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On last night’s “Inside City Hall”, we held a debate about the decision by the Bloomberg administration to bar worship services from city schools.

Watch a clip of the interview above.

Tonight’s guests include: City Council Speaker Christine Quinn; the Executive Director of Union Settlement Association, David Nocenti.

We will also have live coverage of Council Speaker Quinn’s State of the City Address starting at noon.

The New York Times

Schwartz & Dewan report: “After months of painstaking talks, government authorities and five of the nation’s biggest banks have agreed to a $26 billion settlement that could provide relief to nearly two million current and former American homeowners harmed by the bursting of the housing bubble, state and federal officials said. Under the plan, federal officials said Thursday, about $5 billion will go in cash payments to states and federal authorities, $17 billion will be earmarked for homeowner relief, roughly $3 billion will go for refinancing and a final $1 billion will go to the Federal Housing Administration. If nine other major servicers join the pact, a possibility that is now under discussion with the government, the total package could rise to $30 billion….More than the dollar figures, the settlement had been held up amid concern by New York’s attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, that it provided too broad of a release for banks for past misdeeds, making future investigations much more difficult. Mr. Schneiderman was able to win significant concessions from the banks in recent days.”

William Glaberson writes: “New York has been among the most aggressive states in trying to protect homeowners from foreclosure, granting new legal protections and turning courts across the state into teeming negotiation centers working to keep people in their homes. But four years into the foreclosure crisis, the state’s courts are largely at a stalemate, facing an estimated 100,000 foreclosure cases — a record number — with tens of thousands more expected. Courts statewide have been mired in often hopeless cases involving loans that have left bus drivers and grocery clerks, among others, owing $700,000 or more on homes that have fallen in value.”

New York Post

Erik Kriss notes: “Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who controls the state Education Department through its governing board, helped a motorcycle-riding ex-beauty queen and a former Assembly ally land a job at the schools agency. Although he opposes efforts he says would politicize the agency, Silver (D-Manhattan) helped former Assemblywoman Janele Hyer-Spencer, who is close with the speaker, land the $84,000-a-year job as legislative liaison last September.”

Dave Seifman reports: “The city is finding that it sometimes pays to be nice to deadbeat dads. Officials reported collecting a record $731 million in child-support payments last year, up about 4.5 percent, and part of the reason was that the city adopted a customer-friendly approach toward some parents who haven’t been paying up.”

Sally Goldenberg writes: “Mayor Bloomberg assured ailing Ground Zero first responders that city agencies will turn over medical data to research institutes studying whether working on the toxic pile caused cancer. Hizzoner’s promise came yesterday amid a blistering controversy over the NYPD’s refusal to give up its medical data to doctors trying to discern possible links to cancer and other illnesses among the tens of thousands of city workers who responded to Ground Zero on Sept. 11.”

New York Daily News

Blau & Deutsch report: “A veteran jail supervisor will be criminally charged for beating an inmate who had just punched a female correction officer, the Daily News has learned. Veteran Assistant Deputy Warden Edwin Diaz has been asked to turn himself in to authorities Thursday for his role in the attack on inmate Jesus Alejandro on Sept. 24, 2008, a source familiar with the investigation said.”

Parascandola & Fisher write: “Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly has ordered a top-to-bottom review of all street level narcotics enforcement procedures after it was revealed that the cop who killed an unarmed Bronx teen had never been properly trained.”

Wills & Gendar note: “Archbishop Timothy Dolan is grabbing the olive branch the Obama administration extended on birth control, saying he’s happy to offer the feds a “graceful exit” from the election-year uproar.”

Monahan & Blau report: “City Council Speaker Christine Quinn wants every youngster to have a seat in school. She will propose making kindergarten mandatory for 5-year-olds in her State of the City speech on Thursday. Under the current law, kindergarten is not mandatory, and children can stay home until they turn 6. As a result, an estimated 3,000 city children are not enrolled”

Ken Lovett writes: “Democratic Rep. Carolyn McCarthy’s Long Island district is on the chopping block as state leaders begin redrawing congressional boundaries, the Daily News has learned. State Senate and Assembly negotiators are looking at merging McCarthy’s Nassau County district into a Nassau-Queens district now held by fellow Dem Gary Ackerman, sources close to the planning said.”

Pete Donohue reports: “The city plans to make one of Manhattan’s most dangerous corridors safer for pedestrians. The Transportation Department said Wednesday it will shorten 14 crosswalks on Delancey St. between the Bowery and Clinton St. by widening sidewalks and medians.”

Until tomorrow.

Bob Hardt