Yeshiva Leadership and Australia – Elections… Transparency

 

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Conversations on Yeshivah Leadership: So Let’s Talk Elections

Sunday, 9 October 2016

So Let’s Talk Elections

There is a lot to comment on about the new Constitutions.  This week however, what’s topical would definitely be the ‘opportunity’ offered for voting membership and nominations for positions on the Boards of Yeshivah-Beth Rivkah Schools Limited (YBR) and Chabad Institutions of Victoria Limited (CIVL).

Issues exist, many of them problematic and common to both organisations and their electoral processes.

A place to begin would be with the letter that was sent out by Mr Yudi New, Yeshivah Community Liaison, on September 13 2016, the better part of a month ago, advising of upcoming elections.    

It stated ‘…the elections will be outsourced to the Australian Electoral Commission’   (AEC).   We’ll come back to that.

The letter included an extensive (and confusing) table as to the proposed electoral timeline including possible variations on a range of deadlines.

A month has passed and most people have tossed their old mail, including one imagines the letter referred to above.  Mr New’s distributions last week arrived providing links inviting membership to various members of the community.  Some hiccups on the latest correspondence… 

Let’s begin with the headlined Applications for Membership; whether from YBR or CVL they’re both attached to an invitation from Mr New, directed to no named person and ‘Submitted’ to no specific individual or endpoint.  From here, let’s go straight to the newly released Constitutions: 

• YBR – 6.2.  Admission to Membership
  • (a)  Every person seeking admission to Membership of the Company must:
    • (i)  submit an application addressed to the Secretary, in the form prescribed by the Board

• CVL – 6.2.  Admission to Membership
  • (a)  Every person seeking admission to Membership of the Company must:
    • (i)  sign a written application addressed to the Secretary, in the form prescribed by the Board

Nussen Ainsworth is the Secretary of both the YBR and CVL Interim Boards, but these application forms are certainly NOT addressed to him, even by title.

Other information sorely missing from the cover email sent by Mr New was a series of dates.  When do Membership Applications need to be submitted by to ensure membership is achieved along with an opportunity to vote at the upcoming elections?    Let’s remember the Constitutions have just been released on the SAME DAY as these Applications have been issued and prospective members are being asked in these Applications to ‘agree to be bound by their Terms and Conditions’.  A constitution takes some reading and members of the community are already reaching out, seeking advice and input on both of these.     Usually there would be no great rush to join – but an election is approaching… sorry, again, when is that happening???  

So, I circle back to an earlier point.

Apparently it is now not the AEC to whom the elections have been outsourced, apparently the elections have not ‘been outsourced’ in their entirety at all.

Outsourcing the elections, ‘in their entirety’  would have guaranteed an independence from beginning to end of the process and one could have anticipated some further attention to a range of matters such as requisite communications and constitutional obligations.   

Organisation memberships may be managed in-house and the role of the Interim Board should be limited to delivering a ‘Register of voting members’ to a body to whom the process had been outsourced in its entirety.  As matters stand,  who knows how the decision was made and by whom, to buy into any part of these  elections?   Where did the authority come from?  Who exactly has been running it to date?  Where’s the transparency that the community has long been promised?  

Again, I refer to the cover letters regarding Expressions of Interest for Board Positions, from Mr Yudi New:

• re CVL:  At this stage, if you express interest your name will remain confidential until nominations are formalised;
• re YBR:  Nominations will remain confidential until formalised.

To me, outsourcing an election includes management of candidacy nomination and management.  The possibility of vetting of candidates should certainly not be sitting within the same Board whose responsibility it is to manage organisation membership.  

It should be remembered that in all likelihood, some members of this Interim Board are likely candidates and appointees within elections for incoming Boards themselves and should be far-removed from any process of ‘Expression of Interest’ for nominees.     

I finish again questioning – where has the authority been sourced for them, for whomever it is,  to be undertaking these roles?

A little Transparency please?  Perhaps a great deal?

…marcia pinskier

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Will Cuomo’s Replacement Protect Ultra-Orthodox Sex Crime Victims?

D.A. Kenneth Thompson, “Voice for racial justice” but not for molested children…

We would not want to celebrate someone’s demise. It would be purely awful of us. He leaves behind a wife and children, parents and siblings.

We offer our sincerest condolences to those who mourn his loss. We do not.

We can’t help but hope that his successor will do more, just a little more is something, to help the victims of sexual assault, suffered at the hands of Rabbis, and frankly Priests. We find ourselves praying, just short prayer, that his successor cannot be swayed by the power of the bloc of ultra-Orthodox voters and power brokers.  Perhaps he will meet these men again…

Ken Thompson, Brooklyn District Attorney, Dies After Disclosing Cancer

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/10/nyregion/ken-thompson-brooklyns-first-black-district-attorney-dies-at-50.html?_r=0

Kenneth P. Thompson, the first black district attorney of Brooklyn and a voice for racial justice at a moment of tension between law enforcement and minority communities, died on Sunday from cancer, his family said. He was 50.

Mr. Thompson was elected district attorney in 2013 after campaigning on a platform of reform and racial justice, and unseating Charles J. Hynes, a fellow Democrat and a troubled incumbent who had served more than 20 years.

After being absent from his office for nearly two months, Mr. Thompson released a statement on Tuesday saying he had cancer. His office released a second statement on Sunday night, announcing his death and saying that his family had been by his side at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan when he died.

A former federal prosecutor who went on to have a successful private law practice, Mr. Thompson earned a reputation in office as one of the country’s most progressive district attorneys, creating a robust internal unit that reviewed questionable convictions and establishing a policy of not prosecuting most low-level marijuana arrests.

At a moment of heightened racial tension over police-related shootings, he chose to prosecute — and eventually won — the complicated case of Peter Liang, the former New York City police officer who fatally shot an unarmed black man, Akai Gurley, in the stairwell of a housing project in 2014. After the trial was over, Mr. Thompson decided not to seek prison time for Mr. Liang, which enraged Mr. Gurley’s family and led to protests.

“The thoughts and prayers of our entire city are with District Attorney Ken Thompson, his family and his loved ones tonight,” Mayor Bill de Blasio and his wife, Chirlane McCray, said in a statement on Sunday. “With a life and promise cut far too short, our city was blessed with but a glimpse of Ken’s unwavering commitment to justice and his unrivaled pursuit of a more fair system for all those he served.”

Born and raised in New York City, Mr. Thompson was the son of a police officer and lived in public housing in Harlem before moving to Co-Op City, a housing development in the Bronx. He attended the city’s public schools and applied to the Police Department, as his mother had, before choosing instead to attend the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. After his graduation, he obtained a law degree from the New York University School of Law.

On the advice of one of his law professors, Ronald K. Noble, a onetime Treasury Department official and the secretary general of Interpol, Mr. Thompson sought and found a position as a federal prosecutor in Brooklyn. In 1997, he was assigned the prestigious task of making the opening statement at the trial of Justin Volpe, a former police officer who eventually pleaded guilty to torturing a Haitian immigrant, Abner Louima, with a broken broomstick in the bathroom of a Brooklyn station house.

After leaving government service, Mr. Thompson went into private practice. His most prominent case was representing an African-born hotel housekeeper, Nafissatou Diallo, who accused the French politician Dominique Strauss-Kahn of raping her in a Manhattan hotel room in 2011. Cyrus Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney, eventually dismissed the case, and Mr. Thompson was criticized for his incendiary personal attacks against Mr. Vance and members of his staff.

Mr. Thompson had harbored ambitions for higher office, but, according to a friend who spoke on the condition of anonymity because Mr. Thompson declined to disclose the type of his cancer, learned he had an aggressive form of the disease this year. By the time he received the diagnosis, the cancer had already metastasized and was incurable.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo may now name a replacement for Mr. Thompson, who would have faced re-election next year. “A lifelong New Yorker, Ken was known as an effective, aggressive civil rights leader — and a national voice for criminal justice reform,” Mr. Cuomo said in a statement on Sunday.

Mr. Thompson is survived by his wife of 17 years, Lu-Shawn Thompson; his children, Kennedy and Kenny; his mother; his father; his brother; and his sister.

 

To read the article in its entirety click here.

 

“‘Fraud’ is too nice a word – Lakewood, an Opinion

 

http://www.njspotlight.com/stories/16/10/05/opinion-lakewood-s-ultra-orthodox-day-schools-tyranny-of-the-many/

Opinion: Lakewood’s Ultra-Orthodox Day Schools, ‘Tyranny of the Many’

 

“There’s nothing fraud hates more than a spotlight,” says Tom Gatti, head of the newly incorporated Senior Action Group (SAG) in Lakewood. The fraud he references is an utter lack of compliance with a newly legislated program, Senate Bill 2049, that awards $17 million a year to a private consortium representing Lakewood’s burgeoning sector of 130 ultra-Orthodox Jewish day schools. The bill mandates an oversight committee. None exists. And no governmental entity — the Christie administration, Department of Education, local school board, or bill sponsor Senator Robert Singer (R-Ocean, Monmouth) — seems to care.

So here’s some illumination.

American democracy is complicated. Elections pivot on the preponderance of votes but minorities are afforded protections (codified in the Bill of Rights) in order to avoid, as John Stuart Mill had it, the “tyranny of the majority.” That very tyranny is an apt description of Lakewood’s public education landscape.

The South Jersey city is home to the second-largest population of ultra-Orthodox Jews in America (Brooklyn comes in first) and this population is growing rapidly. The total population of Lakewood is about 60,000 and is projected to rise to 225,000 by 2030, almost entirely fueled by the continued influx of ultra-Orthodox families. Last year the town’s planning and zoning departments approved 10 synagogues, nine yeshivas and 1,175 new residences. Many ultra-Orthodox constituents vote in a bloc, taking instruction from the Vaad, a local council of rabbis. The elected municipal government is dominated by white male Orthodox Jews, as is the school board.

And that school board is in a bind. The budget for Lakewood Public School District, which serves about 5,600 Latino and African-American children, has a $12 million deficit out of an annual operating budget of $127,778,000. The two biggest bites are transportation and special education. Until this year the district paid $18,199,974, mostly to bus 10,000 non-public students on gender-specific buses to 130 different yeshivas. (The other big bite — a mind-boggling $31,485,495 — is annual tuition to private special-education schools, mostly for ultra-Orthodox children who attend Jewish yeshivas that accept children with disabilities.)

According to a recent analysis by Michael Hoban, senior educational consultant to Lakewood U.N.I.T.E (the group that represents Lakewood’s black students), most school districts allocate about 75 percent of annual budgets to student instruction. In Lakewood that allocation shrinks to 48 percent.

Hence, Senator Singer, Lakewood’s white knight, wrote a bill (or the Vaad did, depending upon who you ask) that awards $17 million a year to pay busing costs for yeshiva students, with enough left over for “courtesy busing,” or transportation for students within state walking parameters. (The town council has “pledged” to pay for courtesy busing for public school students.)  The $17 million, according to the bill, is paid directly to a “consortium.”

That consortium, now registered with the state Division of Revenue and Enterprise Services, is an LLC called the “Lakewood Student Transportation Authority (LSTA) and the chairman of the board is Rabbi Yisroel Schenkolewski, who is also the municipal police chaplain, commissioner of the Ocean County Board of Elections, founder of a girls’ yeshiva, and, according to the Jewish paper Haaretz, in an article entitled “Only in America,” wielder of  enormous power within the ultra-Orthodox community.

What about the accountability described in Senate Bill 2049 as an “oversight committee” consisting of five members, four appointed by the commissioner and one appointed by the state monitor or the school board?

According to SAG, Inc., at least three well-qualified residents dutifully filed resumes presenting credentials to all these entities and repeatedly contacted Senator Singer’s office. While there have been occasional responses, no action has been taken.

Certainly, there’s no point in prospective overseers contacting LSTA. According to Ocean City Politics, “The Lakewood Student Transportation Authority still has a nonfunctional public website and phone calls made to it are directed to an automated prompt. No public information has been released about the bids for busing by the agency, unlike local and county governments that publish bid documents on their websites.” (As of publication date, this nonfunctional status is unchanged.)

To date, $17 million of taxpayer money has been sent to an unaccountable consortium. To date, there is no oversight committee as stipulated in state law. To date, Lakewood public school students, 74 percent Latino, 20 percent black, and 86 percent economically disadvantaged, are summarily deprived of access to their constitutionally guaranteed thorough and efficient system of education.

Now, let’s be fair. Nonpublic school students are entitled to transportation within state parameters (although gender-specific, yeshiva-specific buses are a murky area). The district is underfunded because of New Jersey’s broken and unsustainable school funding-formula.  But the state Legislature just handed over $17 million a year to an unaccountable group of powerbrokers (regardless of who is responsible for implementation of the Senate bill) and called it square. This disdain for rectitude and law perpetuates the inequities — indeed, the tyranny — visited upon the minority children who attend Lakewood Public Schools. “Fraud” is too nice a word.

East Ramapo and Elia- Public Meeting to Determine Fate of $3M

A School District Whose Children Have Been Raped of an Education and $3M in State Aid

It does not matter in East Ramapo whether you are Orthodox, ultra-Orthodox, secular, Hispanic, Black, White, or Green because all of East Ramapo’s children have been deprived of an education.

In the public schools in East Ramapo despite the best efforts of teachers, parents and activists the resources have been scarce and the schools in disrepair, leaving the public school children to study without proper textbooks,  in classrooms known to leak during rainstorms. The schools of that district barely offer core classes. There are few art classes, if any and music is a luxury.

The public schools in East Ramapo, once the best in the State, lack the resources necessary to provide an education consistent with New York State mandates. Funding is grossly inadequate and the Board of Education, comprised in disproportionate part of ultra-Orthodox men blames the State.

There is no acknowledgement on the part of the Trustees of the East Ramapo Board of Education and their spokespeople that money has been siphoned off for years for the ultra-Orthodox and Orthodox religious education. The premise has been that there are more private school, Yeshiva educated children and more resources should be provided for their edcuation. Separation of Church and State be damned.

In contrast the private Yeshivas, funded with public taxpayer money, have the resources but the children are deprived an education by an establishment which actively chains them to functional illiteracy, mathematical ignorance and a non-science based religious education… in Yiddish. Separation of Church and State, an unknown concept.

 

Presently there is a public meeting at Rockland Community College, located in East Ramapo intended to explain how $3M in New York State aid will be allocated. Perhaps Church and State can walk on separate sides of the road….

Lohud reported on September 27, 2016

Full-day kindergarten and other programs will start Oct. 6

The state education commissioner has approved the East Ramapo school district’s plan for using $3 million in state aid to create universal full-day kindergarten and restore arts programs in grades K-6, among other initiatives.

Commissioner MaryEllen Elia said Monday that she had given her blessing to the plan, and also said she would join state-appointed monitors Charles Szuberla and John Sipple at a public meeting to discuss the initiatives at 6 p.m. Wednesday at Rockland Community College’s Cultural Arts Center, 145 College Road, Ramapo.

Full-day kindergarten and other programs will start Oct. 6, according to a district spokesperson.

The district conducted its own public hearing to receive community input on the expenditure plan on Sept. 7. The school board approved the plan on Sept. 13 and it was submitted to Elia on Sept. 20.

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PREVIOUS COVERAGE: East Ramapo: District details how it will spend $3M state aid

“These plans represent the district’s path forward to ensure progress continues and to ensure the educational rights of every East Ramapo student are met,” Commissioner Elia said in a statement. “Chuck Szuberla, John Sipple and Superintendent Wortham have worked as quickly as possible to put a long-term strategic academic and fiscal improvement plan in place that is both thorough and thoughtful. It continues the work already done to repair the trust of the East Ramapo community, while recognizing there is still work to do.”

The $3 million in supplemental funding was approved under a state oversight law that required the development of the strategic academic plan, as well as a comprehensive expenditure plan, in consultation with Szuberla.

In 2012, East Ramapo went from full-day to half-day kindergarten amid $14 million worth of budget cuts. Last year, two sections were added. Four new full-day kindergarten classes were included in the district’s $224 million budget approved by voters in May.

Here’s what’s being proposed for the $3 million:

• $1.2 million to hire six monolingual kindergarten teachers and four bilingual kindergarten teachers.
• Up to 11 sections of full-day kindergarten would be created, depending upon the number of children who enroll.
• The bulk of kindergarten funding, $670,000, would go towards salaries, while the remainder would cover classroom materials, instructional technology and building adjustments to accommodate new classes.
• Restoring art, music, dance and theater classes for students in grades K-6 will cost around $1.7 million.
• The district aims to hire 12 teachers for arts instruction, the majority of whom were previously laid off and are on the preferred eligibility list (PELL).

The strategic plans can be found on the East Ramapo Central School District website.

To read the article in its entirety click here.

Millionaire Brooklyn Couples Stealing Millions in Benefits… Very Charitable of Them

 

https://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20160927/bushwick/landlord-brooklyn-hasidic-snap-food-stamps-section-8

 

Brooklyn ‘Millionaires’ Busted for Stealing $1.3M in Benefits, Feds Say

 

WILLIAMSBURG — Three Brooklyn couples, including a landlord with properties all over the borough, were arrested Tuesday on charges of defrauding the government of $1.3 million worth of benefits.

Shlomo Kubitshuk, 38, and his wife Rachel, 39, Naftali, 40, and Hinda Englander, 41, and Leib, 39, and Devorah Teitelbaum, 36, were accused of lying about their income to the federal government as far back as 2001 in order to collect thousands of dollars worth of food stamps, Section 8 housing vouchers and Medicaid.

“For over a decade, this ring of six defendants allegedly lied to city and federal officials about their financial status in order to obtain benefits that were meant for the needy,” said U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara.

The six were slapped with a multiple counts of conspiracy to steal government funds and theft of government funds, which carry a five and ten year maximum sentence respectively, court documents show.

In two separate complaints unsealed Tuesday, prosecutors said the six benefited from $457,000 in Section 8 vouchers to pay for NYCHA apartments, $130,000 in food stamps and $733,000 in Medicaid payouts.

“At a time when affordable housing is scarce and there is a waiting list for Section 8 vouchers, it is reprehensible that some New Yorkers went without so that these defendants could have still more,” said Department of Investigations Commissioner Mark Peters.

Shlomo Kubitshuk owns multiple properties across Brooklyn, according to prosecutors, including 56 Grattan, 98 Grattan St. and 177 Montrose in East Williamsburg, 327 Melrose St., 318 Melrose St. and 1436 Greene St. in Bushwick and 1144 Bergen St. in Prospect Heights.

The state had records of Kubitshuk taking in $560,000 in rental income in 2013, and in multiple applications for mortgages he said his assets were worth more than $2 million, prosecutors said.

His wife said she took in $300,000 in annual income through another LLC company on a 2013 credit card application, according to the complaint.

Despite that, the pair claimed only $13,409 a year in combined income for around a decade in order to qualify for federal subsidies, federal prosecutors charge.

Naftali Eglander, owner of a U.K. real estate company City Gate Estates Limited worth more than £600,000, and his wife Hinda disclosed only $15,858 in combined annual income between 2001 and 2013, prosecutors said.

Finally Leib Teitlebaum, president of the online jewelry company www.glitzs.com, professed to earn about $1.2 million a year in a 2006 credit application, according to the state, yet disclosed far less.

“These defendants were millionaires stealing from the poor,” said Peters. “The defendants fraudulently concealed their wealth to obtain benefits.”

 

To read further click here.

DAINFO PROVIDED LINKS TO THE COMPLAINT:

https://www.scribd.com/document/325511086/Complaint#from_embed

https://www.scribd.com/document/325511081/Teitelbaum-Complaint

 

Rockland Community College – Public Meeting… Blockbusting

Assemblywoman Ellen Jaffee’s Interview Above

https://www.facebook.com/Clarkstown-What-They-Dont-Want-You-To-Know-146207698912716/

Senator Carlucci Is Interviewed About Blockbusting

http://www.fios1news.com/lowerhudsonvalley/newsbreakers-interview-DavidCarlucci-part1#.V-vjr6L67Md

The New York Department of State’s Division of Licensing Services held a public meeting at Rockland Community College Wednesday, Sept. 21, 2016. They are considering a “cease and desist zone” to prohibit blockbusting tactics – Peter Carr/The Journal News

“Chestnut Ridge is going full Orthodox, like Monsey,” Claudia Gollub said she was told by an unnamed home buyer. “We will make our community aware not to buy your house until you have no choice (but) to sell for the lower-than-market price.”

Gollub’s story was one of many voiced by dozens of residents. The hearing displayed the growing tensions between homeowners and home buyers in the county.

Representatives from the Department of State listened for three hours as residents recounted their experiences of pushy home buyers knocking on their doors, calling their homes and leaving unwanted flyers.

Residents can submit further testimony and evidence by mailing it to:

The New York Department of State
99 Washington Ave
One Commerce Plaza
Albany, NY 12231
c/o Whitney A. Clark

http://www.lohud.com/…/rockland-blockbusting-real…/90483344/

Here are links to YouTube videos of statements made at this meeting you may like to watch watch.

Michael Miller’s statement:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_sxqnnPQHM

Senator Carlucci’s statement:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0JNEjmK5wM

Assemblyman Zebrowski’s statement:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjVyZZS8v9w

County Executive Day’s statement:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTNEewe-yGY

Assemblywoman Jaffee’s statement:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8U-kbKUQg_U

Part II of Carlucci Interview: http://www.fios1news.com/lowerhudsonvalley/newsbreakers-interview-DavidCarlucci-part2#.V-vktaL67Md

 

Satmar – Abusing Government Resources: Section 8, SNAP, Medicaid

 

 

Several Members of the Satmar Community Reportedly Arrested This Morning

The FBI in Williamsburg this morning made arrests at 118 Skillman and 900 Bedford. Four members of the Satmar community were arrested arrested in Williamsburg, Bedford and Skillman. The FBI were in Boro Park at 52nd between 11 & 12 as well this morning.

The 5 arrested so far are:

Shlome Kuptchik & his wife
Zalmen leib Teitelbaum Ben Meir
Gabe Bihmd Myrtle
Nuta Wolf

To read the article in its entirety: http://israelnewsonline.org/breaking-several-members-of-th…/