Senate GOP (Plus Pedro Espada!) Valiantly Carrying On With The People’s Business

“We need just one brave Senate Democrat to come to the session so we can pass these and other important bills and move the session forward,” Senate President Pedro Espada said. “It is time for them to end their boycott of the session, come to work and get the people’s business done.” These important bills include but are not limited to:

• Senate Bill 3697, which would rename the Battery Park City Authority the “Hugh L. Carey Battery Park City Authority”
• Senate Bill 1764, which would designate August seventh as “Family Day, a day of commemoration”
• Senate Bill 2398, which would permit correction officers to be color blind
• Senate Bill 1036, which would designate as a day of commemoration, February 14th, to be known as “Congenital Heart Defects Awareness Day” (that’s got to be a joke, right?)

Things I’d Rather Not Know About Include . . .

. . . the idea that pedicab drivers are getting payola in the form of lap dances:

A Midtown strip club has made raunchy rickshaws out of the three-wheeled rides — and management is plying the three-wheeler drivers with free meals and private tours to help promote the hot spot.

In the latest move in its ongoing ad campaign, Rick’s Cabaret has outfitted at least 50 pedicabs with its posters.

Club owners have asked drivers to hand out free passes and are giving them firsthand knowledge of the club’s offerings.

“The drivers always ask when the next ‘orientation’ will be,” said a taxi driver.

Serious Question . . .

. . . is it just me or is the mayor/city council .5 percent sales tax increase not listed on Governor Paterson’s special session to-do list?

Then again, if the city is continually cooking books (“Surprise, here is a half billion!”), then they won’t really have to worry about it until after November 3 at least:

In May, the mayor hoped to generate $1.5 billion in revenue by raising the sales tax, doing away with a sales tax exemption for clothing and negotiating with the city’s unions on both health care costs and pensions.

He was partly victorious: The City Council signed off on hiking the sales tax to 8.875 percent from 8.375 percent and agreed to do away with the exemption for clothing selling for more than $110. The city’s unions also went along with contributing to some of their health benefits.

Elsewhere, the mayor was not so persuasive. He was unable to secure the creation of a fifth pension tier for new city employees in Albany, and the City Council refused to endorse a five-cent tax on plastic bags. In the end, the fiscal year 2010 budget agreement came up $359 million short.

This also doesn’t factor in the uncertain situation in Albany, where the legislature must approve all of the mayor’s tax proposals. The state will have to OK the sales tax increase, among other revenue measures, by July 1.

An administration spokesperson said the city will make up the revenue shortfall elsewhere. Conveniently, the city’s budget department reported last week that an additional $438 million to help fill the gap was generated thanks to “conservative” revenue projections.

But what some see as faulty revenue projections, others caution is a misleading budget process.

“It amazes me that they find a half a billion dollars,” said Councilmember Lewis Fidler. “Surprise, here is a half billion.”

“They are not playing all the cards on the deck,” added Fidler, who says the administration squirrels away funding to keep the City Council out of the budget process.

Some advocates also question whether the administration is being completely open about its revenue projections.

“If they are not being transparent about where the money comes from it makes me nervous for New Yorkers who rely on programs that are less politically popular, like AIDS housing programs,” said Barry. “We aren’t firehouses.”

Others wonder about the politics and whether the entire budget process represents an attempt to make the city’s fiscal situation appear OK for now, until after the city elections. In an analysis of the mayor’s budget, the city’s Independent Budget Office not only predicted far higher deficits in future years — climbing to $5.8 billion in fiscal year 2012 — but also observed, “Given that this a municipal election year, the difficult decisions about spending cuts and tax increases that lie ahead are unlikely to be addressed until November.”

Some advocates fearfully agree.

“People expect these cuts to be back on the table in the November financial plan after the city elections,” said Barry.

We Are All Triboro Now*

It’s not just Staten Island — everyone seems to dislike the “Triboro” label:

For decades, stamps on letters mailed in New York City have generally been canceled with squiggly lines of ink and the name of the sender’s home borough. But this tradition may itself soon be canceled, at least in Brooklyn and Queens and on Staten Island.

Under the Postal Service’s plan, most mail from the three boroughs would be sent to a central processing center in East New York, Brooklyn, where it would be branded with a new emblem:

“TRIBORO, NY

BKLYN-QNS-STATEN ISL.”

The plan was spawned because of a 29 percent decline in the volume of first-class mail over the past decade. Officials say the change would save $6.7 million annually.

This is where a bureaucratic transaction gets personal.

“There are certain things you don’t mess with,” said Audrey Hecht-Stewart, 54, a teacher from Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, who was standing in line last week at the Cadman Plaza Post Office in Downtown Brooklyn. “The postmark on your letter should represent where you live, like caller ID on your phone.

“You can’t throw Brooklyn in the same pot with Queens and Staten Island,” Ms. Hecht-Stewart added. “When you go and lump us in with those other two boroughs, you take away our individuality.”

A host of elected officials, from the relevant borough presidents to New York’s two United States senators, has decried the proposal, along with postal union officials who translate a consolidated postmark into lost jobs. And dismay is rippling across this proposed new land called “Triboro,” where many who know about the plan resent the prospect of being stripped of their envelope identifier.

*Think about it — it could look cool on a T-shirt!

Mayor Mike Gets Results

267 new jobs! Give or take:

“Public officials’ estimates of jobs created from these kinds of programs are often exaggerated,” said Paul Wachtel, an economics professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business.

“They put out a big headline number, but there’s a great deal of uncertainty with such estimates — you should take them with a grain of salt.”

Mayor Bloomberg’s spokesman Marc LaVorgna said the city calculated jobs with widely used federal formulas, including a US Transportation Department equation which projects 27,800 jobs created for every $1 billion in construction contracts.

So far, only 1 percent of the $1 billion in Big Apple stimulus funds slated for capital projects has trickled out — about $10 million. And jobs produced so far are few.

The city’s Economic Development Corp. recently gave Hunter Roberts Construction Group $7 million in contracts — $3.7 million to start — to install utilities and interior walls for future stores at the ferry terminals in lower Manhattan and Staten Island.

A company official told The Post it will put about 30 people in various trades to work.

But the city’s estimate is much bigger — predicting 167 jobs, plus 100 more expected to work in the new stores.

Something to keep in mind when you read exciting campaign literature, e.g, “Under Mike, the City is creating jobs by investing more than $10 billion this fiscal year in critical infrastructure projects, and Mike is using additional federal stimulus money on other transportation projects like the rehabilitations of the St. George Ferry Terminal and Brooklyn Bridge.”