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You Can Help Boost Voter Turnout on Election Day, But You Have to Register Soon


voting booth elections

(Edwin J. Torres/Mayor's Office)


In order to vote in the city’s November 7 general election -- for Mayor, Public Advocate, Comptroller, Borough President City Council, and other offices -- one must register with the Board of Elections by Friday, October 13. For registrations by mail, registration forms must be postmarked by October 13 and received by the BOE by Wednesday, October 18. This is only for New York City residents who are not currently registered to vote.

Since party primaries are over, prospective voters are no longer being held to party registration deadlines and regulations -- New York has a closed primary system, with party-change deadlines far in advance. To vote in November’s election, one must simply be registered, with any party or none -- those registered to vote but not with one of about 10 official political parties are called “unaffiliated” voters. They are also at times referred to as “independents” or even “blanks” because of how they leave the party registration section of the form.

It appears that many New Yorkers have registered with the Independence Party thinking that it makes them an “independent” voter, but that is not the case.

Notably, though, Friday, October 13 -- of this year, 2017 -- is also the deadline to change your party registration ahead of next year's 2018 state-level electoral primaries in New York. If you're already registered to vote, you can declare a party or change parties by October 13 and be eligible for voting in Democratic, Republican, or other party primaries next fall.

Turnout on this Election Day is expected to be very low, with Mayor Bill de Blasio appearing likely to trounce his main opponents, Republican Nicole Malliotakis and independent Bo Dietl, as well as other minor candidates, including Reform Party nominee Sal Albanese, Green Party nominee Akeem Browder, and Michael Tolkin, running on his self-created Smart Cities ballot line.

In 2013, the turnout in the general election between de Blasio and Republican Joe Lhota was a meager 24%, the lowest in the city’s modern history. The 24% turnout in the general came after the Democratic and Republican primaries clocked in at 22% and 12%, respectively.

In this year’s Democratic primary on September 12, 14% of registered Democrats turned out to cast ballots. This is one of the lowest Democratic primary turnouts in the city’s history; in 2009, Bill Thompson won the Democratic mayoral primary with turnout of 11%.

This starkly low turnout in the Democratic primary comes in the wake of even lower turnout numbers in last year’s primaries for state and federal legislative offices. In the September 2016 state legislative primary, turnout totaled 10%; in June’s congressional primary, turnout stood at a measly 8%, according to a report from the City’s Board of Elections.

These numbers stood in sharp contrast to the turnout rates for the higher profile presidential contest that year: 35% of registered party members voted in April’s presidential primary, and 62% of registered voters in New York City voted in the November general election, with Hillary Clinton versus Donald Trump at the top of the marquee.

As of April 1 in New York City, there were just under 5 million registered voters. Of these, about 3.43 million were Democrats, about 522,600 were Republicans, and about 880,660 were unaffiliated with a party. Many thousands more were spread among the smaller parties, including Green, Reform, Independence, Conservative, and Working Families.

A recent poll for this year’s mayoral race from NBC-4 and Marist College shows de Blasio leading the pack with 65% of the vote, followed by Malliotakis at 18% and Dietl at 8%. While there are several weeks to Election Day, competitors must catch fire soon to have a chance to unseat the Democratic incumbent. The first debate -- with de Blasio, Malliotakis and Dietl -- is scheduled for Tuesday, October 10.

New Yorkers can check their registration status here, check registration deadlines here, and see a full list of candidates for all offices in the general election here.

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by Ben Brachfeld, Gotham Gazette

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James Defends Approach to De Blasio, Outlines Second Term Priorities


tish presser nycprogressives crop

Public Advocate James (photo: @NYCProgressives)


Public Advocate Letitia James, a Democrat running for a second term, is facing a challenge from Republican candidate J.C. Polanco, who believes James has done little to hold accountable a mayor who aligns closely with her own politics. But James, an outspoken former litigator, has her defense ready as the two move toward a televised debate on October 16.

During a recent appearance on the Max & Murphy podcast, James rebutted critics of her first term and sought to dispel the notion that she has not stood up to Mayor Bill de Blasio. She also outlined other aspects of her record she is most proud of as she seeks reelection and put forth several areas she intends to focus on if given another term.

James told podcast hosts Ben Max, editor of Gotham Gazette, and Jarrett Murphy, editor of City Limits, that she has spent the last four years using her familiarity with the legal system to battle the administration on many fronts, whether it be improving school transportation for students with disabilities or fighting for rent exemptions for seniors. She has been critical of the failures of city agencies, such as the Administration for Children Services, and has called out the mayor for not supporting legislation that has been priorities for her office.

To a lesser degree, however, has she employed her bully pulpit to criticize the mayor’s own ethics and transparency, being less vocal than her fellow Democrat, Comptroller Scott Stringer, for instance. James acknowledged on the podcast that she has not taken her own more subtle approach to accountability, but said she has not been shy to disagree substantively or to sue or to criticize, citing several examples, but also said she has worked with the administration behind the scenes to create productive outcomes.

When she first researched the role of public advocate, the office was “ill-defined” with no clear objective, James said in the Max & Murphy interview. “There was a lot of room to engage on a lot of efforts on a wide range of issues that obviously I care about, but it all boils down to one issue, and that is social justice,” she said. “It’s part of who I am. It’s part of my DNA. It’s my raison d’etre.”

On taking office, she said, her priorities were to use her legal skills to litigate strategically, to “continue to engage in investigations on issues that impact low- and moderate- and middle-income families,” and to maintain strong relationships with the City Council, which has been a partner in passing progressive legislation proposed by James. She referenced the town halls she has held all over the city as fulfilling the need to hear directly from New Yorkers.

James’ opponent, Polanco, an attorney and former educator, is running on a platform of government reform, and that includes reforming the public advocate’s office to give it more teeth. “I really want to reform the office and make it an opportunity for New Yorkers to have a real watchdog to oversee what the mayor and the City Council is doing,” he said in a recent appearance on Max & Murphy, explaining several added powers he wants to see given to the public advocate, including subpoena power. Polanco emphasized the need for an independent voice to moderate the “extreme ultra-left agenda coming out of City Hall” and, while calling James herself “ethical,” took issue with her effectively enabling what he sees as the mayor’s unethical practices.

“I think that if you endorse a mayor as unethically challenged as this one, if you can see it took NY1 and The New York Post to sue City Hall to get email records that demonstrate a pay-to-play operation, if you can endorse someone like that, I am going to be very suspect as to why you’re endorsing them,” he said of James’ support for de Blasio.

James sees it differently, and is confident she’s been a tough check on the administration. “When I’ve agreed with the mayor on issues, I’ve stood by his side,” she said. “When I disagreed with the mayor, we’ve criticized the mayor.” She cited numerous instances to bolster her point.

She criticized the mayor’s reluctance to create a separate agency for veterans affairs in the city, she said, and has opposed his policies on homelessness and the administration’s use of temporary hotel shelters. She also touted the lawsuits she has filed against the administration, including one that took aim at a rule change passed by the administration that she claimed was kicking eligible seniors off the rolls of a property tax exemption. She touted a victory in opening up School Leadership Team meetings across the city to the public.

James also pointed to the New York Post editorial board’s praise for her in December last year for speaking out against the mayor over the “agents of the city” controversy, that involved the administration attempting to shield the mayor’s email exchanges with unpaid outside advisors. “Consultants, lobbyists — to me, it’s a distinction without much of a difference,” James had said at the time, part of one of the larger episodes that Polanco calls into question in terms of de Blasio’s ethics and James’ reactions.

When de Blasio’s administration was embroiled in numerous controversies, chiefly revolving around dual investigations of his fundraising practices and the work of a political nonprofit set up by his allies, James was conspicuously silent for the most part, and did not publicly condemn the mayor at news conferences as one might have expected from someone in the public advocate position. But that has been part-and-parcel of her approach to the office, she said. “I thought that as the public advocate of the City of New York and having a relationship with the mayor where we’re somewhat like-minded philosophically and politically, that I can get more done by having a conversation with him one-on-one with regards to our differences and coming to some agreement,” she said regarding the approach more broadly, not on any specific issue.

“Because we have a relationship, and because I have a relationship with a significant number of commissioners, and we are all focused on one objective, and that is a more progressive approach to legislation and a more progressive approach to dealing with these problems which appear to be intractable, we’ve achieved quite a bit in the office of public advocate,” she added, “and I would argue without any fear of contradiction that we have done more in the last four years than any previous public advocate or all public advocates combined.” De Blasio is, of course, a member of that group.

Undoubtedly, James is well-placed for a second term, with visibility among voters who are overwhelmingly registered Democrats, strong campaign finances, and near universal labor union support. And she is going into reelection with an agenda for the next four years, which includes affordable housing, criminal justice reform, property tax reform and mental health services, to name a few issues.

As she looks to talk issues, James expressed frustration that the controversy over the statue of Christopher Columbus -- which arose in the aftermath of white supremacist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia in August after a protest over the removal of the statue of a Confederate general -- has subsumed other more important matters. Following the incidents, Mayor de Blasio announced a commission that would study public monuments in the city to determine which ones are appropriate and which ones have a sordid history and should perhaps be removed.

“I think this is really a distraction from the major issues that we really should be focusing on,” James said on the podcast, insisting that she’d rather talk about issues like public housing, homelessness, mental health services and grand jury reform. For the record, James supports preserving the statue of Columbus and stresses that it should serve an educational purpose.

“The monument should remain, there should be a teaching opportunity where we talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly of Christopher Columbus and how he exploited indigenous populations,” she said. “But I’d rather be having more a substantive conversation about what we can do to improve the lives of residents of public housing, what we can do to transform the third rail of politics, that is property tax, which is squeezing the middle class and resulting in so many senior citizens who are losing their property or liens being placed on their properties.”

Her largest priority is housing, she said, whether it’s NYCHA developments or affordable housing for several demographics, including homeless people. On October 9, James will rally at City Hall with members of dozens of churches to advocate for a NYCHA infill proposal that originated in the community, she said.

James wants to build off the city’s successful universal pre-kindergarten program and expand to quality infant care in the city. She said she will push for reopening dental and health clinics in public schools, which she said she fought for when former Mayor Bloomberg closed them down. And she believes the city needs to reevaluate the numerous neighborhood rezonings that are creating widespread uncertainty and discontent in low- and middle-income communities fearing gentrification. The city needs to involve community-based organizations in the conversation, she said, and build affordable housing on unused public land.

“We need a housing bond act. We need to build over rail yards...We need more integrated housing...integrated by income,” she said. “More housing set aside for homeless, moderate-, middle-income housing. We need more work-live space in the City of New York and we really need to examine these rezonings.”

She also emphasized the need for reexamination of the 421-a property tax exemption, approved at the state level, which she believes allows developers to create luxury housing and exacerbates the need for more middle-income housing. The operative issue, however, is that would require cooperation from the state.

“I think we need a better relationship with the governor of the State of New York,” she said, “and if in fact there were improved relationships with the State of New York, which holds the lion’s share of housing subsidies, we could go a long way in addressing the crisis in affordable housing and the homelessness situation.”

James can only hope, though. For the better part of his first term, de Blasio has famously feuded with Governor Andrew Cuomo, also a Democrat, and the two have been reluctant to work together even when their policy goals intersect.

At a news conference on Tuesday, when Gotham Gazette asked de Blasio about James’ appeal to comity with the governor, the mayor said it was “idealistic” to expect such cooperation, sarcastically likening it to the Republican Congress offering unsolicited aid to the city. “Likewise, I’d like to see the governor focus more on actually delivering on affordable housing for New York City. There’s been some big pronouncements but I haven’t seen a lot of delivery and we need it. I don’t think it’s about relationship. I think it’s about everyone doing their job and living up to their commitments. And you know my job...is to hold people to their commitments and be an agent of accountability when it comes to the needs of New York City.”

As for James’ call that the city take a more ambitious approach to building affordable housing, de Blasio indicated that he is always open to continuing to evaluate what can be done, but that he has set the city on its most ambitious affordable housing plan ever, at 200,000 built or preserved units over 10 years.

[Listen to the full podcast episode of Max & Murphy with Public Advocate Letitia James]

[Listen to public advocate candidate J.C. Polanco on Max & Murphy]

***
by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

Read more by this writer.

Can Redevelopment of the Bedford Union Armory Be Saved?


bedford armory rendering

Rendering of the Bedford Union Armory via BFC Partners


A land use proposal to redevelop the 138,000-square-foot, publicly-owned Bedford Union Armory in Crown Heights to create a mix of different types of housing and a state-of-the-art recreation center has seen successive setbacks in recent months. As proposed, the project has been rejected by community advocates, the local community board, the local City Council member, Laurie Cumbo, and the borough president, Eric Adams, all of whom believe the project should include more affordable housing.

The de Blasio administration, in response, has vowed to work with local elected officials and the city-selected developer behind the project to make it acceptable, especially to Cumbo, who will have the final say in a few short weeks.

But, with any land use redevelopment, the administration must balance the resources at its disposal to achieve maximum effect, and in this case, making the project more palatable to community members calling it a harbinger of gentrification would likely mean making it less profitable for the developer and more costly for the city. As the clock ticks on negotiations and a series of essential decisions dictated by the city’s land use review process, it is unclear what steps the de Blasio administration might take to make a deal happen, advance a key project, and avoid a potentially significant political defeat.

BFC Partners is the developer selected through a competitive bidding process run by the New York City Economic Development Corporation. The initial request for proposals (RFP) was put out in October 2013, prior to Mayor Bill de Blasio taking office, and the project was awarded to BFC in December 2015. Over the next year, the project became a source of significant controversy and become a burning issue in this year’s District 35 City Council race, where Cumbo was running for reelection. It has also become a symbol of the de Blasio administration’s strategy for creating affordable housing across the city and a sore spot and political vulnerability for the mayor, a fellow Democrat who did not endorse Cumbo but sent behind-the-scenes support for her campaign.

The redevelopment proposal envisions converting the armory -- which spans an entire city block and sits defunct -- into an affordable recreation center, 330 rental housing units at various levels of affordability, and 56 condominiums to be sold.

Of the 330 rental units, 164 would be market rate while the rest would be “affordable” for low-income and middle-income families, whereby rents are capped so that tenants pay no more than 30 percent of their income to the landlord. Affordability is calculated according to the 2016 Area Median Income (AMI) of $81,600 for a family of three. The rental units would include 18 units at 40 percent AMI; 49 units at 50 percent AMI; and 99 units at 110 percent AMI, providing rent regulated apartments to households of various income levels.

AMI apartments Bedford Union Armory

Of the condos, 44 would be sold at market rate and 12 at 120 percent AMI. BFC Partners would receive a 99-year ground lease on a majority of the site, recouping its costs through sales of the condos, rents on the apartments, fees from the recreation center, and a developer fee from the city.

De Blasio has pitched the project as a much-needed community facility, similar to the Park Slope Armory recreation center, which can be kept affordable in the long-term under the current structure of the plan, with the benefit of creating affordable housing. As it stands, the project does not include any housing subsidies that the administration has used in the past to create more affordability in land use redevelopments. At a September 14 news conference, de Blasio indicated openness to adding more subsidies, though he was noncommittal as to what the city might do to sweeten the deal.

“[W]e want that to be the best possible project for the community, we're going to look at every way to improve it,” he told reporters, noting that the current plan allows for the recreation center to be affordable on an ongoing basis. “That's what we need to come out of this in the end. But we’re going to work with the Council member to see if there is a way to improve the project that would win her support and be more comfortable for the community.”

Cumbo, the Council member de Blasio referred to, recently won the primary for her reelection effort against an opponent who put the Bedford Union Armory at the core of the campaign, accusing Cumbo of being too close to real estate developers and ineffective at stemming the gentrification and displacement sweeping the changing district. Cumbo faced criticism for dithering about the project for months only to oppose it earlier this year, but came to draw a line in the sand on the project. Without her approval, the project is dead on arrival at the City Council, which traditionally votes with the local member on land use applications and will have 50 days to evaluate the deal once it is referred by the City Planning Commission, perhaps with adjustments, unless it is taken completely off the table by then.

Cumbo was not made available to comment for this article. Her spokesperson, Kristia Beaubrun, referred Gotham Gazette to the Council member’s statement in May when she came out against the proposal.

"Since the very beginning our message has been clear: We will not allow public land to be used for the purpose of luxury condominiums,” she said, calling on the mayor to “go back to the drawing board and produce a plan that meets the needs of my Brooklyn neighbors.”

Last month, Borough President Adams, as part of the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP) required of all such proposals, rejected the project and recommended that the city increase the number of deeply affordable units and also provide more upper-tier affordable housing units to offset the costs of running the recreation center.

Adams also called for more permanent affordability -- currently, 30 percent of the units are permanently affordable -- and for 20 percent of the rental apartments to be allotted to the Department of Housing Preservation and Development’s “Our Space Initiative” for housing homeless families. “This is our opportunity to get this right,” he said. “This process has gone through years of debate, emotions, and public scrutiny, both for and against the development. We must ultimately come together and find the right balance that is the ideal solution for the future of Crown Heights, and for the optimal reuse of the Bedford Union Armory as a public resource.”

The proposal is currently before the City Planning Commission, which will hold a public review session on Wednesday before voting on the project later this month. The CPC can either approve the project, with or without changes, and send it to the City Council for further review, or it can reject it, although that would be shocking and especially rare.

“It’s hard for me to imagine tweaks at this stage that would address the concerns being raised,” said Emily Goldstein, senior campaign organizer at the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development. Goldstein, who is not involved in the community efforts around the armory, said the administration isn’t taking full advantage of the city’s ownership of the land, which allows it to demand more benefits than it could if the project were on a privately-owned site. “There are broader concerns about wanting lasting community control,” she said.

Goldstein hits at the heart of the opposition to the project by community activists. The Our Armory Coalition, a group that includes the Crown Heights Tenant Union, New York Communities for Change, Picture the Homeless, The Black Institute, The Legal Aid Society, and others, have called for a community land trust to develop the project, rather than a private firm. That would allow community voices to drive decisions on the property in the community interest, rather than effectively giving a for-profit developer a century-long hold over public property.

“The RFP process for the Bedford Armory has been flawed and corrupt from the very start,” said the coalition, in a statement last month, calling for the project to be scrapped entirely and for the city to issue a new request for proposals. “Elected officials including Cumbo are [sic] failed to address the fact that BFC is a for profit developer, making money off our public land while not providing real affordability to the community. And that’s unacceptable.”

“I don’t see any reason it shouldn’t be explored,” said ANHD’s Goldstein of a community land trust, also insisting that it isn’t the only option available. “There are other ways to build in the idea that public land is a public resource that should remain public. I think there’s a flaw in the calculus the city is using.”

She acknowledged that deeper affordability would require more city subsidies and that BFC’s application may have been the most attractive proposal. But, she said, “It’s shortsighted to do what’s cheaper in the short term. What you lose in the long term is permanent affordability. It’s hard to start from where they are and make it more affordable.”

One housing expert said the city is trying to save as much money as possible, and any subsidies applied to the Bedford Union Armory would mean not being able to use them in other neighborhoods. “The city likes to think of itself as a negotiator on the community side but they’re really not, they’re really just a broker,” said the expert said, who requested anonymity to speak more freely and pointed out that the hurdles to the Bedford Armory project stem from the city’s “deal-by-deal approach” to development, which allows community advocates to pressure the administration with an all-or-nothing opposition rather than pushing for compromise.

That’s the case with the Our Armory coalition. Jonathan Westin, executive director of New York Communities for Change and a strident critic of the administration on its housing policies, is adamant that the only way the project could be acceptable to his group is if there are no luxury condos or market-rate rental units. “They could force the developer off the project and make it 100 percent affordable since it’s on public land,” he said. “Using public land to build luxury housing is a travesty.”

Although issuing a new RFP for the project, and triggering another round of ULURP, could potentially take years, Westin said it would be worth it. “It’s better than a gentrification project that would displace the community.”

Westin also pushed back against the argument that the condos are being used to cross-subsidize the recreation center. A BFC spokesperson earlier told Gotham Gazette that the firm will make a net profit of less than $800,000 from the sale of the condos and that those funds would be put back into the recreation center. The spokesperson also said that the annual cash-flow from all the rental units, which are expensive to operate and maintain, would be around $800,000. Citing Borough President Adams’ recommendations, the spokesperson pointed out that removing the revenue-generating component of the project would require other funds to fill the gap, while noting that the original RFP for the project specified that the developer should not request any housing subsidies from the city.

“This cross-subsidization frame is what luxury developers use to justify luxury development,” Westin said. Instead, he said the city could designate the armory as a land bank and set restrictions on the land, which could then be developed by a nonprofit developer. “It’s completely feasible to do this project 100 percent affordable,” he said.

The project does have its supporters. Geoffrey Davis, a Democratic district leader from Crown Heights, emphasized that the recreation center was a necessity for the community. “Our seniors, our young people, our community will have a place to go to,” he said in a phone interview. “I say, continue to negotiate, work it out. Do not leave the table. If you say kill the deal and walk away, we’re talking about another 30 years.”

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by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

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