Henry Garrido, the author (photo: District Council 37)
[Update: two days after this op-ed column first published, CD37 announces its support of Eric Adams for mayor]
On January 1, a new Mayor will take on what is — even under normal circumstances — one of the most important and challenging elected offices in our nation. New York City’s next executive leader will inherit a city ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic and resulting citywide shutdown. The events of the last year devastated our communities, shuttered businesses, and took tens of thousands of lives. Whoever takes the city’s top job next must have the strength to confront this historical crisis and be decisive in action.
District Council 37 is New York City’s largest public sector union. We represent 150,000 city workers and 50,000 retirees. We’re the people helping your kids cross the street to school safely; we’re the paramedics who race around this city night and day transporting New Yorkers to care; we’re the ones working in your libraries and planting trees and flowers in your parks. Recently, we’re among those who you refer to as “essential.”
During this pandemic, our members suffered greatly. Some paid the ultimate price, doing their duty as essential workers, while thousands more were struck by COVID-19 yet thankfully recovered, although some with lingering effects. Even still, throughout this pandemic our members remained steadfast in providing services to the public. As we approach one of the biggest decisions we’ll make as an organization this year – which candidate to support for Mayor – we do so with the commitment and sacrifice of our members in mind.
The challenges our next Mayor will face are vast: closing a huge budget deficit, working with state and federal leaders on proper funding for our frontline workers and institutions, reaching out to the communities hardest hit by the pandemic, and daring to go beyond slogans and gestures by addressing the social and economic inequalities that plague our city. Ultimately, the person we elect to lead us must maintain the vision and strength necessary to push responsible public policy in a bold, new, direction.
Taking a new direction is often difficult — and it will be here — but this city demands a leader who has a firm grasp of the issues that will shape our future. We seek a mayor with the foresight to look beyond recovery and move New York City forward.
Strong leadership is required to improve and expand the city’s infrastructure, in making green initiatives a permanent priority, by taking up the fight to shore up our social safety net through ensuring equal access to the city’s social services to all New Yorkers, and to develop long-term reforms with non-negotiable goals for how our children are educated from preschool to our city university system.
We want a Mayor who isn’t afraid to fight and has the courage to not back down under pressure. A leader unafraid to stick by their principles is one who inspires.
The next Mayor must be someone who understands the needs of those who suffered and sacrificed the most during the pandemic, someone who respects and values their hard work, their heritage and civic culture. Our next Mayor must be someone who follows words with action in decisions regarding future budgets, contracts, and enforcement.
When it comes to the city budget, our view is simple: A budget is a statement of principles. If you value essential workers and services, you will make sure they are funded and provided for.
Tens of thousands of frontline workers have spent the last year staring down the fear of being laid off. Only after weeks of tough negotiations were unions able to hammer out an agreement that held off – at least for now -- 22,000 layoffs of essential city workers. But the threat still looms.
An austerity budget is not the answer and our next Mayor must commit to find another way. Next year, we expect a Mayor who backs up this year’s campaign promises of valuing the people who make this city run and understands that investing in city services is critical to New York City’s recovery.
Our city survived thanks to essential workers in our public institutions, our first responders and workers in municipal hospitals tending to the sick, and school workers providing hundreds of thousands of meals to children and the elderly even though schools were closed. Public library workers went to great lengths to provide services. Parks workers and highway maintainers kept working. Workers in social services, 911 and 311 operators remained on the job in dangerous work conditions giving vital services to people in need.
The Mayor our union shall support will be someone who understands that if you value these institutions you first must also respect and value the workers who allow them to function, and not set them up to be the scapegoat for every budget crisis.
The city’s public workers did their jobs, even under the most exhausting and stressful conditions. We certainly expect the same from the candidate we choose to be our next Mayor.
***
Henry Garrido is Executive Director District Council 37. On Twitter @DistCouncil37.
***
Have an op-ed idea or submission for Gotham Gazette? Email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Gov. Cuomo at an MTA announcement (photo: governor's office)
This budget year for New York State is like no other due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but one thing remains business as usual in Albany: The Governor is once again filling state budget holes with funds that are supposed to be dedicated to supporting mass transit and fighting climate change—hitting disadvantaged communities especially hard.
Governor Cuomo intends to take $240 million in dedicated taxes from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), and $23 million from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). Fortunately, the State Legislature has the opportunity to reject these raids in their budget resolutions, and in the final adopted budget due April 1.
The MTA has long been a piggy bank for the state. Governor Cuomo and his predecessors have raided hundreds of millions of dollars from dedicated funds that are intended to be used by transit agencies to effectively and safely run bus, subway, and commuter rail services for the public.
Raids of dedicated transit funds are a highly regressive backdoor tax which disproportionately harms low-income riders and essential workers. The Governor’s raids also come at a time when the MTA seeks to make riders pay more for less service. The MTA has temporarily postponed fare hikes, but hikes will come sooner if the state takes $240 million in transit funding.
The MTA’s budget has been hit much harder than the state’s by COVID-19. Ridership is still hovering at only 30% of what it was before the pandemic ravaged its finances. In good times, fares and tolls brought in nearly 40% of the MTA’s budget. Fortunately, federal funding helped fill some of its massive budget gaps. The bad news, however, is that the Governor has made this aid less meaningful by taking hundreds of millions away from the MTA when the authority and its customers needed that money the most. The MTA is still asking Congress for $8 billion to close its budget gaps through 2024, but the likely receipt of federal dollars is not in any way an excuse for the state to divert dedicated funds to its general fund.
Raiding dedicated funds breaks trust with the public, who pay these taxes with the understanding that they will fund specific programs and agencies — not other state purposes.
Mass transit funds, like RGGI, are crucial for the state to meet its climate goals.
The RGGI program has brought over $1.4 billion to New York by charging polluters for the emissions they produce. In turn, these funds are used to support projects that help communities fight climate change, reduce air pollution, and create good green jobs. Or at least that is the way it is supposed to work. Unfortunately, throughout the life of the program, almost 15% of the total amount raised has been swept away to plug budget holes elsewhere. This year is no different, with the Governor’s budget again skimming $23 million into the general fund and away from their intended use—that’s 16% of the overall RGGI budget for the year missing on day one.
The RGGI raid is even more egregious this year as these clean energy funds have taken on greater importance under New York’s new climate law, which now requires that at least 35% be invested in communities on the frontlines of climate change to help them transition away from fossil fuels. Sweeping $23 million of RGGI funds means that disadvantaged communities will be deprived of millions of dollars that are supposed to be there to improve their environment and create jobs. We cannot continue to shortchange the fight against climate change and communities cannot afford to lose millions more this year.
The Legislature can finally put a stop to these budget games. The first opportunity is to stand against MTA and RGGI raids by rejecting them in their one-house budget resolutions, which typically come out in mid-March. They must also stand firm and make sure these funds aren’t on the chopping block during budget negotiations. Our state’s future is worth the fight, and this is a good opportunity for the Legislature to flex their supermajority muscles.
***
Rachael Fauss is Senior Research Analyst at Reinvent Albany and Conor Bambrick is Director of Climate Policy at Environmental Advocates NY. On Twitter @RachaelFauss of @ReinventAlbany and @conorbambrick of @greenwatchdogNY.
***
Have an op-ed idea or submission for Gotham Gazette? Email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
March against domestic violence (photo: William Alatriste/City Council)
As President Biden begins to make good on his promise to reverse some of the Trump Administration’s most heinous immigration policies, I welcome the changes but hope he is able to dig deeper. Because for every horrific Trump Administration immigration policy that was announced and grabbed headlines, there were others that were discreetly implemented, effectively creating an “invisible wall.”
These more subtle shifts in policy have been devastating, and unfortunately, only become obvious to the public after thousands have already been impacted. A particularly unjust one impacts domestic violence survivors like me.
Born and raised in the Caribbean in Kingston, Jamaica, I immigrated to the U.S. in 1998 and have lived here in New York City since. A single mother to my daughter, a natural-born U.S. citizen who is now age 13, I work as a home health aide and am also a certified chaplain of my church, after graduating with a bachelor's degree in theology.
But this part of my story began in 2009. I started dating someone and it was going well in the beginning. But then he began to behave in ways that made me not trust him and so I tried to end the relationship. He would not leave me alone until he convinced me to meet up with him at a hotel one day. That is when he raped me.
My world was shattered. I was terrified of him but even more terrified of reporting this crime to law enforcement because of my immigration status. He was a U.S. citizen and he knew I was undocumented. I only told one person, a family friend.
Then in early 2011, the father of my daughter, Keith*, threatened to shoot me during an argument we had. Fearing he really had a gun, I grabbed my cell phone and called the police. By the time the police arrived, Keith had fled the apartment we shared, and so the officers asked some questions but left without filling out a police report. The next morning, however, the same officers returned to arrest me because Keith had filed a report accusing me of assaulting him—with the cell phone I used to call the police when he threatened me! I ended up being charged with assault with a weapon. I had to appear in court a couple of times but the case was ultimately dismissed as Keith did not appear. The records were then sealed.
I tried to move on with my life until one day, later that year, I got a call from my sister, who mentioned that she saw in the news that someone we both knew was arrested and charged with several counts of rape. She said she did not believe it was true and so I opened up to her—I told her I knew it was true because he did the same to me.
With my sister’s encouragement, I came forward to the detective handling the case and reported the crime committed against me. That’s when I learned I should be able to get humanitarian immigration help as a crime victim.
I was introduced to Safe Horizon, a non-profit organization, by the detective. At this point, fear and paranoia took over since my rapist knew where I lived and my immigration status. I received counseling from Safe Horizon and its Immigration Law Project attorneys helped me apply for legal status in the U.S. through the U visa program.
This special visa is available to victims of certain serious crimes who are helpful to law enforcement in the investigation or prosecution of the crime. I applied in 2012 and I was granted a U visa in 2013, which allowed me to live and work in the United States lawfully, and three years later, to apply for permanent residence, or a “green card.” In 2017, again with the assistance of the Immigration Law Project, I submitted my application for a green card.
I was shocked to receive a request from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for details about my arrest in 2011, even though I had already disclosed my arrest in my U visa application and explained that the records were sealed. DHS demanded unsealing of the records to determine what kind of weapon was involved and whether I was indeed a threat to public safety.
According to my attorneys, this was a noticeable shift from previous DHS policy. Before the Trump Administration, DHS would not demand unsealing of records because arrests that resulted in dismissed charges and/or sealed records typically did not warrant additional scrutiny. Moreover, sealing statutes, such as the one in New York, are designed to protect individuals in situations like mine. It allows us to essentially start over without the stigma that usually comes with an arrest. My attorneys refused to ask for unsealing of the records. Consequently, my “green card” application was denied.
My heart sank. My work permit was also denied, which has impacted me severely, especially during this pandemic as I struggle to keep a roof over my family’s head. I feel victimized all over again. And I am not the only one. Sadly, I learned that countless others like me have suffered similar fates—domestic violence survivors falsely accused by their abusers have had their U visa or “green card” applications denied.
My attorney helped me file an appeal, which was dismissed, and then a motion to reconsider, which is currently pending. They have also demanded that DHS turn over any records related to this unannounced shift in policy.
Awaiting the outcome, I hope that the Biden Administration will step in and protect domestic violence survivors. I hope that my story sheds light on this invisible policy change and that it finall y comes to an end.
*Names changed to protect identity.
***
Angela Harriett* is a domestic violence survivor, immigrant, mother, and resident of New York City.
***
Have an op-ed idea or submission for Gotham Gazette? Email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Hospital workers (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)
The current process to secure a COVID-19 vaccine is, to put it frankly, a logistical nightmare. Appointments have been cancelled by testing sites due to supply shortages, and vaccines were frequently being defrosted and then thrown out due to missed appointments and limited eligibility criteria. This was expected.
Contributing to the problems with vaccine distribution is the inaccessibility for seniors, especially in parts of eastern Queens. Successful vaccination often requires digital fluency and a mode of transportation – two large barriers that complicate a speedy rollout to our most vulnerable neighbors. One of our parents (ages 71 and 74) struggled tremendously navigating the highly decentralized systems to find an appointment despite not facing these technical and logistical barriers.
Vaccine distribution spotlights fundamental problems in our city’s health-care infrastructure that disproportionately impact elders. However, these issues date back to far before the pandemic. A series of management mistakes and a lack of political will to support investing in our health-care infrastructure permitted three major Queens hospitals to close in 2009. This has led to a borough that is uniquely unprepared to handle the coronavirus pandemic.
One of the most impactful closures was St. Vincent Catholic Medical Center, which served Forest Hills, Rego Park, Maspeth, Glendale, and Corona. The medical center’s bankruptcy was partially fueled by slow reimbursements from the government to support health care for the elderly, like Medicare. The city should heed the lessons from the last recession, we cannot divest again from preventative care or health-care infrastructure when city finances tighten. We must choose to have a moral budget that prioritizes our health and wellbeing.
Increasing hospital bed capacity in Queens needs to be one of the top priorities as we rebuild from the pandemic. Queens currently has 1.7 beds for every 1,000 residents, whereas Manhattan has three times that capacity. Unsurprisingly, bed shortages led to hospitals like Elmhurst being overwhelmed during the pandemic. Post-pandemic, we must focus on investing in new infrastructure to replace institutions such as St. Vincent. We must fight to maintain and buoy existing capacity in hospitals and health centers. New York City has left Parkway Hospital in Forest Hills empty and idle for the past 10 years, but with some effort it can be rehabilitated into a useful place to deliver wellness services for our community.
We have an obligation to support our seniors in Queens. It is a vulnerable group, most reliant on and hurt by the diminished accessibility of health services in the borough. Demographically, the communities of Rego Park, Forest Hills, Kew Gardens, and Richmond Hill (City Council District 29) form one of the oldest areas in the city. We must take the initiative to increase our ability to care for our parents and grandparents.
A new mayoral administration and a new City Council presents a tremendous opportunity to commit to a moral budget that protects the most vulnerable and elderly. New leaders must also accept the radical responsibility to truly address social determinants of health, such as food insecurity, affordable housing, and economic instability.
This past year has reminded us that there is nothing more important than our ability to stay healthy – our overall physical, emotional, and social wellbeing. Nothing can fix the social-emotional toll of partial or full isolation from friends and family, or of the loss of loved ones. We are collectively suffering from a trauma exacerbated by racial and economic inequality.
As Mahatma Gandhi famously said, “The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members.” Now more than ever our city must commit to ensure a robust health-care infrastructure. So let’s support our seniors. Let’s restitch our social safety net and ensure we have the capacity to repair what is not yet broken. Let’s heal together.
***
Douglas Shapiro is a candidate for New York City Council in Queens, Council District 29. Reva Singh is an undergraduate at Princeton University. On Twitter @Shapiro4NYC.
***
Have an op-ed idea or submission for Gotham Gazette? Email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
(photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)
“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice,” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. famously said. Nearly 53 years since his death, the causes for which he is most famously remembered – civil rights and social justice – remain just as urgent and relevant today. While it has long been true, this reality crystalized for many Americans over the past year as a result of high-profile police killings of unarmed Black men and women, including the brutal murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor. These events made it clear that there is an urgent need to address systemic racism in our society. An open, honest reckoning about racial justice must happen and we cannot make lasting progress without it.
That is why the City of New York is taking action to invite difficult conversations among employees about race equity. The New York City Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS) recently launched the Race Equity Initiative (REI), a model that offers a sustained focus on educating, engaging, assessing, and taking action.
REI takes a multi-faceted approach to promoting race equity through:
Inviting employees to participate in an employee-led learning series that features books, news articles, essays, podcasts, and other content focused on understanding race equity and its impact on all races. The learning series includes monthly selections that all employees are encouraged to discuss.
Offering unconscious bias training to all supervisors and managers across the department to ensure that agency leaders are aligned and cognizant of their actions, which inform workplace behaviors and decisions.
Hosting roundtable discussions to provide all employees with a safe space to engage in dialogue on an array of topics related to race equity, including but not limited to navigating racism in their personal and professional lives.
Enlisting outside facilitators to conduct voluntary and affinity-based focus groups so employees can share their experiences and thoughts on how DCAS and the city can further strengthen their commitment to race equity.
Collecting and analyzing data to identify opportunities to better support employees.
Taken together, this vital work is already sparking discussion and fostering greater understanding among DCAS employees. The department seeks to encourage other city agencies to replicate or learn from this initiative, which was just introduced citywide at the NYC HR & EEO Our Common Ground– A Transformative Workplace conference from March 1 through March 5.
As the most diverse city in America, New York City is unique in how it can serve as a leader for this important work. City government not only prides itself on the diversity of its workforce, but New York is a place where people of every background are inextricably linked and create what former Mayor David Dinkins called a “gorgeous mosaic.”
So much of what we must do goes back to a simple truth: it is easy to fear or distrust what you don’t know or don’t understand. Frank, honest conversations between people and candid sharing of truths should not be feared as a wedge to divide people, but as a strength in helping people understand one another and feel connected to one another. It is through openness and sharing that we can build understanding that invites empathy and builds stronger bonds.
We also recognize that leadership requires accountability and delivering measurable results. That is why it was important for our team to take a deep dive in using data to understand current circumstances and to build a roadmap for the progress ahead. We will be analyzing data we collect throughout the initiative to inform next steps and policy decisions.
Ensuring race equity in the city’s workforce is not only a moral and ethical imperative, but it is also a simple matter of good government. In a city with the richness and diversity of New York, our municipal government can best serve its constituents only when its workforce reflects the talents and diversity of all New Yorkers.
We profoundly believe in the power of public sector leadership and innovation and the Race Equity Initiative is a manifestation of that belief. All too often people think of the private sector as being the hub of innovation in the workplace, but government has a platform to affect major change on both the macro and micro levels. The City of New York and our team at the Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS) is committed to being bold in promoting race equity and we hope the work we are doing will inspire you to be champions of change to create a more equitable future.
***
Dawn Pinnock is the Executive Deputy Commissioner for People Operations and Risk Management and Belinda French is the Diversity & EEO Officer at the New York City Department of Citywide Administrative Services. On Twitter @NYCDCAS.
***
Have an op-ed idea or submission for Gotham Gazette? Email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Budget work (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography)
Of the endless forums that are being held in the mayoral primary race, the only one that has specifically focused on the City’s fiscal situation and budget was the one last week held by the Citizens Budget Commission, my former organization. (You can watch it here, or read Gotham Gazette’s detailed summary here.)
The event, with candidates appearing one by one, revealed a range of reactions to the fiscal challenge one of them will likely find him/herself tasked with solving when they take office in January. Some candidates seem not to understand the problem, others don’t take it seriously, and still others may understand it but don’t want to really talk about it.
One can only hope that the main question CBC President Andrew Rein posed to each of the eight candidates will cause them to think in greater detail about how they will deal with the budget if elected. He asked:
If you take office next January, you will have about three weeks to submit a preliminary budget for fiscal year 2022-23 to the City Council. With a deficit now projected at $5 billion that could well grow, how will you balance the budget? What combination of spending cuts and revenue increases will you propose?
Maya Wiley made what turned out to be a standard, generic claim that there is lots of waste to be eliminated and said that she would ask agencies for cuts of 3% and work with labor to achieve personnel cost savings. But instead of balancing the budget she chose to talk about her plan to invest an additional $2 billion in capital spending to create 100,000 jobs, as if that would make the rest of the $5 billion deficit go away.
Kathryn Garcia also cited agency savings as a major way to reduce the deficit and said she would ask for agency reductions of 3-5% but could see cutting as much as 10% from some agencies, for example, by combining redundant IT services. But she decried the cuts Mayor de Blasio imposed on the Department of Sanitation, which she led until resigning last year to run to replace him, such as the termination of curbside residential compost collection. This was in fact a wise decision by the mayor, since the program has been little used and extremely expensive. If programs that are not cost effective cannot be closed (or at least postponed) what will Garcia do as mayor when her agency heads protest cuts of programs they care about? Every program has a constituency.
Andrew Yang seemed to understand the magnitude and urgency of the deficit challenge but he offered more of a mélange of various long-shot ideas than an organized plan. He spoke about the need to reduce headcount through attrition. He also offered some long-time CBC recommendations such as requiring employee contributions to health care benefits, and getting nonprofits to pay real estate taxes on some of the property they own. Does he really have plans to implement these or will he back track on them when they are met with opposition? Can he show how they total $5 billion?
Meanwhile, Yang also acknowledged that his plan to provide families with cash payments will be expensive; he said philanthropy would partner with the city to finance half the initially $1 billion program (unlikely; the last time private philanthropy gave as much as $500 million to one initiative in New York City was just after September 11, 2001) and indicated that somehow calling the payments “borough bucks” and getting recipients to spend in local small businesses would offset some of the cost.
Yang said that reform of the property tax system is sorely needed and that while it would not help with city finances short-term, it would unlock value in the billions over the long-term. If the system were truly reformed to reduce the misallocation of value between and within property classes, it would surely be more fair and rational, which might, over the long-term have a positive effect on overall development, but the damage to real estate value due to covid could take years to overcome.
Dianne Morales made it clear that balancing the budget is not a topic that influences her thinking. She didn’t address Rein’s question but instead decried the concept of austerity (though neither Rein nor anyone else used that word), said she would cut the budgets of the police, correction, and perhaps children’s services departments but would re-invest the savings in other city jobs and community investment. Like several candidates, she generally criticized the number and size of city consulting contracts. She supports several state tax increases and a land value tax, but gave no numbers for any of her proposals, on the spending or revenue side.
Eric Adams had some concrete proposals and figures. He called for personnel attrition, which he estimates would save $1.5 billion a year after a two-year hiring freeze, and would also require agency savings of 3-5%. Once again, contract spending was cited as an opportunity for savings; he would appoint a contract efficiency czar. Neither Adams, nor any of the others who called for savings in the contracting process, gave an estimate of how much money this would save. He also wants to control police overtime, which is a perennial in mayoral budget proposals but never achieved.
There is no way Adams’ savings plans would add up to $5 billion so he has tax proposals, i.e. a two-year temporary surcharge on incomes of $5 million or more and a tax on social media data collection. If the $1-2 billion these would raise a year is used to fund operating costs including his plan to open public schools year-round, there is clearly the possibility that the surcharge would not be temporary.
Ray McGuire had a theme that sidestepped the deficit-closing question from the opposite end of the spectrum from Morales. He said we cannot cut and/or tax our way out of the financial predicament. He says we must grow our way out by incentivizing and helping economic growth through spending proposals, i.e. wage subsidies for small businesses and suspension of sales taxes as well as free license renewals. He did, at least, have an estimate for the cost of the subsidies, which, at $900 million over two years, might be on the low side. He also referred to the need for personnel attrition, pension reforms, 5% agency savings, and collaboration on savings with labor. There is no question that the city needs to grow its way to fiscal health over the long run, but that will depend on the extent to which the economy bounces back after the pandemic and on many factors outside the control of municipal government. And no matter how robust the recovery it won’t enable the mayor to present a balanced budget in January 2022.
For a public official who has been directly involved with city finances for years, Scott Stringer was vague about how he would balance the budget – no doubt purposely so. He asserted that his experience as comptroller makes him the best positioned to take the needed actions, but was short on specifics, repeating calls for contract savings and curbing waste in city agencies, citing the Department of Education in particular. But he didn’t estimate how much his proposals would save. Unlike others who called for reducing personnel through attrition, he said he thinks the current city headcount (20,000 more than when de Blasio took office) is appropriate but he is also in favor of early retirement incentives that would drive up pension costs and, if the retirees are replaced to keep up headcount, would not save much in the short-term.
Finally Shaun Donovan had many specific fiscal ideas, but most had no concrete dollar values attached. Moreover, he seems to misunderstand or miscalculate some of the topics he discussed. He made a point of strongly opposing layoffs or borrowing for operating expenses but the mayor has dropped these from his budget plans. Like Andrew Yang and Eric Adams, he called for property tax reform but did not claim it would generate revenue; he is in favor of a pied-a-terre tax and a high-income surcharge. And like all the candidates he is for agency savings, contract efficiency, and working with labor to achieve productivity savings. He also suggested a CBC favorite: consolidating public employee union benefit funds.
Donovan presented value capture as a key revenue-raiser. He spoke of congestion pricing, not seeming to realize that the money from this, once implemented, is already built into the MTA’s capital budget and is not controlled by the mayor. He cited the financing of Hudson Yards as an example of a way to generate more revenue, seemingly not recognizing that it took six years for the area to generate enough revenue to pay its own debt service. More projects that ‘capture value’ to finance development will divert, not generate, revenue for the city. If he has specific value capture projects in mind to add to the city’s coffers he did not offer them.
He was perhaps most misguided in his firm belief that there will be multi-year federal aid to cover city deficits. It is a hard-fought battle for the president and Congress to get immediate state and local aid in the pending covid relief bill; further support certainly cannot and should not be relied upon as a way to sustainably balance the city’s budget.
All of the candidates have been participating in forums covering an array of topics, from homelessness and housing to criminal justice and climate change, promising all kinds of new, expansive and expensive programs. Voters should be concerned about how realistic these campaign promises really are and which of the candidates understand the difference between aspiration and governing. More probing questions about fiscal management, by the media and the public, are needed.
***
Carol Kellermann was president of Citizens Budget Commission from 2008 through 2018.
***
Have an op-ed idea or submission for Gotham Gazette? Email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
***
Have an op-ed idea or submission for Gotham Gazette? Email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Dominican Day Parade (photo: Benjamin Kanter/Mayoral Photo Office)
In the coming months, leading up to the all-important June New York City primary elections, I will be writing a series of columns for Gotham Gazette exploring how the Latino vote can impact City Council races across the city. The series — Latino Vote ‘21 — will also highlight some opportunities that may increase Latino political representation and will at times touch on citywide or boroughwide races.
This series is, I believe, the first of its kind in a publication like Gotham Gazette. Past analytical pieces that have explored the Latino vote and Latino political representation, like those by the late Angelo Falcón, were published primarily in academic journals or for think tank-like entities like Falcon’s own National Institute for Latino Policy. I’m grateful for the opportunity to shed light on a pivotal ethnic group that could further shift the dynamics of our city’s politics.
The rise in the Latino voting population in New York City has long been explored, including by me at Gotham Gazette. Yet it is worth repeating here that Latinos are now the largest ethnic voting group in the city among all active registered voters, and among Democratic voters, they represent the second largest ethnic voting group in the city, ahead of white voters and just 80,000 behind African-Americans.
The one difference between Latinos and these two other largest racial groups is that Latinos have so far not been avid voters. But they could be. If they were, they could affect the course of New York City electoral politics quite significantly. And in fact, we have seen glimpses of hope for Latinos in the last two primary election cycles. According to voter data company L2, the 2018 and 2020 primary elections in New York each drew over 100,000 Latinos to the polls.
If these Latino voting patterns continue, Latinos could finally represent a quarter of the entire Democratic electorate in June. In turn this will determine who occupies the West Wing of City Hall, and the East Wing, where City Council Members do their business.
In the weeks to come, this series will take a borough-by-borough approach. It will look at specific City Council races in Latino-majority districts, and districts with a sizable enough number of Latino voters to affect the outcome of such races. The articles will be filled with demographic analysis, and information on candidates and stakeholders in the districts. That analysis and information will, I hope, help readers make informed voting decisions, and draw attention to important matters that may affect your life and those of your neighbors.
The implications of the 2021 New York City elections -- which will for the first time include ranked-choice voting in party primaries and special elections -- could have pivotal implications for our future as Latinos in the city. Anyone running for city office will need to listen to increasingly vocal and informed Latinos if they wish to pass by the store-front taquerias, cuchifritos, and barberias of our streets on their way to City Hall.
***
Eli Valentin is an adjunct lecturer at Union Theological Seminary, a frequent guest political analyst at Univision NY, and author of the forthcoming, Reinhold Niebuhr: A Political Life. On Twitter @elivalentinNYPA.
***
Have an op-ed idea or submission for Gotham Gazette? Email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
New Yorkers participating (photo: Benjamin Kanter/Mayoral Photo Office)
On February 23, public hearings began for City Council Speaker Corey Johnson’s “Planning Together” legislation, which would institute a process for creating a comprehensive plan for New York City. I fully support city planning, but believe Planning Together’s top-down approach needs fundamental change.
New York City is virtually the only major city in this country that does not have a comprehensive city plan. Instead, we rely on a piecemeal approach to zoning that has resulted in an explosion of luxury towers without anywhere near adequate gains in real affordable housing.
Our siloed zoning approach has allowed inequity to flourish. Black and brown neighborhoods have shouldered the lion's share of new real estate development, which has led to rampant gentrification and displacement.
Arguably, the most urgent reason to adopt a city plan is the climate crisis. Considering that by the year 2100 daily high tides will flood many coastal neighborhoods, it’s hard to imagine that we can combat the climate crisis without a comprehensive plan.
For these reasons and more, it’s clear we need a city plan, yet Planning Together has several fundamental flaws. The most urgent flaw of this legislation is its top-down approach — it misses the opportunity to give the people more power in determining a just and equitable future.
In the first year of each 10-year planning cycle, every community board submits a district needs statement. In the second year, the city creates a “conditions of the city” report based on 13 categories. The categories of assessment will please many planners and organizers, as it includes a “displacement risk index” and a “segregation assessment.”
City leaders who point to these first two years as evidence of community buy-in are missing one crucial point — there is no formal requirement in the legislation to act on the information gathered from the first two years. We don’t just need more information, we need action. Without requiring interventions, it’s easy to see how real estate interests could corrupt the process.
In the third year of the planning cycle, the Office of Long Term Planning and Sustainability (OLTPS) would create three plans per district and present them to community boards and borough presidents. Let that sink in: Planning Together places the responsibility of community planning with an unelected mayoral agency instead of with the communities themselves. Community members are closest to both the unique problems and the most viable solutions in any given neighborhood. Any comprehensive planning legislation should recognize this and take a true bottom-up approach.
There are several changes to the legislation and related issues that should be made to ensure communities can fully engage in planning:
First, fully fund community boards. Currently, the combined budget of all community boards is a meager .02% of the total city budget. This lack of funding poses a major impediment to boards that may otherwise consider engaging in community planning.
Second, adequately staff community boards. Volunteer board members with full-time jobs and/or household duties cannot be expected to create a community plan. All boards should be appropriately staffed and include full-time urban planners.
Third, ensure community plans that are created have teeth and get implemented. Section 197a of the city charter allows community boards to create plans to guide development in their district. Yet, under our current system, community planning is often an exercise in futility; boards sometimes take years to compose a plan only for the city to ignore or reject it. Even when a plan is approved, implementation is not guaranteed. We cannot allow a mayoral agency to override community plans when they are created.
In Planning Together, after the OLTPS creates land use scenarios, community boards and borough presidents vote on which plan they like best. Unfortunately, these votes are in an advisory capacity. The city can move forward with whichever plan it chooses, regardless of the community decision. This (im)balance of power needs to be radically shifted to give communities the central voice in the process.
After the community board and borough president response, the City Council deliberates. Yet the balance of power between the legislative and executive branches is skewed as well. The legislation states: “if the Council failed to adopt a preferred scenario, OLTPS would choose a scenario and describe how such selection was made.” City Council members are much closer to communities than the OLTPS, so transferring power from the legislative branch to an executive agency takes away essential accountability.
Throughout the 10-year cycle, Planning Together lacks a comprehensive framework around public engagement. Our current system is entirely insufficient in ensuring community voices are heard. Case in point: the public hearing for Planning Together itself.
The meeting started at 10 a.m. on a Tuesday, when many New Yorkers were working. City officials were placed at the top of the agenda, and it took nearly five hours before testimony from other New Yorkers began. By the time public testimony began, many government officials had left the meeting. To make a comment, you had to sign up in advance, creating another barrier to entry for many citizens. Testimony was kept to a strict two-minute time frame. These factors prevented the opportunity for real dialogue
City planning is essential, and it is clear we cannot continue our current approach. Yet if we are truly to build the just and equitable city that works for all, New Yorkers need the central voice. Involving New Yorkers without becoming paralyzed by not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) forces is not an easy balance to strike. Yet, we cannot allow our fear of NIMBYism to justify a top-down approach. I urge the City Council to radically amend this plan to ensure greater community control.
***
Aleda Gagarin is a City Council candidate for District 29 in Queens, which covers Forest Hills, Kew Gardens, Rego Park and Richmond Hill, with a Master’s in Urban Planning from CUNY-Hunter College. On Twitter @AledaGagarin.
***
Have an op-ed idea or submission for Gotham Gazette? Email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Volunteers petitioning (photo: @INDBrooklyn)
Today — Tuesday, March 2, 2021 — thousands of people are taking to the streets across the five boroughs. Armed with facemasks, gloves, hand sanitizer, more pens than you can imagine, and stacks of inconveniently-long papers, these determined New Yorkers have made the decision to participate in our democratic system by collecting petition signatures to help get candidates on the ballot.
Many of them, however, did not make this decision of their own volition. Instead, they were given an ultimatum by our governor, our legislature, and our judicial system: have unnecessary, person-to-person interactions during a pandemic, or you/your candidate can’t run for office.
Disappointed does not begin to capture how the three of us and over 350 New York candidates are feeling. We are scared, and deeply concerned. After a year of failing to plan, months of public consternation, and a dismissal by a state judge, candidates, their staffs and volunteers are now forced to put their health, and the health of prospective constituents, at risk all in the name of an archaic, outdated process.
Even amidst the state’s vaccination effort — which does not currently make candidates and their campaign staff and volunteers eligible — New York continues to report nearly 10,000 new cases a day statewide, and there have been more than 47,000 deaths from this disease in our state. Still, even vaccination is not a cure-all; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cautions that vaccinated individuals can contribute to the spread of COVID-19.
New York has been in a state of emergency since January of 2020, which means our state elected officials and party leaders had over a year to figure out a safe way to petition and determine which candidates make the ballot. Instead our government failed us with their inaction and people are going to be forced into tens of thousands of unnecessary interpersonal interactions.
Governor Cuomo, who has repeatedly put politics before the health and safety of New Yorkers, has state-of-emergency authority that would allow him to waive the 2021 designating petition signature requirements. No one questioned his executive order last year that immediately suspended petitioning and lowered the thresholds, and yet with ample time to better prepare this year, the bare minimum was done.
The Legislature also failed to adequately step in, and instead let proposals languish for months, only to end up passing legislation that does absolutely nothing to protect petitioners. The bill signed by the Governor lowering the total signature requirements is not enough. Exposure is exposure, and we now have several new, highly-contagious variants of COVID-19. Reducing the amount of time New Yorkers have to petition does not help either, we are now cramming together during that shorter time period to collect signatures. While the state of our economy is a valid concern and may warrant the opening of certain businesses, petitioning has zero economic purpose. We are talking about a some-risk, no-reward endeavor.
Another bill that passed extends County Committee terms for one year, but does not address other volunteer, largely uncontested political party seats, like District Leader or Judicial Delegate. Most importantly, the bill's main flaw is that it essentially creates a county-by-county “opt-in” solution that must be voted on by each county committee.
Other bills were introduced (and even passed) in the Legislature, but either fall far short of truly protecting petitioners, or were left to languish: A bill that prevents anyone from the opportunity to ballot petition is helpful, but extremely limited in who will benefit from it. More so, under this bill, the uncontested candidate would still have to go out and petition.
A bill that would allow for electronic petitioning, which is the strongest proposal in the Legislature, is still sitting in the Senate and Assembly elections committees, even though it was introduced on January 6. Had this bill been passed immediately, the Board of Elections may have stood a chance of implementing an online petitioning infrastructure. We know it’s possible — both New Jersey and Rhode Island recently announced the implementation of online designating petitions to reduce the likelihood of campaigns becoming superspreader events.
Right here in New York, we successfully implemented online solutions for legal processes, including remote witnessing and electronic signing by notaries, and remote Board of Elections hearings due to the dangers posed by COVID-19. But even if this bill allowing for electronic petitioning was passed within days of its introduction, two months notice may not have been enough for a body that is marred by inadequate funding, bureaucracy, and politics.
That’s why, when it became crystal clear our leaders would not go beyond a careless “we’re working on it” approach to prioritizing public health, we filed suit. But even during the hearing, we knew that the dangers of creating a superspreader event were not truly considered.
Some of the “alternatives” proposed by the judge, like setting up plastic tents along the city sidewalk to protect petitioners, are simply outrageous and not feasible. Anyone who’s petitioned knows that it is an intimate, one-on-one interaction. The petitioner must first engage someone, most often a stranger, and ask them to stop and speak, explain why they stopped them (because many people are unaware of this process), convince the person to sign for all the candidates on the petition, and witness the person sign. In large cities where you can’t canvass door-to-door to target voters, the most effective way to do this to collect the appropriate number of signatures is to stand on crowded and busy pedestrian areas.
Our electeds may have reduced the number of required signatures, but let’s look at a quick example, one that City Council Member and comptroller candidate Brad Lander shared: if a New York City Comptroller candidate needs 2,250 signatures under the new law, they’ll most likely collect three times that amount (which is standard practice for all candidates), amounting to 6,660 signatures per candidate. With seven candidates running for comptroller, that’s at least 50,000 mandated interactions. And let’s not forget: this doesn’t include candidates running for Mayor, City Council, Borough President, Manhattan District Attorney, District leader, or Judicial Delegate. Council Member Lander’s example was for only New York City, but we will have candidates throughout the entire state engaging in these dangerous interactions. How can we collect signatures while maintaining social distance?
The truth is we can’t. New Yorkers deserve better, and we hope the state Legislature will reflect on the danger they put hundreds of thousands of people in, while most of them do not have to lift a finger and petition until 2022. To all of our fellow candidates, campaign staffers, and volunteers: please take care of yourselves, your neighbors, and your communities. Double-up on masks, rotate and clean pens, and commit to not challenging each others’ signatures.
Despite the failures of many, let’s get through this safely.
***
Erica Vladimer, Lauren Trapanotto, and Corey Ortega are candidates for office. On Twitter @EricaForNY, @l_traps, & @mrortegany.
***
Have an op-ed idea or submission for Gotham Gazette? Email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Kids at school (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)
Economic and racial inequities have been a plague in New York City’s education system for decades, and the COVID-19 pandemic has only exacerbated the situation for our most vulnerable students. Faced with the reckoning of remote learning, we’ve been bombarded with stories of how our public schools lack the resources to adequately equip students with the technology they need to stay afloat, while something as simple as providing wi-fi to every child has only been met with excuses. Yet often lost in these stories is how the discrepancies in access to quality early education has created this game of “catch up” the city, parents, and students now face.
In Ridgewood, Maspeth, Glendale, Middle Village, Woodhaven and Woodside -- which make up Queens’ 30th City Council District -- we see these stories playing out along geographical and racial lines every day. It’s no coincidence that the success rates on the specialized high school admission test (SHSAT) for students at schools in predominantly whiter areas of our district are 400-500% higher than at those with a higher foreign-born population. And while much attention is paid to test prep or teaching at the middle-school level, not nearly enough attention is paid to how disparities begin for our students as early as day-care.
Financially, the cost of day-care and early child education averages between $10,000-$15,000 per year. This is before you take into account that parents who cannot afford to pay exorbitant costs for day-care and education must sacrifice their own jobs and economic well-being to look after their children before they are old enough to receive a free public education. Moreover, when you consider many of these same parents may not speak English as their primary language, it’s easy to understand how we’re failing our students at their most pivotal age.
This is why it is imperative that our local legislators continue to fund and expand early childhood educational programs and raise awareness of the resources already available to our families.
Studies have shown that an investment in early childhood education is an investment in our society and public safety at large. A comprehensive review of economic analyses of pre-K concluded that for every $1 invested in early childhood programs, there is a $17 return to society, and a dramatic decrease in the incarceration rate.
Throughout the country we’re seeing more states reap the benefits of investing in early childhood education. Programs like Universal Pre-K provide a free, high-quality education for children starting at four years old, and cities like New York City and Washington D.C. have implemented programs that expand universal free education for children as young as three. Expanding these programs allows families to get an early start on their child’s educational needs, while simultaneously alleviating the financial burden of child care for every parent and opening up opportunity to earn additional income.
Additionally, Pre-K and 3-K For All in New York City offer dual language classes and special education for students who are learning English as a second language and for students with special needs, respectively. I am especially proud of these programs as I helped consult the Department of Education during their implementation.
It has not been lost on me that throughout District 30 it’s been the Polish- and Spanish-speaking populations that have been hardest hit by the pandemic. Parents have had to take on the role of educator, provider, and caregiver while being forced to navigate the educational space at a disadvantage. According to the Department of Education’s MySchools directory, there are over 80 universal pre-K school locations in District 30, but none that offer dual-language programs or secondary language support. This despite a demographic that is nearly 40% Hispanic and 50% foreign born. And while there are paid, dual-language 3-K programs that offer discounted rates for families who qualify, there are no public, city-funded 3-K programs in all of District 30.
Yet these problems offer us a way to provide incentives for not just families, but the teachers and educators who we would rely on. By expanding and reforming the bilingual certifications needed to teach younger children, we can offer scholarships and financial aid to student-teachers who can teach languages like Spanish, Chinese, and Polish at an introductory level, helping provide educational support for both our children and their instructors.
From every perspective, investing in early child-care and education is not only the right thing to do, it is the financial and morally prudent thing to do. Given the evidence, the question is not if early childhood intervention will benefit communities in the long run, but how quickly can we utilize our resources to best support the programs that equip families and children for school readiness and success. Our children deserve the opportunity to thrive and investing in early childhood education is how we ensure they can do so.
I will continue fighting to ensure that every family has access to early childhood education, expand educational programs in every neighborhood so no child falls behind, and offer resources tailored to the needs of our students.
***
Juan Ardila is a Democratic candidate in the 30th City Council District, a resident of Maspeth, and the first Latino to ever run for the seat. On Twitter @JuanArdilaNYC.
***
Have an op-ed idea or submission for Gotham Gazette? Email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.