At Rikers, 21,000 Hot Dogs 
Signify City Belt-Tightening 

ERIC LIPTON / NY Times 27jul03

See Below: Meet Mayor Michael Bloomberg's $100,000 Club - Newsday 21jul03

		Mindfully.org note: Machines are taking the place of more people in the prison system. And while prisons are no place to find humanity, every effort should be made to add it where ever possible. Prison is an entirely unjust, unworkable, and unproductive—in fact, counterproductive—method of dealing with crime.  Machines are on the rise. And it's the poor who always feel the brunt of it. New York's Mayor Bloomberg — a  fat-cat staffed with 43 people making $100,000 or more — needs to look no further than his own staff for cuts. But really, when the truth comes out. . . Prisons are obsolete! And we should all imagine a better world without prisons. To find out how, please buy and read a new book by Angela Davis called "Are Prisons Obsolete?"

The Bloomberg administration's vision of a leaner, more efficient New York City government can be found in an oven that bakes twice as many pieces of chicken in slightly more than half the time. The 6-foot-by-8-foot rotary-rack oven spins hour after hour in a kitchen that prepares meals for 6,900 inmates a day on Rikers Island, almost double the 3,500 it was built to serve just three years ago.

Churning out that many meals means cooks like Cicely Williams have to work harder; she goes home with aching arms and swollen feet at the end of her 3 a.m.-to-noon shift. And to deliver the mass of food, pans must be stacked in an endless queue of insulated carts that are loaded into trucks that then rumble across the village of jails on the Rikers grounds.

But by creating super food factories, the city has been able to close five of the nine Department of Correction kitchens and save $1.5 million this year, eliminating 75 jobs. It is a drop in the bucket given the sprawling $43.7 billion enterprise that is New York City government and the $8 billion budget gap the city had faced this year. But it is one way in which that gap was closed.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg was unable to persuade municipal labor unions to agree to broad-based concessions to produce even bigger productivity savings. Having then raised property, income and sales taxes, the mayor and the City Council were under pressure to balance the budget without slashing services.

That is where the city agencies and their commissioners came in. "Government can do things when motivated and pressed," said William T. Cunningham, the mayor's communications director, clearly implying that the agency directors were being squeezed. "It can adapt to things." The Probation Department cut 41 jobs, saving $2 million, by allowing 25,000 lesser-risk convicts to check in at automated kiosks set up in the five boroughs, instead of with probation officers.

The city expects to save another $10 million by buying in bulk food for feeding the homeless, people who eat meals at centers for the elderly and schoolchildren. And the Bloomberg administration has vowed to serve just as many children in after-school day care services — it currently accommodates about 170,000 — but at a $14 million savings after it merges the management of a hodgepodge of programs into one agency later this year.

Even the city morgue has come through. Instead of two different agencies picking up and processing the dead, only one will, saving as much as $1.4 million this year.

Besides outright savings, the Bloomberg administration has pursued a second strategy to help dig out of the fiscal hole. You might call it passing the tab.

For example, the 105 centers for the aged in City Housing Authority projects, which offer everything from exercise classes to bingo, had cost the city $29 million a year. But since July 1, their operating costs have been transferred to a federally subsidized program.

Many agencies, though, did make significant cost-cutting changes. Among the most extensive were the operational rejiggering at the Department of Correction.

It was a logical place to start. Even before the enormousness of the fiscal crisis set in, the city jail system was flabby with resources because of the sharp drop in crime and a resulting decline in the inmate population, to 13,870 inmates one day last week from a daily average of 19,205 in 1997.

The first round of cuts were the easy ones. The department simply eliminated extra capacity: five of the city's smaller or older jails, including the Houses of Detention in Brooklyn, the Bronx and Queens, have been closed since February 2000. But that was only the start.

The savings drive took Department of Correction officials into the kitchens. The department was already renovating them, but this spring officials decided to close three kitchens at the separate jails on Rikers Island and two elsewhere and to turn the remaining kitchens into virtually around-the-clock food factories.

In years past, cooks would go into supply rooms and refrigerators, grab what they thought they needed for the day and start to prepare the day's meals from scratch. No more. Now every ingredient — from cut green beans to ketchup — is counted and stacked under signs that read "Monday's Dinner" or "Thursday's Lunch."

Tight inventory control has allowed the city to cut the cost of the ingredients used in an average meal to $2.36 from $2.58 five years ago.

Early last Tuesday, in a kitchen that looks more like an airplane hangar, the staff and inmates were busy making four different meals at once: stirring 1,200 pounds of spaghetti and 210 gallons of sauce for Tuesday's lunch; arranging 21,800 hot dogs in pans for Thursday's lunch; cutting cucumbers for a salad for Friday's lunch; and seasoning 15,000 pieces of fish for Friday's dinner.

Although food prepared three days in advance does not sound particularly appetizing, inmates like Nelson Negron, 34, who is serving time for burglary and was cleaning in the kitchen, gave it a passing grade. "It's not so bad," Mr. Negron said. He paused, then added, "You got no choice."

The pre-preparation of most meals greatly reduced the time it takes to handle the food from start to finish.

"Food wagons walking out," yelled Andrew Jackson, a barrel-chested correction officer, referring to the 25 or so giant rolling, igloo-like food storage carts into which the hot foot had been placed so it could be driven by truck to a nearby jail. Until earlier this year, that jail had its own kitchen.

The gate locking everyone into the kitchen — it is in a jail, after all — was slid open and carts rolled. "Choo, choo," an inmate yelled, as the lunch train of sorts pulled out.

For kitchen employees, the intense focus on efficiency can be exhausting. "It is just more harassing now," Ms. Williams, the cook, said. A minute later, her boss asked, "We almost ready to start panning?" referring to the spaghetti she was mixing in a vat so big she needed a spoon the size of an oar. "A few minutes," she said. "That's my girl," her boss shot back, smiling.

The new supersized ovens are critical to the operation. Rikers Island's old kitchens used the equivalent of pizza ovens. The new contraptions — so big they would thrill Hansel and Gretel — can accommodate 500 pieces of chicken at once, 300 more than the old ovens, and, using forced hot air and rotating racks, cook them in 45 minutes instead of 90.

The kitchen is attached to the 2,461-inmate Anna M. Kross Center jail, Rikers' largest. Four officers and a captain used to be assigned to Kross's main control room, where they cast an eye on video monitors, manage guard assignments, keep track of a wall of keys and control the giant steel doors at the jail entrance. Today there are three officers and a captain doing the same work.

At the other end of the jail, where 150 or so inmates are lined up each morning on their way to court, two additional officers have been cut. That means Capt. Steven Cipriano, the supervisor, must focus on the machine that X-rays inmates' bags, instead of just standing in the corridor as he used to, keeping a more general watch on the inmates under his control.

"Would I rather have more staff here?" Captain Cipriano said. "Of course. If something should happen, we would have more coverage. But we are making it work."

Those small cuts have been repeated at dozens of posts across the city's jails. As a result, the Department of Correction's budget for this year calls for 8,771 city-financed full-time uniformed officers, a reduction of 1,122 in two years.

The next-most-ambitious restructuring effort under way this year involves several social service agencies. The city plans to save $75 million by changing the way it helps the unemployed get jobs, provides after-school care to young children and determines eligibility for benefit programs, like help for the elderly to pay their heating bills.

Because the savings have been budgeted but not yet realized, some advocates for schoolchildren say they worry that the city will instead cut services — for instance, put children from poor families that now get child care year-round into a program that operates only during school days. Bloomberg administration officials said that would not happen.

Others say the efficiencies may threaten the safety of workers left doing the job — raising risks for firefighters, for example, by eliminating the fifth firefighter on 23 Fire Department engine companies, saving $11 million.

Some agency officials, though, argue that restructuring has actually improved service. At the Probation Department, those guilty of low-level offenses are required to check in according to a mandated schedule. But instead of seeing an officer, they can visit a kiosk that confirms their presence by electronically reading the shape of a probationer's hand.

That means the city's probation officers, relieved of having to meet regularly with the 25,000 or so people convicted of crimes like assault or fraud, can spend more time on the 9,600 serious criminals on probation. They can visit them at home at least monthly or even meet with them weekly, an agency spokesman said.

At the same time, regular reporting by lesser-risk probationers is up, since many of them know that the computerized system allows the city to keep better track of them and to more quickly penalize those who do not report.

Will all these changes result in a municipal government that is truly lean and productive, or just slightly less wasteful? The Citizens Budget Commission, a watchdog group, argues that the city could save an additional $500 million a year by asking most civilian employees to work a 40-hour week, instead of the current 35 hours or 37.5 hours.

Another $200 million could be saved, the commission contends, by improving the way the city buys goods and services.

Still, the Bloomberg administration has clearly generated more than $100 million in savings by improving productivity. But unlike most other mayors, Mr. Bloomberg has been oddly reticent about publicizing the gains.

Though the productivity savings amount to far less than city residents are paying in new taxes, they have helped Mr. Bloomberg balance this year's budget without closing centers for the aged, cutting library hours, reducing trash collection, or taking all the other draconian measures that once had been threatened.

"Sometimes a fiscal crisis creates an urgency that allows you to do things that inertia has prevented," said Martin F. Horn, the Department of Correction commissioner. "The fiscal situation demanded these changes. But even if it had not, they were the right thing to do."

Meet Mayor Michael Bloomberg's $100,000 Club 

GRAHAM RAYMAN / Newsday 21jul03

As mayor touts cuts, salaries of top aides untouched, data show

From Deputy Mayor Marc Shaw at $194,999 to Assistant Legislative Representative Paul Lobo at $100,000, 47 mayoral staffers make six-figure salaries, data provided by the Bloomberg administration shows. Last year, there were 43.

Bloomberg, from the start of his tenure amid a budget crisis, has made much of his intent to sharply reduce staff. Eighteen months later, his aides are able to cite a substantial reduction in City Hall staff from the Giuliani years.

But a comparison of staff lists from 2002 and 2003 shows that the reduction comes with an asterisk: Nearly half the mayoral staffers who left City Hall were transferred to other city agencies instead of being laid off.

From the highest-paid, Shaw, to office assistant Mkada Beach, who makes the least at $19,732, there are 390 full-time staffers on the mayor's budget line at a total salary cost of $22.7 million, according to the current staff list.

There are 114 office assistants on the mayor's staff, 16 secretaries, 11 clerical associates and six staff assistants, whose salaries range up to $54,000.

To illustrate reductions, Bloomberg aides cite the running staff tally on the city's Web site, which indicates he has reduced his staff by 38 percent and cut $7.8 million compared with the final month of the Giuliani administration, when 624 people were employed.

Bloomberg aides say that decline far outstrips the City Council's 12 percent and $2-million reduction.

"The mayor hasn't asked city agencies to do anything that he hasn't done himself," said Jordan Barowitz, a mayoral spokesman. "Everyone must contribute to get us through this fiscal crisis."

The mayoral payroll is a small slice of the city's $45.5-billion spending plan, which the council approved last month after a deficit-reduction debate that ended without widely feared doomsday-level cuts in services and the municipal work force.

The year-to-year comparison of City Hall staff lists shows:

The steep reduction occurred in January 2002, the first month of Bloomberg's tenure. Since then, as the budget crisis deepened, the total remained relatively stable - about 400 staffers.

The mayor's staff of 390 is still larger than the council central staff of 253. The 51 council members each have staffs, a total of another 336.

Fifty-three City Hall staffers out of 117 employees from 2002 who do not appear on the 2003 payroll list still work for the city. Forty-two were transferred to other city agencies, and 28 of them received raises, including Office of Emergency Management staffers Rachel Stein-Dickenson, who got a $13,200 raise to $145,200, and Stacy Rosenfeld, who got an $18,283 raise to $89,600. (One staffer, Maria Guccione, took a $16,374 pay cut to $87,000 when she moved to the Department of Juvenile Justice.)

Eleven staffers of the 53 still work in the mayor's office, including Joseph Chan, an aide to Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff. Chan is paid under the city Economic Development Corp. budget. Barowitz said Chan splits time between the two offices. Doctoroff, like the mayor, takes a salary of only $1 per year. The 10 other staffers, who work in various mayoral units, are paid by federal, not city, funds, like Ramesh Ganeshram of the Mayor's Office of Health Insurance Access, who now makes $85,000.

At least one unit, the Mayor's Office of Environmental Coordination, has been shifted into an agency budget, the city Department of Environmental Protection.

Council officials grumble that the mayor's ballyhooed reductions amount to shifting staffers around city government. "Perhaps the mayor's press office should put down its poisoned pens and pick up a calculator," said council spokesman Chris Policano.

Council officials also contend the Bloomberg administration's criticism is unfair because the council staff must serve the speaker and 50 council members but the mayor can draw from the vast pool of city agencies.

Barowitz, though, contends that even after the sharp drop in January 2002, the administration continued to eliminate and combine staff slots. He noted that six staffers were recently laid off. The staffers who were transferred to other agencies, he said, moved into vacant slots.

He also provided figures that show Bloomberg has handed out few raises to his staff since last year. Only Deputy Mayor Shaw received a large raise, from $168,700 to $194,999.

As for the new hires, Barowitz said that the current hiring freeze did not kick in until October 2002, four months after the fiscal year began, and that some vacancies simply needed to be filled.

By another measure, Bloomberg's staff is smaller than that of previous administrations, according to figures compiled by the city Office of Management and Budget. The OMB, combining its employees and those from the labor relations office and the mayor's office, said Bloomberg had 862 staffers, compared with 1,480 in Mayor David Dinkins' first year and 1,079 in Rudolph Giuliani's first year.

"It is fair to criticize the council for negligibly reducing their staff and spending while Mayor Bloomberg dramatically reduced spending and head count from the very beginning," Barowitz said.

The mayor's core staff remains in place, even during the budget crisis and historically low approval ratings. Among the top earners in 2002, just seven have departed - the most senior official being $150,000 special adviser Michael Carey, who moved to a law firm and hasn't been replaced.

The $100,000 Club

Employees in Mayor Bloomberg's office who make $100,000 or more per year

Name     Salary     Job tittle

1. Marc Shaw $194,999 First deputy mayor

2. Patricia Harris $168,700 Deputy mayor
3. Dennis Walcott $168,700 Deputy mayor
4. Carol Robles-Roman $168,700 Deputy mayor
5. Edward Skyler $162,800 Press officer
6. Susan Kupferman $162,800 Director, office of operations
7. William Cunningham $162,800 Director of communications
8. John Feinblatt $162,800 Criminal justice coordinator
9. Peter Madonia $162,800 Assistant to the mayor
10. Vincent LaPadula $162,800 Assistant to the mayor
11. Jonathan Greenspun $152,500 Director, community assistance unit
12. Haeda Mihaltses $150,00 Diretor, intergovernmental affairs
13. Kevin Sheekey $150,000 Assistant to the mayor
14. Myrna Ramon $144,826 Administration staff analyst
15. Ernest Hart $140,000 Assistant to deputy mayor
16. Michael Best $138,000 Deputy counsel to the mayor
17. Judy Chesser $135,000 Asst. director, intergovernmental relations
18. Helen Fromm $135,000 Administration staff analyst
19. Yolanda Jimenez $132,000 Administration staff analyst
20. Sharon Greenberger $130,000 Assistant to deputy mayor
21. Yvette Cumberbatch $130,000 Assistant to deputy mayor
22. Nanette Smith $130,000 Assistant to deputy mayor
23. Terri Matthews $125,000 Executive agency counsel
24. John Crotty $125,000 Asst. director, intergovernmental relations
25. Marjorie Cadogan $125,000 Administration staff analyst
26. Marla Simpson $120,000 Director, office of contracts
27. Ester Fuchs $120,000 Assistant to the mayor
28. Alan Gartner $120,000 Assistant to the mayor
29. Eric Lee $119,350 Administration staff analyst
30. Judith Pincus $119,277 Administration staff analyst
31. Anthony Piscitelli $118,480 Asst. director, intergovernmental relations
32. Michelle Sviridoff $116,500 Administration staff analyst
33. Andrea Shapiro Davis $115,000 Assistant to the mayor
34. Michael Kalt $115,000 Administration staff analyst
35. Martin Becker $114,571 Dep. director, criminal justice coordinator
36. Terry Weiss $114,237 Administration staff analyst
37. Anthony Longo $114,237 Administration staff analyst
38. George Davis III $114,237 Administration staff analyst
39. William Daly $110,474 Administration manager
40. Desiree Kim Bookstein $110,000 Executive agency counsel
41. Thomas Curitore $110,000 Chief of planning and evaluation
42. Anthony Crowell $108,000 Executive agency counsel
43. Jeffrey Minnier $105,000 Computer systems manager
44. Susan Cina $105,000 Administration staff analyst
45. Thomas Jelliffe $104,988 Administration staff analyst
46. Jordan Barowitz $100,000 Press officer
47. Paul Lobo Jr. $100,000 Assistant legislative representative

source: http://www.newsday.com/news/local/newyork/politics/ny-nypay213380884jul21,0,7863303.story?coll=ny-nycpolitics-print 26jul03