Democrats should make good on campaign hints to upper-middle class

It seems likely that we will be hearing about the tortuous dramas of the "fiscal cliff" until the calendar closes on 2012. The president took his case to business leaders this week and will speak tomorrow to workers at a Pennsylvania toy factory, in an effort to ratchet up pressure on Republicans in Congress.

Meanwhile, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), is threatening to push the country into default unless there are drastic spending cuts. And so the wrestling match continues, teetering as close to the Jan. 1 "cliff" edge as possible.

Many Long Islanders, I suspect, will be watching how the debate settles over who is wealthy and who is middle class. President Barack Obama has drawn the line at earnings of $200,000 for an individual, and $250,000 for a household. He wants to extend tax cuts for everyone below those annual incomes.

However, this income cutoff is unfair to high-cost areas like Long Island, as some Democrats have acknowledged. In 2010, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) floated the idea of raising taxes only on $1-million-plus incomes. A year earlier, Rep. Steve Israel (D-Huntington) was one of eight co-sponsors of a bill, the Tax Equity Act, that would have adjusted federal income tax brackets to account for regional differences in the cost of living.

The bill was popular in the Northeast: Seven co-sponsors were from New York, and the eighth, Rep. Jim Himes, represents Fairfield County, Conn. But the bill went nowhere.

This year during election season, many more Democrats saw the light and began publicly questioning whether $250,000 was the right cutoff. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who represents pricey San Francisco, in May called for a vote to make the tax cuts permanent for anyone making less than $1 million a year. Florida Sen. Bill Nelson and North Dakota Sen.-elect Heidi Heitkamp also supported extending tax cuts for those making less than $1 million. Candidates from Missouri to Nevada to Virginia said $250,000 was perhaps too low. Some floated figures of $400,000 or $500,000 instead.

This campaign-trail flirtation with a compromise obligates Democrats to at least consider a higher-income cutoff.

There are two reasons this is important to Long Island - and, indeed, to high-cost regions around the country. First, many Long Islanders would be affected by the higher tax rate. The IRS doesn't publish data for the $250,000 income level, but about 100,000 Long Island households made more than $200,000 in 2009, according to census figures.

People making $250,000 a year don't necessarily feel wealthy. Their household could consist of a teacher and a police officer - in other words, middle class occupations. At that income, it's not always possible to fund what most Americans would agree is a middle-class life: the ability to save for retirement, afford a home and educate one's children.

More income taxes - on top of high-priced homes, local taxes, transportation, recreation and education - would make this area even less affordable. We are already bleeding retirees to North Carolina, and graduates to everywhere else.

To be sure, it may be hard to muster sympathy for a $250,000-earner when the median family income nationwide is $62,300. And bumping the cutoff from $250,000 to $1 million would lose the government $366 billion in revenue over 10 years, according to the nonpartisan Center for Budget and Policy Priorities.

But fairness dictates a second look for high-cost regions. For many people, another few thousand dollars in taxes just isn't affordable.

This essay was first published in Newsday.

Embracing the new normal

There's nothing like a life-shaking storm to make people appreciate normal. Usually, normal is ho-hum. But when life is turned upside down, normal is the most welcome feeling.

Normal didn't return for me, after superstorm Sandy, when we got our power back or refilled the refrigerator. It was when I saw faces I hadn't seen since before the storm - about two weeks after it knocked our Island around. There we were, smiling, most of us showered, and whole. Normal returned when I realized that people in my community were, for the most part, going to be OK.

That's not the same as saying life will be the same as it was before the storm, or before this long recession. Instead, we're living with a "new normal" - a sense that we must permanently lower our material expectations. Maybe the new normal will define our moment in history.

Some day, years from now, we may think of these times the way people recall the Great Depression. People who lived through it went on to stash away money - sometimes in places far away from banks they no longer trusted. They hoarded food; waste became a sin. Our recollections of 2012 may be that this was the year we acknowledged how much we depend on each other.

Our country has weathered a long series of blows. The banking crisis of 2008 diminished or zeroed out our home equity. High school graduates applied to cheaper colleges, and college graduates couldn't find jobs. Stretches of unemployment lengthened, people couldn't pay their mortgages, and then ... Sandy.

It's fair to say that many of us are feeling wiped out. Thousands of homes and more than a dozen people on Long Island were lost in the storm. It's the sort of thing that makes normal seem miraculous.

You probably think I'm going to say that we should be grateful for normal. It is Thanksgiving Day, after all. Children's smiles, purring kittens, dry basements and the smell of coffee. Yes, all of that.

But there is another point worth remembering, and that is that as the winds have receded, it's impossible to miss the compassion going around. We heard about the occasional tempers flaring as people waited in hours-long gasoline lines. But for the most part, we were patient with one another. Those with generators opened their homes. A friend cooked all the chicken from her neighbor's powerless freezer and fed the neighborhood. An out-of-state tree cutter returned to one woman's home, after his shift was over, to make sure she had lights and heat. Fire departments set up cots for utility workers who were far from home.

Everyone has storm stories like this.

During this recession, unlike those of the past, volunteerism has been on the rise, according to Wendy Spencer, chief executive of the federal Corporation for National and Community Service. What motivates volunteers, he says, is connection to community, and a sense that we are all going to have to contribute if we are going to achieve community and national goals.

This year's re-election of President Barack Obama seemed to me to be an affirmation of depending on each other, with a vision of prosperity for the broadest number.

I don't hear people talking now about what they can get out of the government. They are discussing buying generators when the price goes down and how long food will keep in a freezer if you leave it sealed. They're vowing to fill the gas tank at the next storm warning.

People aren't acting like victims. They're adjusting. They're finding a new normal. It's one of the things we as a people do best.

This essay was first published in Newsday.

State 'mandates' are like cockroaches: hard to kill

Newsday's editorial board frequently meets with people in public life: school superintendents, state and local elected officials, law-enforcement agents. And one question that comes up all the time is how to reduce the cost of public services.

It was an issue back when the only urgency was New York's position as No.1 or No.2 in the nation with the highest combined state and local tax burden - a "distinction" New York trades from year to year with New Jersey. Now, as the Great Recession has tightened the screws on public budgets everywhere, the question is more pointed: Which will it be, raise taxes or cut services?

Elected officials, candidates and community leaders usually don't want to choose between these unpopular alternatives. Sometimes they try a dodge: "Cut waste, fraud and abuse!" Hard to argue with that. No one ever campaigns for more inefficiency, dishonesty and corruption.

The other dodge - or at least that's how I thought of it until recently - was, "Cut unfunded mandates!"

"Mandates" come up often as the culprit forcing unnecessary costs on local governments and agencies - but ask for an example, and people have trouble responding. It's not that the problem doesn't exist; it's that it's so pervasive, and it's hard to know where to begin.

Mandates were once well-meaning state rules for how municipalities and school districts should do business. Now, the rules have hardened in concrete. They're bureaucracy; they're micromanagement. And, as of December, they're available in 40 pages of highly descriptive detail - 238 separate mandates - that a task force spent nearly a year compiling for Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo.

The report from the 2011 Mandate Relief Redesign Team lists burdensome rules and paperwork like a bundle of hard knots. Permit local governments to make discretionary purchases on public works projects up to $50,000, instead of $35,000. Reduce time-consuming requirements surrounding foster care reports, while still making them useful to the courts. Allow nursing homes to keep some records electronically.

Cuomo has highlighted mandate relief in two subsequent State of the State speeches - in 2011 and again early this month. In fact, he said pretty much the same thing both times: We need to fix the problem. He had to repeat himself because, while the redesign team did come up with a long list of mandates, it got very little relief accomplished.

Why? Well, first, the team of 27 - representing schools, municipalities, the State Legislature, business and civic organizations - had to agree on which mandates to relieve. The members came up with just $410 million worth - a small drop in a $132.5-billion state budget sea. Of that, the legislature wiped out just 22 mandates - for an estimated statewide savings this year of $125 million. State agencies can save another $40 million by rewriting regulations.

Mandate relief was supposed to ride a white horse to rescue municipalities and school districts from the tough new 2 percent cap on property tax growth they must begin living with this year; $165 million won't do it.

Rather than admitting defeat, the governor and State Legislature formed a Mandate Relief Council - 11 members, including state bureaucrats and legislators - to consider the other 216 mandates. Cause for optimism is slight.

Former Gov. David A. Paterson used to float an idea that all state rules should expire at a certain date unless legislators voted to keep them. That's drastic, but it may be New York's only real hope of undoing the knotty bureaucracy that yokes this tax burden to citizens' shoulders.

Essay first published in Newsday.

Readers respond: Students need layoff facts

Regarding the column by Anne Michaud, "Keep school budget talk out of the classroom" [Opinion, Dec. 8], I agree that children need to feel secure in school. Their focus needs to be on learning. A major part of that learning should, in my opinion, be relating knowledge to reality. What good are the three Rs if we don't see the issues that are facing us daily?

We live in a society that has a small percentage of people voting in general and school elections. This lack of response leads to lack of control over the direction our country takes and sometimes even to corruption in government.

It is imperative that our children learn to be good citizens and participate in our democracy. If this means bringing up budget concerns to students old enough to understand, then they should be mentioned. An open discussion talking about the whole process and not focusing just on layoffs, would be in order. This hopefully would bring students to begin thinking about mundane issues that our society faces on a daily basis. Opening their young minds would undoubtedly lead to a more involved electorate later on.

Steve Tuck, Huntington

If a teacher is asked a question by a student, shouldn't it be answered? I find it amusing that a person who contributes to Newsday's Opinion pages wants to now control the things we say in class. Newspaper columnists get their forum without any input from readers.

I find all the harsh rhetoric printed in the last several years about teachers "divisive, angry and unhealthy" as well. When class sizes are larger and programs are cut, remember the true culprits: the financial institutions and oil companies whose employees and owners still get record bonuses each year -- on average, more than teachers make in a year.

Rich Weeks, Middle Island

I believe that Anne Michaud completely missed the point. School budget talks allow Social Studies teachers to discuss relevant and current issues facing our communities. This issue lends itself to great discussions of limited resources, the role of the citizen in a democracy, economic choices and a whole host of other topics. This is what we call a teachable moment.

We do our students a great disservice when we try to shelter them from what is happening in the news.

Kathleen Stanley, Massapequa Park Editor's note: The writer is a high school Social Studies teacher.

As a teacher in a public high school, I feel that I need to explain why teachers sometimes discuss rules governing teacher layoffs (last in, first out) with their students. A lot of students don't understand the difference between being laid off and being fired. They just assume that when someone is excessed because of budgetary reasons, that person has been fired for cause.

I feel it is important to explain to students how tenure and seniority work. It's bad enough when colleagues are let go. I'm certainly not going to let their reputations be tarnished with misinformation.

The column is right in this sense, that younger children should not be frightened by teachers into thinking Mom and Dad hold the key to a teacher's survival, and children should therefore convince their parents to vote for the budget. It's a cheap ploy.

However, I also think that when students come to school and tell me their parents say I make too much money and have it really easy, that I should be allowed to defend my profession. I don't think it's inappropriate to discuss the realities with older students, some of whom will be able to participate in the upcoming budget votes.

Jeffrey A. Stotsky, Forest Hills

Down times, empty suburban storefronts

Atop sports bleachers and inside minivans across Long Island, gloom about the economy is never very far from mind. The current generation of middle-class householders is used to the normal ups and downs of the economic cycle, but none of us is prepared for a second "down" right now -- the terrifying, rumored double dip.

Recently, as I rode with some other parents along Route 110 from Huntington through the busy Melville corridor to Farmingdale, the conversation turned to how many empty buildings we were passing. One man recalled visiting a now-vacant office center to close on the purchase of his house. A favorite wedding reception hall had been demolished. The Checkers drive-through was suddenly out of business -- open one day, and stripped of its signs the next. Even the dollar store -- maddeningly misnamed "Things Over $1" -- has closed.

How does a dollar store fail during a recession, when everyone's looking for a bargain? The unspoken fear is that perhaps this time, it's something worse.

The Week magazine recently concluded that we aren't in an ordinary economic cycle, but that Americans are in the process of paying off mountains of debt. We had grown used to living on credit, and we are now regretting having covered ourselves with piles of bills just as the economy was about to stumble. For an economy that was 70 percent propelled by consumer spending, tight home budgets are incapacitating.

Others say that the emerging economy -- outsourced and technology-dependent -- is unfavorable to the middle class. It can only benefit those at the top. While economists pull apart the numbers to make sense of it all, the middle class is endeavoring to persevere.

Many are forming new philosophies about kids and college, for example. Two years at a community college add up to a potentially employable graduate with an associate's degree. Meanwhile those same two years at a four-year institution equal, perhaps, nothing more than a college dropout with loans to repay.

One acquaintance told his high school senior that if she wanted to go to a private university, she would have to pay the difference between that tuition and SUNY's. There is praise for the child who chooses the practical -- accounting or engineering -- and a roll of the eye for liberal arts majors.

Nobody says directly that money is tight, but that thought is always lurking. Without asking if we needed it, my daughter's orthodontist offered us a financing plan. While we were school shopping, the clerk at Macy's warned that the jeans we were considering cost a whopping $89.

These small kindnesses are a balm in difficult times -- especially because the opposite coarseness so often confronts us, too. School clubs demanding payment for expensive class trips. The classmate whose outfits display Abercrombie & Fitch logos. The burgher purchasing a case of good red wine, and tipping the clerk to carry it to his Cadillac Escalade SUV.

There used to be far more class trips, designer clothes and Escalades. Or, so it seemed. The new polite is to talk cheap. Where to find the best thrift stores, and bargains at the gas pump. Good buys in used cars. Off-price movie tickets.

Because even if we aren't having financial troubles, we know many who are. The new adult horror story is the acquaintance who hopped the Long Island Rail Road to attend nine job interviews with a potential employer -- only to have the company eliminate the opening in light of more bad economic news. A divorce lawyer remarked that he used to divide up assets; now he parcels out marital debt.

Long Islanders can be resilient. But we'd like to know, how much longer?

First published in Newsday.

Hurricane Irene: Life in the dark ages

One lesson from Hurricane Irene -- or make that, Irene, the tropical storm -- is that we have no moderation in our information flow. It's either all . . . or next to nothing.

For days, weather-watchers reported the direction and shifting wind speeds of the approaching hurricane. We couldn't look at a television, website, smartphone or tablet without a reminder to stock up on drinking water and fresh batteries. This constant nagging heightened the feelings of urgency -- especially for those of us who grew up in a relatively media-free age, when headlines waited patiently on the doorstep until we were ready to take them in.

The blanket storm coverage may have kicked up our anxiety a notch too high, especially since the hurricane slowed significantly before it hit New York. All those masking-taped shop windows afterward seemed overcautious.

But the frequent alerts also made many of us better prepared. My household had never so much as inventoried our flashlights. This time, our outdoor furniture was lashed tightly together with bungee cords, and we had a full propane tank for outdoor cooking -- which proved handy since we were among the hundreds of thousands of tristate homes that lost power.

The pre-warnings about Irene had another effect: They made the morning after seem unbearably quiet. Without electricity, there was no Internet telephone service, no website browsing ability. My family hadn't gotten to the store in time to buy batteries for the radio -- those Ds sold out quickly -- so we started up the truck in the driveway, eager for news. Had the storm passed? Were we in the calm eye and vulnerable to another blast?

It's impossible to imagine my parents' generation being caught without radio batteries.

By midday Sunday, people were emerging from their homes to look around at the wreckage. It was reassuring to be amongst each other. Snapped pine branches scented the air like Christmas.

Some shops were open, powered by noisy generators. Two of the Greek restaurants in Huntington Village had open doors, not to be outdone one by the other. Several caffeine addicts lounged mournfully on the steps of the darkened Starbucks. Neighbors sat on porches with books, turning actual pages and reading by daylight.

A second lesson of Irene is how dependent we are on electronics not only to inform, but also to entertain.

Back at home, still chipper about our power loss, my daughter set up a game of Clue. Afterward, we read until the light faded. I had a charming Jane Eyre moment, transported into the 19th century in my imagination as I carried a candle to the basement to feed the cats. Did Jane also scoop kitty litter by candlelight?

Our peaceful acceptance didn't last. My daughters quarreled over how to use the remaining charge in the laptop. Power up one iPod Touch? Play an audiobook they could both listen to?

As darkness closed in, the quiet was broken by a high-pitched whine. It stopped, then started again, several times. Annoyed, I asked my husband what he thought it was. He replied, "Crickets."

So, that's what's on the other side of the air-conditioners' hum.

Darkness fell before 8 p.m., but who goes to bed that early? We burned greedily through our last energy resources, playing solitaire on the iPad.

Monday morning, still without power, my husband shouldered his laptop and went in search of public places with Wi-Fi. I trust the Long Island Power Authority is hard at work.

First published in Newsday

Mortgage schemers' luck runs out

Mortgage fraud arrests have begun showing up with great regularity on Long Island. Fourteen people were charged last week with stealing $58 million in a fraud ring that involved more than 100 homes. Another 14, in a separate case brought by the Nassau County district attorney, are facing trial in October.

And there are reports of arranged sales on the rise -- cases where a homeowner falsifies a sale, effectively forcing the bank to reduce the mortgage on a home. That may sound like justice for a home that's lost value, but it's illegal, and it unfairly spreads the loss to the bank's other customers.

Why all this fraud in the news? Well, it turns out that Long Island is a hotbed for such schemes. The U.S. Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network says that Nassau had the fifth-highest number of suspicious reports of mortgage fraud per capita, among counties nationwide, in the third quarter of last year.

It's fascinating how people can think of different ways to make a quick, illegal buck. The convenience store robbery just doesn't compare for intrigue -- where's the imagination?

White-collar crime often involves people who had legitimate skills but at some point recognized an opportunity to cash in. In the case brought by Nassau DA Kathleen Rice in March, accused ringleaders James R. Sweet and Dwayne Benjamin were paying acquaintances $10,000 to pose as home buyers, and telling them that they were going to fix up the home and "flip" it. They portrayed it as an investment partnership.

So, the phony buyer took out a mortgage some $30,000 to $40,000 over the sale price, Rice said. The ringleaders allegedly paid off the "buyer" and pocketed the difference. There was no longer a homeowner to make payments on the house, leaving the bank to foreclose.

You can see that when home prices are rising, banks wouldn't be as unnerved by this scheme. But their sense of injury is high today. "For it to be fraud, somebody has to be damaged in some way," says Abigail Margulies, chief of the Crimes Against Real Estate unit in Rice's office, which was formed in late 2008.

Sweet and Benjamin allegedly became more brazen, eventually having people impersonate both the buyer and the seller, and swindling the bank out of the entire loan amount -- six times in one six-month period.

That's a lot of greed. More sympathetic, but just as illegal, are the homeowners whose mortgages are higher than the value of the home -- so-called underwater loans. They intentionally default on the loan and convince the lender to take less than is owed in a "short sale." In reality, the homeowner has arranged beforehand to "sell" the home to a friend for a lower price, and then continue to live in it.

The homeowner is sticking it to the bank that wouldn't renegotiate the loan. You can see how someone could justify that in their mind: "Why am I paying $4,000 a month to live in this home, when if I sold it, the new buyer could pay $1,300?"

A sense of injury runs high, and people feel they no longer need to play by the rules. Some people just walk away from underwater homes.

We'll be reading about more cases soon, says Margulies. Fraud takes a while to recognize and document. The charges being brought now are for crimes that occurred four or five years ago -- back before the 2008 crash, when there were loosey-goosey mortgage application rules about documenting employment or income.

Apparently, making loans to people who couldn't afford them was only part of the problem that led to the crash. Those loose practices also schooled would-be defrauders in how to game the system.

First published in Newsday

High-quality child care is a good investment

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The United States is sitting on a vast, untapped economic development tool that has received too little notice: our children.

Investing in children before they enter school pays dividends, and yet child care subsidies are at risk as Congress mulls questions about how to reduce the federal deficit. Before you tune this out as the same old "it's for the kids" chorus, consider:

--Children in high-quality programs are more likely to be employed -- and paying taxes -- when they reach adulthood.

--Parents who receive child care subsidies are less likely to need other forms of public assistance. A 2006 report by the Department of Health and Human Services noted that the subsidies are associated with the largest increase in employment for people formerly on welfare.

--Children who receive high-quality care, either at home or outside, are ready to succeed in school, showing a reduced need for special education programs and increased graduation rates.

--Bad child care is more likely to produce juvenile criminals. A Chicago study showed that at-risk children not enrolled in early care and education programs were 70 percent more likely to be charged with a violent crime by age 18.

This last point prompted more than 600 police chiefs, sheriffs and prosecutors -- calling themselves Fight Crime: Invest in Kids -- to write to Congress this spring, urging continued funding for Child Care Development and Block Grants. The grants are the federal government's primary child care assistance to states.

Despite a sizable budget -- $19 billion in federal and state spending in 2008 -- child care subsidies have never kept up with the need. Only a fraction of eligible families received any subsidy that year, according to the Urban Institute; most were stuck on long waiting lists.

In February, Republicans in the House proposed cutting the child care block grants by $39 million. That didn't happen, but the funding is still at risk. In the name of deficit reduction, Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan's (R-Wis.) plan for 2012 would reduce spending to 2008 levels. Democrats say that would cause 170,000 families trying to find or keep jobs to lose child care.

To be sure, we must get federal spending under control. But it's fair to ask our leaders to responsibly weigh the value of programs they want to cut.

Child care costs are mind-boggling. A survey by the National Association of Child Care Resource & Referral Agencies found that, in every region of the United States, the average child care fees for an infant were higher than the average amount that families spend on food. In New York, infant care at a center averages $13,630 a year.

One culprit in underfunding child care is the culture war. Often, those who believe that a parent -- a mom -- should stay home and raise children oppose child-care subsidies. But given modern economic realities, parents will work. Seventy percent of mothers with young children are employed outside the home. And census officials are predicting a boom in the number of single mothers on Long Island, as figures are released this week.

Besides, 50 years of research has found that children of working parents don't turn out to be much different from those with stay-at-home parents, at least when it comes to academic achievement and behavior. That's according to an analysis published in January in the journal Psychological Bulletin, which examined 69 child care studies conducted between 1960 and March 2010.

It's the decent thing to do to help families get on their feet and stay there, not to mention to raise a generation of kids who are prepared for success. But if decency isn't persuasive, think of all the money we'll save on special ed, public assistance and juvenile incarceration.

First published in Newsday

Home-sharing's time returns

Pushed along by those twins of the Great Recession -- unemployment and foreclosure -- America may be moving back under the multigenerational roof.

At a recent reunion of high school friends, I talked to one who had returned to her mother's house, along with her brother and sister. The whole family was back together again, this time with grandchildren added to the mix. It was a disaster. The siblings were fighting as much as they had in high school.

Another friend's son was enlisting in the Army to avoid moving back into her home after graduation. The Census Bureau says that 54 million Americans were living in multigenerational families in 2010, up from 49 million two years earlier. That's the highest count since 1968.

Of course, it's nothing new for large extended families to live under one roof. In many parts of the world, it's the norm. In this country, Asians and Hispanics have higher rates of multigenerational living, perhaps reflecting greater cultural acceptance.

But for the most part, since the 1950s, the American middle class has assumed that one is up and out at 18. Each nuclear family, according to this standard, had its own home.

And that attitude can make moving back in together -- or "doubling up" in demographers' terms -- feel like a step backward. It can be a sign of financial desperation, a response to unemployment, lack of child care or health care, or affordable rents.

But there are many advantages that generations can offer one another: care-taking for the young or old, emotional support and the sharing of life lessons. Those benefits -- as well as the financial considerations -- are what led the Huntington-based Family Service League, a social services agency, to create its HomeShare program, which matches older adults with someone who could use their spare bedroom.

Artist Milton Colón, 47, heard about the program through Fountainhead Church in East Northport. He is sharing the Smithtown home of Meinhard and Aino Joks, who are 86 and 85. Colón does the laundry, cooking, bed-making and errands, allowing the Jokses to stay in their home even though their home health care benefits have run out.

In turn, the Jokses have given him shelter and stability. Colón's wife of 22 years died in 2008, of an accidental overdose, and he fell apart. He began living out of his car.

While she was alive, Colón had made a living painting portraits. He was as busy as he wanted to be -- before the recession drained his Brentwood business of customers.

The Jokses are from Estonia and Finland and tell him stories of their emigration after World War II. "I'm a World War II history buff," Colón says. "So, that's something we share. I love history. I could take it in all day."

In the evenings, he works at a basement desk on a comic strip that he's developing. It's about a proud Puerto Rican father named Flores who moves his family from Brooklyn to the suburbs -- "Flowers in Blue," Colón's own story. His new home with the Jokses not only tethers him back to family life, it gives him an artist's freedom from financial worries.

That's the facet of multigenerational living that is not often expressed. We all know about the tensions and bickering -- the fall from the ideal after having somehow slipped off the path to the single-family home. But there is sweetness, too.

So why not make the best of what, for some, has become the new American reality? With 8.8 percent unemployment and 2.36 million homes foreclosed by banks between 2007 and 2010, the middle class is struggling. Independent living may be an American value, but so is helping each other through hard times.

First published in Newsday

Schools challenged to cut costs, preserve quality

A couple of weeks have passed since I asked people in this space to send ideas about cutting school costs, without harming the things we all cherish -- our best teachers, high academic goals, and the extracurriculars that inspire kids to find their place in the world.

I've been overwhelmed by the response. Not so much the volume -- about 45 calls, e-mails and letters -- but by the quality. People have sent thoughtful, 4- and 5-page letters with good ideas about how to cut spending without hurting students. Former and current school superintendents, school board members, teachers and their spouses, parents -- they all want to get in on the conversation.

The response made me wonder whether, as Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo tries to target his $1.5-billion cuts to school budgets statewide this coming year, it might be worth convening a panel of informed citizens to come up with recommendations.

Here's your best advice:

--Salaries make up 60 percent to 75 percent of school spending. Freeze salaries, including the automatic yearly longevity "step" raises, and stop giving increases for extra training that, while important, adds little to classroom effectiveness -- such as courses on sexual harassment or peanut allergies.

--Give school boards more spine. Require that contract negotiations take place on a townwide, regional or statewide basis. Prohibit school districts from hiring board members' families. Stop "loading up" school boards with people who work as school administrators or teachers in neighboring districts.

--Do the math. One man wrote that his district had 6,687 students and 725 teachers. Figuring about 24 students per class . . . that leaves 446 teachers who aren't in the classroom. What are they doing, exactly? Those who wrote me seem very concerned about the large numbers of adults in schools.

--Consolidate neighborhood schools. Lawrence has closed two school buildings, netting $30 million. That money was used for maintenance to other buildings ($17 million) and a reduction in property taxes.

--Make athletics and other activities pay-to-play. Parents should pay for their kids to participate, and the group could raise money for families who can't afford it.

--Increase class sizes, especially in the upper grades. Why can't high schools use lecture halls, like colleges do? Or offer online classes?

--Charge parents whose kids are earning college credits while in high school. They would be paying the college for those credits otherwise.

--Require schools to "go green," inspiring energy savings of 10 percent or more.

--Penalize teachers who are absent a lot. (Although it's not a cost savings, another idea is to reward teachers who work in difficult school districts.)

--Put high school and college students in kindergarten and first grade classes, and give them college credit to help out.

--Consolidate school districts. This was mentioned a lot, but the political reality doesn't seem to favor it.

--Do away with universal bus service.

--Get rid of tenure.

When my family moved here in 2003, the schools were a big draw. Long Island needs to treat the quality of its schools as a treasure, even as we pare them down to a more reasonable cost.

The most depressing response when I asked for ideas about cutting school costs was this: "There have been no solutions and likely never will be any." The best? "It only takes some good ideas and those with the strength of conviction to get the job done."

So, what's it going to be, Long Island?

First published in Newsday

Government programs have failed to stem foreclosures

Even as news reports offer hope of economic recovery, the figures on home foreclosures remain stuck in a recessionary winter. When the books close on 2010, banks will have repossessed a record 1.2 million U.S. homes, up 33 percent from 2009.

On Long Island, we ranked a dreadful second in a new measure published last month: Given the current rate of home sales, it would take 30.4 months to sell all the foreclosed and "distressed" properties here. Only Miami has a larger, slower-moving inventory.

The housing crisis is entering its fourth year, yet people are still losing their homes at a disastrous rate. In Nassau and Suffolk counties, 893 new foreclosure cases were opened in November alone. Despite a series of programs intended to prevent foreclosures, lenders and the federal government have failed.

A congressional panel overseeing the federal programs admitted as much earlier this month. The marquee initiative, the Home Affordable Modification Program, will end up preventing only 800,000 foreclosures, at a maximum, vastly fewer than the 3 million to 4 million it initially aimed to stop. Even more worrisome: This is the third foreclosure prevention effort launched by the federal government since 2007, and the fourth overall. The first was initiated by the mortgage writers themselves - an early washout.

The fundamental flaw in every case is relying on lenders to voluntarily reduce a borrower's monthly payments to affordable levels. One would think that keeping the mortgage checks coming would be in lenders' interests. By foreclosing on a home, they recover only a fraction of the value of the loan.

But apparently there are financial incentives working in the opposite direction. In our system of bundled, resold mortgages, the companies that service the loans can sometimes make more money by charging fees throughout the foreclosure process.

One way around this would be to make loan modifications mandatory. The House voted in 2009 to give bankruptcy court judges the power to reduce mortgages so that people could afford to stay in their homes. Regrettably, the Senate refused to pass this measure. It should be reintroduced.

The government's half-steps to date reflect an unwillingness to "reward" people who foolishly signed up for mortgages they couldn't afford. But many who are struggling have fallen on hard times for unforeseen reasons, often because of job loss. It's a Catch-22 that some people could relocate for new jobs - if only they could sell their homes in this terrible market.

To be sure, it would be better if the housing market recovered and the value of people's homes came back. Some believe the quickest route is to allow the foreclosures to proceed. But blaming homeowners ignores the culpability of lenders, who duped many buyers with teaser rates, balloon payments and outright lies about the loan terms - to say nothing of recent revelations that lenders couldn't produce paperwork to prove they hold the loans. Bankruptcy court judges should be given discretion on whether a lender acted in bad faith.

A new law taking effect Jan. 22 in New York will allow bankruptcy filers to retain up to $150,000 in home equity, or $300,000 for a couple, potentially allowing many to keep their homes. Time will tell if this will be adequate.

It's striking that during the 1930s, the most recent era when U.S. home prices fell so dramatically, President Franklin D. Roosevelt made not only a practical argument to save homes, but a moral plea: The "broad interests of the nation require that specific safeguards should be thrown around home ownership as a guarantee of social and economic stability."

It's time we made this commitment to stability too.

Originally published in Newsday

NY needs to cut special ed spending

Two years ago this month, the Suozzi Commission came out with a startling report. Charged with finding a way to lower property taxes, the group - formally named the New York State Commission on Property Tax Relief - turned sharply off course to detail the escalating cost of special education.

For more than a year, the commission looked for fundamental reasons why New York's property taxes are so high. It asked public school officials who, one after another, pointed to special education.

So, the commission assigned a task force to examine special ed. It found that the state has 204 "mandates" beyond federal rules that make our special education system the most expensive in the country. On average, New York schools spend $9,494 per pupil in regular classrooms, and a prodigious $23,898 for each special education student.

Our state is rightly proud of its generous and progressive history on education. But you have to wonder, as a new administration takes over in Albany next month with a $9-billion deficit chained to its ankle, whether it's time to take another look at the Suozzi Commission's findings. After all, the state Council of School Superintendents called them "the most thorough independent review of New York's special education policies in the more than 30 years since the current basic structure was put into place" - yet they've essentially been ignored.

One problem with special ed is that too many students qualify. Don't assume that these programs serve only those students diagnosed with a severe mental or physical challenge. In fact, more than half the students in special ed simply need extra help in reading or math, speech therapy or other support.

Schools receive extra resources for special ed students, so they have an incentive to label marginal students as disabled. But what if not all of them are really disabled? Not only would that be a waste of money, it would harm the truly disabled students by overburdening the resources meant to serve them.

Also, shifting non-disabled students into special education can stigmatize them and sidesteps problems, like failing schools, that should be addressed head-on.

Once kids are in special ed, schools must meet minimum requirements for them, like drafting an individualized education program every year. Students in speech therapy had to attend at least two sessions a week - no matter what their needs were - until the Board of Regents relaxed that rule last month.

Such regulations may sound trifling, until you consider there are 204 of them, on top of a tome of federal rules.

School officials are also required to hold legal hearings, at an average cost of $75,000, if a parent questions a student's placement. (Parents pay some of the cost.) In the 2007-08 school year, 6,157 hearings were requested. A case for one child on Long Island cost $300,000.

Parents can sue to have the school district pay for private school tuition - as much as $25,000 a year or more - and for bus service within 50 miles of a child's home. In theory, a Mineola student could qualify for door-to-door service to a school in Greenwich, Conn. - although it defies logic that a parent would want that.

Last month, New York's Regents did away with a few of the 204 mandates, but nothing that will cut costs. What's needed is a study of results: which strategies work best to move students on to college or the workforce. Schools should know what leads to success.

Parent advocates for students with disabilities correctly argue that early intervention - say, remedial reading in lower grades - prevents problems later on. And no one wants a child to struggle needlessly. But the spending gap is outrageous. It's time to find a middle ground.

Originally published in Newsday

'Rescuing' kids from child care

Have you ever tried to rescue another Mom from her child-care choices? My sister texted me today to say that another Mom from school invited her 8-year-old son over for the following afternoon. My sister said yes, thinking it was a playdate invitation. But apparently, the other Mom was reacting to my nephew's fussing about going to his after-school child care. The other Mom said he clearly didn't like his day care. So, she thought she would give him an afternoon off -- presumably in the more wholesome environment of her home. The thing is, this Mom was mistaken about why my nephew was fussing. He likes his day care, but he also wanted to go over to her house to play on his friend's new ride-on scooter. It says a lot about our continuing guilt over child care that this Mom felt she had to butt in and rescue my nephew. I think she was being very judgmental.

We're becoming ever more dependent on non-relatives taking care of our kids -- what with the growth of two-income homes, single parents, mobile workers. Yet, we still can't seem to resolve that child care is an acceptable way for our children to spend their time. I'll go out on a limb here and say that it's mostly women who are so uncomfortable with "strangers" -- that is, trained child-care workers -- taking care of our kids. In the back of our minds, we compare this arrangement with Mom or Grandma watching the kids, and the strangers never quite measure up.

I'm guilty of this myself. Several years ago, I met my daughter's friend at the YMCA, ready to put in a day of assistance with her Mom who worked at the Y. I offered to take the girl home to play at my house, certain that it would be a better day for the kid. But her Mom quite rightly said, "She's looking forward to spending the day with me." Her Mom was very nice about it, and we're still friends. But I wonder at my own motivation, trying to "rescue" this kid from a day at work. It's quite possible that she enjoyed her day with Mom and learned a lot in the experience.

What do you think?

Lost in suburbia

I recently visited my dentist. As I was walking down the hall, the receptionist asked if I'd like a magazine and suggested I choose something from the left-hand side where "Ladies' Home Journal" and "Home and Garden" were displayed. The other tier contained magazines about "politics and business -- boring stuff," she assured me. I considered saying something quippy about how I have been writing about politics and business for 20 years and don't consider it at all boring. I used to speak up more when I was younger, just to shake up people's perceptions. I look like what I am: a 40-something suburban mom. But that doesn't mean mommy and political junkie can't exist in the same person.

My quips have not succeeded in educating the world, however, and some days I choose to stop trying. The tide keeps coming back in to wash away my sand castles.

Also, I realize that the receptionist was trying to be nice -- something I appreaciate more now than at a younger time. She wasn't trying to make me feel alienated and freakish, even if that was the result.

It's been about 18 months since I stopped commuting from suburban Long Island into Manhattan. I miss it. Now it's suburbia for both home and work. All suburban, all the time.

Merry Chri$tmas

I ask you, did someone really have to die in an early morning Wal-Mart purchase lust to point out that American consumerism has gone too far? It has, and particularly around Christmas. As a third-grader, I developed a questionnaire for my classmates to gauge whether they had the "right" take on the Christmas holiday. OK, maybe it was an early journalistic instinct. Or perhaps I'm a closet evangelist who has yet to realize her calling. The students of Mrs. Doherty's class at Tarkey Elementary School in Woburn, Mass., were my field test. I asked them whether they believed Christmas was about presents or Jesus.

My subjects were pretty evenly divided at first. But, eventually, word of my objective got around, and everybody began answering, "Jesus." So go the good intentions of even the best pollsters.

I don't really believe that Jdimytai Damour's death is a wake-up call for consumerists. He, like other unfortunate people, was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and it all adds up to nothing. Like the victims killed in Mumbai this week. We don't live in a just world. But I will say that the purchase-lust aspect of Christmas has gotten me down for a long, long time -- perhaps since third grade in Mrs. Doherty's class. Every year, a gloom descends over me as I consider how few people really need the gifts I'm giving. Or how many people must be given a gift to avoid hard feelings. This list has grown as I have matured and now includes the paper delivery folks, the house cleaners, the hairdresser, a couple of babysitters, religion teachers, classroom teachers, classroom aides and the mailman. My family qualifies as its own small economy.

I'm not a stingy person -- not with money, anyway. But I do mind all the time it takes. The days between Thanksgiving and Christmas, to me, seem so bleak with obligation. This year, I have begun creating space for small indulgences of personal time to keep myself from succumbing to the depressing waves that accompany being over-scheduled. On Monday, I wrote a page of a short story that I've been working on. Today, I got my car washed after a long Thanksgiving trip that left it looking very junky. Little things, I'll grant you. But they keep me sane.

So, I guess that I am positing selfishness as an antidote to Christmas consumerism. Or maybe it's taking moments to stop and live life amid the demands. It feels right, and I believe that whatever satisfies our souls comes from God.