Gotham Gazette

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Opinion

Op-Ed: Fight Member Item Corruption Using Participatory Budgeting


participatory-budgeting-voters

Last week’s events call attention to the importance that each one of the fifty-one members of the city’s only legislature have in determining how we as a city spend $77.7 billion dollars, comprising the fourth largest budget in the country after the federal, California, and New York State budgets.

We are running our City Council campaign in the way we believe government should be run — with the first-ever open platform on our website that allows the electorate to submit solutions to improve the community in which they live. We believe in allowing voters the freedom to shape policy and contribute to the collective conversation by not simply being on the receiving end of a politician’s agenda, but actively helping to shape their own communities and futures. People can vote for the solutions they like, or contribute their own innovations — leading to a participatory conversation about the best way forward.

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We plan to bring the same transparency to the budget process with our year-old pledge to distribute member item funding using the participatory budgeting process that empowers local residents with the freedom to determine how their tax dollars are spent to support and improve their own communities. 

Nonprofits in the community have often fallen victim to predatory budgeting practices by members of the legislature that use member item funding. Legislators are responsible for serving their constituents, but many use member item funding to instead demand personal or political financial gain. Participatory budgeting can help end this form of corruption so that fewer non-profits will be forced to use tax dollars to benefit politicians instead of communities in need.

In the second year of the project, eight Council members are already participating allowing their community to directly decide how to spend more than $10 million in tax revenue.  Ironically, Councilman Dan Halloran, who engaged in participatory budgeting, managed to get in trouble with the member item funds that he kept to distribute on his own. This bizarre twist emphasizes that participatory budgeting cannot be treated as proof that there is no corruption or the appearance thereof.  It also raises the question of whether participatory budgeting should be mandatory and if it should be the sole vehicle for distribution of all member item funding.

Once elected, we hope to bring my experience running a nonprofit and as a technology entrepreneur to create an open infrastructure to transparently host the participatory budget process so that government has the tools to empower the community with the freedom to determine how their tax dollars are spent.

This year has the opportunity to bring sweeping change to city government. We can create a new system where residents are empowered and enfranchised, diluting the old Albany culture of pay-to-play and tit-for-tat corruption. Let’s not squander the opportunity.

Benjamin Kallos is the executive director of a leading good government group, entrepreneur, attorney, and the former chief of staff for Assemblyman Jonathan Bing. For more information about his campaign for City Council District 5, visit www.kallosforcouncil.com. Photo of participatory budgeting courtesy of Community Voices Heard, used with permission. 

Op-Ed: A Democracy We Can Believe In


SUNY Downstate Medical Center

I have participated in a dozen budget debates since taking office. Each year, I have worked with my colleagues in the Senate and Assembly to make sure that the executive budget is not balanced on the backs of New York’s working men and women, and that we remain true to our values as New Yorkers. Many years that task has been difficult, but this year, more than any other in recent memory, the budget has failed to reflect the needs and values of a vast number of New Yorkers. Therefore I voted “no” on the entire budget, as I will explain below.

Essentially, the dash to have an on-time budget  seems to have outweighed the need for a good budget. In order to finish quickly, we have botched many opportunities ranging from guaranteeing the stability and viability of SUNY Downstate Medical Center, to fully funding New York City schools and keeping our commitment to Campaign for Fiscal Equity, to making sure we take care of our most vulnerable populations — the developmentally disabled, the poor, seniors and children.

I am not conflicted about voting “no” on this year’s entire budget and taking the governor to task for breaking faith with New York’s proud history of providing a first-class education for our children, caring for the ill, and helping immigrants to succeed. The Statue of Liberty was put in New York for a reason — and not because we killed immigrant’s dreams, but rather because our community of New York State is where dreams come true.

While there is always pressure to vote “yes” even on a bad budget, there comes a time when one’s silence is a betrayal of one’s community and one’s values. Therefore, as a senator elected to represent a working-class district, a district of immigrants, a district with many underfunded schools, a district of progressive politics and values, I refused to rationalize voting “yes,” however easier that might have been — it would have been a betrayal of what my constituents and I believe.

In addition to the executive budget’s merits, or lack thereof, I think it is important to spotlight the flawed, undemocratic and largely unaccountable budget process that is the true meaning and cause of dysfunction in Albany. Again and again we hear that “dysfunction is ended,” Albany has been fixed, and New York is “open for business.”

Yet all that has really happened is that we have moved from three men in a room to four, and in the process guaranteed that there are no African Americans, Latinos, Asians or women in that closed-door and secretive process. I could go on at length on this topic, but quiet as it’s kept, we all know that the executive budget should be negotiated in public by representatives who reflect all of New York’s stakeholders.

That’s why I am calling for a constitutional amendment that bring back a more inclusive budget process, and give the legislature authority over the budget that matches its responsibility for the end product. It is time we stop making a mockery of our democracy.   

Particularly troubling for me this year was the fact that the initial executive budget made no attempt to save Downstate Medical Center, the fourth largest employer in the largest county in New York State — Brooklyn.

For eight months, Brooklyn’s elected officials pleaded in vain for a meeting with the governor’s office to determine how to keep Brooklyn’s only medical school open and avoid worsening Brooklyn’s health care crisis.

How can you even talk about a working government when one-third of the government refuses to even have a conversation about rescuing an institution that puts $1.3 billion into New York’s economy and returns $12 to New York City’s economy for every $1 spent? How can we talk about an end to dysfunction when the proposal made in the budget, after refusing to meet and discuss Downstate’s problems, was to suggest privatization as a solution to the problem?

Take a close look at the crisis facing Brooklyn hospitals; the ones having the most problems are the private institutions. Yet the undemocratically arrived at solution was privatization. Transparency and accountability create better government decisions for a reason, and the 8,000 Downstate employees whose jobs are on the line and the 400,000 patients who receive care at Downstate every year deserve to have their voices heard, through their representatives.

Voting on the state’s budget is my job, but my duty and my promise to my constituents, is to stand up for their interests as well as the state’s broader interests. And I do not believe that goal is impossible. I do not believe we must discard our dreams and values in order to have an on-time budget.

Therefore let me be clear. I believe that it is possible to provide all students with a sound basic education as ordered by the court in the Campaign for Fiscal Equity decision. I believe we can continue our historic role of partnering in immigrant success through the DREAM Act. I believe it is possible for New York's women business owners and those of color to have a fair chance at contracting with the state. I believe it is possible to right the wrongs caused by NYC’s “stop and frisk” abuses, and decriminalize small amounts of marijuana, and have an NYPD inspector general bring greater accountability to the NYPD, just like every other City agency.  

Finally, I believe we are not, nor should we be, a rubber-stamp Senate. Our mandate is to deliver the change our constituents need, and to deliver it openly in the light of day, and not secretly by “four men in a room.”  This too I believe is possible; we can live our values, and as New Yorkers, we can realize our dreams.

Kevin Parker is the state Senator representing the 21st District in Brooklyn which comprises Flatbush, East Flatbush, Midwood, Ditmas Park, Kensington, Windsor Terrace and Park Slope.

Photo of SUNY Downstate Medical Center from Wikimedia Commons. 

Op-Ed: Why Bloomberg's Housing Policies May Have Been Fundamentally Flawed


Hammel Houses in Queens, image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

At the beginning of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s second term, homelessness in his city was at an all-time high: Nearly 40,000 New Yorkers were without homes, which was astronomical considering the city’s homeless population had never reached 30,000 before Bloomberg took office. In response, he laid out an ambitious five-year plan to reduce homelessness by two-thirds.

Eight years later, 48,694 people were homeless, according to the New York City Department of Homeless Services.

What went wrong?

The administration’s critics might say that the mayor’s housing policies failed because he’s out of touch with most New Yorkers. His recent gaffe — ”nobody sleeps on the streets” — and the administration’s infamous policy of offering homeless families one-way tickets out of town certainly give credence to that idea. Critics may also point to the mayor’s support for the continued conversion of the city’s rent-regulated system to a market rate system, which continues to obliterate the city’s affordable housing stock.

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However, the mayor’s defenders would probably suggest that the rise in homelessness has more to do with nationwide phenomena; every city suffered during the severe economic downturn and collapse of the housing market, and this helped to create a perfect storm that no one could navigate, not even a man who became famous for understanding market forces. If people don’t have money, they can’t afford a place to live, simple as that.

Whichever camp you’re in, you would probably agree that the mayor’s efforts were, overall, unsuccessful. But was this a result of a billionaire’s blind faith in free markets or of housing policies that were fundamentally flawed?

When it came to the housing crisis that plagued all three of his four-year terms, Bloomberg clearly believed the road to success would be paved by the real estate industry.

Much of the administration’s efforts to curb homelessness relied on encouraging developers to create affordable housing; the “New Marketplace Plan” and 80/20 buildings, where 80 percent of the tenants pay market rate rent and 20 percent have their rents subsidized, trade attractive tax abatements for affordability (until the apartment becomes market rate).

These programs exempt building owners from paying the full real-property tax rate, and one tax abatement program, according to the Citizens Housing and Planning Council, results in an annual $257 million in uncollected city taxes.

But the mayor’s ideology dictates that such incentives are necessary, and that the market forces will solve problems in the long run. And it’s not far-fetched to view his appointments to the Rent Guidelines Board — a group of nine individuals that determine rent hike limits for nearly one million rent stabilized apartments — as an extension of that ideology. Two-thirds of the board members have backgrounds in investment banking, finance, or the real estate industry.

Perhaps the administration’s proximity to the real estate industry helped create the impression that he was far removed from the world of everyday people, and Bloomberg’s creation and preservation of approximately 150,000 affordable housing units and the expansion of supportive housing for people with disabilities, mental health, or substance use issues is overshadowed because of his relationships with realtors.

But the administration’s often-documented poor management of the city’s public housing system, the discontinuation of giving homeless families priority for Section 8 vouchers, and the de-funding of rental assistance programs suggest the mayor simply made bad decisions.

While tax abatements may have temporarily created more affordable housing units, tax breaks ultimately mean less revenue. So while developers took advantage of programs designed with building owners in mind, many of the city’s programs that were designed with the current and potential tenant in mind (as well as the homeless and potentially homeless) anguished. The “Advantage” program — which helped families leave shelters by finding apartments and work — was abruptly discontinued. Forty-four percent of the defunct program’s participants applied for shelter within a year. The program’s failure was reminiscent of its predecessor, the Housing Stability Plus program, which also resulted in many of the former participants returning to homeless shelters.

The mayor even lobbied against a measure that sought to save city funds and prevent homelessness among disabled New Yorkers living with AIDS. He insisted that there was a start up cost for the policy change, which advocates continue to dispute. However, both the mayor and AIDS housing advocates would probably agree that any cost associated with the proposed policy is dwarfed by the amount of money the city handed out in tax breaks to the real estate industry.

In addition to the quarter of a billion dollars the city sacrificed to entice developers into building affordable housing units, the Pratt Center for Community Development estimated the city gave away another $750 million per year because of a tax abatement program that doesn’t stipulate affordable housing units at all.

A full and thorough examination of Mayor Bloomberg’s 12-year record on housing reveals his commitment to free market principles as well as his astonishingly poor decision-making.

But maybe it’s not that complicated: New York’s income disparity gap — which was already one of the widest in the country — continues to grow. At the end of Bloomberg’s three terms, the gap has grown to rival sub-Saharan Africa, according to a 2012 report by the US Census Bureau.

While Mayor Bloomberg tried everything from building more affordable housing units to shipping homeless people out of town, he did nothing to address poverty. His policies may have made the problem worse. And if you don’t have money, you can’t afford a place to live.

It can’t be any simpler.

____

Jaron Benjamin is the executive director of the Met Council on Housing, New York City's oldest tenant union. He is also the coordinator of the Real Rent Reform Campaign, which represents thousands of lower and moderate income tenants throughout New York City.

 


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