“Over the next week, POLITICO will publish a series on New York City's management of refuse. Based on four months of reporting, more than 50 interviews and a review of hundreds of pages of public documents, the stories will explore the politics, policies and financial decisions that contribute to the mountains of black bags piling up each night on city streets. They will examine the impact of the city’s sluggish progress, which reaches from Newark, N.J., a poor city of mostly racial minorities, to Bishopville, S.C., which has a 46 percent poverty rate.”