Unfortunately, Mayor Bloomberg's big new idea to help the poor looks an awful lot like the billionaire once again buying political support by recycling failed ideas. The Times, of course, sees it otherwise, editorializing in its news dispatch that "the effort is classic Bloomberg in that it emphasizes nontraditional solutions and enlists the private sector to tackle problems that have historically vexed governments." The dispatch goes on to claim that

The administration’s efforts would place an emphasis on rewarding good behavior and promoting self-sufficiency. Officials plan to spend $42 million annually on the tax credit, $25 million to reward actions like attending schools or prenatal education classes, and $11 million to help poor adults save money and learn sound financial practices.

If only dignity and self-sufficiency were so easily achieved by giving people free money. See: The Saudi Royalty and Paris Hilton. That giving the poor the material circumstances of the better-off and expecting them to then behave the same way has been rather definitively disproved over the last 60 years, since projects became a four-letter word, seems to have escaped the mayor’s notice, or at least his interest.
The Times reports that:

The effort would involve the creation of a new city office that would operate in part like a philanthropic foundation and in part like a venture capital company. The program, called the Center for Economic Opportunity, would administer a $100 million fund to support experimental programs, like giving cash rewards to encourage poor people to stay in school or receive preventive medical care, or matching their monthly bank deposits to foster greater savings.

This sounds an awful lot like a new private capital twist on the old game of so-called poverty programs that in fact function as job program for the working class, creating an enshrined social service bureau with every incentive to retain the impoverished class their livelihood depends on.

It also seems the mayor is, yet again, working at cross-purposes. On the one hand, he’s preaching a gospel of self-sufficiency, while on the other, the economic rewards he’s offering all suggest that poor people will not make good decisions unless immediately rewarded for them, just as they lack the self-control to avoid trans-fats and other unhealthy foods.

With all that said, there are a few positive signs. First off, that the plan was developed in consultation with, among others, the honorable, intelligent and effective : Inclusion of the honorable intelligent and accomplished Geoffrey Canada, founder of the Harlem’s Children Zone, is very promising.

And Errol Louis has a sharp dispatch in the Daily News pointing out that the plan was announced in the lobby of one of New York’s 28 credit unions, and hoping that this means some of the $150 million in new funds will flow into these grass-roots financial institutions that he correctly calls “a smart, proven way to combat poverty.”

Louis also is impressed that “The city plans to spend $150 million on anti-poverty initiatives, of which $100 million will go to a new Innovation Fund, designed to put dollars in the best and most effective programs.” And if money is allocated strictly according to impact, this would be worth touting (to be fair, $5 million is being put aside to monitor program results). Then again, since the city got rid of its Department of Burning Tax Payer Dollars, efficiency is always a goal, and we’ll believe that the city has the will to eliminate inefficient but politically popular programs when we see it.

America Works founder Peter Cove writes in, and doesn’t see much that’s new or worthwhile:

The Mayor's poverty proposal relies on discredited strategy and wishful thinking. Rather than tackling the tough stuff, it panders to providers of poverty programs long found to be ineffective or worse. Why isn’t the creation of jobs the first strike in the reduction of poverty, instead of incentives to create independent development accounts. For unemployed fathers?

Rather than encouraging men to return to their children and their mothers, we are fed programs to send nurses to poor first time mothers. What say we encourage the fathers back first?

Thirty more programs are said to be in the offing. One hopes that they will focus not again on peripheral issues, but strike at the very heart of New York's poverty problem-work and the missing fathers.