Opportunity NYC
Opportunity NYC was an experimental Conditional Cash Transfer program (CCT) by the Mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg. Announced in April 2007, it was the first CCT program to be launched in the United States or any other developed nation. Its initial phases were funded by a number of private partners including The Rockefeller Foundation, Robin Hood Foundation, the Open Society Institute, Starr Foundation, AIG, and Mayor Bloomberg's own Bloomberg Family Foundation. The program is being evaluated by MDRC, a nonprofit research firm, using a random assignment research design. Opportunity NYC is administered by Seedco, a nonprofit community development organization. The program ended on August 31, 2010.
Thomas White Jr.
White won the Democratic primary vote in November 2009 to seek a new term, following the overturning of term limits at the insistence of New York City's Mayor Michael Bloomberg in a vote by the New York City Council, by a six votes. This small margin of victory has been attributed by some political observers to public anger over the overturning by the City Council of two referendums supporting eight-year term limits. Five other council incumbents, four of whom had voted to overturn term limits, lost their bids for re-election, the largest such number since the 1980s.