CPD IN THE NEWS

Latin Times - Nov 07, 2013

Like the other 13 detainees set to appear before an immigration judge on Wednesday afternoon, Maximiliano Ortiz had been roused in the wee hours of the morning from his cell in a county jail.  Facing the judge at the Varick Street Immigration Court in Lower Manhattan, clothed in an orange jumpsuit, he looked groggy. 

"Are you arriving at this decision voluntarily?" the judge asked.  The interpreter translated the question into Spanish. 

"Yes," said Ortiz, and shortly afterward, having agreed to concede the charge of "entry without inspection" and accept an order of removal from the country, the first of about 190 poor, detained immigrant to receive pro bono legal representation via the city of New York was escorted out of the courtroom, chains jangling at his wrist and waist. 

On Wednesday, a coalition of seven public defender, legal advocacy and community activist groups unveiled the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project (NYIFUP), the first program in the nation to win public funding for legal defense of detained immigrants who cannot afford to hire lawyers.  In June, the New York City Council appropriated $500,000 for the pilot, which organizers say will be enough to meet about 20 percent of each year's need.  Under the program, detainees whose income falls at no more than 200 percent of the federal poverty line can receive pro bono legal counsel from New York Immigrant Defenders, which consists of public defender offices The Bronx Defenders and Brooklyn Defense Services. 

Organizers of the project trace its descent to the efforts of Second Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Robert Katzmann, who in 2010 commissioned two separate studies of detained immigrant representation in the city.  The odds those reports gave detainees were dim: of the 4,818 detainees who had to argue their case from 2005 to 2010, one found, only 3 percent of them did it successfully, compared to 74 percent of those who were represented and weren't held in detention in the time leading up to their appearance.  A separate study carried out previously by the City Bar Justice Center concluded that 39.2 percent of the 400 detainees it interviewed had "possibly meritorious claims for various forms of relief from removal". 

Immigration law is one of the most notoriously complex types, comparable to tax law.  But Lisa Schreibersdorf, founder and executive director of Brooklyn Defense Services, says detainees could win the right to remain in the country through a wide range of ways.  Some have status and don't know it.  "We had a kid who came to the country when he was two with his mom and dad.  The parents got separated, and he went to live with his mom.  His dad became a citizen before the kid turned 18.  Now, that's automatic citizenship for the child, but the kid didn't know.  When he was being interviewed by immigration officials, they'd ask if he was documented and he'd say, 'no'.  So off he goes."

Others who have green cards or visas might be able to stay because of a US citizen spouse; those without papers might be able to receive legal status of some sort - for example, victims of domestic violence or trafficking could apply for U or T visas, or young people who grew up in the US could apply for DACA. 

"People sometimes don't know, or they don't follow through and do it," she said.  "Even now that they're facing deportation, it's not too late.  You can still apply for those things, and that should actually negate the deportation proceeding.  That's really where I think most of the benefit is going to come from."

"Then there's the low-level criminal cases where deportation is not required and the judge has the ability to cancel the removal.  In that situation, a lawyer's very helpful because they explains to the judge what's going on with that family.  It's very hard for an individual who's unrepresented to know what to tell the judge, what kind of things are going to help them.  Plus it's very hard for people to speak in public.  That's what we're good at." 

On Wednesday, 10 of the 14 detainees who showed up for their initial court hearings were represented by lawyers provided by one of the two groups.  All of them were from Latin American countries.  Marianne Yang, the director of the immigration unit at Brooklyn Defense Services, says they expect demographics of clients to vary.  But according to Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse(TRAC), a database of information obtained from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal agencies, out of the top ten most common nationalities, eight of them are in Latin America.  The most typical profile for a detainee in NYC's immigration system is a Mexican (26 percent of all nationalities; Dominicans make up another 15 percent) who has been charged with "entry without inspection" -- a charge which accounts for about 47 percent of all detainees and some 89 percent of those who are from Mexico. 

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials say the agency only goes after immigrants who fit in its priority categories: someone who has committed serious crimes while in the US lawfully, people who crossed the border illegally in recent times and has few community ties, and "egregious immigration violators", or those have committed fraud or violated immigration law on multiple occasions.  But organizers point to the case of Carlos Rodríguez Vásquez, a 27-year-old cook from the Dominican Republic and husband to a US citizen wife who was arrested by the NYPD for "trespassing" in the apartment building of a friend in Washington Heights.  "In court, they dropped the charges right away, because I'd never had any kind of trouble with the law," he said.  But he'd never filed the paperwork to declare his marriage to his wife in the United States, and the NYPD passed him off to ICE, which transferred him to a detention facility in Hudson County, New Jersey. 

His family shelled out for a lawyer.  But when his case went before a judge, Vásquez says, "The lawyer I hired made me sign a voluntary deportation agreement without talking to me about it, without me knowing."  He ended up calling the Northern Manhattan Coalition for Immigrant Rights, which helped him win a retrial, but not before remaining in detention for an additional eight months.

In a report released on Thursday, the project's organizers argue that it makes good financial sense for the public, saying it will save New York state nearly $1.9 million per year in public health insurance spending, foster care services, and lost tax revenues.  It also says it'll help employers save $4 million annually which they lose through turnover when immigrants are forced to leave their jobs.  "Taken together," the report says, "these savings offset the majority of the investment needed to establish he program."

"It's presented as something which is just for immigrant families," said Brittny Saunders, senior staff attorney at the Center for Popular Democracy. "But in reality it's for everybody."

Source:

Politicians always promise they will rid government of "waste, fraud, and abuse," so let's hope at least one political leader or policy maker will denounce our federal government's new gift of nearly a quarter-billion dollars to charter schools.

The cash dump to charters, courtesy of taxpayers, is from the U.S. Department of Education. As Education Week reports, the money is going to eight states and 15 charter school networks from the Charter Schools Program, a federal government operation that doles out millions every year to start new charter schools.

This money is the latest installment of an over $3 billion gravy train the federal government has funded to help launch over 2,500 charter schools across the nation.

Regardless of how you feel about these schools, you should be concerned about how this new government outlay to charters will be used, based on the extensive track record of financial malfeasance in these schools.

Indeed, shortly after the USDE announcement, the Department's own auditor warned that the money is very much at risk of ending up in the pockets of fraudsters and con artists rather than in the classrooms of diligent students and dedicated teachers.

Again Education Week reports, the audit by the agency's inspector general's office examined 33 schools in six states and concluded that because of a general lack of oversight of charters there was a "risk that federal programs are not being implemented correctly and are wasting public money."

The risk stems from the "cozy relationships," the EdWeek reporter's words, between charter schools and companies that operate them, called Charter Management Organizations (CMOs).

Of the 33 charter schools the audit examined, 22 had examples, sometimes multiple examples, of how CMOs take advantage of the unusual business relationship they have with their client charters to exploit federal education funds and redirect precious taxpayer dollars to private interests that have nothing to do with education.

In one of the more egregious examples the audit round, "the CEO of one CMO in Pennsylvania had the authority to write and issue checks without charter school board approval and wrote checks to himself from the charter school's accounts totaling about $11 million."

At another Pennsylvania charter, a vendor that supplied services to the school was owned by the charter school's CMO and received $485,000 in payments from the school without charter school board approval.

In Florida, a charter and a CMO that shared the same board entered into an expensive lease agreement for the school building, then expanded the facility, extended the lease, and increased the rental payments to the CMO.

One CMO the audit examined, which operated three charters in Michigan and one in New York, required the charter schools to remit all federal, state, and local funds to the CMO and gave the CMO total responsibility, with no oversight by the charter board, for paying school expenditures.

The auditor's report doesn't provide the names of these schools, so we don't know if they have received federal grant money in the past or are some of the ones getting the new money.

However, three of the six states the audit looked at – California, Texas, and Florida – are the same states the Department of Education just decided to send more money to. The other three – Michigan Pennsylvania, and New York – have received federal money for charters in the past, either sent to the state or to charter organizations operating in the state.

These states, and presumably many others the feds send charter money to, often don't sufficiently track how the money is used, according to the audit. Of the six states examined, half could not provide consistent funding data on charter schools with CMOs, a third could not identify which charter schools used CMOs, and a third that tracked whether charter schools used CMOs had unreliable information because charter schools self-reported their operations.

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The federal auditor's revelations on charter school waste, fraud, and abuse is yet another dose of reality in a long line of factual reporting about these schools.

A study released last year by the Center for Media and Democracy found "charter spending is largely a black hole." That's because the "flexibility" charters have been granted by the government is often being used not to create education innovations but to "allow an epidemic of fraud, waste, and mismanagement that would not be tolerated in public schools," the CMD report found.

Based on its extensive research on charters, CMD examined the list of new award grantees and noted Florida, that's getting a grant of $58,454,516, has closed over 120 charter schools in a little over a decade. Texas, which is getting $30,498,392, has "an unknown number" of charter schools "housed in churches" and "closely tied to, religious groups."

Tennessee, which is getting $15,172,732, is famous for having a statewide online charter school that is so bad, the state education chief tried to get rid of it but couldn't because of political maneuvering by the charter lobby and lack of regulatory accountability.

California, which is getting $27,329,904, has some of the worst charter school scandals in the nation, according to a report from the Center for Popular Democracy, which uncovered over $81,400,000 in fraud, waste, and abuse in the state. CPD call the alarming figure "likely just the tip of the iceberg."

Louisiana, another grantee getting $4,836,766 from the feds, has been ripped off by "tens of millions of dollars in undiscovered losses" from charter schools in the 2013-14 school year, according to another CPD analysis. "The state has insufficiently resourced financial oversight," CPD contends, and has yet to put into place adequate reporting, staffing, and auditing.

Three other states – Georgia, Massachusetts, and Washington – are getting the money just when they are deeply embroiled in heated controversies over charter schools.

Georgia has a ballot initiative in November on whether to allow the state to operate an Opportunity School District that would summarily take over local schools and hand them over to charter operators. Massachusetts also has a November ballot initiative, called Question 2, that would allow the state to lift the cap on the number of charters allowed to operate in the state. And in Washington, a charter school battleground for over 20 years, court rulings, legislative shenanigans, lawsuits, and counter lawsuits related to charter schools continue to rage across the state.

No doubt, this new money – over $41 million altogether for these three states – may now sweeten the pot if pro charter forces get their way.

Regarding the individual CMOs the Department is sending money to, one of them, Uncommon Schools, is a charter chain which used to be led in part by the current head of USDE, Secretary John King. Uncommon is getting $8,004,576. No conflict of interest there.

Another recipient – the Denver School of Science and Technology charter chain in Colorado, with a grant of $4,043,361 – has paid out between $20 to $50 million to a for-profit corporation owned by two of the charter chain's director, according to another CPD analysis.

A charter school chain in Indiana getting $1,923,866 is plagued with financial problems, low enrollment, and controversy over how the CEO spends money. No doubt the infusion of federal cash will help.

The federal auditor's report recommends the convening of a formal oversight group to look into charter school financial malfeasance, more rigorous review of charter school operations by federal agencies, and legislative changes in Congress to firm up government oversight.

Here's another recommendation: Stop federal funding to expand these schools.

By Jeff Bryant

Source

Federal Reserve bank presidents are pushing back against a rising chorus of voices saying the central bank’s century-old structure needs to be overhauled to reduce bankers’ influence over its operations and policies.

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and the party’s draft platform have echoed calls for change by left-leaning activists, a drive that could gain new attention this week during the party’s convention in Philadelphia.

At issue is the role played by private banks in the Fed’s 12 regional reserve banks, which supervise financial institutions, provide financial services and participate in the central bank’s monetary policy-making.

By law, private banks elect six of the nine members of each Fed bank’s board of directors, choosing three to represent the banks and three to represent the public. The other three are appointed by the Washington-based Fed Board of Governors to represent the public.

Critics say the setup creates an inherent conflict of interest, akin to the proverbial fox guarding the henhouse, and has resulted in too little diversity among the leadership of the Fed system.

“Common sense reforms—like getting bankers off the boards of regional Federal Reserve Banks—are long overdue,” Mrs. Clinton’s campaign said in May.

Fed leaders in recent public comments and interviews have defended the status quo as effective, though Chairwoman Janet Yellen said during congressional testimony in February “it is of course up to Congress to consider what the appropriate structure is of the Fed.”

Meanwhile, regional Fed bank officials have played down the potential for conflict of interest, noting that the directors aren't involved in bank supervision, and the directors who represent private banks don’t participate in choosing the Fed bank presidents. The officials also see value in having close ties to the banking community. Patrick Harker, president of the Philadelphia Fed, said most of the bankers in his district are from small firms, not the big financial institutions that can worry regulators.

“The banker from a small town in Pennsylvania provides incredibly important insight” about local conditions, and “I worry about losing that insight,” Mr. Harker said. He agreed bankers could provide input through advisory groups, but he said having them on his board, meeting every 15 days, provides a level of instant insight into the economy and financial system that would be hard to replace.

William Dudley, president of the New York Fed, told reporters in May, “The current arrangements are actually working quite well, both in terms of preserving the Federal Reserve’s independence with respect to the conduct of monetary policy and actually leading to pretty, you know, successful outcomes” in terms of hitting the Fed’s goals of maximum employment and low, steady inflation.

Another issue for some advocates of change is the regional Fed banks’ status as quasi-public, quasi-private institutions. The Fed board in Washington is a wholly government entity that ultimately oversees the regional Fed banks. But when private banks become members of the Federal Reserve system, they are required to buy stock, and in turn receive dividends from the Fed. So the private banks in a sense own the regional Fed banks, though they can’t transfer or sell the stock.

“It’s pretty indefensible for the Fed to be the only regulatory institution” in the U.S. “that’s owned by the industry it regulates,” said Ady Barkan, of the Center for Popular Democracy’s Fed Up Campaign.

Fed officials say the critics misunderstand the Fed’s ownership structure. Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester said in an interview the quasi-private status of the regional Fed banks helps ensure the independence that is needed for good policy-making in an economically diverse nation. If the regional banks were made fully part of government, she worried, Washington’s power would grow, raising the risk of politics influencing the policy debate.

Ms. Mester said “yes, the banks have stock” in the Fed. “But that’s not owning the Fed in the sense of a corporation, right? It’s making sure that there’s representation from the district as part of the Fed structure,” she said.

Richmond Fed leader Jeffrey Lacker also worried making the regional Fed banks pure governmental entities might promote short-term thinking that would lead to bad policy outcomes.

Fed Up worked with former senior Fed staffer Andrew Levin, now a professor at Dartmouth College, on a proposal to make the Fed banks wholly government institutions, as are the central banks in all the major economies. His proposal also would eliminate the regional Fed board director slots reserved for bankers and have all the directors selected in a public process involving the Washington governors and local elected officials.

Mr. Levin said he’s somewhat mystified Fed officials appear to be rejecting almost all the major reform ideas now being debated. They “might not have much influence on the outcome if they wait too long to engage in the debate,” he warned.

Mr. Harker, the Philadelphia Fed president, worried “there are always unintended consequences anytime you make a change.”

But Mr. Barkan countered “it’s true the system could be made worse than it is now, but we think it could be made better.”

By MICHAEL S. DERBY

Source

 President Trump continued a sweeping remake of the Federal Reserve’s leadership on Monday by nominating Richard Clarida, a Treasury official in the administration of President George W. Bush, for the Fed’s second-ranking job.

Read the full article here.