We shouldn’t have to disadvantage taxpayers and our children to build smartly in the 21st century. Robin Jacobowitz with Kt Tobin and Josh Simons It would be pretty hard to be an Ulster County resident and to not by now have heard about the Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) sought by the developers of the Kingstonian, a mixed-use project proposed for uptown Kingston, NY. The Ulster Read more…
This post originally ran on the Gotham Gazette Early in 1984 I visited Governor Mario Cuomo’s office in Albany at his invitation. He wanted to discuss a talk I’d given at the New School about his first year as governor. I found myself going on about the growing dominance of the governor in New York’s legislative process. Governor Cuomo loved to debate. I knew from Read more…
Legendary Chicago School architect Louis Sullivan was famed for his aphorism: “Form ever follows function.” This was true, Sullivan said, in the natural environment, “whether it be the sweeping eagle in his flight, or the open apple-blossom, the toiling work-horse, the blithe swan, the branching oak, [or] the winding stream.” It should be true too, he averred, for all things people designed and created, from Read more…
Did you know that New York State law requires county government budgets to include a report every year on the value of all real property within the county that is exempt from property taxation? For example, in Ulster County, New York, this year there are 15,673 properties on the rolls with either full or partial property tax exemptions, organized in 98 categories in accord with Read more…
Earlier this month Ulster County Executive Pat Ryan proposed a $333.8 million budget for 2021 that requires neither a property tax levy increase nor employee layoffs, and with a smaller withdrawal from the county’s savings account (the fund balance) than was made in 2020. At first glance, this seems like an extraordinary achievement during a time that the New York State economy has been devastated Read more…
I know that I promised an article about how the City of Poughkeepsie was going to experience the most transformative change from the current wave of migration from New York City, and that article is coming, but first I wanted to address the notion that this trend is going to drive up the population of the region. The considerable uptick in affluent households moving to Read more…
I really did not want to open the semi-annual survey invitation from Bright Line Watch when I found it in my inbox this past August. This was the eleventh time since 2017 that this team of political scientists surveyed colleagues about the state of the U.S. government, to “monitor democratic practices… their resilience, and potential threats.” Questions focus on the systemic consequences of specific presidential Read more…
When I volunteered for military service in 1961 I was required to memorize the six elements of the Code of Conduct for American soldiers, keep a copy of the Code on a card in my pocket and be able to recite them on the spot if commanded to do so. To this day, it shapes who I am at what it means to be a citizen, Read more…
It is—and isn’t—who you’d think Article 1, Section 2 of the Constitution requires a decennial census. It is the basis for reapportionment, the drawing of legislative district lines for all levels of government from the federal House of Representatives all the way down to local city councils and some towns and villages. The census has also come to be used for an array of other Read more…
This opinion essay was originally published in the Times-Herald Record during the 2016 presidential campaign. Gerald Benjamin is no longer an enrolled Republican. Associate Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been widely and wrongly condemned for her critical remarks about Donald Trump’s fitness to be president. “Partisan.” “Inappropriate for a sitting justice of the Supreme Court.” “Potentially destructive of the court’s legitimacy at a Read more…