A rally at the capitol (photo: Governor's Office via flickr)
This summer treated New Yorkers to a spectacular display of the vulnerabilities of the New York region’s century-old subway system. Hardly a day passes without a rush hour social media meltdown because of delays and service interruptions. The MTA’s own data back this up: the authority is struggling to keep pace with historically high ridership while also upgrading the system.
The recent agreement struck between Governor Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio to fund the MTA five-year capital budget is encouraging, but it does not in any significant way address the agency’s failure to build and maintain infrastructure with cost-efficiency. The MTA will likely find much of the funding for the capital budget by taking on more debt.
In light of these struggles, recent (and upcoming) increases in subway fares should draw out the pitchforks -- or they would, if straphangers knew that most of the money doesn’t go to services for riders, but to paying MTA debt service, which has reached the size of whole national economies. According to the MoveNY Fair Plan, 17 percent of the MTA operating budget is spent on debt service. That’s equivalent to 47 cents of every MetroCard swipe -- and that number is rising.
Bringing MTA capital costs under control will require an overhaul of the agency’s organizational practices across the board, but why should large banks benefit from our daily commuting woes? Let’s cut Wall Street out of the equation and create a bank for the people of New York. We should be financing MTA capital projects, along with many other public goods, with a state-owned public bank.
By allowing the MTA to consolidate and refinance its debt at better rates, a public bank for New York would make available more funds for getting the New York region’s transit infrastructure to a state of good repair and expanding the transportation network.
A state bank can and should address other issues as well. It would support local community banks and credit unions in small towns and rural communities in places like Rensselaer, Niagara, and Allegany counties to make more small business and agricultural loans. It would offer competitive financing and loan products for new green technology and energy investments. By supporting local community banks and credit unions, perhaps in conjunction with a pilot program to offer banking services at post offices, it could crowd out predatory check-cashing businesses.
Finally, it would create a means for refinancing student loans, taking the strain off straphangers and students--two constituencies in which Governor Cuomo has shown limited interest.
The Bank of New York would be professionally staffed and independent from, but accountable to, both a citizen advisory board and elected representatives. Funds from state and local treasuries and from public benefit corporations like the MTA would make up the bank’s deposits.
Four times since 2011, lawmakers in Albany have introduced legislation to study a potential Bank of New York, but it has never been given a vote. It will take a social movement to make it happen. This is how reformers established the only existing state bank in the nation, in North Dakota, when a progressive populist movement swept the corrupt establishment from power. These actions helped communities weather the Great Depression, and today the Bank of North Dakota has bipartisan support from a broad range of constituencies in that deep red state.
Taking control of finance by creating a public bank sounds radical, but “radical,” which comes from the Latin word for “roots,” only means getting to the root of the problem. Sometimes it’s not enough to trim the weeds -- you have to pull them out and plant something new. Finance, like electricity, water, or the internet, is a public utility and can be harnessed for the public good or enrich a few. We've been doing the latter. We know that the Wall Street way isn’t working, but we’ve been sticking to it because we don’t yet see alternatives.
A state bank would pull out some Wall Street roots and plant new seeds based on economic democracy, a system that puts greater power in the hands of the people and communities that create our common wealth. Economic democracy is a deeply American tradition stretching from Thomas Paine to the agrarian anti-renters and Free Soilers of 19th century New York, to the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement who built institutions for community ownership in the Jim Crow South and marched on Washington for jobs and freedom.
Like any one part of a larger whole, a state bank alone won't solve all of our problems--transit or otherwise. But New Yorkers across the political spectrum see that our current system doesn’t work, and with greater economic democracy we have a systemic alternative.
A public bank would serve all New Yorkers: working and farming families, students and small business owners, drivers and straphangers. A coalition drawn from those constituencies would quickly transform any “radical” notion into a common sense solution. A state bank is one tool for the people of New York to push back against Wall Street power, move our economy forward and help us invest in the future of our transit system and our state as a whole, from Buffalo to Plattsburgh to Brooklyn.
Rather than waiting for Albany to do right by the people of New York, New Yorkers can promote these structural changes by voting “yes” in the constitutional convention referendum that will be on the ballot in 2017.
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Matthew Rigney is a Master of City and Regional Planning candidate at Rutgers University. Evan Casper-Futterman is a PhD candidate in Public Policy at Rutgers University.
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Have an op-ed idea or submission for Gotham Gazette? E-mail editor Ben Max: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Protesting anti-immigrant messaging
As two of the 4.3 million immigrant members of this state, we, like most of our community, came to New York City with high hopes of acceptance and opportunity. And we love our city. We love how diverse it is, how progressive its values are, and how we have so much opportunity to work together to identify problems and fight for solutions.
One thing we do not love, however, is that there is a group of wealthy New Yorkers working against our immigrant communities to make us feel unwelcome and to separate our families.
As a new report, "Backers of Hate in the Empire State" (which the organizations to which we belong produced with the Center for Popular Democracy Action) has revealed, there is a group of wealthy New Yorkers who are using their millions and elite networks to fund and support the anti-immigrant movement in this country. And the anti-immigrant rhetoric and organizing they are behind is now tragically seeping into our nation's political arena.
That's why, this week, more than 50 immigrants like us joined together recently to protest in midtown Manhattan to call out the backers of hate. These organizations and individuals work together to create an irrational fear of immigrants and they work in favor of anti-immigrant policy. Individuals like Barbara Winston, beneficiary of the Winston gem fortune, have supported anti-immigrant groups for years, and now candidates like Donald Trump and Carly Fiorina are following this lead.
The rhetoric of Trump and other Republicans reflects the hate and lies of these groups. And the same is true for policy. Like anti-immigration groups such as the Federation for American Reform (listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center), Keeping Identities Safe, the Center for Immigration Studies, and NumbersUSA, leading GOP candidates oppose immigration relief and a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, and they want to get rid of birthright citizenship.
Most New Yorkers disagree with these extreme views, and that's why we're fighting back. We first picketed outside a jewelry store owned by members of the Winston family, and then marched and continued to rally outside of Trump Tower. Our march traced the dangerous connections between the backers of hate in New York State and the toxic conversation around immigration that Republican candidates have launched. This followed several other protests against Mr. Trump himself, at which immigrant New Yorkers have directly confronted him for his anti-immigrant positions.
It's time for the millionaires and billionaires who are using their resources to back anti-immigrant movements to stop and instead use their money and energy to improve schools for our children and housing for our communities—to create a better future for this nation. But, while they continue their anti-immigrant work, it's critical that politicians, the media, and other organizations cut ties with individuals and organizations who support a hateful, anti-immigrant agenda. New York should be a progressive beacon for our country—not a haven for hate.
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by Maria Rubio, Make the Road Action Fund, and Elva Meneses, New York Communities for Change.
A citizenship ceremony (photo: Ed Reed, Mayor's Office)
New York City's new plan will expand access to care for immigrants across the City
Access to health care is on the rise all across New York City, thanks to federal, state, and city efforts over the last few years.
For example, the latest data show that the number of people who are uninsured dropped 34 percent from 2013 to 2014. That's the good news. The bad news is that many of the remaining uninsured New Yorkers still face daunting barriers to access basic care because of their immigration status or because they don't yet speak English fluently. Indeed, during the congressional debates on the Affordable Care Act, immigrants were treated as the "poison pill" for the legislation, and during debates on immigration reform, health care coverage is similarly sidelined.
We are working to change that dynamic at the local level. With Mayor de Blasio's new plan to improve immigrant access to health care, we are creating a more equitable city. Over the coming months, we will launch the Direct Access project, to explore an affordable system that will provide comprehensive primary and preventive care to immigrants who are ineligible for support under the Affordable Care Act. This project's success will serve as the basis for a more inclusive health care system, including families in our city without access to insurance.
Direct Access is a recommendation of the Mayor's Task Force on Immigrant Health Care Access, a group of City government officials, community advocates, health care professionals, hospital administrators, and public health experts. The Task Force's recommendations acknowledge that many immigrants face unique struggles in accessing care. Many who do not yet have full English proficiency have difficulty finding help in their language. Some encounter a health care system that seems dauntingly unfamiliar. Others find themselves excluded from access to care due to our broken federal immigration system's outdated rules and the failure of multiple attempts at federal reform.
These barriers mean that far too many of our fellow New Yorkers are relegated to a second-class health care system in which they must forgo basic medical care such as check-ups, cancer screening, and chronic care management. Instead they are forced to rely on inefficient emergency room visits and overburdened neighborhood providers, with little to no opportunity for follow-up care. This means that our immigrant family members and neighbors often do not get sufficient basic health care, resulting in missed workdays and unnecessary illness, and a cost that we all share.
The Affordable Care Act, passed in 2010, has helped to solve these problems for millions of Americans. It has expanded access to health care across the country, providing support to nearly all low-income and moderate-income Americans to get health insurance.
But that qualifier—"nearly all"—makes a big difference in our diverse city. According to our analysis, as many as 345,000 uninsured New York City residents who live, work, and raise their families here will remain uninsured because they are ineligible for help under the Affordable Care Act due solely to their immigration status. That is more people than the entire population of St. Louis. Much, perhaps most, of this population would benefit from proposed immigration reforms or the President's November 2014 executive actions. However, all of those measures have been held up in congressional committees or in the courts, victim to political calculations.
We cannot wait for others, in D.C. or Albany, to solve this problem for us. The health and safety of our residents is ultimately our responsibility, and the Mayor's plan represents a bold step forward—the first effort in the country since the implementation of the Affordable Care Act to grow immigrant health care access.
The Mayor's new immigrant health effort is the first step towards a more inclusive health care system. This will strengthen our health care system, our immigrant communities, and our city as a whole.
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by Nisha Agarwal, Commissioner, NYC Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs. On Twitter at @NYCImmigrants.
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