By Matthew Dunn
During
Andrew Cuomo’s re-election campaign, he said that public schools were one of
the remaining few public monopolies.
Since being re-elected he has made it clear that he intends to
reorganize the public schools in New York State for this reason. These recent statements make it clear that
Governor Cuomo believes that things that in private hands are run better than
those run by the public sector. I
propose that Governor Cuomo test his hypothesis by having one of his largest
campaign donors, run a school: James Dolan.
For
those who have been fans of the Knicks for the last fifteen years or so, the
name James Dolan might send shivers down your spine. James Dolan is the CEO of Cablevision, a
large cable and internet provider in the tri-state area, and also is Executive
Chairman of the Madison Square Garden Company, which not only owns the teams
that play in Madison Square Garden (the Knicks and Rangers) but also a host of
other entertainment venues in New York City, including the famous Radio City
Music Hall. Dolan’s company Cablevision
was one of Cuomo’s largest campaign donors in the 2014 election, donating a sum
of $354,097 to the state Democratic Committee during the last election
cycle. Dolan’s companies are very profitable,
so perhaps Governor Cuomo would like to have this titan of industry show the
public school monopolies how to run things.
So let’s take a look at the great results of Dolan’s business practices.
As
Chairman of the Madison Square Garden Company, Dolan has been the primary owner
of the New York Knicks. In the last 15
years, the New York Knicks have largely been the laughing stock of the NBA. They have consistently had among the highest
payrolls in the NBA, and have produced some of the worst results. This current season, may turn out to be the
most embarrassing for the Knicks as they are currently are the worst team in
the NBA, and have lost 16 games in a row at the time of this writing. In addition to this, the Knicks have become
infamous with high ticket prices while putting out a terrible product. We will also have to overlook the management
structure at the Knicks which a few years back under Dolan and Isaiah Thomas,
created an environment so hostile to women, that former Knicks vice president
Anucah Browne Sanders was able to win $11.6 million in damages in a sexual harassment
lawsuit against the organization. With
this information as well as Dolan’s history of substance abuse, we can gather
that he probably isn’t the best person to work for.
Alright,
well that’s just his sports team. Surely
that’s not the only aspect of Dolan’s business abilities. Cablevision, is a billion dollar cable and
internet provider that is surely a better example of the wonders of Dolan’s
management. On an online survey site
entitled consumeraffairs.com, Cablevision was received a rating of 1.5 stars
out of a possible 5. As you read through
the website at the customer comments you see that the complaints usually are
about the costs and the poor service that Cablevision offers, which is the
complaint that most people have about their cable and internet providers. So why if the service they provide is
considered poor at best, are they able to be so successful? Simple, Cablevision is a near monopoly on the
cable market in the places that it operates.
Cable
companies operate largely by acting like drug cartels. Generally, they take over a territory and are
able to take over exclusive rights to serve an area. On Long Island, Cablevision is one of the two
main internet and cable providers. In
Nassau and Suffolk, other big players in the cable market such as companies
like Time Warner and Comcast, do not operate.
In return, Cablevision does not try to gain a foothold in New York City,
which it leaves to these other companies.
Therefore, anyone wishing to use the internet or watch cable television
in the Long Island market has the choice to use either Cablevision or its only
competitor, Verizon, hardly a choice involving any form of small business.
In
addition to cable and internet service, Cablevision owns Newsday and News 12 on
Long Island. These media outlets are
considered the main print and tv sources of news for people living on Long
Island. With the exception of local town
papers, and Verizon’s local news station, there really is no other source of
news on Long Island. So if you couple the
fact that Cablevision owns most of the provision of cable and internet service
on Long Island, with the fact that they own the majority of the information that
is released, coupled with their interests in sports and entertainment through
the Madison Square Garden Company, you see quite a media empire. One might even go so far as to call it a,
dare I say it, a monopoly.
James
Dolan of Cablevision and Governor Andrew Cuomo are truly kindred spirits. They both had very successful fathers, and it
seems that both of them are now trying to live up to the expectations of their
dads. Governor Cuomo also seems as though
he would like to open up what he calls a public monopoly, and turn it into more
of a private monopoly like James Dolan has with Cablevision. As James Dolan’s companies have shown, he is
a master of creating a profit by offering a very terrible product. As much as people like Governor Cuomo, complain
about the mismanagement of schools, having a businessman like James Dolan run
schools, would hardly be any better. But
maybe giving Dolan a chance to run schools will defy expectations. However, if
Cuomo engaged in this kind of experiment it would probably make the parents and
teachers at schools feel just like Knick fans, consistently disappointed.
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If you are more interested in James Dolan, and
other horrible owners of sports teams, read Dave Zirin’s excellent book Bad Sports: How Owners Are Ruining the Games
We Love. In this book he gives a
detailed explanation of Dolan’s practices as owner of the Knicks, as well as
discussing some of the other worst owners in professional sports.
