Human Rights Redundancy
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Before Mayor Bloomberg carries out his threat to seek an increase in the income tax on New Yorkers, he deserves to be asked about the city’s Human Rights Commission. It spent $7.8 million in the 2002 fiscal year serving in a redundant role, and is now home to a new commissioner, Omar Mohammedi, who serves as general counsel to the terrorist-sympathizing Council on American Islamic Relations. If New Yorkers are having problems with employers, landlords, or other parties discriminating against them, there are a host of other routes by which they can lodge their complaints and have them rectified.
As for employment, New Yorkers, as do all Americans, have recourse to the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. For housing discrimination, there is the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development. If the disabled are discriminated against they have access to a plethora of state and federal avenues. Students or teachers can appeal to the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights. Those facing discrimination in New York State also have recourse to the New York State Division of Human Rights. While this could be seen as shifting costs to the state government, it seems that the state human rights division is getting a much bigger bang for its buck. For its $7.8 million price tag, the New York City Commission on Human Rights closed 1,305 discrimination cases in fiscal year 2002. It took on 714 new cases. However, at the state level, the Division of Human Rights, for only about $2 million more in the 1999-2000 fiscal year, took on 5,727 new cases and resolved 5,283 of these cases. And if New Yorkers can’t get a hearing at the state level, there are always the local district attorneys, and the federal prosecutors empowered to bring civil rights charges. So it seems untenable to maintain over 120 employees on what is largely a political committee. The state division even runs outreach and prevention programs, which could supplant the hundreds of conferences, workshops, and training sessions that the city commission lauds as one of its major accomplishments. Instead of raising property taxes and going begging to Albany, the city has $7.8 million reasons to dispense with this important function.
