New York Post - 19.08.2019

New York Post, Monday, August 19, 2019

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I

N September 2018, activist groups around New York rushed to denounce

the Trump administration for considering making changes to the “public-

charge” rule for immigrants. The publicly funded New York Immigration

Coalition, or NYIC, staged a protest outside the Tenement Museum on the

Lower East Side. Leaders of the organization were arrested after they sat

down in the middle of Delancey Street and blocked rush-hour traffic.

New York City has long been fertile ground for political protest. Civil-soci-

ety groups, along with elected officials, activists and unions, typically orga-

nize these protests, which run the gamut from standard rallies to civil disobe-

dience. What most New Yorkers don’t realize is that many of the protests are

funded by taxpayers. Whether they agree or disagree with these efforts, New

Yorkers should understand that they’re paying the bill for them.

Any nonprofit receiving money

from the city is supposed to have a

purely charitable purpose. A signifi-

cant recipient of taxpayer largesse

— it receives about $9 million annu-

ally — is Make the Road New York.

Founded in 1998, Make the Road

characterizes itself as a member-

driven organization with more than

15,000 Big Apple members, almost

exclusively Latino immigrants.

The group receives millions of

dollars in city and state funding an-

nually, ostensibly to run adult liter-

acy classes, “know-your-rights”

clinics, cultural activities and as-

sorted information sessions.

But Make the Road’s real purpose,

to paraphrase its mission statement,

is to “build power through organiz-

ing.” Leaders of New York’s far-left

Working Families Party run the

group, which urges its clients to

participate in political indoctrina-

tion as an implicit condition of re-

ceiving aid and encourages them to

join as members.

Make the Road’s legal structure

and leadership closely overlap with

Make the Road Action — a

501(c)(4) organization that engages

in electoral activity and endorsing

candidates — to which Make the

Road regularly makes contributions

in the six-figure range.

New York Communities for

Change, successor organization to

the disgraced Acorn, also receives

money from Make the Road. A spin-

off group, the Center for Popular

Democracy, receives millions of dol-

lars in donations from the Open So-

ciety Foundation, the Ford Founda-

tion, organized labor and the Rock-

efeller Foundation — and operates

from the same street address as

Make the Road Action, with which it

shares overlapping leadership.

Public funding thus fuels an inter-

locking complex of political organi-

zations on the left, including direct

electoral endorsements and cam-

paign work. Democratic elected of-

ficials know that they can count on

Make the Road to thicken crowds at

rallies and stand behind them at

press appearances.

When Mayor de Blasio announced

that he would not permit ICE agents

to enter public school buildings, he

was surrounded by Make the Road

members; when he visited Las Vegas

in April, as part of his pre-announce-

ment presidential tour, he met with

Make the Road Nevada.

Other nonprofits operate in a sim-

ilar politicized mode. For instance,

one week after Trump’s inaugura-

tion, NYIC, joining forces with

Make the Road, organized a march

to protest the administration’s

“Muslim ban.”

NYIC posted a video showing

the leaders of the march holding a

large banner reading “No Ban, No

Wall,” with Make the Road and

NYIC signs attached. Congressio-

nal Reps. Joe Crowley and Nydia

Velázquez led the marchers in

chanting, “Hey hey, ho ho / Donald

Trump has got to go!”

In early 2018, ICE arrested an il-

legal immigrant, facing a felony

domestic-violence complaint, out-

side the Bronx criminal court-

house. Lawyers from the Legal

Aid Society and Bronx Defenders

— both publicly funded — staged

a walkout from their cases and

stood outside chanting, “Immi-

grants are welcome here.”

These groups are, legally speaking,

charitable organizations, funded al-

most entirely by the taxpayer to pro-

vide indigent defense — not to pro-

test federal immigration policy.

These left-wing groups develop

talent that goes on to run political

campaigns, work for elected offi-

cials, staff government agencies

and run for elected office.

New York’s multibillion-dollar

human- services complex generally

provides the services that it prom-

ises, but it has also become the op-

erating environment for radicals,

posing as social workers, who si-

phon off public money to promote

their political agenda.

Seth Barron is associate editor of

City Journal, from which this col-

umn was adapted.

Twitter: @SethBarronNYC

How Your Tax Dollars

Fund the Radical Left

SETH

BARRON

F

RIDAY’S board meeting of the

state-subsidized Metropolitan

Transportation Authority dis-

solved into chaos: At one

point, members aggressively bick-

ered as chairman Pat Foye begged

them to “stop, stop!” But this is

politically purposeful chaos. Gov.

Cuomo is happy to watch his peo-

ple scream at each other while he

figures out what to do about his

broke MTA.

Most years, the MTA doesn’t hold

an August board meeting. The

ostensible reason for this one was

that the MTA’s crisis demands

extraordinary action. Even with a

half billion dollars in annual savings

from a new “transformation plan”

— savings that will be hard to

achieve — the MTA faces a $300

million deficit in two years.

The immediate task: rein in over-

time, which helps drive deficits.

This year, the MTA will spend

more than $900 million on OT,

nearly twice the $500 million a

decade ago. In June, the MTA hired

a former prosecutor, Carrie Cohen,

to figure out why, and she pre-

sented her findings Friday.

Cohen and her six colleagues from

top firm Morrison & Foerster didn’t

tell the MTA anything the MTA

didn’t know. She started off by quot-

ing another report noting that “the

MTA has not effectively managed

and controlled its overtime costs.”

That was from nine years ago.

Although she valiantly filled up 57

pages, there wasn’t much new to

say: MTA agencies rely on outdated

technology, including paper, to

clock hours. High absences “create

a large number of shifts that are

staffed on overtime.”

Finally, “arcane collective-bar-

gaining-agreement provisions and

work rules, which often lack any

modern justification, constrain

management’s ability to assign

work in the most cost-efficient

manner.”

At the LIRR, workers get an extra

day’s pay when they run both elec-

tric and diesel locomotives on the

same shift. On subways, workers get

overtime for more than eight hours

in a day — even if they work fewer

than 40 hours for the week.

All well-known. The report’s rec-

ommendations are hardly ground-

breaking: On work rules, Cohen

suggests that “management should

consider whether it is... feasible to

negotiate changes.”

What would a groundbreaking re-

port have done? Assign a cost to

each work rule. How much does the

LIRR pay every year for “time on

time,” extra pay for when a worker

does a task not included in his nor-

mal job description? Or how much

does the subway dole out for extra

“snow pay”? Prioritizing the rules

would give the MTA a blueprint.

The MTA could also put these

costs in context by examining how

overtime and benefits help push

worker pay well above comparable

local averages. Indeed, for its sub-

way and bus division, responsible

for about $10 billion out of $16 bil-

lion in annual spending, it has the

inklings of such a report.

In June, in a report not made pub-

lic, a different set of consultants

told the MTA that the cash com-

pensation of the average unionized

city transit worker is $89,000.

That’s “above the level of most New

York City household incomes” as

well as what regional private-sector

transportation workers make.

Part of what pushes up wages is

vacation and sick benefits that are

well above private-sector aver-

ages — a month’s vacation after

three years, plus 11 paid holidays,

plus 12 sick days. (People earn OT

to fill in.)

The narrower board focus on

overtime, though, serves the gover-

nor’s purposes.

After hearing Cohen’s report,

neither board member Larry

Schwartz, a Cuomo loyalist, nor

John Samuelsen, the head of the

Transport Workers Union and

another longtime Cuomo ally, was

stirred by even the fleeting atten-

tion to work rules.

Instead, they fought over their

preferred topic, alleged OT fraud.

Samuelsen lamented that Schwartz

had “ranted and raved” over abuses

before knowing the facts; Schwartz

accused him of telling a “lie.”

But they are on the same side. For

as long as the MTA focuses on

overtime “abuses,” like individuals

at the LIRR working around the

clock, it isn’t focusing on the

broader issue.

The yelling buys Cuomo over-

time — to decide whether he wants

to take on the unions over work

rules — including risking strikes.

Nicole Gelinas is a Manhattan

Institute senior fellow.

Twitter: @NicoleGelinas

Gov’s MTA Snow Job

NICOLE

GELINAS

POSTOPINION

‘

Public funding fuels an interlocking

complex of political outfits on the left.

’