All Articles Tagged "city government"
“She’s The Boss” Episode 16 – Patricia Gatling, Commissioner And Chair Of The NYC Commission On Human Rights
Meet Patricia Gatling, Commissioner and Chair of the New York City Commission on Human Rights. A top enforcer of the Human Rights Law, Commissioner Gatling is committed to combating and eradicating discrimination throughout the City of New York. Having served as the First Assistant District Attorney at the Kings County District Attorney’s Office, Commissioner Gatling attributes her interest in law to her days growing up in the south during the Civil Rights Movement. Bright, Gifted and authentic, find out why She’s the Boss!
City Clerk Fined for Having Workers Move Her Furniture
(AJC) — Rhonda Johnson, Atlanta’s long-time city clerk has been slapped with an $800 fine after a Board of Ethic investigation showed that she used city workers – using a city-rented truck – to move personal furniture.According to the study, on Sept. 15, 2008, Johnson rented a Toyota Prius to attend a meeting in Athens. The next day, she traded the Prius in for a 2008 Chevrolet S15 pick-up truck.
The Big Sell: Infrastructure Anyone?
(Slate) — Almost lost in the deluge of news out of Wisconsin was a paragraph tucked into Gov. Scott Walker’s original “budget repair bill” giving the state government the right to sell state-owned power-generation facilities—which supply heating, cooling, and electricity to Wisconsin’s government buildings—essentially without any oversight, checks, or balances. As the bill put it, any such sale would, by definition, be “considered to be in the public interest.” The blogosphere erupted in a storm of speculation—and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman joined in—that the sale of the plants was intended as a gift to Koch Industries, the mammoth private company run by the Koch brothers, the billionaire Tea Party Medicis who provided conservative support for Walker’s agenda.
But the language didn’t make it into the final bill. So what had been just a local Wisconsin issue is now a nonissue, right? Actually, the privatization of state and, especially, local government assets is a very real, very national issue, albeit one in which the left’s favorite villains in Wisconsin—the Koch brothers—don’t figure as prominently as the left’s other favorite villain—the banks. The deep budgetary woes of states and cities around the country have made the quick (but one-time) infusion of cash resulting from an asset sale a handy temporary solution. The big banks advise cities about whether privatization is a wise choice. They also control the ability of states and cities to access the market for their financing needs. But the banks’ investment funds may also stand to make money off privatizations. As Josh Rosner, a managing director at the research firm Graham, Fisher who was a prescient critic of the housing boom, says, “Given what we’ve seen [in other deals], I have concerns that the banks will or could use their lending power” to push privatization deals that get done via closed bids, aren’t publically debated, and may not be in the public interest.
D.C.’s New Mayor Gets Ready to Pick His Business Team
(Washington Post) — One of the the top questions as Vincent C. Gray prepares to enter office is whom he will choose as deputy mayor for planning and economic development. With the city’s unemployment rate still above the national average, Gray says he wants a deputy mayor who will focus not just on advancing dozens of real estate projects but on developing the city’s workforce. He has named two people outside of the core real estate community — Barbara Lang, president of the D.C. Chamber of Commerce, and former George Washington University president Stephen Joel Trachtenberg — to tackle economic development issues for his mayoral transition team.
Preckwinkle Promotes Her Independence as Some Question It
(New York Times) — It is a longstanding practice for Cook County’s Democratic Party heavyweights to dismiss would-be reformers as weaklings and phonies. But this year provides a twist: While the party leadership has embraced Toni Preckwinkle, who is campaigning as a reformer for president of the Cook County Board of Commissioners, some activists and commentators have grown skeptical that she really is as independent as she has claimed.
