“Say ‘Hi’ to Vinnie for me”

Those were the parting words of Judge Matthew Sciarino to Council Ydanis Rodriguez after dismissing charges of obstruction of justice and resisting arrest stemming from the councilman’s November arrest.

Sciarino, a criminal court judge who was transferred to Manhattan from Staten Island after posting revealing details about his life on Facebook, may have been referring to Jimmy Oddo and Vincent Ignizo, Rodriguez’s two Council colleagues from Staten Island. But Rodriguez couldn’t say, focusing his public comments more on the need for the City to respect the constitutional rights of Occupy Wall Street supporters like himself.

“Today, with the dismissal of my charges, I am calling on Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Commissioner [Ray] Kelly to spend those resources as is needed to protect our city from terrorist attack, keep our city safe, but also to defend our constitutional rights,” Rodriguez said outside the courthouse.

Rodriguez was arrested in the wake of the November 15 police sweep of Zuccotti Park that ended the first phase of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Rodriguez claims he was traveling to the park to observe the police action in his capacity as a Council member, but was detained and beaten by several police officers.

In court today, prosecutor Michele Bayer from the Manhattan district attorney’s office said that she doesn’t buy the councilman’s recollection of the events, but lacked the testimony, specifically from one female police officer, to try and convict him.

“As we don’t have the testimony of this specific female officer, we cannot prove the charges against this defendant beyond a reasonable doubt,” Bayer said. “Therefore, the People move to dismiss this case.”

Rodriguez’s lawyer, Andrew Stoll, said Bayer’s comments in court about finding “no evidence to corroborate” the councilman’s story were extraneous and unwarranted.

“This wasn’t the arena for them to make those comments,” Stoll said. “Those were gratuitous comments.”

Here’s the transcript of Bayer’s full comments from court:

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Given that Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s proposal this year raises education spending by 4 percent, an $805 million bump over last year, all the activity seemed a bit superfluous. But a brief glance at the fiscal woes of school districts across the state suggests otherwise.

Take the Haverstraw–Stony Point school district in northern Rockland County. It has lost $10 million in state aid over the last three years. It has laid off 118 staff members, and will lose another 17 teachers this year.

Two of the five elementary schools have closed, as well as one middle school. Ninth graders are being pushed from middle school into high school to save money. And $11.6 million of the district’s annual budget is tied up in an ongoing court settlement with a local utility company.

Students there can expect fewer sports programs, advanced-placement classes and music classes—and ongoing struggles to educate high-needs children.

“We have in a year’s time undergone an entire transformation,” said Deborah Gatti, president of the North Rockland Central School District. “We’re operating under an austerity system.”

And North Rockland isn’t alone. Dick Weisz, president of the Guilderland school board in Albany County, said his district has eliminated 40 teachers and 40 staff positions over the last two years, and they are still looking at a $2.6 million budget deficit.

“It’s a sobering time,” he said. “Fewer adults means less education.”

Many school districts are chafing under the 2 percent property tax cap Cuomo signed into law last year, as well as a host of mandates they say drive up costs for localities and force layoffs and other cutbacks.

Much of that anger boiled up during a meeting between school board representatives and Budget Director Robert Megna in early March. Board members complained it would be “political suicide” to submit budgets that exceeded the 2 percent cap. Megna encouraged them to negotiate concessions with their local unions.

Tim Kremer, executive director of the New York School Boards Association, said he apologized to Megna after the meeting.

“I just don’t think he was in his element,” Kremer said. “They were not appreciating his responses.”

The message, though, was loud and clear, Kremer said: “Now we’re in deep. And it does not appear anything will change for us in the near future. In fact, a lot of districts talk as if this is a permanent feeling, this particular recession. It feels like we’re not going to recover from it. As some of these smaller, poorer, rural school districts say, ‘There’s just no way out of this hole.’ ”

In a statement, Megna acknowledged that times were tough for schools around the state.

“The last few fiscal years have been difficult for all levels of government, and we are pleased to have offered a long term sustainable solution to school finance by pegging aid increases to personal income growth,” Megna said. “This will result in a School Aid increase of $805 million next year and more than $1.5 billion over the next two years, in addition to significant relief through pension reform.  Working together, we can direct more resources to where they are most needed – the classroom.”

Cuomo is pushing a $250 million competitive grant program as a way to spur cash-strapped school districts to explore cost savings and shared services as a way to reduce expenditures.

But school boards are urging the Legislature to scale back the performance grants, arguing many of the hardest-hit school districts lack the skills and staffers—like grant writers—to compete for that pot of money.

But other groups say the grants are the only way to encourage districts to take the necessary steps to consolidate back-office operations and save real money.

“There’s a status quo out there that’s done things traditionally the old way. This is a more innovative and newer program that, quite frankly, awards school districts based on merit,” said Elizabeth Ling, New York State director of Democrats for Education Reform.

“That can be threatening to the status quo,” she said. “Even though the amount is relatively small, it’s easy to focus on that, rather than making the system better.”

Both the Senate and the Assembly stripped the grant program from their one-house budget bills. But Ling said she is confident that the governor can convince lawmakers to restore the funding.

“There’s a lot of moving parts right now,” she said. “We’ll look to see how it works out.”

Speaker Quinn hugs Patricia Smith, daughter of Police Officer Moira Smith, who was killed on 9/11. Madison Square Park playground was renamed in honor of the fallen officer. Photo Credit: William Alatriste

Photographer William Alatriste sees the City Council in a different light

Photographing a politician behind a podium can be about as exciting as watching paint dry. Which is why the City Council’s official photographer, William Alatriste, tries to avoid those shots at all costs.

“Propaganda—I don’t do that,” Alatriste says. Alatriste started out at the City Council writing proclamations in 2002 and shifted to photography four years later. After years of watching the Council at work, he has launched a new project—online at nyccouncil.tumblr.com—to document a day in the life of each of the Council’s 51 members.

That can take him from the City Hall steps to a sidewalk in any neighborhood, where he has a rare ability to fi nd compelling human moments amid the endless hearings and news conferences that make up a politician’s day—catching the instant that makes a scripted event come alive.

“It’s my hope that some of my images reach beyond the often prosaic, one-dimensional ways that politicians are seen,” he said, “and show them in ways that are a bit more unguarded, engaging, and sincere.”

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