Lloyd Constantine

Making sense of the 2010 Census

While New York state and The Weekender’s mid-week home, New York City, were clear losers in the recently released 2010 U.S. Census results, my weekend residence, Chatham, not only held its own but gained substantially. It was a winner in the bottom line tally and in the more granular analysis of what the numbers say about the last 10 years and foretell about our future as a community.

New York state and City lost because their populations each increased by an anemic 2.1 percent, rising to 19,379,102 and 8,175,133, respectively, while the national increase was 9.7 percent to 308,745,538. That will cost New York state two seats in the House of Representatives and tens of billions of dollars in reduced federal funding over the coming decade.  Read More 

Scorecard on the first Andrew Cuomo budget

The last Weekender column (March 31) promised that the next would provide analysis of the importance of both the process and results of the recently released Census. That column will be deferred until April 28 because in the interim, the state enacted its first on-time budget in five years, as predicted in The Weekender of March 17. (Despite this and many contemporaneous, previous and future self-congratulatory pats on the back, this column will continue to be called The Weekender and not be changed to “I Told You So”).  Read More