Gov. Andrew Cuomo, left, has some nearly-forgotten accomplishments (photo: @NYGovCuomo)
New York is suffering from mass political amnesia: no one seems to remember the condition of the state's polity when Andrew Cuomo assumed office. The Senate was barely functioning. Executive-legislative relations were in shambles. Key social policy issues went unaddressed. The Upstate economy languished. Budgets were regularly late and structurally out of balance. Summing up, Dal Forsythe, a former Budget Director and respected authority on state government, wrote: "[T]he state's governance system is widely regarded as among the worst in the nation, and its leaders seem unable to achieve effective cooperation for the accomplishment of common goals."
In his 2010 campaign manifesto, The New New York Agenda: A Plan for Action, candidate Cuomo proposed dozens of initiatives organized around five broad themes: integrity in government; fiscal probity; governmental efficiency; economic development; and social policy. Candidates eschew priorities to build winning coalitions; governors must have them to governor. Andrew Cuomo, after election, gave primacy to putting New York's finances in order.
Economies were sought not only from state government operations – austere labor agreements, restructuring state operations - but by encouraging localities to collaborate, reduced assistance to general purpose local governments and school districts, and capping and freezing the property tax, local governments' lifeblood. On the revenue side, state taxes were largely held in check. A start was made to open up new sources of money: constitutional change to allow casino gambling. Changes were made in funding key state functions to ease demands on the general fund (e.g. the "rational tuition policy" for SUNY).
This focus on creating a sound state budget was a reasonable priority for Cuomo, perhaps the best priority. It offered extraordinary synergies. Financial integrity is intrinsically important for a state's health. Achieving it through sequential years of timely budgets demonstrated competence to govern, and was a major step toward restoring confidence in government. A sound budget, with taxes constrained, requires attention to efficiency and underlies economic growth.
The respected Citizens Budget Commission wrote this May that New York's fiscal discipline "has markedly improved the State's fiscal condition." In June, Moody's Investors Services raised the state's bond rating to its highest level in half a century. In July, State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, a co-partisan but no great political friend of the governor, reported: "New York has made significant budgetary improvements since the Great Recession to put it on solid financial footing, and the result is that the state's fiscal condition is the best it has been in years."
Most politics involves giving to get. We have a legislature. It shares power. Its members are elected; they are not gubernatorial appointees. So to get what he wanted most, to build the necessary coalitions, Cuomo often found it necessary to give ground on his other agenda areas.
One casualty was political reform. Legislators are winners under current electoral rules. They don't like changes that restrict their discretion - like ethics reform - or diminish their hold on office - like genuinely neutral redistricting or campaign finance reform. In the face of their resistance, even to ideas most Assembly and Senate members pledged to support during the 2010 election, like independent redistricting, reform became a lesser priority for the governor. It was not abandoned, but its evisceration was accepted.
A second was the social agenda, or large elements of it. Majority Senate Republicans were aligned with Cuomo's fiscal goals; an easy sell. But many of them relied on Conservative Party backing. They resisted same-sex marriage, and the reproductive rights element of the women's equality agenda. Cuomo had to modify, delay, or put aside these high profile social policy goals to advance his first priority. After a delay, same-sex marriage was achieved. Two Republican Senators who supported same-sex marriage were defeated in the next election. Reproductive rights is still an agenda item.
The steps Cuomo took to advance his fiscal goals angered some in his party: Senate Democrats who were shut out of power, and local elected Democrats who felt the squeeze of property tax limits. They also provoked opposition from interest groups that usually supported Democrats: public employee unions, education activists - in general, those who advanced various elements of the so-called "progressive agenda."
Most politics involves giving to get, but not all. Some things cannot be negotiable for a governor, things like opposition to corruption. Dissolving early his own Moreland Commission on Public Corruption deprived the governor of directive moral authority; it reduced him to the status of 'ordinary politician.' Cuomo, regarded as extraordinarily politically astute, erred in treating the Moreland Commission as one more occasion for ordinary transactional politics. Moreover, he failed to realize that a very powerful actor from outside state government – federal prosecutor Preet Bharara – would be drawn into the arena by his actions in connection with this commission, in the midst of the election season. The unfolding is still unknown.
A second political miscalculation was an underestimation by the governor of the political costs of the priority he chose, and those he compromised. Disappointed or angered Democrats, he calculated, would nevertheless be unwilling to support a Republican. They would have no real alternative at the polls, except to not vote at all. The importance to the governor of the Working Families Party nomination was in accord with the strategic goal of denying disaffected Democrats an alternative to him on left in the general election. But Zephyr Teachout, energized by her spirited but failed bid for the Working Familes nomination, unexpectedly decided to fight on, qualified for the Democrat primary ballot, and survived Cuomo's legal challenge to her residency. Teachout emerged as a David against Cuomo's Goliath, offering the very alternative in a Democrat primary that the governor sought to avoid.
Critics suggest that Andrew Cuomo had the wrong priorities, and made the wrong tradeoffs. In fact they suggest that tradeoffs were not necessary, and say that he could have achieved all that they really wanted, and he said he wanted, if he truly desired to do so. Their vision of a single person fully empowered to rule New York would be frightening if it were true; fortunately it is not in our power sharing system.
Andrew Cuomo in his first term has been a serious, focused governor who advanced the right priority for New York, but also has made some very bad choices and judgments. Under Cuomo's leadership New York has been better governed than at any time in the state's recent past, and is poised for further renewal. But now we need a new first priority: we must adopt the institutional and process reforms that will allow us to restore our democracy, to be fairly and cleanly governed.
For political system change, as the experience of the past four years again painfully shows, we cannot rely on any governor and any legislature. We must bypass those in power. Our institutional means for doing this is to call a Constitutional Convention.
We are required to be asked at referendum in 2017, during the term of the governor we elect this year, whether we want such a convention. Calling one to achieve comprehensive reform in our politics and government reform was part of Andrew Cuomo's New New York Agenda in 2010. It must be a leading priority for the next elected governor.
Meanwhile, two cheers for Andrew Cuomo. Not one. Not three. Two cheers.
***
Gerald Benjamin is Director, Center for Research Regional Education and Outreach (CRREO) - SUNY New Paltz
Do you have an op-ed idea or submission for Gotham Gazette? Send it to Executive Editor Ben Max: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
SBS Commissioner Maria Torres-Springer, the author (photo: Rob Bennett/Mayor's Office)
There are more than 200,000 small businesses in New York City, which represents nearly 98 percent of all businesses across the five boroughs. Small businesses give our neighborhoods their unique character, and employ more than half of New York City's private sector workforce. But they also achieve much more. As the daughter of immigrant entrepreneurs, I personally understand that for many people, owning a business can be their first chance for economic self-determination and a path to the middle class.
When Mayor de Blasio appointed me as Commissioner of Small Business Services earlier this year, he tasked me and the leadership of all City agencies with fighting inequality in all its forms, on all its fronts, and building a city where everyone can rise together. With this charge in mind, my vision for the Department of Small Business Services (SBS) is to ensure that every job seeker and business owner has access to the resources they need to succeed. I plan to achieve this by impacting three key pillars: good jobs, stronger businesses, and a fairer economy.
SBS is dedicated to addressing the unique needs of local entrepreneurs through a variety of free services that help businesses in all five boroughs start, operate, and grow. We work with business owners like Maggie Kwok, who utilized our agency's NYC Business Acceleration services to open her first restaurant, Shanghai Asian Manor, in Lower Manhattan. Maggie was so happy with the City's services, when she was ready to open a second location in Flushing, Queens, she knew to come to the City for help. NYC Business Acceleration guided Maggie through the City's regulatory process, helping her interface with numerous agencies to open both locations faster, providing jobs for more than 60 New Yorkers.
Small business owners like Maggie Kwok face many challenges. In my first few months at SBS, we have launched numerous new initiatives to ensure that government's infrastructure works better and harder for the small businesses and neighborhoods that most need our help.
- NYC Business Acceleration is one way we are helping small businesses cut through the City's red tape and open their doors faster. This service has helped more than 2,000 restaurants across the city open an average of 2.5 months faster, and we recently announced that we are expanding the program to serve small businesses in retail and manufacturing as well.
- Small Business First: We are not only providing direct services to small businesses, but we are also working with City Hall and more than ten partner agencies to help reduce fines and violations on small businesses through Small Business First. This multi-faceted inter-agency initiative is about changing the way government interacts with small business owners by improving the regulatory climate in New York City and helping businesses avoid penalties and fines through collaboration, simplification, and education.
- Immigrant Small Businesses: As we expand our services and collaborate with partner agencies to help small businesses, we are also working to fundamentally change the way government provides services to New York City's immigrant entrepreneurs, who make up nearly half of the city's small businesses owners. Already, we have doubled our agency's non-English business course offerings and are launching our NYC Craft Entrepreneurship program in Spanish, so unemployed and underemployed New Yorkers with craft skills can earn supplemental income from selling their crafts online. With support from Citi Community Development, we have launched the Immigrant Business Initiative, developing partnerships with community-based organizations to help identify and execute new services to strengthen immigrant-owned businesses, particularly in the Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Haitian-Creole, and Russian communities.
Stronger small businesses mean stronger neighborhoods and more good jobs for New Yorkers. Last year, SBS assisted more than 15,000 business owners, helped nearly 7,000 new businesses open across the city, and connected entrepreneurs to more than $45 million in capital. The City can help with free services including pro-bono legal advising, business courses, access to capital, recruitment services, certification, help navigating government, incentives, and more. I encourage anyone with an interest in small business services to call 311, visit our website, or drop by an NYC Business Solutions Center in one of the five boroughs.
***
by Maria Torres-Springer, Commissioner, New York City Department of Small Business Services
Do you have an op-ed idea or submission for Gotham Gazette? Send it to Executive Editor Ben Max: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
From "Big Dreams for New York City's Smallest Children"
When you ask the people running childcare and early education programs for low-income kids what would help their all-important work most, the predictable answer is: more money. And the experience of EarlyLearnNYC, the City's much-ballyhooed revamping of subsidized programs for kids from 6 weeks to 4 years old, shows that while instruction standards have been raised, funding not only hasn't kept pace; one effect is that teacher take-home pay has, perversely, been reduced.
The good news – contained in our recent Center for New York City Affairs at the New School report on EarlyLearnNYC's mixed record since its 2012 launch – is that there's a lot we can do to financially shore up early childhood education using already existing funds. The key is getting more kids currently eligible for subsidized programs enrolled in them – a goal that EarlyLearnNYC has struggled to meet. In fact, enrollment in child care programs that hold contracts with the City crashed in the first months of EarlyLearnNYC, plummeting below 80 percent of the system's total capacity. That number has slowly climbed back up to 89 percent over the past year-and-a-half – but that still leaves more than 4,000 subsidized child care slots sitting empty.
We've identified how, with a little entrepreneurial effort and red tape cutting, the City can recapture tax dollars for quality early education that are now all too often being spent for little more than informal babysitting.
Here's the deal: Federal law requires the City to provide childcare vouchers to parents making the transition from receiving public benefits to holding jobs. Since 1999, the number of kids covered by such vouchers has jumped by more than two-thirds, to nearly 57,000.
Parents are legally entitled to use those vouchers any way they see fit – and today the overwhelming majority wind up paying friends or family members to mind their tots during the workday. That's a huge missed opportunity to reach and teach kids whose brains are sponges for knowledge and who aren't getting the exposure to learning they need. It's also a pretty poor return on what's expected to be an outlay of $367 million in tax dollars ($67 million raised directly from city tax levy) over the next 12 months.
Our formula for changing that has two key elements. The first requires getting two major city agencies – The Human Resources Administration that manages childcare vouchers and the Administration for Children's Services that oversees EarlyLearnNYC – consistently on the same page. When they have worked together to encourage parents to use vouchers for EarlyLearnNYC programs, they've produced positive results. The goal should be making such cooperation, reinforced by targeted social media outreach and mass media ad campaigns, the rule rather than the exception it now is.
The second reform we propose is: Make it easier for parents to enroll youngsters in EarlyLearnNYC. There's no doubt that the current way-too-cumbersome enrollment process can be made simpler, quicker, and more convenient without any serious downside. The discouraging schedule of parent co-pays for EarlyLearnNYC – now as high as $3,000 a year for families making less than $25,000 – also needs to be made more financially realistic.
Getting more kids in EarlyLearnNYC would be a win for them, and also for their parents, for early childhood education programs, and for the city as a whole. It would prime thousands more kids for success when they move on to the city's expanded all-day pre-kindergarten classes.
It would also strengthen the case for upping funding for early childhood learning. The mavens are absolutely right when they say they need more money. We think they'll have an even better argument to make by working with the City to aggressively, creatively, and cooperatively increase EarlyLearnNYC's now foundering enrollment.
***
Kendra Hurley and Abigail Kramer of the Center for New York City Affairs at the New School are authors of the new report, Big Dreams for New York City's Youngest Children: The future of early care and education
Do you have an op-ed idea or submission for Gotham Gazette? Send it to Executive Editor Ben Max: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.