Two seemingly unrelated news items from the last month: The tunnel boring machine digging the extension of the number 7 subway line completed its task, leaving the new project on target for a late 2013 opening. And the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, a quasi-public development corporation formed to oversee the reconstruction of a 22-block swath of downtown Brooklyn, was reported to be short of cash and threatened with being reduced to “a shell” of its former self.

The tie that binds these two stories: Dan Doctoroff, who as deputy mayor for economic development spearheaded both the 7 train extension and the downtown Brooklyn rezoning, along with numerous other development projects that marked Mayor Bloomberg’s first two terms in office… [read more]

Meetings of the Industrial Development Agency - the city agency in charge of approving discretionary tax subsidies to local businesses - are generally sleepy affairs. Unless sports teams are involved, the monthly board meetings typically attract a handful of business executives and policy wonks but little public attention.

This morning’s monthly IDA hearing, though, was widely anticipated for a different reason: One of the items on the agenda was $24 million in sales tax breaks on office and building materials to Thomson Reuters, the news-and-information-services giant created when the Canadian firm Thomson bought the wire service Reuters in 2008… [read more]

The New York state education department issued its annual test scores for 3rd- through 8th-graders this morning, and the takeaway is: They blow. The number of students judged proficient in English fell from 77% in 2009 to 53% this year; in math, the percent earning passing grades plunged from 86% to 61%.

The state, however, was quick to note that it had anticipated crappy scores, seeing as it had raised the scores required to pass — “cut scores,” in testing lingo — after widespread criticism that New York students had been doing better on state tests but not on national ones. The real upshot, then: New York schools aren’t any crappier than ever, it’s just that prior reports of improvement were an illusion.[read more]

Sometime in the last year, New York City reached a milestone: More than one-quarter of its adult residents are now receiving food stamps. Thanks in large part to the outreach efforts of the Bloomberg administration–with an added boost from the crappy economy–1.7 million New York City residents are now receiving food stamps (or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, as they’ve been officially known since 2008), up from 800,000 at its low point in the final month of the Giuliani Administration in December 2001.

Finding places to effectively spend those food stamps is another story… [read more]

Poor dead George Steinbrenner doesn’t even have a grave to spin in yet, and already he’s being raked over the coals for his past sins.

First came Jim Dwyer’s recounting of The Boss’s legacy of egotism and abuse in today’s Times, which recalls how Steinbrenner shook hands with Ed Koch on a lease extension at the old Yankee Stadium, only to back out when he decided he’d rather keep all his cable boodle for himself.

Then at noon today, a group of South Bronx residents held a press conference at the new Yankee Stadium that Steinbrenner and his kids got $1.2 billion in taxpayer money for, demanding that the Yankees cough up proof that they’ve lived up to the community benefits agreement that team execs announced with great fanfare just before the city council vote on the new stadium plan in 2006… [read more]

With a new mandate looming that will require business owners to file millions more tax forms, the Internal Revenue Service has begun the daunting process of figuring out how to turn the law’s sweeping demands into actual rules for taxpayers.

The new regulations, which kick in at the start of 2012, require any taxpayer with business income to issue 1099 forms to all vendors from whom they purchased more than $600 of goods and services that year. That promises to launch a fusillade of new paperwork: An estimated 40 million taxpayers will be subject to the requirement, including 26 million who run sole proprietorships, according to a report released this week by National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson… [read more]

When Mayor Bloomberg tapped former Indianapolis mayor Stephen Goldsmith in April to replace longtime aide Ed Skyler as the city’s new deputy mayor for operations, all the talk was about the new hire’s credentials as an innovator at remaking government through privatization. The Times called Goldsmith, a former two-term mayor of Indianapolis who officially started work at City Hall on June 1, “a national leader in the movement to introduce corporate-style accountability and cost-cutting into government bureaucracy.” Bloomberg enthused about his new hire, “Lots of people talk about reinventing government; I think it’s fair to say Steve has actually done that.”

According to some of those who saw Goldsmith’s work firsthand in Indianapolis, however, his record is mixed. The Indianapolis miracle, say many community and labor leaders, was less an indicator of the magic of privatization than of its limits. … [read more]

When the New York Times delivered its all-important endorsement to then-City Councilman Bill de Blasio in last year’s race for public advocate, the paper noted that the winner’s chief task would be “demonstrating whether this position truly serves New Yorkers.”

If the subtext wasn’t clear then, it was brought into sharp focus when the mayor’s charter revision commission announced that its agenda for this year would include the possible elimination of the public advocate position… [read more]

Following the Mets’ improbable come-from-way-behind win over the Marlins yesterday, the Shea Stadium Citi Field scoreboard blared the slogan “We Believe in Home Field Advantage,” along with the news that the Amazin’s now boast a sparkling 22-9 record in Flushing.

Now, given that the Mets continue to hover around the .500 mark, you can probably guess that they’ve been abysmal on the road (8-18 currently). When teams sport crazy home-road splits like this, you can look at it as half-full — they’re unbeatable at home! — or half-empty — they forget to pack their bats! Or you can speculate about the reasons why: familiarity with the ballpark’s quirks, jet lag, or blowing garbage.

Or, if you’re the Times’ Ken Belson, you can skip right over all that and claim that the Mets’ futility on the road is to blame for the team’s declining attendance at home. In a post Saturday on the paper’s Bats blog (named, presumably, because the alternative violated their style guidelines), Belson asserted, well, you really need to read it for yourself… [read more]

No sooner had the unemployment rate dipped from its January high of 10 percent than the media drumbeat began: What will the Obama administration do about looming deficits?

The danger, it was made clear, was both imminent and mammoth: The federal deficit, warned the New York Times (2/2/10), was on pace by 2020 to “equal 77 percent of the gross domestic product, the highest level since 1950.” The Times (1/26/10) even alluded to “perceptions that government spending is out of control” as a cause of Obama’s falling poll ratings among independents.

The “out-of-control spending” theme, in fact, dominated news coverage of the deficit panic, with numerous news outlets drawing parallels between the government’s rising debt and individuals’ irresponsible spending. “We’re going to talk, this morning, about what happens when you put off paying the bills,” began an NPR report (3/5/10) on the deficit… [read more]