"Three Men in a Room: The Inside Story of Power and Betrayal in an American Statehouse," by Seymour P. Lachman and Robert Polner, was the book that launched Wagner College's Hugh L. Carey Institute for Government Reform. Published in September 2006, "Three Men in a Room" is an insider's exposé of how one of the country's largest and most powerful state governments -- with the fourth-largest budget, behind only the federal government, California and Texas -- has become a model of corrupt, inefficient and undemocratic governance. Lachman ran the New York City Board of Education and taught political science before being elected to the New York state senate. What he found when he arrived in Albany was a Potemkin village of government where legislators voted on bills they hadn't read during legislative sessions they hadn't attended. After four terms, Lachman left his safe senate seat in disgust and, with journalist Robert Polner, wrote this sharp, mordant and impassioned call for reform. CLICK HERE for more about "Three Men in a Room" on the book's Amazon.com web page.
The Nexus of Money & Power in Albany
Click on the photo (left) to see an
On Sept. 18, 2008, Wagner College’s Hugh L. Carey Center for Government Reform sponsored a panel discussion entitled, “How Much News is Fit to Print? Why and How the News Media Covers (or Doesn’t Cover) New York State Government.” Moderated by former New York Times education columnist Gene Maeroff, the discussion included New York Daily News state government columnist Bill Hammond, Village Voice senior news editor Wayne Barrett and Staten Island Advance editorial page editor Mark Hanley.
Below is a complete video of the seminar, followed by a news article on the event published the next day in the Staten Island Advance.
New York's 'Secret Government'
On November 24, 2008,
Pacifica Radio's Hugh
Hamilton broadcast a
30-minute interview on
his WBAI "Talk Back!"
program with Adam Simms
about the challenges
posed to New York State
by its public funding
authorities. To listen to
the interview, CLICK HERE
or on the radio icon (left).
NEW IMMIGRANTS TO NEW YORK was a lecture presented by Joseph Salvo, chief of the Population Division of the New York City Department of City Planning, on March 12, 2009. We have four items on this page to share with you the substance of this program:
SIXTEEN MONTHS EARLIER, Salvo had participated in an earlier Wagner College program that tried to make sense of the patterns of immigration to New York City. Sewell Chan wrote a story about the event for the Nov. 14, 2007 New York Times called "Immigration in New York City: Taking the Long View."
"The Man Who Saved New York: Hugh Carey and the Great Fiscal Crisis of 1975," by Seymour P. Lachman and Robert Polner, is the latest product of Wagner College's Carey Institute for Government Reform. It was published in July 2010 by the SUNY Press, Albany.
It was principally Carey’s leadership, Lachman and Polner argue in "The Man Who Saved New York," that helped rescue the city and state from the brink of financial and civic catastrophe in 1975.
“This is the definitive account of New York’s fiscal crisis, of its hero Governor Hugh Carey, and of one of the most significant and absorbing episodes in the history of local and state government in this country," says Peter Goldmark, former New York State Budget Director, "plus, it is timely because New York and a handful of other states stand once more on the brink of bankruptcy.”
“Intellectually, academically, and politically, 'The Man Who Saved New York' couldn’t be more timely and vital for New York as the state slides toward its own rendezvous with insolvency,” says Giuliani biographer Fred Siegel.
“We would do well to learn from this account of New York’s fiscal crisis in the 1970s," says New York Lt. Gov. Richard Ravitch.
For more information, visit the SUNY Press website.
To order from Amazon.com, CLICK HERE.