Media Links
March 9, 2011
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Source: NY PostA state appeals court yesterday threw out a Harlem man's $1.8 million verdict against New York City Transit after finding he was hit by a bus not because it blew through a red light, but because he wasn't watching where he was going.
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Source: NY TimesResidents of Park Slope expressed a variety of opinions about the bike route along Prospect Park West that is the focus of a suit against the city’s Transportation Department.
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Source: NPRRepublicans in state legislatures of Wisconsin, Indiana and Ohio are trying to cut collective bargaining rights for workers in the public sector. A recent New York Times article described these bills as "the largest assault on collective bargaining in recent memory, striking at the heart of an American labor movement that is already atrophied."
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Source: Brown Daily HeraldAfter weeks of hearings, graduate students at New York University are awaiting a decision from the National Labor Relations Board to determine whether they will be allowed to form a graduate student union.
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Source: NY1Disaster was narrowly avoided Monday when the doors of a subway car opened before it reached the platform at an elevated station in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
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Source: Daily Politics / NY Daily News
Here's the latest salvo in the battle between the United Federation of Teachers and Mayor Bloomberg when it comes to the layoffs Hizzoner is threatening.
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Source:Nova Bus here [in Plattsburgh] is busy building a test fleet of 90 buses for the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority.
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Source: WCBS 880
Not knowing where the next bus can be a frustrating part of commuting, but for NY Waterways riders, now they can know exactly when a bus will arrive.
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Source: NY PostThe New York City Council is holding a hearing on legislation aimed at improving the city’s response to weather-related emergencies. Wednesday’s hearing will examine recommendations that came out of a series of public hearings the Council held following the post-Christmas blizzard that paralyzed large swathes of the city.
March 8, 2011
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Source: WPIX 11
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Source: StreetsblogThe two houses of Congress were so much at odds over the Republicans’ proposed spending cuts that they needed two more weeks to bicker about it. So last week, they pushed off a little longer final passage of the budget for a fiscal year that started five months ago. But in order to even pass that measly two-week extension, Democrats needed to accede to $4 billion in cuts.
About a quarter of those cuts were to transportation. But it’s not as bad as it sounds.
The biggest chunk is $650 million of general fund spending for transportation. But remember, the baseline budget that this money is being cut from is the FY2010 budget. No allocation from the general fund was ever requested for 2011, so this isn’t a real cut since it wouldn’t have been in the 2011 budget in any case. As the Appropriations Committee puts it, “Removing these funds will have no impact on the authorized, mandatory side of the highway program and its limitation of obligations.”
The two-week cuts also targeted unspent earmarks from 2010, including $22 million for HUD Neighborhood Initiatives, $173 million for HUD Economic Development Initiative, $293 million for surface transportation “priorities” and $25 million for rail line relocation.
That all adds up to $1.16 billion in cuts to transportation and urban development. But really, it’s a lesson that when members of Congress advertise to their fiscally-conservative constituencies that they’re cutting money from the budget, sometimes the money they’re “cutting” was never really there in the first place.
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Source: Albany Watch - Journal-News
Here’s one you don’t see often: An ad from health-care groups and unions in favor of a governor’s budget cuts. But here is it, a television ad that started over the weekend by 1199 SEIU and Greater New York Hospital Association, the two most powerful health-care groups in Albany.
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Source: StreetsblogIn amendments to the state budget released last week, the Cuomo administration claims that its $100 million raid on dedicated MTA funds was a one-time deal that won’t be repeated in the next three years.
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Source:The Wisconsin AFL-CIO is firing back at Gov. Scott Walker's (R) Monday press conference, in which he attacked state Senate Minority Leader Mark Miller (D) and his caucus for not returning to the state -- and accused Dems of secretly taking their marching orders from the unions instead of having real negotiations. In response, the union says Walker is the one who isn't negotiating in good faith -- and is also the one who was caught on a phone call with someone he believed to be an out-of-state backer.
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Source: 1010 WINS
Legislator Kevan Abrahams and transportation advocates want Nassau County Executive Ed Mangano to negotiate with the MTA.
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Source: NY TimesA suit over a bicycle path incorporates criticism of the city’s overall approach in carrying out the initiatives of the transportation commissioner.
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Source: WNBC 4
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Source: Second Avenue SagasEvery few months, the benches in the subway system — those sometimes-convenient, often-dirty wooden slabs that provide a few minutes’ respite while the subway comes — sneak their way into a news story.
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Source: Albany Watch - Journal NewsAssembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, D-Manhattan, has gone back and forth over the odds of keeping the so-called millionaires tax, a surcharge on earners who make more than $200,000. But following Assemblywoman Catherine Nolan’s petition released this morning, Silver’s office released a statement this evening calling for the tax to stay. “The Speaker wholeheartedly agrees that [...]
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Source: NY Daily NEwsHere's a way to balance state budgets that should appeal to union members and Tea Partyers alike: End corporate welfare as we know it.
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