CPD IN THE NEWS

New York Times - January 28, 2013, by Kirk Semple - In the next several days, the deans of the nation’s top law schools will be notified of a new job opportunity for their graduating students. Applicants must be high achievers who want to be part of a groundbreaking start-up, live in New York City, train with veteran lawyers and help create a new paradigm in immigration representation.

The call comes from the Immigrant Justice Corps, a new group that received a life-giving injection on Tuesday when the board of the Robin Hood Foundation, a poverty-fighting philanthropy, approved more than $1.3 million in funding.

The initiative is the long-nurtured idea of Robert A. Katzmann, the chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, who has for years campaigned to redress a grave problem: the shortage of competent legal representation for immigrants, particularly those of modest means facing deportation.

The group’s plan is to recruit 25 graduating law students or recent graduates, immerse them in immigration law and then farm them out to community-based organizations. The young lawyers would commit to at least two years of service and as many as three.

“It’s a very simple concept, but it’s one that will not only ensure fairness for immigrants but will infuse our legal system with a generation of lawyers committed to serving those in need,” said Judge Katzmann, whose father was a refugee from Nazi Germany and whose maternal grandparents were immigrants from Russia.

The corps intends to hire a cadre of 25 lawyers every year, each earning a salary of $47,000 plus benefits. They will be assisted by recent college graduates with multilingual skills who will handle less complex cases, such as naturalization applications. The team will be supervised by a group of staff lawyers and advised by veteran lawyers.

Organizers estimate that by the third year, the corps will be handling nearly 15,000 cases a year, about double the number of immigration cases currently overseen by nonprofit organizations in New York City.

Robin Hood’s grants, while enough to get the initiative off the ground, will cover only a fraction of the project’s operating costs, which are expected to total about $4 million in the first year and about $7 million in each successive year.

But foundation officials and corps board members anticipate that they will be able to raise money from other foundations as well as philanthropists and the government.

During an interview this month, with the foundation’s approval nearly certain, Judge Katzmann turned emotional.

“The dream is about to come true, after lots of hopes and some disappointments,” he said, pausing for a moment. “I’m choked up as I’m thinking about it.”

In 2007, deeply concerned about the quality and availability of representation for immigrants, he sounded a clarion call and started a study group that investigated the issue’s impact on immigrant populations. Among its findings: Most detained immigrants in the New York region did not have counsel at the time their cases were completed.

Judge Katzmann and his allies have warned that, absent new programs, the problem would grow worse should Congress pass comprehensive immigration reform providing legal status for undocumented immigrants.

The study group spawned an initiative, the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project, which seeks to provide legal representation for every poor immigrant facing deportation in New York.

But Judge Katzmann pressed for more: a national army of young lawyers in the style of public service programs like AmeriCorps Vista or the Peace Corps.

Robin Hood heard about the idea last spring and agreed to fund a planning process. Organizers decided to limit the project to New York City, at least until it had sufficient funding to expand nationally.

Nisha Agarwal, the executive director of the Immigrant Justice Corps, views the pilot project as something that could be replicated in other cities with large immigrant populations, and as a kind of feeder system for legal talent. “Maybe these fellows will leave these fellowships and go elsewhere in the country,” she said, “and be leaders in immigrant representation.”

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Targeted by progressive activists hoping to kill his chances of being Hillary Clinton’s running mate, Julián Castro is set this week to announce changes to a hot-button Housing and Urban Development program to sell bad mortgages on its books.

The changes, which HUD officials will brief stakeholders and activists on during a conference call on Monday, could be made public as early as Tuesday — depending on when department lawyers give the green light to publishing them in the Federal Register.

But they won’t take effect before the next auction of HUD mortgages, scheduled for May 18.

Castro’s actions could potentially defuse an issue that activists have been using to question his progressive credentials — and he’ll be doing it at the moment the running mate search has begun to get serious at Clinton campaign headquarters.

Among the changes, according to people with knowledge of what’s coming: The Federal Housing Authority will put out a new plan requiring investors to offer principal reduction for all occupied loans, start a new requirement that all loan modifications be fixed for at least five years and limit any subsequent increase to 1 percent per year, and create a “walk-away prohibition” to block any purchaser of single-family mortgages from abandoning lower-value properties in the hopes of preventing neighborhood blight.

HUD officials say that the timing isn’t a response to the activist pressure or the presidential campaign calendar.

“It has always been our goal to get the policy right, regardless of arbitrary deadlines, and we expect to announce those changes this week,” said HUD press secretary Cameron French.

But the changes come after two years of calls by activists — joined last September by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) — for major reforms to the Distressed Asset Stabilization Program. Their calculations — numbers that HUD says are way off — allege that during Castro’s tenure, 98 percent of problematic mortgages the department has sold went to Wall Street firms that they say were responsible for the housing crisis in the first place.

With the backdrop of a Democratic Party recalibrated by Bernie Sanders’ surprisingly strong candidacy, activists were preparing a full offensive against Castro this week, looking to leverage his political ambitions against him to extract major concessions.

Last Thursday, activists sent an ultimatum letter to HUD titled, “Seeking swift changes to HUD's DASP program,” and demanding response within 24 hours. They had set up a national day of action for Tuesday, with protests scheduled at HUD offices in New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and San Francisco, along with a news conference at Newark City Hall — which remains on for now, pending whether they feel HUD has gone far enough in what the agency tells stakeholders on Monday afternoon.

“I would say we’re cautiously optimistic, but we don’t know, and what we need to see is a plan that will lead to substantially more mortgages not getting into the hands of bad actors and saving more homes from foreclosure,” said Amy Schur, campaign director for the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, on Sunday afternoon. “Unless we see that, it’s going to be a problem.”

Schur has been in touch with HUD regularly over the course of the past two years, and in recent weeks when the conversations stepped up after the activists fired a warning shot against Castro by launching a public effort built around the website DontSellOurHomestoWallStreet.org.

That first attack on Castro in early April prompted a number of leaders to rush to his defense — some because they felt the criticisms were unfair, others because they were eager to protect the future of arguably the most promising Latino rising star in the Democratic Party.

“Some of y’all may have seen recently concerns that were voiced about DASP,” Castro said last week in an appearance at a National Association of Realtors event teasing the changes.

“We’re improving that and have been working to do that to ensure that folks are able to stay in their homes longer because they’re offered principal reduction in certain instances,” Castro said, “that we get better outcomes for neighborhoods by making sure that folks who secure those loans aren’t able to just walk away from those properties and by instituting something that we refer to [as] ‘payment shock protection’ to make sure that once payments are modified that they don’t just jump up a couple years later.”

Other members of the coalition and signatories on the ultimatum letter are American Family Voices, the Center for Popular Democracy Action, Daily Kos, Democracy for America, MoveOn.org Civic Action, New York Communities for Change, Other 98% Action, Presente.org, RootsAction.org, the Rootstrikers Project at Demand Progress and the Working Families Party.

Schur said that she and others are hoping that HUD will include some method of incentivizing mortgage sales through early bidding or favorable rates to nonprofits and neighborhood groups, rather than the Wall Street firms that have bought many of the mortgages. They feel that large financial institutions don’t care about the effect on neighborhoods from letting properties go vacant or decline, or of overwhelming homeowners with liabilities — though many argue that the reason these institutions buy so many of the mortgages is that they are the only ones that have the capital and management capability to handle the purchases.

“Where we would like to be with HUD is partnering to roll out a positive program in our cities across the country,” Schur said. “We’d rather be doing that than protesting. But if the changes are insufficient and this program is going to continue to be almost a wholesale giveaway to speculators, we’re going to have to keep the pressure up. We’re not going to have a choice.”

HUD officials point out that the May 18 auction isn’t for the DASP program and call the complaints surrounding that unfair. It is for different mortgages, called an “aged loan sale,” scheduled before these reforms were far along. No DASP auction has been set yet for 2016, and reconsideration of the program, according to French, has been underway since the most recent DASP auction, at the end of last year.

“Since 2014, FHA has made changes to the DASP program before every sale. FHA has been working on the latest round of changes to the DASP program for months, and, in our desire to be as comprehensive as possible, we’ve engaged a broad group of stakeholders on the potential reforms that would make the most impact for distressed homeowners,” French said.

Activists had been growing frustrated with the pace and substance of the conversations with HUD, and HUD officials have been losing patience with them as well, feeling that the activists are out for attention and landing on Castro simply because his name is in the running mate mix.

And, well aware that this is a critical political moment for Castro, activists warn that they’re ready to keep after him until the Democratic convention in July, and beyond that if he is Clinton’s pick.

“We would all love for the secretary to really come through in a big way, but housing activists and folks in our neighborhoods are not going to stop when our neighborhoods are being sold off to Wall Street. There has to be a major, major change,” said Jonathan Westin, director of New York Communities for Change. “Folks are completely ready to keep pushing.”

By Edward-Isaac Dovere

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York Daily Record - November 4, 2014, by Rev. Aaron Willford, Sandra Thompson and Clovis Gallon - Over the past few months, something remarkable happened in York. Parents, teachers, students, neighbors and faith leaders united to send a clear message that the education of York's children is more important than the profit margin of an out-of-state charter operator.

On behalf of that community, we would like to thank the York City School Board for standing up for our students, making sure their education comes first, and rejecting a charter takeover of our schools.

When the school board met on Oct. 15, Chief Recovery Officer David Meckley pressured board members to vote on an incomplete, poorly researched charter plan that was rolled out less than a week before. With so little time to review the plan and so many unanswered questions about it, the community urged the board to cast a no vote.

Rejecting the charter plan was not an easy decision for the school board, but it was the right decision — and we applaud their courage. If the plan had been enacted, money that should support students in the classroom would have flowed to a for-profit management company instead. City school children would have been treated like guinea pigs in a radical experiment, and their parents would have lost any say in how their neighborhood schools are run.

Perhaps the school board was looking into a crystal ball when it cast that vote. Just a week later, a federal judge appointed a receiver for Mosaica Education Inc., one of the two charter companies initially in the running to take over York city's schools. The heavily indebted Mosaica was sued by its primary lender in September after defaulting on its debt.

Imagine where York's students would be if a charter operator took over their schools and, right out of the gate, found itself under enormous financial pressure for "a series of bad business decisions," as lender Tatonka Capital Corp. claims in its lawsuit against Mosaica.

The case against Mosaica followed a string of troubling studies questioning charter school oversight and accountability in Pennsylvania. A spring report from Auditor General Eugene DePasquale found that a lack of state oversight of charters was creating problems — with some observers comparing the current charter environment to the "wild, wild west."

A blistering report from the Center for Popular Democracy this fall revealed more than $30 million in proven or alleged fraud, waste, or abuse in Pennsylvania's charter school system over the past 17 years.

Giving Meckley a blank check on charterization in York would have been a big mistake.

Fortunately, the school board recognized how fraught with risk this plan was and chose to maintain local control of all the city's schools.

Now, it is critical for the school board to work in partnership with York's educators to improve the city's schools and give every child a shot at success.

Educators and administrators are already implementing a road map to fiscal recovery that will strengthen educational programs. We are glad that the school board is giving this "internal option," as it is known, an opportunity to work before taking any action that will negatively impact our schools, our students, or our community.

York city schools, like many other districts across the commonwealth, face a funding crisis created by deep cuts in state funding for public schools. All Pennsylvania school children deserve better from Harrisburg. It is high time our elected leaders reverse those cuts and put our schools back on track.

Until that happens, York's children should not be treated any differently than other Pennsylvania students. They shouldn't be guinea pigs in a charter experiment. And they shouldn't be deprived of the opportunity to attend their neighborhood schools.

Our school board agrees, and now it is up to all of us to take responsibility for the future of our city's public schools and the students who learn there.

We have no doubt that the York community is strongly committed to making our schools the best they can be. Working together, we can achieve truly remarkable things.

Rev. Aaron Willford is a member of York Concerned Clergy. Sandra Thompson is president of the York NAACP. Clovis Gallon is a teacher and York Education Association member.

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Supporting a strong job market is a big part of the U.S. Federal Reserve's mandate. Fed officials, though, interpret that goal differently than most observers do. For the economy's sake, Congress should step in to resolve the discrepancy.

Specifically, the Federal Reserve Act instructs the central bank to promote "maximum employment" and "stable prices." Most people understand these instructions as meaning the Fed should seek to generate as much demand for workers as possible without causing an unduly large increase in prices.

The website of the Fed's Board of Governors, however, makes a slight modification to the jobs mandate: "maximum sustainable employment." Innocuous as it may seem, that one word can make a big difference.

How? Well, suppose inflation is running below the Fed's 2 percent target and the unemployment rate is at 5 percent, which officials consider to be its long-run level (pretty much the current situation). They can choose between two monetary policies, which are expected to result in the following paths for the unemployment rate:

Most observers would opt for the second policy. It's more aggressive, so it will get inflation back to target sooner. Even better, the unemployment rate is the same or lower every year, and by a significant amount: One percentage point is worth more than a million jobs.

The word "sustainable," however, means that the Fed views any deviation from the long-run unemployment rate -- up or down -- as undesirable. When officials speak of the economy “overheating” or “running hot” in the absence of inflationary pressures, this is what I think they have in mind. So they would see unemployment as running too low under policy 2.

Some Fed officials worry that “overheating” could trigger a recession. (I don’t understand the precise economic mechanism, but let’s leave that aside.) They think policy 2 might generate the following path for the unemployment rate:

Policy 2: Possible Recession Outcome

In 2019 and 2020, the economy falls into recession. From the Fed’s perspective, this unemployment path is terrible, because the rate is either too low or too high for the next four years.

It's easy to imagine, though, that many people would be willing to trade the risk of recessionary pain in 2019 and 2020 for the near-term gain of 2017 and 2018. They might even believe there's some chance that policy 2 will generate an outstanding outcome -- if, for example, the long-run unemployment rate is actually lower than the Fed thinks it is. Here's how that would look:

This interpretational divide was on full display last month, when Fed officials met with representatives of the pro-employment activist group Fed Up. The activists largely assumed that the central bank was contemplating near-term interest-rate increases to keep inflation in check. But most of the officials downplayed inflation, invoking instead the need to keep the economy from running too hot (which some said could lead to a recession).

I find it hard to believe that the Fed's approach is consistent with Congress's intent as expressed in the Federal Reserve Act. That said, it's really up to legislators to provide an unequivocal answer, which could matter a lot for the economy over the next few years.

By Narayana Kocherlakota

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