A union sued National Grid Plc (NG/) in Brooklyn, New York, federal court, alleging the utility failed to pay overtime wages to workers putting in 60- to 80-hour work- weeks repairing damage from Hurricane Sandy.

Transport Workers Union of America (0247990D) Local 101 alleged in a Nov. 15 complaint that the utility’s workers in Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and Long Island, New York, were paid nothing for work in excess of 40 hours a week for the past three weeks. A spokeswoman for the London-based utility company, Karen Young, said the company is trying to fix an automated payroll problem.

The storm hit the Northeast region of the U.S. on Oct. 29 and is estimated to have caused as much as $33 billion in damages in New York. National Grid provides natural gas service to the area.

“My members are working but they’re getting frustrated,” Michael Conigliaro, president of Brooklyn-based Local 101, said in a phone interview. Storm-related repairs and inspections to gas lines and boilers may go on for another two months, he said.

The company implemented a payroll system change just before the storm that likely caused the overtime pay problems, he said. No specific deadline has been provided for when it will be fixed and workers will be fully paid, he said.

Young said in a statement that National Grid “takes the timely and accurate compensation of its employees very seriously.”

‘Made Whole’

“All affected employees will be made whole as soon as possible,” she said.

A lawyer for the union, Arthur Schwartz, said the workers may still be owed damages under labor laws even if the international utility eventually pays all of the wages due. Some of the workers lived in areas severely affected by the storm, including Staten Island, Breezy Point and Howard Beach in Queens, and Coney Island in Brooklyn, Conigliaro said.

“We do know the devastation that’s down there because that’s our areas,” he said.

The case is Conigliaro v. National Grid, 12-5627, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of New York (Brooklyn).

To contact the reporter on this story: Christie Smythe in New York at csmythe1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Hytha at mhytha@bloomberg.net

Source: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-11-16/union-sues-national-grid-over-storm-related-overtime-pay

As if the executives of National Grid did not have enough problems restoring the power in the Rockaways and on Long Island, they now face a lawsuit filed by their employees over pay.

The company’s unionized workers contend that they have not been compensated properly for all the extra work they have been doing since Hurricane Sandy struck on Oct. 29. Many of them have worked 16-hour days without a break for more than two weeks but have received just their regular weekly salaries, said Michael Conigliaro, president of Local 101 of the Transport Workers Union of America, which represents 1,400 employees.

“Our guys are getting the 40 hours,“ he said. “But they’re working 80-90 hours. We signed up for this. We get it. “ But, he added, the workers are becoming discouraged about not getting paid for all the overtime.

The problem stems from the company’s implementation of a new payroll system this month, Mr. Conigliaro said. A spokeswoman for National Grid, Karen Young, said there was an “automated payroll issue,” but declined to explain.

In a statement, she said, “All affected employees will be made whole as soon as possible.”

Mr. Conigliaro and five members of his local are named as plaintiffs in a class action filed against National Grid on Thursday in Federal District Court in Brooklyn. The employees named all work in the company’s natural gas operations in Brooklyn and Queens, but Mr. Conigliaro said employees who operate the electric grid on Long Island had similar complaints.

Don Daley, the business manager of Local 1049 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, which represents about 2,600 National Grid workers on Long Island, said the payroll was so erratic that some of his members received checks for zero dollars. He said that he understood the problems were companywide, affecting employees in upstate New York and parts of New England too.

“For special cases in which people weren’t paid anything, they are trying to get a check out to them for a 40 hour pay week,” Mr. Daley said.

National Grid, a British company, has a contract to run the power grid for the Long Island Power Authority and also distributes natural gas for heating in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island.

Source: http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/16/utilility-workers-sue-over-pay/

November 16, 2012 by MARK HARRINGTON / mark.harrington@newsday.com

National Grid employees, including thousands who worked hundreds of hours each restoring electric service following superstorm Sandy, have filed a class-action suit saying the company’s new payroll system has drastically shortchanged their paychecks.

The suit, filed in Eastern District Court in Brooklyn, charges the company paid workers for a maximum of 40 hours, even though many worked double that amount.

The workers typically worked more than 10 hours in one day, “but were not paid one hour of bonus pay and the overtime rate for each day they worked more than ten hours,” the suit says.

Arthur Schwartz, a New York attorney who filed the case on behalf of six National Grid unionized employees, estimated the underpayments to employees at around $3 million a week over the three weeks it’s been in malfunctioning. He also estimates the company could be subject to a 25 percent penalty for the total $9 million and counting in lost wages.

“We were facing a situation where people were saying they didn’t want to work anymore, and the union said file suit,” said Schwartz of the Transportation Workers Union of America Local 101, and its president, Michael Conigliaro, one of the named plaintiffs.

Don Daley, business manager for local 1049 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, said the situation is far worse.

“These guys and gals are working 16 hours a day, and at the end of the week the payroll may be anything from zero to whatever,” he said.

It’s not just salary and overtime that are being shortchanged by the system, Daley said. Expenses such as meals and driving costs are also being underpaid by the system, he said. “Everything is screwed up.”

In a statement, National Grid said it “takes the timely and accurate compensation of its employees very seriously. We are quickly addressing the automated payroll issue that has surfaced recently, affecting a subset of our employees.”

The problem, said Daley, is that the company implemented the new payroll and broader financial system “right in the middle of a hurricane.”

“I’m sure they’re working hard on it,” he said of the company’s efforts to fix it, “but the bottom line is they are not getting the correct amount back to the employees,” who have endured long hours in hazardous working conditions, and in some cases abuse by customers during the height of outages.

The union has filed complaints with the New York State Department of Labor, and “we have had a discussion with the attorney general,” Daley said.

One worker who has experienced it said the glitch has crippled his home finances. He said he worked 70 hours and got paid for working eight hours.

“People are really upset,” he said of the thousands of workers affected. “They’ve had to reschedule mortgage payments, and cancel vacations . . . They owe me more than $7,000.”

Mark Harrington

Staff Writer, Newsday

Phone: 631-843-2772

A recent video profile of Arthur Z. Schwartz:

Advocate For Justice – A Profile from Patrice Marie Howard on Vimeo.

By Arthur Z. Schwartz
Published September 2012

This is an extremely unusual election year for those of us who live south of 59th Street and above Canal Street on Manhattan’s West Side. We and our neighbors in the other City Council Districts that make up State Senate District 29 are actually getting to elect a new state senator. The last time any city, state or federal elected office representing our Council District came vacant and we voters were given any real choice to vote for someone other than an incumbent was in early 1999, after Tom Duane ran unopposed to fill the state senate seat he is now vacating and Christine Quinn was elected to replace him on the City Council. Thirteen years is a long time to go with no change: same City Council member (Quinn); same State Assembly members (Dick Gottfried and Deborah Glick); same State Senator (Duane); and same U.S. Congresspersons (Jerry Nadler and Carolyn Maloney). One would think the lack of change is indicative of a healthy, vibrant corps of elected representatives who vigorously defend our communities, mobilize our citizens and have earned their multiple terms in office.

But recent events surrounding the St. Vincent’s closure and NYU’s expansion tell us something else about our city and state leaders, at least, and require us to take a hard look at what these elected leaders are saying about our latest crisis—the possible closure of Pier 40 to save Hudson River Park.

I. NYU—Was the Loss Avoidable?

From the perspective of community residents, the City Council vote to approve the slightly modified NYU 2031 Plan is a major loss. NYU has been given license to turn the south side of Washington Square Park into an even bigger urban landscape than it is, wholly out of character with the rest of Greenwich Village, which spawned NYU. The superblocks south of Washington Square Park were already out of character with the rest of Soho and the Village. I remember 33 years ago, looking out the window of my first office, which faced north 20 stories above Canal Street. Silver Towers and University Village were the bulk of the few tall structures (by NYC standards) between Canal Street and the Empire State Building. Now the blight of NYU’s high-rise buildings will get even worse.

How did the community lose to NYU when our State Senator, Tom Duane, and our Assembly member, Deborah Glick, stood steadfastly against the expansion plan, leading marches and meetings and letter-writing campaigns? Were they even at the table when the actual decisions were made? Did they have any plan other than to stand, hands on hips, saying “No Way”? I think not. Instead of recognizing NYU’s political clout and what it could do “as-of-right” and tapping the creative energy of our community early on to develop an alternative plan, these elected officials—especially Assembly member Glick—ran to the front of a growing popular movement and grabbed the banner. But NYU rolled right over them, and Council member Chin and Council Speaker Quinn largely ignored them. Their role was so inconsequential that the residents of 505 LaGuardia Place, desperately seeking to maintain an affordable rent oasis in the middle of our increasingly expensive community, barred politicians from their meetings with NYU.

The NYU conflict cried out for a community-led compromise. The beginnings of one were put forward by Andrew Berman of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation and the NYU Faculty. But it came too late and was never endorsed by Glick or Duane. Our political leaders missed the boat. And that left Margaret Chin in the unenviable position of having to support almost all or nothing. Not a sparkling performance.

II. St. Vincent’s—Could We Have Gotten More?

I received a notice in the mail in late July that the North Shore-LIJ Urgent Care Center that opened two years ago on West 20th Street with $9 million in State funding to provide some relief from the St. Vincent’s closing was itself closing “due to a lack of use.” It was a reminder of the “hands on hips” failed leadership our elected officials provided on this issue as well. Deborah Glick, Tom Duane and Chris Quinn all stood before large crowds in early 2010 and promised that there was “no way” they would allow our community to lose a hospital. In Chris Quinn’s speeches, we heard vague mention of an “Urgent Care Center,” which, in the end, is all we wound up with. At no point did anyone have a real plan to preserve any hospital beds in the West or Central Village, so needed not just by our community but also by the residents of Fulton Houses, Chelsea-Elliot Houses, and the ILGWU Co-ops in Chelsea. Neither did our aspiring political leader Yetta Kurland, who had no compromise plan in mind and focused everyone’s energy on the Bankruptcy Court proceedings even after the judge told her that the Court wasn’t interested in anything except paying creditors. Kurland also made herself persona non grata with the ineffective Glick, Quinn, and Duane and built her own separate “No Way” movement. She created a lot of anger and hope but led people nowhere.

There always were alternatives to saving St. Vincent’s, like building a small hospital atop the O’Toole Building (a proposal raised by Deborah Glick late in the game and by Yetta Kurland even later) or offering space on Pier 40 to some hospital looking to expand (a proposal I first laid out in WestView in June 2010.) In the end, Council Speaker Quinn gave the community some school seats, a small park, an AIDS Memorial, a fund for affordable housing, and a somewhat scaled-down version of the Rudin condo plan—but we got very little replacement healthcare. I can’t help wonder whether the new Northshore-LIJ Urgent Care Center that will open in the O’Toole Building in two or three years will go the way of the first one (on which $9 million in public money was wasted) because it also won’t be able to deal with real emergencies.

III. Hudson River Park—Is “No Way” the Answer?

So now we face a crisis in Hudson River Park, which I explored at length in the June issue of WestView. In brief, the Park will have a negative cash flow this fiscal year, largely due to the repairs that have to be done to keep the roof of Pier 40 from falling in, and it will have a negative cash flow next year because of additional needed Pier 40 repairs. And then there is the long-term problem of needing to repair Pier 40’s pilings, which will cost $100 million.

We (the Village Community) have done a good job of knocking down several efforts to put out-of-context, inappropriate entertainment and commercial buildings on the Pier, and, having done so, developers who lost more than $1 million preparing these proposals just aren’t interested in submitting new ones. Greenwich Village Little League and Downtown United Soccer Club commissioned a study of what uses would bring the most money to the Pier (and the Park) with the least traffic impact, and the study concluded that rental housing and hotel uses would be optimal. Such projects could preserve 65 to 75 percent of the Pier for recreational and park uses. The Hudson River Park Trust asked for changes in legislative restrictions on Park use to allow it to seek the broadest range of proposals for the Pier and drafted legislation that would mandate these changes. Assembly member Glick said “no way” to residential and hotel uses and to commercial office uses (though she seems to have backed off on the latter) and, once again, hands on hips, has announced that the State and City should just fund the Park and pay for the Pier 40 repairs out of the State and City Treasuries. Look, she says, the City just gave $260 million to Governor’s Island. But neither the Mayor nor the Governor seems interested in Glick’s moral stand, and the Trust has started shutting down parts of the Pier.

Assembly member Glick says that this is just a ploy to push for housing and considers opposition to residential use on part of the Pier a fundamental principle. Unless her position changes, or Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver moves a bill forward later this year to allow residential use over her objection, we will all soon find out whether the Trust is bluffing. Meanwhile, we know that larger and larger chunks of the roof of Pier 40 are falling down and that water damage is endangering large sections of the Pier below the roof. Some of us believe it is possible to legalize housing and impose restrictions that would prevent unacceptable projects from being built. It is time, again, for creativity and compromise. If we can find a middle ground, this could be a win-win, with the ugly structure on Pier 40 replaced by smaller and sleeker towers of some sort. This time, there are many in the community who will not rally behind Glick’s “No Way” banner and will push for alternatives on their own. It will be an interesting fall, even though Deborah will run unopposed on the Democratic ballot.

Arthur Z. Schwartz is the male Democratic State Committee member for Greenwich Village, Soho and Tribeca, the Co-Chair of the Parks and Waterfront Committee at Community Board 2, and the Principal Attorney in the new private public-interest law firm Advocates for Justice, Chartered Attorneys. He emphasizes that the views he expresses here are his own and do not reflect those of anybody on Community Board 2.

By: NY1 News

Ten Metropolitan Transportation Authority employees were arraigned in Downtown Manhattan today on charges of subway signal inspection fraud, but MTA officials stress that the inspection process has now been corrected and that the public was never at risk.
Eight signal maintainers pleaded not guilty today and two MTA supervisors entered not-guilty pleas on Friday to charges of tampering with public documents.

The supervisors — 52-year-old Oscar Magalong and 42-year-old Chandrapaul Hariprashad, 42 — and one signal maintainer, 29-year-old Anthony Pellegrino, are also facing charges of official misconduct.

The signals, which act like traffic lights in the subway system, are supposed to have barcodes which are supposed to be scanned during inspections.

However, prosecutors say the accused workers were sometimes scanning the barcodes in lockers, and that the falsifications may have lasted as long as a decade due to a lack of internal controls.

Magalong is also charged with encouraging maintainers to increase the number of falsified inspections.

The MTA inspector general started his “Signalgate” investigation two years ago, and then received help from the Manhattan district attorney’s office.

Union lawyers, who represent six of the defendants, say they were under pressure to do too many duties with no compensation.

“These individuals never received one cent for anything they did. They never got extra overtime, they never didn’t work the eight hours that they were supposed to and what they got caught up in is a scheme by an upper-level management in the New York City Transit Authority to pump up numbers so that they would look better to those above them,” said defense attorney Arthur Schwartz.

Another signal maintainer was charged last year but died before he could be prosecuted.

MTA officials say they have new methods to report and prevent suspicious inspections.

All 10 defendants were released on their own recognizance and will be due back in court on Thursday.

Source:  http://www.ny1.com/content/top_stories/167219/ten-mta-employees-charged-with-falsifying-subway-signal-inspections

BY LINCOLN ANDERSON  |  Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver is in hot water after it was revealed that the state Assembly paid a secret settlement of more than $100,000 to a female intern of Brooklyn Democratic Party boss Vito Lopez after she alleged that Lopez sexually harassed her.

This week, Governor Cuomo asked his Joint Commission on Public Ethics (JCOPE) to launch a probe into the situation surrounding the payout.

Subsequent to the date of the secret settlement, Lopez last week came under fire after he was publicly censured by the Assembly in connection with two other cases where female interns of his also alleged that he had sexually harassed them.

Silver initially said the first sex-harassment claim was handled quietly — and not referred to the Assembly’s Ethics Committee — because the woman making the complaint wanted to guard her privacy.

However, attorney Gloria Allred, who represented the woman, is saying that wasn’t the case and that she would never squelch a government investigation.

The Daily News editorialized on Wednesday that the payout of New Yorkers’ taxpayer dollars to settle the initial Lopez harassment complaint may well have exceeded the reported $103,800 — since that’s only apparently what Allred was paid for what were indicated as “legal services.”

The News has filed a Freedom of Information Law request for all documents pertaining to the “cover-up” of the secret settlement — a settlement for which a staff member of Attorney General Eric Schneiderman gave advice on and for which State Controller Thomas DiNapoli O.K.’d the payment.

In a statement released on Tuesday, Silver said, “In July 2012, two employees in Assemblymember Vito Lopez’s district office filed a complaint about sexual harassment in the assemblymember’s office. We referred the complaint promptly to the bipartisan Assembly Committee on Ethics and Guidance and acted swiftly on their recommendations last Friday.

“However, it has been the opinion of Assembly counsel, which I endorsed, that if an employee or employees represented by counsel request a confidential mediation and financial settlement, the Assembly would defer to the employees’ desire for mediation and confidentiality and that this precluded referring their complaints to the bipartisan Committee on Ethics and Guidance.

“While that opinion is both legally correct and ethical and can result in a resolution sought by complaining employees, I now believe it was the wrong one from the perspective of transparency,” Silver said. “The Assembly (1) should not agree to a confidential settlement, (2) should insist that the basic factual allegations of any complaint be referred to the Ethics Committee for a full investigation and (3) should publicly announce the existence of any settlement, while protecting the identity of the victims.

“I am deeply committed to ensuring that all of our employees are treated with respect and dignity and I take full responsibility in not insisting that all cases go to the Ethics Committee. Going forward I will work with independent experts and our counsel’s office to ensure that we put in place policies that both protect the interests of victims and provide adequate transparency and accountability to the public.”

Meanwhile, most local legislators have been declining to comment on the latest story about the secret settlement. Last  week, however, many of them were happy to call for Vito Lopez’s being stripped of his committee chairpersonship — or even more, for his resignation from the Assembly. But to say anything against the speaker — the state’s second-most powerful Democrat after Governor Cuomo — is another matter entirely.

“No comment,” said Kelly Magee, Councilmember Margaret Chin’s spokesperson, on Wednesday. Chin’s Lower Manhattan district overlaps with Silver’s.

Others simply did not respond to requests for comment, including Assemblymembers Brian Kavanagh and Dick Gottfried, and Borough President Scott Stringer.

Congressmember Nydia Velazquez, who has no love lost for Lopez — whose handpicked candidate she recently defeated in a primary race — also did not return calls for comment.

Brad Hoylman, who is running for Tom Duane’s state Senate seat, also did not respond to requests for comment.

When Council Speaker Christine Quinn was asked for a comment on the scandal, her office initially sent her statement from last Friday, which referred to the two publicly known cases of sexual harassment by Assemblymember Lopez:

“There must be zero tolerance of sexual harassment in all workplaces, always,” Quinn said. “Chairman Daniel O’Donnell and the Assembly Committee on Ethics and Guidance have conducted a serious, thorough investigation and Speaker Sheldon Silver’s actions [stripping Lopez of his committee chairpersonship] are warranted and appropriate. Because of the seriousness of these findings, Vito Lopez should immediately resign from office and step down as chair of the Brooklyn Democratic Party.”

Asked for a comment specifically on the secret payment, Quinn’s office later sent this statement: “Speaker Silver has admitted that he should have handled the situation differently and has made appropriate reforms going forward. I agree that JCOPE is the correct venue to review this matter.”

Matt Borden, Assemblymember Deborah Glick’s chief of staff, said Glick was “unavailable for further comment” but “has been quoted in a few other places,” and said to feel free to use those statements.

Glick told the Albany Times Union that Silver seems to have done everything he could, even if settlement payments were made for some victims of Lopez.

“We spend a lot of money to settle claims against public employees,” Glick said. “Men behaving badly is not limited to Albany and that women in the workplace continue to face these things, it’s disgraceful.” According to the Times Union, Glick said the Assembly offers an open path for reporting incidents of harassment and regular training for staff and members is conducted.

“We cannot change individuals without a brain transplant or something,” Glick said.

New York taxpayers shelled out big bucks five years ago to settle a case against Michael Boxley, Silver’s then counsel, by a woman who claimed Boxley had raped her in 2003. The woman charged that Boxley was a “known predator” within Silver’s office. She sued Silver for negligence and accepted a $507,500 settlement and a promise of reforms to remove any peril from the workplace. However, taxpayers ultimately paid about $500,000 of that bill. Boxley pleaded guilty to misdemeanor sexual contact.

Joseph Santora, a retired litigator, later sued to have Boxley and Silver foot the bill. But State Supreme Court justice Emily Jane Goodman ruled that because state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer authorized that the payment be borne by taxpayers, Silver and Boxley should not subsequently be forced to repay the money, and that voters could express their view when they cast their ballots.

“If in representing State officers in their official or individual capacities, the Attorney General errs in judgment in the conduct of the litigation, the remedy lies not before the Supreme Court, but at the polls,” Justice Goodman wrote.

In addition, Governor Cuomo this week said it’s the state’s responsibility to try to settle these cases.

Arthur Schwartz, the Village’s State Democratic Committeeman, was one of the only local elected officials to openly criticize Silver over the latest developments.

Speaking Wednesday, Schwartz told this newspaper, “I think that Lopez should resign, and I am greatly disappointed that Assemblymember Silver participated in covering up the first incident and then using public money to pay damages to the complainant. Lopez should have been forced to pay.”

Source: http://www.thevillager.com/?p=7193

By RUSS BUETTNER

Published: August 20, 2012

Eight subway signal inspectors were charged on Monday with falsifying reports to make it

appear they had performed inspections that prosecutors said they had never actually done.

The inspectors collectively filed 33 false inspection reports of the mechanisms that control subway traffic during 2009 and 2010 under the direction of their immediate supervisors, according to prosecutors.

The Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., said in a statement that the false reports could have created dangerous situations for riders, if not for the presence of other safeguards in the subway system.

“Failing to properly inspect the subway system can lead to delays in service and, potentially, endanger the safety of subway riders,” Mr. Vance said in a statement.

The inspectors, mostly middle-aged men, were arraigned in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, each on one or more felony counts of tampering with public records, which carries a maximum penalty of seven years in prison.

Searching one inspector’s locker, investigators found bar codes that are supposed to be on signal equipment and scanned when the inspection is complete, according to court records. That inspector was also charged with official misconduct, a misdemeanor.

Two supervisors who oversaw the inspectors were charged last Friday. They pleaded guilty to tampering with public records, a felony that carries a maximum penalty of seven years in prison, and official misconduct, according to court records.

Arthur Z. Schwartz, a lawyer for six of the inspectors and their union, said that his clients “were ordered to meet quotas that some might describe as impossible” in order to artificially increase productivity.

“The pressure on these individuals to do this or suffer consequences all came from above,” Mr. Schwartz said outside of court. “And yet all we’ve seen is the guys at the bottom of the chain who are getting in trouble here.”

Mr. Vance’s announcement said his investigation had explored whether the practice of falsifying inspection logs had been directed or condoned by upper management and only found evidence sufficient to charge the 10 employees.

Barry L. Kluger, the inspector general for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, reported that signal inspections were being falsified in 2000 and 2005. Mr. Kluger said that the authority did not resolve the issues raised by those earlier reports, but that it had since
.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/21/nyregion/8-subway-inspectors-charged-with-filing-false-reports.html

Originally published: August 12, 2012 6:50 PM
Updated: August 12, 2012 7:29 PM
By MEGHAN E. MURPHY  meghan.murphy@cablevision.com

Photo credit: Meghan E. Murphy | Arthur Schwartz, lead attorney for Advocates for Justice, speaks at the French Speaking Baptist Church in Spring Valley about the lawsuit his firm has filed on behalf of 167 plaintiffs against past and current Orthodox Jewish members of the East Ramapo school board, claiming that they siphoned public money to pay for private religious education expenses. (Aug. 12,2012)

Schwartz, a parent of four and an observant Jew, began his speech by placing a yarmulke on his head, explaining to the Baptist congregation that it’s a sign of respect for a holy place.Only Richard Stone, one of the 12 defendants, returned a call for comment last week. He called the claims baseless and alleged the main actors held religious prejudices.
“This faith is at the center of this lawsuit,” Schwartz said.
The defendants in the lawsuit are Orthodox Jews from a community where most of the children attend private religious schools. The case uses state agency reviews of the district and public documents to allege that the defendants violated the constitutional separation of church and state through a number of actions, including purchasing religious textbooks and inappropriately placing children with disabilities in private schools.
“Our government is not supposed to promote, oppress or favor any one religion,” Schwartz said. “These taxes are supposed to support education.”
The public school has seen significant cuts to programming and staff, including a cut to full-day kindergarten for the upcoming school year, a move that prompted parents to protest. Schwartz asked more community members to sign on to the lawsuit or donate to the cause.
“Many of you here have been on the verge of giving up,” Schwartz said. “It is time to wake up the people of Spring Valley.”
After the speech, those affected by the school cuts were asked to stand. Almost a third of the congregation — parents, students, alumni — rose.
“We have a lot of kids here who go to the school district. They’re distraught,” Fara Saint Fleur of Spring Valley, said after the service. “This is definitely going to be encouraging and keep hope alive.”
Michel said he welcomed Schwartz into the church to share information with the community members, who are very concerned about the education cuts.
“Every day, parents come to me and they complain about the schools eliminating programs: marching band, after-school programs and kindergarten,” Michel said.
He added that the challenge to the school board is not about religion but about fairness. “It’s the way they manage the money. They have to do it the proper way,” Michel said.
Stone did not return a call for additional comment Sunday. East Ramapo School Board President Daniel Schwartz said he has not been served with the lawsuit and declined to comment. Schools Superintendent Joel Klein could not be reached.

Thursday August 9, 2012 7:19 PM By Meghan Murphy

Photo credit: Angela Gaul
East Ramapo Superintendent Joel Klein’s secretary called Thursday in response to a message left for him the day before asking for comment on the lawsuit that names Klein and past and present school board members.
I was told that Klein couldn’t comment on the litigation and then referred to school attorney Antonio D’Agostino for comment.
On any given day that would be a pretty routine response. But nothing is ever routine in East Ramapo. In this case, that referral itself speaks to a conflict that’s arisen in this lawsuit and in other challenges to the board.
Former school board member Richard Stone said Wednesday that the school board’s vocal opponents are robbing the kids of money with their legal challenges, but forcing the board to pay attorneys to defend them. That’s exactly why next week Advocates for Justice attorney Arthur Schwartz will ask a judge to bar the defendants, who are named as individuals, from using the school attorneys in their defense. Klein’s referral seems to make it clear that unless the judge agrees with the plaintiffs he will indeed use the school attorney in his defense.
Another item of note is that D’Agostino is actually a defendant in the lawsuit. Just last month, the state attorney general argued that it’s a conflict of interest for D’Agostino to represent the school board in its investigation of the district, because he may become a witness in the case. So too would D’Agostino be interviewed in a lawsuit where he is a defendant.