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	A Bishop’s Testimony Is Heard By Arthur Sulzberger The New York Times December 3, 2009 http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/03/a-bishops-testimony-is-heard/ The witness was Edward M. Egan, then the Roman Catholic bishop of Bridgeport, Conn. The question was about a priest who had been accused of sexually molesting children. “I didn’t make a decision one way or the other,” Bishop Egan said. “I kept working on it until I resolved the decision.” The exchange is one of hundreds recorded in a vast trove of documents the Diocese of Bridgeport made public on Tuesday after battling in court for seven years to keep them sealed. The archive — more than 12,000 pages of memos, church records and testimony — was gathered for 23 lawsuits, alleging sexual abuse of children by seven priests, that the diocese settled in 2002. At the heart of it lies the bishop’s testimony, in two wide-ranging depositions from 1997 and 1999. Punctuated by legal parsing and frequent exasperation on both sides, transcripts of the videotaped sessions show the man who would become one of the church’s most prominent American leaders — the archbishop of New York, and a cardinal — as he navigated a budding scandal that still threatens the church’s finances and reputation. [NYT] Same-Sex Marriage Vote The New York State Senate decisively rejected a bill on Wednesday that would have allowed gay couples to wed, providing a major victory for those who oppose same-sex marriage and underscoring the deep and passionate divisions surrounding the issue. [NYT] (Also see The Wall Street Journal and The New York Post.) Advocates of gay marriage moved away from a strategy of incremental change, but the gamble has not paid off. The 38-to-24 vote in Albany was just the latest example. [NYT] In the extraordinarily personal debate over the bill, senator after senator cast aside the often mundane speech of lawmaking and delved into the most intimate aspects of their lives: husbands, wives, siblings and religion. [NYT] Government & Politics Lawmakers took baby steps toward bringing spending restraint and more-rigorous government oversight to the capital on Wednesday by closing most of a $3.2 billion state budget deficit, scaling back pension benefits for new government employees and overhauling the public authority system. [NYT] The Bloomberg administration is looking into dozens of bank accounts containing tens of millions of dollars it says the Manhattan district attorney’s office has secretly maintained for years outside the city’s financial review process. The district attorney denies the accusation. [NYT] (Also see The New York Post.) Crime & Public Safety For the last several weeks, Joseph L. Bruno, the irrepressible 80-year-old former Senate majority leader, has offered a running commentary on his own federal public corruption trial from the courthouse steps, playing both defendant and pundit to throngs of cameras and tape recorders. [NYT] To prosecutors, Harold C. Turner, an internet radio host, was trying to incite others to murder three federal judges, but to the defense, he was exercising his right to free speech. [NYT] Transportation Large among fabulous municipal projects that ultimately never saw the light of day was Westway, the most ambitious development in city history, a park-covered Hudson riverfront superhighway that would have transformed the West Side. [Daily News] Schools The New York City Department of Education said Wednesday that it would move to close four poor-performing schools, in the first of several such announcements expected over the coming weeks. [NYT] (Also see The New York Post.) People & Neighborhoods New York City’s storefront gates, like its fire escapes and stoops, are the unnoticed wallpaper of New York at night. They have been battered by vandals and defaced by graffiti taggers. They have secured diamonds, handmade tortellini and other valuable commodities. They have provided the clattering soundtrack of dawn and dusk, the steel canvas of struggling artists, the most compelling evidence that the city does, indeed, sleep. But now the City Council has voted for a phased ban of the roll-down gates. [NYT] Some New Yorkers insist the gates do not have to be a blight, and they have ideas on how to redeem them. [NYT]
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