Professor Lynne Weikart, PhD

 In an article in Patch , Riverhead  Town Supervisor Tim Hubbard released a statement Friday stating that despite recent federal executive actions, police will not detain anyone for suspected violations of immigration laws. Other East End towns, Shelter Island and Southold, have also made similar pronouncements. Some have yet to act to protect their neighbors and their service workers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agents (ICE). There is no legal requirement for state, municipality, town, or other non-federal entities to assist or cooperate with such federal round-ups.  We need not and should not participate.   New York State has enacted a law, the Protect Our Courts Act, that keeps ICE officers from making civil arrests in and around NYS Courts, including City and other Municipal Courts. That is the extent of the restrictions on ICE. Consequently, ICE officers can go to our schools, homes, and places of business and arrest anyone they choose. But...

 I am writing a second edition to my first book, Follow the Money, and have found interesting events that I had never heard or read about before. My book is an examination of how New York City mayors responded to the demands of federal and state officials as well as financial elites to the city's 1975 fiscal crisis in which city officials were forced to reduce the city's expenditures in order to balance the budget and avoid bankruptcy. Before I write about an interesting event, let me discuss the two political theories are often used to explain decision making around city resources. The first competing theory is pluralism.  The best example of a community power study examining liberal pluralism is Robert Dahl’s famous study of New Haven, Connecticut, Who Governs ?  Dahl concluded that there were multiple centers of power in which groups would come together in different configurations for a particular urban issue. In effect, there are a collection of interest groups all s...

 Reinvent Albany , a NY nonpartisan organization advocating open government, has called upon the NYS legislature to allow the State's Public Authorities Budget Office (ABO) oversight over the NYC's Public Housing Authority. Who knew that the ABO did not? Most people did not know that NYCHA had been conveniently left out of the authorities for which the ABO had oversight. Only the serious policy wonks knew about this slight quirk that all municipal housing authorities had been left out of ABO's jurisdiction. How many public authorities are there in the State of New York? In December 2019, the State Senate Committee on Investigations and Government Operations led by Senator James Skoufis issued a critique of the current law s governing public authorities. "As of July 2019, there are 583 active public authorities, an increase of 298, or by 126 percent, since July 2008, when the ABO issued its first annual report." "The current inventory of covered public autho...