Is It Time for New York State to Revise Its Village Incorporation Laws? A Background Report on Village Incorporation in New York State

Over the past several years, New York State has taken considerable steps to eliminate or reduce the number of local governments — streamlining the law to make it easier for citizens to undertake the process as well as providing financial incentives for communities that undertake consolidations and shared services. Since 2010, the residents of 42 villages have voted on the question of whether to dissolve their village government. This average of 4.7 dissolution votes per year is an increase over the .79 a-year-average in the years 1972-2010. The growing number of villages considering dissolution is attributable to the combined influence of declining populations, growing property tax burdens, and the passage of the New N.Y. Government Reorganization and Citizen Empowerment Act (herein after the Empowerment Act), effective in March 2019, which revised procedures to make it easier for citizens to place dissolution and consolidation on the ballot. While the number of communities considering and voting on dissolution has increased, the rate at which dissolutions have been approved by the voters has declined. That is, 60 percent of proposed village dissolutions bought under the provisions of the Empowerment Act have been rejected at referendum (see Dissolving Village Government in New York State: A Symbol of a Community in Decline or Government Modernization?) While the Empowerment Act revised the processes for citizen-initiated dissolutions and consolidations, it left the provisions for the incorporation of new villages unchanged. Thus, even as the state has created pressure on and increased incentives for residents to reduce the number of local governments, new villages continue to be created. Moreover, recent village incorporation efforts have been particularly contentious. This report highlights several recent village incorporation controversies, reviews the history of village incorporation patterns and procedures, and compares the incorporation provisions of New York relative to those of other states to ask whether the current state laws governing village incorporation are adequate to addressing the increasingly complex questions which surround local government formation and dissolution. The report concludes that it is time for New York’s legislature to look to other states for prospective models that would modernize the municipal incorporation process

Incontri, scontri, confronti Appunti sulla ricezione della xilografia nordica in Italia tra XV e XX secolo

Germany, France, Italy: the attribution of the first woodcut images has long been debated between several countries, to gain the technological primacy of the invention of reproductive printmaking, before Gutenberg’s movable type printing. Today we know how difficult it is, if not impossible, to establish a place and a date of origin of image printing in Europe. Impossible and probably unimportant. Printing was a European phenomenon in the 15th century, and we may ask ourselves whether a northern woodcut beyond the Italian borders was intended as something different than an Italian one. The contrast between northern and southern prints, which has been claimed by art historians from Vasari until the half of the 20th century, seems to be denied by early modern Italian sources. For example, a German woodcut from the first decades of the 15th century and a Florentine painting from the end of the 14th century can coexist as models for the illumination of the same manuscript. This unpublished case study of two Florentine 15th-century illuminations shows how a European cultural horizon was more common than we think today, and how much woodcut has been a fundamental tool for this broadening of horizons, since its very beginning

Ep. 70. In Local Hands

The New York Government Reorganization and Citizen Empowerment Act (the Empowerment Act) made it easier for New York State residents to initiate the dissolution or consolidation of village governments. On the latest episode of Policy Outsider, Rockefeller Institute Fellow and Daemen University Professor Lisa Parshall discusses her new book, In Local Hands, which examines the social, political, and narrative context surrounding municipal reorganization in the state, especially since the Empowerment Act went into effect in 2010. The conversation touches on questions explored in the book: why do village residents support or oppose dissolutions? How do residents initiate reorganizations? And how do dissolutions affect taxes and government services? Description from Rockefeller Institut

Interviewed for: Head-Scratching: Caucus Confusion, Censure, Lonesome George [Skimm This podcast]

From publisher: A day after the Iowa Democratic Caucus, we’re told results are still just around the corner. But the damage from a historic vote-counting fail is already being felt, and Iowa could be the biggest loser. Meanwhile, we’ll look at the big issues that might come up in tonight’s State of the Union Address by checking out the guest list. Also on today’s show: Democrats float an alternative to impeachment, and why one lonely creature might not have been the last of his kind

New York\u27s fire protection system ripe for reform

The patchwork of fire districts that respond to the needs of New Yorkers is costly and ripe for reorganization, according to a new report from Dr. Lisa Parshall, a fellow at the Rockefeller Institute