City & State: Does your comedy ever intersect with politics?
Susie Essman: Not too much. If something strikes me, yes. But there are people who do it so much better than I do that I let them handle it. You know, the Jon Stewarts and the Bill Mahers and the Lewis Blacks. They’re so much better at it than I am, so I stick to what I’m good at.

CS: Is there anything going on in New York politics that you find to be particularly funny right now?
SE: No. You know, when things are going well, it’s really bad for comedy. Bush was great for comedy. Eliot Spitzer was, of course, fantastic for comedy.

CS: Mayor Michael Bloomberg appeared on an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Did you have a chance to speak with him?
SE: I was not in the scene with him. But I know that everybody was very pleased with him. He came in, he did what he had to do, and he did it well and quickly and in just a couple of takes. He’s a professional. Some politicians are better actors than others.

CS: You’re bringing comedy back to the Catskills with an Aug. 25 benefit concert at the Belleayre Music Festival, part of the Catskill Park Resource Foundation’s effort to revitalize the region. How did you get involved?
SE: I live in the Hudson Valley—not in the Catskills, exactly, but we’re adjacent.That entire area really suffered after Hurricane Irene. So many people lost their homes, and the whole Catskill region really suffered also from that devastation. And this winter all the ski resorts suffered because there was no snow. I mean, I was happy about no snow because I have a treacherous driveway, but that’s kind of selfish of me. I know that the area’s depressed.

CS: Did you go there on vacations as a kid?
SE: We used to spend the summer at a bungalow colony. When I was growing up, it was the place to go. All the hotels were in operation, and it’s where so many great comedians started working in the Borscht Belt. That’s no longer there. I think a lot of those places are just trying to hold on and see if gambling is ever going to come. They’re all closed now, and it’s kind of sad because it’s a really beautiful, beautiful part of the country.

CS: Did you ever perform there early on in your career?
SE: I worked at the Concord, at the Raleigh, at the Nevele, at the Fallsview. But I was really at the tail end. It was not the way that it was in the ’40s or ’50s, let’s say, when it was happening. All of those comedians started there: Mel Brooks and Buddy Hackett and Alan King. They used to go up there and they used to work at the hotels and then go around to all the bungalow colonies and work there on a Saturday night. They’d do maybe five or six shows on a Saturday night.

CS: What was it like when you performed there?
SE: It was very different. It was a very different clientele, and it was on the downslide. It eventually just dried up. All the hotels closed. I think money wasn’t put back into them. They weren’t kept up well. But it’s a beautiful part. I’m partial to New
York State.

CS: Is there anything that can be done to revitalize the Catskills?
SE: There’s no manufacturing any more, like the rest of the country. I think they’re trying to just boost tourism. It’s a great outdoor life there. There’s hiking and fishing and skiing and all that stuff.

CS: Tell me about the benefit comedy concert that you’re putting on in August.
SE: It’s a fundraiser to raise money for people to bring awareness [to the Catskill region].  Especially with gas prices the way they are—it doesn’t have the cachet of the Hamptons per se, or Dutchess County, but it’s a great place to go with your family. It’s inexpensive. It’s rural. A lot of good restaurants have been opening up. I think they’re just trying to bring awareness to the area. It’s in economic decline right now, like so much of our country.

To read the full article at City & State click here.

Brad Hoylman

Brad Hoylman, who is planning to run for the seat held by retiring state Sen. Tom Duane, said he was “humbled” by Duane’s encouragement of his candidacy.

In an interview on Capital Tonight with Liz Benjamin, Duane said he hopes Brad Hoylman runs for the seat and that he would make “a terrific state senator.”

“One of my closest friends is Brad Hoylman, and I’ve made no secret at all of my fondness for him,” Duane said. “I haven’t officially made an endorsement. I don’t know who else would be in the field. But I would be very proud to have Brad Hoylman represent me in the district I have been representing.”

Hoylman said he welcomed the incumbent’s remarks, which fell just short of an endorsement.

“I’m extremely humbled by Tom Duane’s comments about me and nothing would make me prouder than to continue his sterling legacy of being a champion for our community and those who normally don’t have a voice in the halls of government,” said Hoylman, who until recently was the senior vice president and general counsel for the Partnership for New York. “His 14-year legislative record is really without parallel and will be a hard act to follow, but I hope I can continue Tom’s progressive, activist work. I’d be honored to have his support for my State Senate bid in the 27th District.”

This article originally appeared on the City & State website. To read more from City & State click here.

This article previously appeared on the City & State website. To read more from City & State, visit www.cityandstateny.com.

But since much of the growth was spurred by generous state tax incentives, which reduce taxes by 30 percent on designated production projects, the joke may actually be on taxpayers.

The tax credits don’t directly take money out of the state budget, but they cost a few hundred million dollars a year in foregone tax revenue. The value of the tax credits in 2012-13 is expected to be $342 million. Last year, they totaled $297 million.

Some incentives go to some productions that might have been filmed in the city anyway, which would mean less tax revenue for the state, said Robert Tannenwald, an adjust lecturer on public finance at Brandeis University.

“The key is, what would New York State’s employment and income have looked like had the money spent over several years on film tax credits been used instead to keep teachers in classrooms, firefighters in our firehouses, cops on the street and clinics open,” said Tannenwald, who analyzed such credits in a 2010 Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report. “What would the bottom line have been if that had been the case?”

Mayor Bloomberg, who released a study laying out the latest figures on film and TV job and spending growth since 2002, touted the results as a sign of his administration’s success in diversifying the local economy.

“With this flood of new business has come tens of thousands of new jobs that have put New Yorkers to work in these tough economic times,” Bloomberg said. “Without a doubt, our booming media and entertainment industry is one of the main reasons why we have weathered the national recession better than most of the rest of the country.”

The study, conducted pro bono by the Boston Consulting Group, also found improvement in the city’s advertising and publishing industries and its digital media sector, which has grown to account for over $8 billion in revenue and now employs 25,000 people.

But the highlight of the report was filmed entertainment, which has seen tax incentives rise in tandem with its growing spending, thanks to shows like Boardwalk Empire and Gossip Girl.

TV and film production companies spent nearly $7 billion in the city in 2005 and 2006, the report shows, after combined tax incentives from the city and the state were boosted to reduce taxes on productions by 15 percent.

Then in 2008, as Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Connecticut raised their own production credits to between 25 and 30 percent, New York City saw its film and TV production spending plummet.

New York State raised its incentives to 30 percent in 2009, and while the city’s incentive program expired, additional state funding lured some of those companies back to the city and set off another boom, the report concluded.

“Our interviews with industry leaders consistently cited the strong support of the city and the state of New York as an important driver of growth, including the New York State tax incentive, improved permitting, and access to premier locations, to name just a few,” said Kate Sayre, the study’s author.

To read the full article at City & State click here.

In The Avengers movie that opened this past weekend, Mark Ruffalo plays the Incredible Hulk, a creature born from a scientific experiment gone awry who joins a team of superheroes seeking to save the world. The risks of scientific progress and efforts to save the planet are also at play in his real-world battle against hydraulic fracturing, Ruffalo tells City & State.
What follows is an edited transcript.

City & State: How did you become involved in fracking activism?

Mark Ruffalo: I heard about hydrofracking before I moved my family to New York, and I thought it was going to be the greatest thing since sliced bread. It was going to bring this vibrant new economy to upstate New York. But I also started to hear some questionable things about it. So I went to the old Internet and started doing some research. At this time, there was very little to learn. The gas industry is very rosy and extremely positive. There were inklings from EPA whistleblowers and people in Wyoming whose homes were filling with gas and were coming up with these neurological disorders from the drinking water. So I decided, “I have to go look at this for myself.”

CS: Where did you go?

MR: I went to Dimock, Pa. It wasn’t really to find anything wrong. It was just to see what was going on. But in a room of 40 people, it became clear to me that these people were under siege in their life, and the American dream was betrayed. What about the EPA? The EPA wouldn’t allow something like this to happen. Well, this isn’t regulated by the EPA, really. Well, what about the DEP? Well, they’ve pretty much turned their back on us. What about your attorney general? They’re not interested. There were victims there, and basically they were being told they were lying. You had these Americans who obviously had a problem, and everybody turned their backs on them. I didn’t want to get involved, honestly. But if I am who I say—I care about people and I care about injustice—then I realized this is coming to my community, where there are people that I love and I care for, and it can’t happen like this.

CS: But fracking could create jobs in New York’s poorer regions.

MR: There’s only a fraction of the jobs the industry says they’ll create. They tend to be incredibly transient. Cornell did a study last year on what the effects would be, especially in small communities that rely on pristine water and pristine air. A lot of these communities have only agriculture and tourism to support them. What happens is the community is left worse off after the bust. A few people end up making a lot of money. It doesn’t make its way out to the rest of the community. The workers leave. The area is left with less economic diversity. It kills off other industries. I understand that we’re in bad times. The other thing that’s interesting to point out is the fastest growing job sector right now in the United States, at 10–18 percent a year, is the green sector, or the renewable-energy sector.

CS: In your experience, are people aware of the hydrofracking issue?

MR: When I started three years ago, I just thought, There’s no way. We’re done for. We have the biggest industries in the world; we have Exxon Mobil and Chesapeake just dumping so much money. It was a done deal. Thousands of families have reported contamination now. These people are poor, they’re desperate. When their wells become contaminated, their properties become worthless. They turn to the gas industry, and the gas industry says, “We didn’t contaminate your well, but we will buy you out and give you water if you sign a nondisclosure agreement.” We will never know these people’s stories. You have people in Dimock, and some people in Wyoming now, these mothers whose children have come down with asthma and weird autoimmune-deficiency diseases, whose school is right next to compressor stations, and they’re getting together and they’re starting to get their stories out. They’re not taking the short money, which is what we’re seeing in Dimock. They’re saying, “No, we’re going to live through this, we’ve been wronged, and we’re going to get our stories out.” It’s very different now than it was even a year ago. Fracking is a national issue. There’s a lot of new information coming out, and the longer this goes on, the more we’re going to find out how damning it is.

To read the full interview at City & State click here.

It is also on the cutting edge on a less glamorous front: getting rid of its trash.

The Durst Organization, the powerful real estate company and the developer of the Bank of America Tower, is doing all it can to minimize the building’s waste and keep it out of landfills.

It all starts with the office workers. At Durst’s headquarters on the building’s 49th floor, the trash bins next to each desk are only for paper. None of the receptacles have plastic liners, a reminder to keep out any food or liquids.

Pizza crusts, apple cores and half-eaten bagels have to be carried to a break room, where employees deposit them in wooden compost buckets. Empty water bottles, soda cans and glass go into a separate can. Any remaining garbage is dumped into yet another can.

Lisa Cintron, a Durst quality-control manager, said it was an adjustment to take her trash to the break room instead of throwing everything away right at her desk.

“Since you get up and you’re already there, you say, ‘Well, I might as well do the right thing and throw it in the right place,’ ” she said. “It was definitely inconvenient for people and hard to adjust initially, just the thought, but it really didn’t take much to adjust.”

The on-site sorting, done on all but a couple of floors at the Bank of America Tower and at a number of other Durst buildings, is just the start of the journey for each piece of trash.

Food refuse is shipped to the Durst family’s composting farm two hours north of the city. Paper, cardboard and plastics are shipped overseas to be broken down and remade into new products. Much of the remaining trash is burned in an incinerator. Only a fraction of the garbage is buried underground.

Helena Durst, a Durst vice president spearheading the company’s efforts to minimize trash and maximize recycling, said it’s all about setting an example in a city trying to boost its recycling.

“It’s not a moral thing,” Durst said. “It’s an economic driver, and it’s an imperative for the environment. It’s the government’s imperative to be able to put the infrastructure in place so that we can all easily follow it.”

* * *

Around 5 p.m. on a sunny day in March, the cleaning crews show up at the Bank of America Tower for the evening shift. Ljubica Martic arrives on the 49th floor, still lit by the fading sunlight, to tidy up the upscale corporate offices and cubicles, vacuum the floors and take out the trash.

As a few employees wrap up their work and head for the elevators, Martic steps into a deserted break room with a sweeping view of the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty and the harbor beyond. She scoops up an empty Starbucks coffee cup on a table and drops it into a plastic bag.

“We throw recycled paper here, garbage here, and we always use blue plastic bags in case we find cans or water bottles,” she says, snatching up other bits of trash from the table and dropping them into their designated cans. “Here, it’s more strict.”

She yanks several half-filled bags and lugs them down the hallway to the freight area, where she drops them next to an elevator.

Just before 7 p.m., the elevator doors open, and out steps a young Durst employee sporting a light blue work shirt and a mohawk. He loads the garbage into 55-gallon wheeled tubs, and the elevator descends to the ground floor.

At the loading dock, the bags are tossed from the tubs onto the empty concrete floor. By midnight the dock is filled with hundreds and hundreds of bags.

To read the full article at City & State click here.

Critics have blasted FreshDirect’s government-subsidized move from Queens to the Bronx as a waste of taxpayer dollars with little benefit to local residents, as well as a serious health issue since more delivery trucks could exacerbate the borough’s already high asthma rates. So this week the online grocer is striking back with a new web site, www.freshdirectfacts.com, which defends the $127.8 million in city and state subsidies and posts a slew of positive newspaper editorials, supportive quotes and upbeat press releases. The web site also touts 3,000 “good-paying jobs” created or retained, the development of greener trucks and the economic boost from construction and other jobs. “One of the things the site does is address misinformation around FreshDirect’s move to the Bronx,” a company spokesman said. But critics remain unmoved. “I think they’re trying to make up for the fact that they’re just not a good corporate citizen,” Bettina Damiani, of Good Jobs New York, said after perusing the site. “They threatened to go to New Jersey unless New Yorkers gave them more money.”

This piece first appeared in City & State’s Heard Around Town, April 24, 2012. To read more from City & State click here.

Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries (via Jeffries for Congress)

Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries today blasted the American Legislative Exchange Council, the nonprofit public policy group under increasing scrutiny following the shooting death of Trayvon Martin due to its role in writing Florida’s controversial “Stand Your Ground” law.

Jeffries, who is currently running for Congress, said Martin’s death sent shock waves through the largely African American community he represents in Brooklyn, but that revelations about the law and ALEC’s role in pushing it, not just in Florida but in New York and elsewhere, were equally shocking.

“It revealed for us in New York the magnitude of this effort that ALEC has launched all across the country,” Jeffries said on a conference call organized by the liberal Progressive Change Campaign Committee. “Here in New York, we’ve called on this state senator to withdraw this reckless and irresponsible legislation. And more importantly, we’re proud to be able to participate in the effort to expose ALEC really as a right-wing front group.”

That New York lawmaker is state Sen. George Maziarz, who has refused to withdraw the bill. Senate Republicans have indicated they will not take up the measure. Jeffries did not mention Mariarz by name during the call.

ALEC has been subject to increasing criticism across the country. The Progressive Change Campaign Committee has successfully lobbied a growing number of corporations, including Coca Cola and McDonald’s, to sever their sponsorship ties with the group.

Some have also called into question ALEC’s status as a charity, which prevents it from doing any lobbying, though others have defended the organization.

Jeffries and a number of lawmakers from other states also called on any Democratic legislators who are members to leave the group. It’s not immediately clear whether any New York Democrats are members.

To read the full article at City & State click here.

Fresh Kills in Queens.

Bowing to public pressure, the Bloomberg administration today took the former Fresh Kills landfill off the table as a potential location for a pilot project to convert waste into energy.

In early March, the city asked companies to submit plans for a waste-to-energy facility inside the five boroughs or within 80 miles of its borders, but the only site specifically named as a possible location was a portion of the former landfill.

That set off a firestorm of criticism on Staten Island, where garbage has long been a controversial issue due to Fresh Kills, a massive landfill closed in 2001 after years of debate that is now being turned into a sprawling park.

New York City Councilman Jimmy Oddo, who joined other Staten Island elected officials in raising their concerns with Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Tuesday, praised the decision to reverse course.

“The thing that we bristled at was that the RFP said to the world, ‘You can show us how you can use any of these technologies within 80 miles of the city of New York, and oh, by the way there’s one publicly owned site that we would ask you to consider,’” said Oddo, the Council minority leader.

“You can’t lead on garbage with Staten Island, given our history,” he added. “We saw this entire issue through the spectrum of Fresh Kills.”

Oddo and other Staten Island elected officials had planned a protest near the former Fresh Kills landfill on Monday, but a fire forced them to cancel the press conference. A town hall meeting was also planned for later this month.

Public Advocate Bill de Blasio also seized on the issue, and Council Speaker Christine Quinn issued a statement today applauding the mayor for excluding Fresh Kills.

To read the full article at City & State click here.

The Muppet version of Mayor Bloomberg. Photo courtesy of Flickr Commons.

The Muppets are taking Manhattan – and the rest of New York City as well.

Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy and Gonzo showed up in Manhattan last week to announce that they and their fellow Muppets have signed on as the city’s official family ambassadors over the next 12 months.

“Having Kermit as a family ambassador for New York is pretty exciting, and I know it’s going to make other cities – listen carefully – just green with envy,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg said at a quip-filled press conference to kick of the initiative.

The Muppets are partnering with NYC & Company, the city’s tourism agency, to encourage families to visit, offering tips on www.nyc.gov and publicizing places like the Bronx Zoo, Brooklyn Bridge Park and Coney Island.

Last year families visiting the city spent about $14 billion, according to the mayor’s office, and accounted for some 30 percent of the city’s record-breaking 50.5 million visitors.

Signing on the Muppets is part of the city’s initiative to reach 55 million visitors annually by 2015, which Bloomberg said would continue to create jobs and boost the economy.

“It’s one of the reasons why we weathered the recession better than other cities, and it creates an enormous amount of jobs and gives people an understanding of just how great New York is, so they come here for education, for medical care, for vacations, to start businesses,” Bloomberg said.

The collaboration is a natural one. The Muppets starred in The Muppets Take Manhattan in 1984, and Bloomberg also shared a scene with Miss Piggy in a holiday TV special, in which he admitted he “did ham it up a bit.”

“New York has been kind of home to the Muppets in one way or another since the 1960s when I first came here with a guy named Jim Henson to see if we could break into show business,” said Kermit, adding that he has a place in Central Park – not on Central Park. “New York is part of the Muppets. This city helped make us who we are today.”

Gonzo touted Ellis Island, the Statue of Liberty, and his personal favorite, the Port Authority Bus Terminal. He added that he would be giving tips on the best places to water ski on the East River.

And Miss Piggy, who said she could usually be found having breakfast at Tiffany’s, raved about the city’s restaurants, shopping boutiques, department stores and flea markets.

To read the full article at City & State click here.