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Instant Incumbents


A dismal turnout and an undemocratic nominating process were not the most alarming aspects of the so-called Special Election on the last day of February, when voters in three State Assembly districts that represent roughly 375,000 people in New York City picked new legislators in what was nearly a foregone conclusion:

  • Linda Rosenthal won the Assembly seat from the West Side of Manhattan, replacing Scott Stringer, who has become Manhattan borough president
  • Sylvia Friedman won the Assembly seat from the East Side of Manhattan to replace Steve Sanders, who has retired
  • Alan Maisel took the Assembly seat from the Canarsie/Mill Basin/Flatlands etc. district in Brooklyn, replacing his former boss Frank Seddio, who has taken over the borough’s newly created second Surrogate’s Court judgeship.

 

What is most alarming is that these new members, though technically elected for only the next six months, have become instant incumbents -- which means they are likely to remain in office for the next 20 years. Yes, they have to run for re-election this fall, but as incumbents they will have the full power of their office and the support of their political party. And being an incumbent in New York means never having to say goodbye.

Staying Forever

State Senator John Marchi has been in office for 49 years. But more to the point, in the past 22 years, there have been only 30 instances when incumbents in the New York State legislature have been defeated in a general election, according to a report by the New York Public Interest Research Group. Since all 212 members are up for election every two years, this means there were only 30 incumbent defeats in more than 2,000 races.

In another survey, the National Conference of State Legislatures cited that in the 2002 elections only eight percent of the New York State Senate and 16 percent of the New York State Assembly were not returned to office -- one of the lowest turnover rates in the country.

The Incumbent Advantage

As Gotham Gazette has explained before in the online game, “Donkey Con (Elephant Evasion),” politicians are re-elected at staggering rates because of the state’s incumbent protection racket:

Access to the ballot: Incumbents have an easier time both getting on the ballot and assuring that any potential challengers stay off of it. Ballot-bumping is New York’s bloodsport – the process by which politicians hire election lawyers conversant with the state’s arcane election law to comb their rival’s nominating petitions to find the slightest errors, so that they can be stricken from the ballot. Incumbents are not alone in engaging in this practice, but they have the resources – the backing of their political party, the troops, and the money – to be the strikers rather than the stricken.

Name recognition: An unquantifiable advantage of incumbency is the name recognition it provides. Voters frequently head to the polls on Election Day armed with selections for big ticket offices such as president, governor or mayor. Local races do not garner as much interest, so voters tend to vote for familiar names.

Political Parties And Campaign Cash Incumbents use their party organizations to reach out to more voters.

Both the Republican and Democratic organizations in New York have extensive funding mechanisms to re-elect members of the Senate and Assembly. In the most recent election cycle, the Center for Public Integrity reported that the Democratic Assembly Campaign Committee spent $5.6 million while the minority Republican Assembly Campaign Committee contributed $2.1 million to Republican candidates. In the Senate, the Senate Republican Campaign Committee spent $9.5 million to hold on to their slim majority and the Democrats spent $1.4 million to fund their State Senators in office.

Powers of incumbency: As elected officials, members have the power to secure funding through member items for special neighborhood projects and provide various constituent services. During campaign season, they can “call in their chits” for having provided these services. Those who have been the beneficiaries of the legislator’s favors might fear the closing of the tap if they were to publicly support a challenger.

Others benefits of incumbency include:

  • Multiple district-wide mailings funded by tax payer dollars
  • Unparalleled access to the community through speeches and official legislative events
  • Fundraisers in Albany during legislative session that are well attended by lobbyists

Inadequacies of Incumbency

A permanent legislature doesn’t just hurt the cause of democracy, it goes directly against the interests of the voters. It deters qualified candidates from seeking office and thus stymies fresh ideas. Legislators are less accountable to the public, and more beholden to party leaders. It is no coincidence that the New York State legislature, with among the smallest turnovers in the nation, has been labeled the most dysfunctional in the nation, the legislators weak and non-responsive, deferring to the Assembly Speaker and the Senate Majority Leader.

For the voter, incumbency means there are no real choices on Election Day: In some races there are no challengers at all; in most, the results are a foregone conclusion. The lack of options diminishes voter participation and is reflected in turnout rates. No more than 30,000 voters participate in Assembly and State Senate races in each district where there is an incumbent, and it is often a lot less.

The lack of choices and the depressed voter turnout amount to voters rubberstamping party choices on Election Day – a kind of social promotion for elected officials.

Overcoming Incumbency

One solution that obliterates the problems of incumbency is term limits. A recent survey conducted by Sienna College Research Institute found that 68 percent of respondents support term limits for state legislators. In New York City, voters established through referendum term limits for citywide office, barring incumbents from seeking more than two terms. On a statewide level, the legislature would have to pass measures to limit the amount of time they can serve in office.

There are other ways of promoting competitive elections – through reform of the process of redistricting and by public financing of campaigns in a system similar to that set up by the New York City Campaign Finance Board. The Sienna College survey found 74 percent favored redistricting done by an independent non-partisan commission. Currently there is a bill in the Assembly (A6287) that proposes such reform.

Amy Ngai is program associate for Citizens Union Foundation, which publishes Gotham Gazette. 

 

City Council Stated Meeting - March 1, 2006


Every two weeks the New York City Council meets for its Stated Meeting to introduce and pass legislation. As a regular feature, Searchlight covers these meetings and posts a summary of the bills passed.

QUOTE OF THE DAY:

"Do I believe that the behavior of Walmart is outrageous? Yes. Do I think that Walmart is beginning to feel the pressure? It is clear they are. Will they get to a place where we could call them a responsible member of the corporate community? I hope so, but they aren't there yet."
- Speaker Christine Quinn on the need for employers like Walmart to pay for health care benefits.

MEETING SUMMARY:
HEALTHCARE FOR GROCERY WORKERS
The New York City Council overrode its first mayoral veto under the leadership of Speaker Christine Quinn in an effort to require grocery and "big box" stores like Walmart to provide health care coverage for their employees.

The veto override relates to an amendment (Intro 758-A) to the Health Care Security Act, a previous bill passed last year that requires employers to contribute $2.50 for each hour an employee works, or $5,000 a year for a full-time employee toward the worker's health costs.

The amendment changes the act so that it applies to stores with more than 50 employees (the previous bill said 35 or more employees) and excluded temporary and seasonal workers. The bill also applies to large stores, like Walmart, which use a significant amount of their space to sell food.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg vetoed both measures, arguing that they violate federal law, which limits state and local government involvement in employee benefits.

The council overrode the mayor by a vote of 48 to 2; Republican Councilmember Andrew Lanza and Democrat Simcha Felder sided with the mayor. The council only needs a two-thirds majority to override the veto.

Still, it is unlikely that that the council's action will have much impact on the 27,000 workers it is intended to help. In February, New York's highest court ruled that the mayor does not have to enforce city laws that he deems to be illegal.

Quinn called the court ruling "a challenge, not a problem" and said it was important for the council to send a message that businesses should be expected to give their workers benefits.

"Do I think that Walmart is beginning to feel the pressure? It is clear they are," said Quinn.

The mayor and council will likely continue the battle over the legislation in court.

Despite their differences on the bill, Quinn said that she hoped there would be fewer mayoral vetoes and City Council overrides than in the previous council under Speaker Gifford Miller.

"Vetoes and overrides should be extraordinary acts," said Quinn. "I hope we have to do them infrequently."

TAX LIENS
The council also passed a measure that extends the Department of Finance's authority to sell tax liens for another six months, until August 31, 2006. The sale of tax liens allows the city to collect property taxes on buildings that are in foreclosure that would otherwise not be paid.

Over the next six months, the council also wants to review the program to ensure that senior citizens and disabled New Yorkers do not lose their homes.

"Seniors are having trouble paying their taxes because their properties are now more valuable [due to a rise in real estate prices]," said Councilmember David Yassky. "They should not be forced to move out of their homes because they can't pay those taxes."

The bill passed unanimously at the request of the Bloomberg administration.

CITY COUNCIL REFORM
Shortly after being elected as Speaker, Christine Quinn vowed to reform the internal rules that govern the City Council to make the legislative body more open and transparent.

One aspect of the promised reform is to set up a task force to review the current rules and work with good-government groups to come up with ways that they can be improved.

Quinn appointed Councilmembers David Yassky and Dan Garodnick to head up the task force, which will also include Gale Brewer, Leroy Comrie, Robert Jackson, Oliver Koppell, Michael McMahon, and Dominic Recchia.

FLATBUSH AVENUE BUSINESS IMPROVEMENT DISTRICT
The council passed a measure (Intro 92-A) that begins the process of establishing a Business Improvement District on the corner of Flatbush and Nostrand Avenues in Brooklyn.

Business improvement districts provide activities or amenities that promote business in a specific area, including maintenance and sanitation, and holiday decorations. They are funded by assessments on property owners within the area.

The next Stated Meeting is scheduled for March 22, 2006.

 

 

The Cartoon Crisis


Marjane Satrapi's drawing about a teenager's life in Iran

There are many ways of looking at what is being called the cartoon crisis, even in New York.

1. Demonstrations

A dozen cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad –- one of them with the prophet in a turban shaped as a bomb with a burning fuse -- were first published last September in a newspaper in Denmark. It was not until January of this year, according to an account in The Washington Post, that the cartoons began sparking violent protests around the world, resulting so far (as of mid-February) in the deaths of at least 45 people, according to a count by the Associated Press.

There have been demonstrations in New York City as well: About 1,000 Muslims protested in front of the Danish Consulate on a Friday in February; there was an earlier demonstration at the United Nations.

2. The Cartoons And The NY Press

Several European editors have lost their jobs for publishing the cartoons, and 11 Muslim journalists in five countries, including Jordan, Algeria and Yemen, were arrested for doing so.

In New York City, four members of the staff of the New York Press quit when the publisher yanked the cartoons right before publication. (The articles, and 12 cartoons, that were going to run have been published on a Web site called New Partisan) So far, no local newspapers have published the cartoons except the New York Sun.

While in Qatar, U.S. Undersecretary of State Karen Hughes said U.S. newspapers generally did not reprint the caricatures ''because they recognize they are deeply offensive, even blasphemous to the precious convictions of our Muslim friends and neighbors.'' Others say it is from fear.

3. Political Cartoons And The Press: Losing Their Voice

When Daryl Cagle talks about a cartoon crisis, he is not only talking about the reaction to the Danish cartoons. A cartoonist himself for MSNBC, Cagle runs a popular Web site that offers both an index of political cartoons and news about cartooning. (It probably has the most comprehensive updates about the events surrounding the Danish cartoons).

It is clear from his site that he feels that political cartoonists are under siege in the United States as well, albeit for different reasons. The number of full-time staff editorial cartoonists has shrunk from more than 200 in the 1980's to under 80 today. Major newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times and Baltimore Sun are now without a staff cartoonist, and even the newspaper cartoons that remain (as cartoonist Scott Santis observed on Cagle’s blog) “are more often jokes than commentary.” Recently, Cagle wrote: “A knowledgeable source tells me that the Village Voice, the New York alternative tabloid with a great tradition of editorial cartoonists going back for decades -- including Jules Feiffer and Ed Sorel -- will stop running editorial cartoons, and any future cartoons will be non-political.”

4.Offensive Cartoons On Display In NYC, I

There are a half-dozen offensive cartoons –– not online, not from Denmark, but in a New York City museum. They are ugly caricatures of black New Yorkers, wearing ludicrous costumes, speaking in ignorant but pompous dialect, and generally putting on airs.

“Not a single image of black New Yorkers survives from their first 170 years in the city,” explains a wall label in “Slavery in New York,” an exhibition at the New-York Historical Society. Then, in the 1790s, “black people appear in the pictures of the city for the first time.” The first pictures are landscapes dotted with a couple of “hardworking if nameless blacks.”

It was not until slavery was abolished completely, in the 1820s, that caricatures of black New Yorkers started appearing in the local press. They were not the only group to be caricatured; immigrants too were a target. But “black New Yorkers came in for especially vicious lampooning” – and some half-dozen examples hang on the walls of the exhibition.

5.Offensive Cartoons On Display In NYC, II

On the second floor of The Museum of Jewish Heritage: A Living Memorial To The Holocaust, is a room with some half-dozen Nazi-era caricatures of Jews, most of them on the front page of a notorious German newspaper called Der Sturmer – a Jew accosting an innocent blonde in a train station, Jews collecting the blood of children, a Jew looking like a kind of bloody King Kong destroying a German town. There is also a children’s board game called Jews Out. “The objective of the game is to collect Jews, who ‘mar’ a German town by their presence and their ‘parasitic businesses,’ and deport them to Palestine.”

Elsewhere in the exhibition is a poster by American artist Ben Shahn, created in response to a Nazi massacre in the town of Lidice, Czechoslovakia: Under the title, “This is Nazi Brutality,” it shows a figure with a hood over his head, his hands chained (an image that in 2006 startlingly evokes a more recent event.) Although commissioned by the U.S. Office of War Information, the wall label notes, “it was deemed too violent for mass distribution.”

6. What Is Offensive Art?

Nobody is calling the Danish cartoons works of art -- indeed, New York Times art critic Michael Kimmelman called them “callous and feeble” provocations meant to “score cheap points about freedom of expression.”

Still, The Washington Post’s account explains that Flemming Rose, the editor for the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten who commissioned the cartoons, did so in part after having read “that museums in Sweden and London had removed artwork that their staff members deemed offensive to Muslims.”

Many non-Muslims looking at the cartoons see them as bland or unclear, and don’t understand what all the fuss is about; some of those offended reply that this lack of understanding is part of the problem.

The question of whether the religion of Islam deems any depictions of Muhammed to be offensive is reportedly one debated by Islamic scholars. In The New Yorker magazine, Jane Kramer writes: “The Koran says that there can be ‘nothing like a likeness’ of God, but in fact it makes no reference to images of the prophet to whom the interdiction was revealed. (It is the Hadith, Islam’s early narrative, that forbids the faithful to represent him.) And, as Islam spread to Persia and India, civilizations with strong representational traditions, artists did paint him.”

It is worth noting that an analogous prohibition exists in the Judeo-Christian tradition, as expressed in the King James Bible translation of the Second Commandment: “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image [in other words, an image sculpted, carved or engraved], or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.”

A Web site called Religious Tolerance points out that “a strict interpretation of this verse would prohibit…erecting nativity scenes at Christmas, hanging religious art in churches, allowing wedding photographers into the sanctuary, installing stained glass windows…that include images of people and animals, using children’s Bibles which are decorated with pictures,” etc.

7. What Is Offensive Art In NYC?

In his article on the Danish cartoons, “A Startling New Lesson in the Power of Imagery,” Kimmelman asked: “Have any modern works of art provoked as much chaos and violence?” He noted that the 1926 painting by Max Ernst, The Virgin Spanking the Christ Child before Three Witnesses, was recently shown at the Metropolitan Museum of Art without protest. He brings up a handful of past controversies, such as the Sensation show at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, which is best-known for inspiring then-Senatorial candidate Rudy Giuliani to create a Decency Commission and threaten to bankrupt the museum. But Kimmelman left out the long litany of battles in the culture wars taking place in New York -- including, mostly recently, the successful effort to chase the Drawing Center out of the World Trade Center site, and the attacks on The Last Supper also at the Brooklyn Museum, and on artwork by Robert Mapplethorpe, Andres Serrano, Richard Serra, John Ahearn...

There is, in fact, a great deal of artwork in New York that one group of people or another have found offensive. Kimmelman attributes this to what he calls the "knee-jerk baiting of traditional authority" inherent in modernism, the efforts by modern artists to "pander to a like-minded audience by goading obvious targets hoping to incite reactions." We live in a society where it is considered a compliment to call something "irreverent."

Others say that the artist's role is to show a culture things about itself that people do not want to see, or are not ready for; "it's through art," Arthur Miller wrote, "that the generations converse with one another."

8. Islamic Art Not On Display In NYC

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has three portrayals of Muhammad in its collection, according to the Los Angeles Times.

“A spokeswoman said none of the Met's depictions of Muhammad -- one from 15th century Afghanistan, one from 16th century Uzbekistan, one from 16th century Turkey -- had been displayed for years. The Met's Islamic galleries are closed for renovation until 2009.”

At the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which also has such work, Islamic art curator Linda Komaroff said: "We've always known about these images, and no one's ever had a problem, because they are respectful.... I wish this whole issue would go away because it's so incendiary."

9. “Islamic Art” On Display In NYC

"Speechless" by Shirin Neshat

The label “Islamic Art” does not appear in a new exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art entitled “Without Boundary: 17 Ways Of Looking,” even though 15 of the 17 artists “came from the Islamic world but do not live there,” in the words of curator Fereshteh Daftari. The artists were born in Iran and Iraq, Pakistan and Egypt, Istanbul and Beirut. They live in London and Paris, Buenos Aires and (six of them) in New York. Some of their work takes the classic traditions of Islamic art as they are understood in the West –- calligraphy, carpets, miniatures -– and turns them on their head in some way. “The most Islamic-looking object,” Daftari points out, is by one of the two American-born artists, Mike Kelly, whose woven silk carpet replaces the traditional red with the green of his ancestral Ireland, and throws in a few shamrocks. “The purpose of this show,” the curator said, “is to prove how reductive ‘us-them’ is.”

The most startling image may be “Speechless,” by Iranian-born New York artist Shirin Neshat’s, in which a woman is wearing a gun barrel as an earring, and her face is covered with calligraphy-like text, the writing (as the catalogue explains) “a eulogy to martyrdom in the name of Islam, quoted from the writings of the contemporary Iranian poet Tahereh Saffarzadeh.” It is part of a series she called “Women of Allah.”

The most ironic work in the show is surely Marjane Satrapi’s drawings, taken from a comic book she entitled “Persepolis,” named after a capital city of an ancient empire, that chronicles the life of a teenage girl in the post-revolutionary Iran of the 1980s who is drawn to Michael Jackson and denim jackets and Nikes sneakers. In a series of panels, the girl is stopped by “guardians of the revolution” who interrogate her about her sneakers, her jacket, and her Michael Jackson button, “that symbol of decadence.” (Remember, this takes place in the early 1980s, before he had become a symbol of decadence in the West as well.) It’s not Michael Jackson, she lies. “It’s Malcolm X, the leader of black Muslims in America.”

In the forward to her comic book, Satrapi (who now lives in Paris) laments that “this old and great civilization” where she grew up is being discussed entirely in connection with “fundamentalism, fanaticism and terrorism….I know this image is far from the truth.”

...***  

Quinn-ing the City Council


In the month since she was selected as the new Speaker of the City Council, Christine Quinn has made an effort to define herself as a unique leader of the legislative body - announcing a series of reforms aimed at making the council more open and democratic and joining Mayor Michael Bloomberg in a crack-down on unscrupulous lobbyists at City Hall.

Then, Speaker Quinn made her mark in an even more tangible way: she fired 61 people.

The Friday before the Presidents Day holiday weekend, Quinn undertook what aides called a "significant restructuring" of the council; nearly a quarter of the staff were handed letters informing them that they had been fired and were told to leave by the end of the day.

The massive layoffs affected every level from receptionists to lawyers to the fiscal experts who are responsible for negotiating the city's $50 billion budget with the mayor's office. Larian Angelo, the longtime finance director, was fired along with 17 of her staff members in the budget office.

Recently, the council announced some of the new people being hired. Key members of Quinn's new appointments include:

- Michael Keogh, who worked in the mayor's Office of State Legislative Affairs, as the new finance director.

- Elizabeth Fine, who worked for President Bill Clinton, as general counsel.

- Kevin Wardally, a former advisor to Gifford Miller, as a deputy chief of staff.

- Maura Keaney, who worked for the Bloomberg campaign, as another deputy chief of staff.

- Ululy Martinez, a former aide to Bronx Democratic Party boss Jose Rivera, as another deputy chief of staff.

- Rob Newman, who has worked at the council since 1999, as legislative director.

- Lucy Mayo, who worked for the organization Demos and State Senator Tom Duane, as policy director.

- And Maria Alvarado, who worked for Gifford Miller, as press secretary.

Observers choose to see Quinn's house cleaning in different ways.

Some said it was expected; when Gifford Miller became speaker in 2001 he did a similar thing and let about 60 staffers go.

Some said the layoffs were Quinn's way of making a clean break from some of the scandals (like the Allan Jennings sexual harassment suit) that plagued the previous council.

Others worried that Quinn was merely making room to hire party loyalists from the Democratic organizations in Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx whose leaders who helped her win the position.

Still others - including several members of the council's Black, Latino, and Asian Caucus - expressed concerns about the ethnic diversity of those let go and those filling the open positions.

Whatever the reasons behind the move, Quinn also wants the staff to take their jobs - or at least their appearance while they are on the job - more seriously.

Last week, the speaker also announced a new dress code and put an end to "casual Fridays." "All employees are expected to be in appropriate business attire during business hours, regardless of the day," a council memo reportedly stated.

For more on the council's changes, see the City Hall news section of Gotham Gazette.

 

How Candidates Get on the Ballot for a Special Election


When a state representative leaves office in the middle of a term, the governor must decide whether or not to hold a Special Election to fill the vacant seat.

If the governor decides not to hold a Special Election, then the seat is open and the residents of the district have no representation until the next election.

If the governor does call for a Special Election, then each political party selects its nominee by its own party rules.

In the Democratic Party, the nominee is selected by the Democratic committee members, a slate of party loyalists who have few other duties than voting to fill a seat in the case of a vacancy.

Candidates who want to run present themselves to the local party – usually through the local Democratic clubs. The local leaders schedule a day to vote when delegates must show up in person.

Each delegate’s vote is weighted based on how many Democrats voted in that election district in the last gubernatorial election. This means that one delegate’s vote can be worth two or three times as much as another.

The delegate’s votes are not secret. Each person puts their vote in an envelope and signs it.

Many delegates vote the way the party leader tells them. Sometimes rival political clubs will back different candidates, but usually the party bosses make their decisions ahead of time about who the nominee will be.

Candidates who do not get the party’s nomination can also file their petitions independently with the Board of Elections. For a State Assembly race, each candidate must get 1,500 signatures to get on the ballot and then the candidate makes up their own party name.

In New York City, where Democrats outnumber Republicans 5 to 1, the Democratic nominee has a distinct advantage.

The candidate who wins the Special Election also has a good chance of getting reelected again in the fall. Last year, of the 212 representatives of the State Legislature, more than half had no opponent or an opponent who raised less than $1,000 for their campaign.

 

The Last Dance?


Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers danced in the movies. Jerry Rice and Tatum O’Neil are dancing with the stars. But this year the New York City Council is trying to end the dance at City Hall.

Every year, the mayor and the City Council engage in a budget dance, a five-month battle. The mayor cuts programs in exactly the same way he had cut them at the beginning of budget negotiations the year before, and then the council restores those cuts in the same way that it had the year before. This maneuvering often arises from a lack of dialogue between the mayor and the council -- and contributes to it as well.

But it is not the best use of time or a particularly sound way to make budget policy. And so the Finance Committee, which I chair, is attempting to insure that funding for certain programs not be cut -- that the current year’s allocation serve as a “baseline” or “benchmark” for spending on those programs in the future. In other words, the funding for these programs could go up --- but not down. The hope is that this baseline will protect key programs and allow the council and the administration to avoid budget dances in the future.

This year’s preliminary budget contains over $320 million in hidden cuts to programs that were restored by the council last year. The slashing includes a cut of over $40 million from the city’s library systems, meaning library hours will again face possible reductions. Over $20 million has been cut from senior citizen programs, including $8 million from the home delivered meal program. There is a cut of over $20 million from the city’s cultural institutions, meaning programs, such as ballet, art, and theaters around the city will face reductions in funding. Finally, a cut of almost $26 million is slated for city education programs that provide worker education, computer training, and leadership education for our city’s youth. These are just some of the allocations that the council will attempt to ‘’baseline’’ this year in an effort to avoid the same fight, for the same allocations, for the same programs next year.

One cut in the preliminary budget that the council will especially focus on restoring is the reduction in funding for school capital projects. Similarly, last year the mayor’s preliminary budget contains no allocations toward financing the hole left by the lack of the funding called for in the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit. The governor in his state preliminary budget has again failed to allocate the funding mandated by court orders, and once again the city’s school children are left in overcrowded classrooms and without the tools necessary to learn.

The governor’s and, consequently, the mayor’s inadequate funding of our public school system has left the system $1.8 billion short of the funding needed to finish capital projects for fiscal 2006 (that’s this current fiscal year), and $1.7 billion short of the funding needed to complete school capital projects in fiscal 2007. The fiscal 2006 cut includes $849 million for new construction, which translates to 23 schools and 15,381 seats that will not be built. It also represents a loss of $238 million for repairs and $365 million for educational enhancements such as libraries, technology, and science labs. As a result, these projects will have to be pushed to fiscal 2007, 2008, 2009, or beyond.

When the mayor threatened to cut over $1 billion from last year’s education capital budget, the City Council refused to pass any budget that did not contain a full restoration of this money. As things stand now, the council and the mayor will dance the same dance again this year. At this point, the Finance Committee and speaker can follow one of two options: either force the administration to put back the full $3.5 billion, or accept the cuts. Since the latter option will leave 1.1 million New York City school children at an educational disadvantage, the council simply cannot accept it. Even though we are tired from dancing and our feet are getting sore, we will again kick off our shoes and fight a battle for the restoration of billions of dollars in capital funding for education.

Finally, the mayor announced $2 billion in surplus funds that will be allocated toward paying for the health benefits of retired city employees, a plan for addressing a financial cost that the city must face. This idea has some merit. Before committing to the proposal, however, the council will need to look into specifically where the funds are derived from to ensure that this does not disadvantage other programs.

As a team, the council Finance Committee and speaker will work to improve the fiscal process. Our long-term goal will be to modify the budget dance by working together to understand which programs and services need funding and then negotiating to baseline that funding. So while we can tap like Gregory Hines or shuffle like Dick Van Dyke, capture the imagination like Chita Rivera or spin like Baryshnikov, we hope that the mayor saved the last dance for last year’s council and last year’s budget. We hope that instituting budget baselines this year will allow the council and the mayor to sit the next one out and pass a responsible budget with ease.

Councilmember David I. Weprin is chair of the City Council Finance Committee and represents the 23rd District in Queens.

Five First Steps At The City Council


Less than a month after her selection by her colleagues as City Council Speaker, Christine Quinn convinced them to pass five small but significant reforms meant to make the legislative body more democratic. (see the Stated Meeting Report Of February 1). Some skeptics might find it ironic that the reforms passed with little discussion -- and that the vote was unanimous.

The relentlessly lopsided votes in the New York City Council are one of the things that make so many New Yorkers so skeptical about the council.

Some are more than skeptical; they are outraged. Preservationists certainly were outraged late last year, when the council voted 43 to 6 to overturn the decision by the Landmarks Preservation Commission to designate the 1913 Austin, Nichols warehouse (built by architect Cass Gilbert) as a landmark. Members of the council have since admitted that they did not know anything about the building before the meeting and were not prepared to weigh in; Councilmember Albert Vann, for example, recalls that he “did not come prepared for any deep thinking” on any issues that day. The council members subsequently overturned the mayor’s veto of their decision, saying they now understood the issue and did not think the building deserved landmark status. But this hasn’t made the skeptics any less skeptical.

Advocates for the disabled are outraged that a bill to make New York City’s taxi fleet accessible to those who use wheelchairs -– currently, less than one percent of the taxis are -- has not even made it to the floor for a vote.

Civic organizations and neighborhood groups that rely on the City Council to champion their causes, on everything from ensuring cleaner air in the Bronx to addressing patterns of housing segregation, long have been asking for a more open legislative process, so that they not only know the status of the bills that concern them, but can feel that their views are being taken into account.

Openness, transparency, accountability, greater participation, timeliness -– these are some of the principles that reformers believe need beefing up in the day-to-day procedures of the City Council, as laid out in a report (in pdf format) issued last month by Citizens Union that I co-authored.

And this is what new City Council Speaker Christine Quinn is promising to do. “We in the City Council have a responsibility to make our government responsive to our constituents’ needs,” Quinn declared at the news conference announcing her package of reforms. “By allowing for more transparency and by instituting these progressive changes we are making the City Council a stronger, better and more effective institution.”

The Power Of The Speaker

To realize the significance of the reforms, it helps to understand how much of the council’s power has been concentrated in the hands of the Speaker. She has the ability to control the flow of legislation and even the level of debate in many different ways. The speaker not only has the power to set the agenda for full council meetings, she exercises control over the agenda of the committees as well, including making decisions on what bills they will vote on. As a further show of power, the Speaker (rather than the committee chairmen) hires and pays for the counsels to the committees, and the Speaker’s staff is often given the responsibility to draft a bill, translating it from an idea into the necessary legal language. While these counsel are often conflicted between allegiance to the committee and the Speaker, the Speaker ultimately pays their bills. All of this presents a hurdle to individual council members -- and their constituents -- from having more of an impact.

With the new rule changes, Christine Quinn is signaling that she is willing to do things at least a little differently.

The Five Rule Changes

The new reforms are meant to be the first steps in addressing the problems for which the council has been criticized:

1. Timeliness: The Speaker’s staff often delays drafting into legal language the bills that are proposed by individual members of the Council (as opposed to the Speaker herself). The new reforms include a requirement that the staff must write such draft legislation within 60 days after a request.

2. Transparency: The public and even most members of the City Council can only easily get ahold of the first version of a bill when it is introduced for consideration. It is much more difficult to learn of the various changes that the bill undergoes in committee, so that they can follow the progress of the bill and be more informed when it comes to a vote. The new reform calls for the most current version at any given time to be posted on the City Council Web site.

Active Participation: Two of the rules just passed are meant to encourage council members to play a more active role in the political process by making it easier for them to use two rarely-employed procedures to go around the power of the Speaker.

3. Many bills, after being considered in the appropriate council committee, never make it to the full council (called the floor) for a vote, because they lack support by the Speaker. Theoretically, if enough city council members feel strongly enough about a bill, they can insist that it be brought to the floor. But this almost never happens. The new rule, which says that a bill must have the support of only seven council members (reduced from the previous nine) to bring it to the floor over the objection of the Speaker, is meant to signal this Speaker’s willingness to have this procedure used on occasion.

4. Similarly, the fourth new rule encourages members of the City Council to offer amendments to a bill after it already has been passed. Offering amendments is commonly practiced around the country.

5. Openness. Committees are now required to post notice of their hearings -– and, perhaps more importantly, their proposed agendas -- 72 hours in advance of committee meetings, online, to the news media and in a public place at City Hall.

What From Here?

Will the new rules be effective?

Reformers on the council itself are optimistic. Reformers outside the council, such as Craig Gurian, executive director of the Anti-Discrimination Center of Metro New York, are hopeful. “A useful early test,” Gurian says, “will be to see if the council is able to enact some of the long-overdue legislation that has been sitting for years without getting to the floor for a vote.”

In addition to the rule changes, the Speaker has pledged to create a “working group” on reform to review and evaluate other proposals.

Councilmember Gale Brewer, chair of the technology committee, sees no great conspiracy to keep council members in the dark but believes the council has not done an adequate job informing council members of the issues that are being worked on. “Because the budget is so large and because many of the issues that come before us and that affect New York are so complex, it’s a challenge to get everyone up to speed,” Brewer said. What will help, she believes, will be “more council and staff briefings as part of the council process and better use of list serves and the Web.”

Proposals need not come just from the council – or at least not just from the New York City Council.

The Web site of the Columbus, Ohio City Council is available in eleven different languages, including Spanish, Chinese and Korean, all languages that are widely spoken in New York City.

The City Council of Los Angeles must post on its Web site a list of expenditures neighborhood by neighborhood.

In Detroit the City Clerk’s office is required to post introductions of laws not only at City Hall but in a daily newspaper, so that the public knows what’s going on as well. And any public hearing cannot be held sooner than five days after the publication of the notice.

Support has been growing for a number of other measures. One common peeve is the way that funds are distributed to council districts and “stipends” to council leadership. The amount of money added to their $90,000 annual salary –- for what is officially (but only rarely in actual practice) a part-time job –- ranges as high as an extra $28,500. That is for the Speaker herself, of course, but even those rewarded less handsomely have one person to thank -- the Speaker.

Doug Israel is policy director at Citizens Union Foundation, which publishes Gotham Gazette 

City Council Stated Meeting -- February 1, 2006


Every two weeks the New York City Council meets for its Stated Meeting to introduce and pass legislation. As a regular feature, Searchlight covers these meetings and posts a summary of the bills passed.

QUOTES OF THE DAY

“I believe that these five changes will make the proceedings and business of the council more transparent, more democratic and more open and accessible to the public.” – City Council Speaker Christine Quinn

“It is history in the making.” — Joel Rivera, on Bronx Terminal Market

MEETING SUMMARY

The New York City Council passed two packets of legislation. One, which aims to make local government more transparent, changed several of the operating rules of the city council. Another, reached after difficult negotiations between private developers and community groups, gave city council approval for the Bronx Terminal Market development to proceed.

CITY COUNCIL RULE CHANGES

With little fuss and no dissent, the city council members unanimously approved changes to the way they do some of their work. The set of resolutions is supposed to reform the council.

“I believe that these five changes will make the proceedings and business of the council more transparent, more democratic and more open and accessible to the public,” said Speaker Christine Quinn. She added that the council will establish a working group on rules reform to study and propose more rules changes throughout the year.

One major change, for instance, affects the way bills are drafted in the council. In the past, there were times when a member would submit a bill that never actually got drafted. Now, the speaker has to make sure that the “central staff provides legislative drafting services to all members on an equitable and confidential basis.” Instead of languishing, bills introduced by any member, popular or not, will be drafted on a first-come, first-served basis and within 60 days.

During the meeting, several members said they welcomed the changes as a way to make what they do more transparent to the public. Councilmember David Yassky said the new rules were “a meaningful set of changes” that would allow taxpayers ultimately to get a “better product” for their money.

Councilmember Albert Vann called the changes “progressive and member-friendly.” Even Charles Barron, perhaps the council member most likely to disagree with the rest of the legislative body, said the changes were “a step in the right direction.”

Another new rule requires council committees to be quicker about spreading the word when they hold meetings. Now, a committee must give at least 72 hours advanced notice, “where practical,” of a meeting by sending press releases to news media and by posting notices inside public areas of City Hall and on the internet.

Also, amendments to bills will be read off and voted on separately after debate on the floor of the city council chambers. And the entire process for amending legislation was clarified.

One new rule changes how laws are changed. The new regulation requires alterations to drafts of legislation that seeks to amend or repeal an existing law: now, the legislation must be stamped with time and date, any repealed text should be printed between brackets and any insertions of new material should be underlined.

Finally, the number of council members needed to bring a piece of stalled legislation out of committee to the full council was reduced from nine to seven.

For more explanation, go to Gotham Gazette's Voting topic page article, Five First Steps At The City Council, by Doug Israel.

BRONX TERMINAL MARKET

More contentious than reforms to the council’s operating procedures were changes that will allow the Bronx Terminal Market development to keep pushing ahead. It was a big city thumbs up for the Related Companies’ $400 million mall – and a slap in the face for Walmart.

Technically, the council approved six uniform land use review procedure applications for 965,000 square feet of land in the Bronx. But because months of negotiating between developers, the city and community groups resulted in a “community benefits agreement” and the explicit banning of Walmart, the city council also set a precedent.

“It is history in the making,” said Joel Rivera, the council’s majority leader and strong Bronx councilmember, during the meeting.

The negotiations resulted in “a community benefits agreement that’s going to serve as a model, not just for the city but for our nation,” said Councilmember Maria del Carmen Arroyo, who represents District 17, where the market, which will be renamed Gateway Center when it becomes a mall, will be built. “Developers in the city, I hope you’re paying attention. Because it’s only going to get better.”

The retail project will raze and replace about two-dozen wholesale merchants, who together comprise what is reportedly the largest seller of ethnic and tropical food on the East Coast.

Some officials and community members have raised concerns about how the project originated – and indeed, about how often development projects in the city are spawned not by government or the public but by private developers.

But many praised the community benefits agreement. Some of its stipulations, as Arroyo noted during the stated meeting, are:

-$3 million from Related Companies for a referral system to coordinate job training and placement, with special emphasis on local residents. The goal, Arroyo said, is to fill 75 percent of the jobs with Bronx residents. It is similar to a hiring plan devised to appease locals in the construction of the Time Warner Center.
-A preference toward local contractors. The goal here, she said, is to get half of all contractor and development work going to local, Bronx-based firms (though published reports have said Related Companies only agreed to 30 percent).
-A promised “green roof” and affordable child care program and facility.
-“No Walmart, of any kind,” said Arroyo. Any big box store that moves in must accept food stamps and WIC and must reduce or eliminate membership fees for those who cannot afford them. Related Companies agreed to pay 50 percent of membership fees for 2,000 families from the community for five years.

While many members praised the community benefits agreement, as well as the Bronx delegation, community groups and Related Companies for persisting through difficult negotiations, some members raised concerns about the path the project has taken. “We can’t forget about process,” said Councilmember Charles Barron. “We can’t forget about displacement.” He was the only member to vote against the Bronx Terminal Market measures. Councilmember Hiram Monserrate abstained from voting for the same reasons.

 

State Of The Neighborhood


Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s State of the City speech focused on many of the issues that I seek to address and make a priority during my term in office. Chief among them are housing and health.

The neighborhoods in my district include El Barrio/East Harlem, part of the Upper West Side and part of the Mott Haven section of the South Bronx. In East Harlem alone we have 10 housing projects, including the large Wagner Houses complex. One section of the district reportedly contains the lowest-income census tract in the city.

Bloomberg talked about reducing poverty in his State of the City address. “This year, we’ll launch a public-private task force – modeled on our task force to end chronic homelessness – that will attack chronic unemployment and poverty in the homes and neighborhoods where the need is greatest,” he said. “We’ll launch our first pilot programs in three communities where the problems have long been entrenched – Bushwick, Melrose, and Bedford-Stuyvesant.” I welcome creative approaches to tackling our pressing issues. As legislators it is our responsibility to ensure that the public policies that guide this city address the systemic problems that contribute to such inequities. The Mayor has committed himself to seriously tackling these concerns in a non-partisan manner and I welcome that approach. I look forward to the work of this public-private task force as it seeks to determine the underlying causes of chronic unemployment and poverty and will join the dialogue as it progresses.

Affordable Housing, Public Housing

Despite the income disparity of many of my constituents with other parts of the city, we’re seeing property values rise as the area begins to gentrify. That creates an urgent need to maintain the affordable housing stock that already exists, as well as develop new units. I seek to address our affordable housing crisis by looking at innovative ways that we can safeguard Mitchell Lama housing units as well as looking at public policy and legislation that will facilitate the creation of new affordable units.

The mayor noted in his address that he would build or preserve 165,000 new units in the next seven years as part of his $7.5 billion housing plan. I welcome the challenge, but we must first address how we define affordability if we seek to tackle the issue effectively.

We’ve also got to address problems residents are facing in our public housing. After serving as council member for only several weeks, I am finding that the vast majority of constituent requests are related to public housing concerns. My district is home to ten percent of New York City’s public housing stock -- one of the highest concentrations in the city. The challenges that confront New York City’s public housing system will be a priority during my tenure and I will work alongside tenant leaders and New York City Housing Authority to ensure that we improve existing conditions.

Diabetes, Asthma, AIDS

On the health front, a recent New York Times article highlighted East Harlem as an epicenter of the diabetes epidemic in the city. The article pointed out that residents of this part of my district “die of diabetes at twice the rate of people in the city as a whole.” Bloomberg also recognized this crisis in his address, saying the city’s goal is now to “reduce the number of New Yorkers at the highest risk for diabetes complications by 20 percent by the end of 2008.” The first step will be reporting blood sugar test results to the Department of Health. I will seek to work with my district’s health facilities to raise greater awareness among all constituents and will work alongside the Department of Health to ensure that we are aggressive about reducing the number of individuals at high risk.

What’s more, district 8 also has one of the highest rates of asthma in the city, and the second highest HIV infection rate. We have to address these issues by allocating greater funds to prevention and engaging our communities in visible public educational campaigns as a means of raising awareness.

Between health and housing, my district desperately needs big-picture problem solving as well as help with every-day troubles.

Service Provider Summit

Currently, we are still assessing how we will structure the constituent services division of our office. I see myself, and the work that I will engage in, as one that will facilitate change within the district. My office will work in partnership with the local stakeholders to fulfill our greater vision of community empowerment. There are many agencies providing great services to this district. It is my aim to build a strong, cohesive partnership with them that I believe can work in tandem with this office.

I will hold a series of service provider summits in order to develop a better sense of the work they are engaged in and to outline the ways we best can work together. It’s a critical role: working in partnership with the service organizations and also being able to hold them accountable for the work they’re directed to do. I will be looking at how to serve as that nexus for my constituents.

I have had instances where people have walked into our office seeking help filling out paperwork for a myriad of benefits. Ideally, my office would link that constituent up with a local service provider better suited to assist them. For example, we have constituents walking in with concerns about enrolling in Medicare’s Part D drug benefit. A senior center here already does exactly that kind of work. So from this office, we can call and make an appointment for the constituent and follow up afterwards, making sure he or she went to the senior center and that the visit ran smoothly. This kind of relationship will enable us as an office, and me as a city council member, to help my constituents while maximizing our time to tackle large-scale issues like public housing or the affordable housing crisis. It is my hope to serve as a strong voice for a community that has been greatly disenfranchised.

Melissa Mark Viverito represents district 8 in the New York City Council 

Mayor Michael Bloomberg's 2006 State of the City Address


The following is the text of Mayor Bloomberg’s State of the City Address as prepared at Snug Harbor Cultural Center in Staten Island:

Thank you, Jeanne.

Borough President Molinaro, thank you for hosting us here in beautiful Staten Island, the place that -- unbeknownst to the press -- has been my real island get-away over the past four years.

Comptroller Thompson, Public Advocate Gotbaum; Borough Presidents; Members of the Council with special congratulations to the new Council Speaker, Christine Quinn; and all the distinguished officials and honored guests with us today: Welcome.

Looking around at all of the elected officials and community leaders in this theater, I see faces with family roots in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean. I see Jews, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, gay and straight, immigrant and native–born. I see New York!

The diversity of our city -- and its leadership -- gives us incredible strength. And over the past four years, as God knows, we have needed every ounce of it. After starting this decade at the peak of an economic boom, we soon tumbled into the darkest of valleys. Since then, against all the odds, our city has climbed back up that mountain – faster than anyone thought possible. We didn’t do it by putting political interests ahead of the public’s interests. We didn’t do it by leaving the most vulnerable behind. And we didn’t do it as Republicans or Democrats. We did it together as New Yorkers. And because we did, today, all five boroughs are reaching heights that we’ve never before known: in safety, education, health care, economic development. In every area, the State of our City today is united and stronger than ever!

As we look ahead to 2006 and beyond, we recognize that this is a special moment for New York. We can sit back and let the power of the moment wane. Or, we can grab hold of it and set New York on the road to long-term strength, stability, and success so that when the tough times return – and they always do – we will be better prepared to meet them than ever before.

CAMPAIGN PROMISES

Fellow New Yorkers: such a future is now within our reach. I believe that the unity we’ve achieved, born of tragedy, but nurtured by our common dreams, can lead us to great achievements that no one imagined possible just four years ago. During the last campaign, I proposed more than 100 initiatives that will keep New York moving forward. Have I forgotten those promises? Not one. Will I honor them? You better believe it. But we will do much more than keep our promises. We will keep pursuing new ideas and fresh approaches with more determination than ever, and with the same values and principles that have guided us here. We will use this moment to take on the most difficult long-term challenges for our children, and theirs.

I have pledged that in my second term, we would neither turn back, nor hold back. And today, you’ll hear exactly how we’re going to do that. I’m going to lay out a blueprint for New York’s future in all the key areas of our City’s life: jobs and the economy, housing and parks, health and human services, education and public safety, financial security, and government integrity.

JOBS AND DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS

Let’s start with the challenge of creating the jobs New Yorkers need today, and the jobs our children will need tomorrow. In 2005, New York City's unemployment rate dropped to 5.8 percent, the lowest level since 2000, but we're not stopping there. I've set a goal of creating 250,000 new private sector jobs over the next five years-- and to make sure that all communities have access to them. To do it, we’re going to invest in economic development projects, make New York the most business-friendly city in the nation, and encourage growing industries.

This year, an extraordinary range of projects will leap off the drawing boards – creating jobs, revitalizing the waterfront, and bringing new life to communities in every borough. At the Homeport here on Staten Island, we’ll break ground on a waterfront esplanade and take the first major steps toward creating a great place to live, work, and play.

In Brooklyn, construction workers will put shovels in the ground at Atlantic Yards, the most exciting housing, commercial, and sports development in Brooklyn’s history.

In both the South Bronx and Flushing, the Yankees and Mets will break ground on new stadiums – and then meet in a seven-game Subway Series! (We can dream, can't we?)

But that’s just the beginning. Just west of Yankee Stadium, we’ll start construction at the long-neglected Bronx Terminal Market. And, just east of the stadium, we’ll begin building at the Hub, finally realizing its extraordinary potential. Together, these projects will become the first major retail and commercial development in the South Bronx in decades.

In Flushing, we’ll start construction on a $500 million project to create 2,000 jobs and revitalize the heart of downtown. And just west of there in Willets Point, we’ll select a developer to begin turning the Iron Triangle into a community jewel -– with parks, jobs, and housing.

In Jamaica, we’ll begin one of the largest re-zonings in decades, creating the conditions for a vibrant transportation-oriented business district that capitalizes on the AirTrain and its connection to Kennedy Airport, while at the same time protecting the character of the residential neighborhood.

On Manhattan’s East Side, work will begin on the new East River Science Park, which will create 2,500 biotech jobs. On the West Side, we’ll start digging a tunnel to extend the Seven Train, spurring development of a thriving new residential and commercial neighborhood. We’ll also move ahead on two badly needed projects: the Javits Center expansion, and on the Hudson, a modernized cruise ship terminal.

Nearby, we’ll begin work on one of the most innovative park projects in the world: the High Line. And, across the island, we will begin reshaping the East River Waterfront.

Over in Brooklyn, we’ll fully open a new cruise ship terminal in Red Hook, which will become home to the Queen Mary II and 600 new jobs. Also, along the Brooklyn waterfront, the Port Authority will turn over Piers 1 through 5 – and the City will contribute Pier 6 – to the Brooklyn Bridge Development Corporation – something the community has been dreaming about for 20 years!

To make sure that all of these projects move forward on schedule and on budget, we have created a new Office of Capital Project Development in City Hall, which will work with all of our public and private partners. And when we say we're going to build something, it's not just a photo-op -- we're really going to build it! And this office will be the central command center to insure that.

GROUND ZERO

Most importantly of all, this year, as we push forward on the redevelopment of the World Trade Center, we need to push aside individual financial interests and focus on what’s best for our city. That means it’s time to pick up the pace of commercial construction, and to build for uses that reflect the realities of the market and the needs of Lower Manhattan –like the retail development that’s so crucial to linking the site back into the life of the city.

We can do this if Silverstein Properties is willing to do the right thing – and hand off responsibility for building Towers 3 and 4, in exchange for a reduction of its rent. And we can do it if the Port Authority commits to occupying one of the towers and working quickly to identify a developer for the other, so that all projects can proceed simultaneously at the same, quick pace. Such re-negotiations between the Port Authority and Silverstein Properties must not wait. The time to reach agreement is now. We can not allow the Trade Center to be a construction site for the next 15 years, which the current plan all but ensures it will be!

If we immediately start building retail stores along with a commercial, residential, and hotel mix – Lower Manhattan will become one of the most energetic and exciting neighborhoods in New York. We need this now, to advance our economy and pay tribute to those who died there –not a decade and a half in the future, when it fits a developer's financial plan!

Three years ago, we presented our vision for revitalizing Lower Manhattan as exactly that kind of vibrant, 24/7 community. Since then, we’ve advanced every element of that vision – investing in parks, housing, schools, and streetscapes. Now, we’re also going to extend it to one of our most valuable assets: Governors Island. We will select a specific plan for the future of Governors Island that makes the most of its spectacular location, beauty, and history. We believe that by taking all of these steps, the next four years will see the rebirth of Lower Manhattan as the world’s financial capital and as a thriving residential, retail, and waterfront community.

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND TOURISM

Lower Manhattan is a cornerstone in our blueprint for the future, but we cannot allow its volatile financial markets to be the sole foundation of our economic health. In 2006, not only will we get major economic development projects off the ground in all five boroughs, we’ll take a major step toward our goal of making New York the most business friendly city in the nation. By the end of this year, we’re going to launch “Business Express,” a web site where small business owners can set up personal accounts and get the help they need to start and grow their businesses.

Creating the conditions for small businesses to thrive also means supporting the growing industries that many of them capitalize on, industries like retail, film & television, and tourism. We’ve just had our best tourism year on record, with 41 million visitors to our city. This year, NYC & Company expects that number to climb to 43 million. But we must, and we will, do even better.

Over the past four years, we’ve created new partners for NYC and Company: NYC Marketing, and NYC Big Events. Now they’ll work more closely together to create the best marketing and promotion effort serving any city in the world. And to support this, we’re going to commit an additional $15 million annually – nearly tripling the city’s investment, so that we can compete with cities like Las Vegas that spend far more than we do to attract tourists and the jobs they create. With this bigger and better marketing strategy, we will set a new goal called “50 by 15,” 50 million visitors annually by the year 2015.

To help accommodate our growing number of visitors, we’ll soon announce a comprehensive plan to protect our city’s great hotels and encourage investment in new hotels. The plan will embody the new spirit of labor-management cooperation we helped forge to rescue the Plaza and hundreds of jobs. The biggest draw for tourists, and the greatest competitive advantage that New York has over every other city, can be found right here, at all of our world-class cultural institutions and entertainment venues. That’s why we’ve dramatically increased capital funding for arts organizations in every borough.

This year, the 30th Anniversary of our City’s Department of Cultural Affairs, we will help unveil a number of exciting projects, including a new performing arts center at Harlem’s Aaron Davis Hall, and a beautiful new wing at the Bronx Museum of the Arts. And – I know this will be a favorite with many here today– the Staten Island Zoo will open its long-awaited Reptile Wing!

To make sure that all communities have access to the jobs we’re creating in so many different industries, we’ve worked hard to level the playing field for women-and minority-owned businesses. In the months ahead, as a result of our close collaboration with the City Council, we’ll establish explicit purchasing goals at every City agency for women- and minority-owned businesses.

We’ll also begin to see the results from our Commission on Construction Opportunity, and let me tell you – early indications are incredibly promising. For example, next Monday, men and women who have had difficulty finding steady employment will start a six-month job training and union apprentice program to begin preparing them for careers in construction. And our Workforce One job training centers will place a record 15,000 people in jobs over the next 12 months.

FIVE-BOROUGH STRATEGIC LAND USE PLAN

Making sure that every community shares in the New York we are building also requires us to look to the future –and plan for the future – in ways we haven’t dared in decades.

In April, I will present the results of a sweeping inter-agency, five-borough Strategic Land Use plan that examines all of our City’s neighborhoods and their needs for the 21st Century, focusing particularly on housing, transportation, energy, and infrastructure – including parks. This year, here in “the borough of parks,” Staten Island, we will begin to turn what was once the world’s largest landfill into a beautiful expanse more than twice the size of Central Park. We’ll also add substantial acreage to Staten Island’s “bluebelt” conservation system.

Historically, there was almost no coordinated planning to protect Staten Island’s quality of life. As a result, as everyone here knows, overdevelopment became a major problem, and traffic went from bad to worse. We are going to confront the problem of traffic with the very same vigor we used attacking overdevelopment. Using the work of the Growth Management Task Force as a model, we will take decisive steps to improve the flow of traffic on Staten Island.

I have asked my Transportation and City Planning commissioners to report back to the Growth Management Task Force in 60 days with a package of initiatives designed to address Staten Island's growing congestion. And to improve traffic flow in all five boroughs, we will launch a new program called "Take Back the Streets," to crack down on construction contractors that illegally tear them up. And, to ensure that when public utilities fix the streets, we hold them accountable for making sure they stay fixed!

AFFORDABLE HOUSING

When we talk about quality of life, we also need to talk about affordability. New York’s future depends on our ability to make sure that middle and working class families can afford to live here. That’s why we fought for the $400 property tax rebate. That’s why we will issue it again this year. It’s why I will be asking the State Legislature to extend the rebates for the remainder of my term. And it’s why we are creating the most ambitious affordable housing initiative in New York City history!

Over the past four years, we’ve funded the construction and rehabbing of nearly 50,000 affordable houses in all five boroughs. But that is only the beginning. Next week, when I release our preliminary budget, it will fund our $7.5 billion plan to build and preserve 165,000 units of affordable housing in New York City by the year 2013. Three-fourths of that housing will be started or finished by the end of this term, and many of the units will be for the middle class. Over the next 12 months, we’ll put another 15,000 units of affordable housing into production. We’ll break ground on the first new mid- and high-rise co-ops and condos to go up in the South Bronx in a generation, and on the next phase of more than 500 Nehemiah homes being developed at Spring Creek in Brooklyn.

To make sure that the benefits of our affordable housing program are shared with city workers, who do so much to keep our city healthy and strong, we’ve introduced a five percent preference for them in our housing lotteries. This year, we’ll also help more of our city’s brave veterans achieve the dream of home ownership by giving them a 30 percent preference for homes taken in foreclosure by the federal government and that are now being restored by the City and our partners. These men and women have risked everything to defend us, and I’m honored that several have joined us today. I ask them now to stand so that we can thank them for their service to our nation, and the sacrifices they have made protecting our freedom.

PROTECTING CHILDREN

We’ve got obligations to other New Yorkers, too, particularly our children, and especially those who are at-risk of abuse. Our Administration for Children’s Services has come so far over the past ten years, but we know we have not come far enough. We must respond to every child’s case with an unflinching sense of urgency. Two days ago, I announced $16 million in new initiatives that will improve oversight, ease caseloads, and ensure coordination among all city agencies. We are taking every possible step to seal up the cracks so that no child can slip through them. The death of Nixzmary Brown will long be remembered in New York as a terrible tragedy, but I am determined to see that her death will not be in vain.

I promise you we will do everything we can to protect innocent children from suffering at the hands of abusers. As we focus on protecting our children, we will also do more to tackle the myriad of issues that prevent too many in our city from fully enjoying its opportunities. In a few weeks, we’ll break ground on a new citywide intake center for homeless families that will replace the old Emergency Assistance Unit and the failure it represents.

REDUCING POVERTY

This year, we’ll also launch our Integrated Human Services System, a secure, online information and application system for all those who receive Food Stamps, public health insurance, and other benefits. Today, the number of New Yorkers on welfare is at a 40-year-low, but this year, we’re going to do more than ever to give people the opportunity to live lives of independence and dignity.

To make sure that welfare recipients receive the training and education they need to hold jobs, we’re launching a new “Back-to-Work” initiative that connects case-load contractors and the training and education services they provide to every job center in the city. If contractors don’t help their clients find and hold jobs, it’s simple: They won’t be paid. Because beginning this year, all contracts will be performance-based.

Even though we have become a national leader in promoting welfare-to-work, our great city remains home to the nation’s poorest congressional district – the 16th in the South Bronx. And that has been true for too long. Men and women struggling to get out of poverty deserve our help – and so do their children. Our nation has learned by experience that we cannot eliminate poverty by throwing money at the problem. But our city has shown that problems once thought to be beyond hope: dangerous streets, failing schools, chronic homelessness –can be turned around, if we target our resources where they are needed most, if we set measurable goals, and if we hold ourselves accountable.

Today I am committing to a major reduction in the number of children, women and men who live in poverty in this city over the next four years. To that end, this year, we’ll launch a public-private task force – modeled on our task force to end chronic homelessness – that will attack chronic unemployment and poverty in the homes and neighborhoods where the need is greatest. We’ll launch our first pilot programs in three communities where the problems have long been entrenched – Bushwick, Melrose, and Bedford-Stuyvesant. I have asked Richard Parsons, CEO of Time Warner, and Geoffrey Canada, President and CEO of The Harlem Children's Zone, to serve as co-chairs of our new task force. They have agreed to work with me to develop and implement our strategy, identify the most important measurements, and make sure that we refuse to accept failure.

Geoffrey is here with us today, and I want to thank him and Richard for joining me in taking on such an important challenge.

HEALTH CARE

Attacking poverty also means making sure all people receive the quality health care they deserve. And I am pleased to be working with a City Council Speaker who is as passionate about improving public health as I am. Over the past four years, we’ve created the nation’s finest public hospital system. This year, we’re going to launch a revolution in our community health clinics. We’ll ask Albany, Washington, and the private sector to join us in investing $100 million to create secure electronic health records in our community clinics, and in the offices of doctors who practice in our poorest neighborhoods. This will reduce preventable illnesses. It will save millions of dollars a year now wasted on needless procedures. And it will make us the national leader in providing high-quality health care to those most in need.

Compared to four years ago, there are one million more New Yorkers currently enrolled in public health insurance programs, many of them children. Now, we’re going to begin an unprecedented campaign to improve the health of our children by working to ensure that virtually every school student has health insurance -– a mark that no other city has ever achieved. We’ll work with the city’s primary and secondary schools to integrate public health insurance into their enrollment process, and with community health centers and all hospitals to make health insurance enrollment a key part of the discharge process.

We will also remain at the forefront of the war against AIDS. Over the next three years, our goal is to cut the number of HIV-related deaths by more than 40 percent. We believe we can achieve it by intensifying prevention, improving access to treatment, focusing on programs that actually deliver results, and by urging the State to pass legislation that makes it easier to find out your HIV status and enables us to reach out and offer to help patients get better care.

This year, we’ll also mount an aggressive campaign against the only major health problem in our city that is getting worse -- diabetes. It’s a vicious silent killer, and we’re going to start tracking it down and doing everything we can to control it. This year, when people take blood sugar tests, that information will go to the Health Department. And starting in the South Bronx, we’ll work with patients at high-risk and their doctors to improve the care they receive. Our goal is to reduce the number of New Yorkers at the highest risk for diabetes complications by 20 percent by the end of 2008. Public health is a fundamental responsibility of government, and we are going to do everything we can to help New Yorkers continue living longer lives.

EDUCATION

If we want New York to be the healthiest big city in America, we cannot succeed without continuing to restore the long-lost vitality of our schools. Over the past four years, we’ve taken major strides in providing our children with the education they will need to lead New York forward. Today, students are making record gains on their test scores, schools are safer, and the intolerable achievement gap that exists among different ethnic groups has begun to close. But we all know we have a long way to go.

In the fall, I proposed several major initiatives to take our reforms to the next level. We are charging ahead on each of them, and at the same time putting in place even more bold programs. First, this year we will begin creating more new schools, and new programs, that offer high school students additional routes to graduation, employment, and post-secondary education. Second, this September, we will open Brooklyn Latin, the first of seven new, top-flight, academically selective schools (This is just the type of school I could not have gotten into.)

Third, we will be a leading voice in the effort to lift the state’s cap on charter schools in New York City – so that we can create more options for communities that need them the most.

But we will do even more. This year, we will increase by 150 the number of schools in the “Autonomy Zone”. These schools will be empowered with greater freedom and flexibility and be held accountable for their results. We will begin directing at least $200 million more away from the bureaucracy and into the classrooms.

And today I am happy to announce that the Department of Education, together with NYU and CUNY and supported by $15 million from the Carroll and Milton Petrie Foundation, is launching the New York City Partnership for Teacher Excellence. The Partnership takes a new approach to teacher education. Aspiring teachers will spend a great deal of their time inside our public schools because there is no substitute for real world experience. We are confident that the Partnership will help us attract and retain more high quality teachers and prepare them for the hardest-to-staff subject areas, grade levels, and communities. CUNY Chancellor Matt Goldstein and NYU President John Sexton have joined us today, and I want to thank them for lining up their great universities behind this innovative program.

We're also making sure our teachers spend more quality time with students. Starting in less than two weeks teachers will spend an additional 150 minutes a week in small group instruction with struggling students and they will return to assignments in lunchrooms, school yards, and hallways -– something that hasn't been done in years.

But we also need our State officials to step to the front of the class and deliver the money we are owed as a result of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity. We need that money to build and maintain new facilities to provide more training for teachers and principals and to create more Pre-K programs throughout the city – ensuring that thousands more of our city’s kids arrive at kindergarten ready to learn. We need the money now and together we must continue fighting for it. Because it’s not just our school children who are being shortchanged, but the very future of our city.

CRIME AND PUBLIC SAFETY

Putting New York on the road to long-term success in all of the areas I’ve spoken about today rests on our ability to continue making the safest big city in America even safer. Public safety is the foundation of our city’s prosperity. Over the last four years, the NYPD has cut crime by more than 20 percent. Today, our city is safer than it has been in more than four decades.

Now, people ask: How low can crime go? No one knows the answer, but we’re going to continue doing everything we can to find out.

This year, we’re going to expand “Operation Trident” – which splits precincts to attack stubborn crime problems. Last year, in the 75th Precinct in East New York, Brooklyn. Operation Trident reduced crime by more than twice the citywide average. Now, we’re going to take it to the 44th and 46th Precincts in the South Bronx. We’re going to identify new locations to target as part of Operation Clean Sweep so that we continue gaining ground in our campaign to improve New York’s quality of life. We will also expand our cutting-edge Real Time Crime Center so its data can be used to solve not only murder cases, but other serious crimes. And we will complete construction of the most sophisticated forensic DNA laboratory in the nation, which will have the capacity to test evidence not only from sex crimes and homicides, but from any crime.

But even as our city leads the nation in analyzing DNA from crime scenes, our State is way behind the nation in collecting DNA from convicted offenders. Forty-three other states require DNA samples from all convicted felons. We are not one of them and make no mistake: People are dying because of it. This year, we will urge the State Legislature to pass a law mandating the collection of DNA samples for all criminal convictions. This is the single best way to catch offenders before they become serial offenders, as well as to exonerate the innocent. Let's hold the State Legislature accountable for doing it, and let's also challenge them to abolish the statute of limitations for rape and sexual assault cases where there is DNA evidence, so that these vile criminals are punished whenever they are caught.

By now, you know that I never mince words about the urgent threat that illegal guns pose to our everyday lives. Let me describe exactly how we will turn up the heat against all those who menace our streets by carrying or selling illegal guns. This year we will marshal all of our resources and work with all of our partners in public service –- whether they are across the rotunda in City Hall up in Albany or in big cities across the nation -– both to root out and punish these criminals and to stop the flow of illegal guns into our city

First, every felony gun defendant will be thoroughly de-briefed either by the Police Department’s elite Gun Suppression Squad that we are now forming or by district attorneys, or in many cases, by both. This will allow us to learn much more about where and how illegal guns are sold and by whom. Second, we will pilot new technology that uses microphones to instantly direct video cameras to the source of gun shots, ensuring that shooters are seen as well as heard. Third, we will continue using gun crimes to identify Impact Zones to crack down on shootings. Fourth, when gun offenders get re-arrested for any other crime –- theft or assault, for instance –- their cases will be red-flagged for prosecutors, judges, and probation and parole officers so that all law enforcement officials will know the threat these offenders pose.

As we marshal our resources to stiffen enforcement of existing laws, we will also ask our legislative partners to strengthen our laws. We will work with the City Council to enact a one-gun-every-three-months limit on purchases in New York City, and we will urge Albany to pass two pieces of critical legislation:

First, a Gun Offenders Registration Act – which would be a Megan’s Law for gun criminals. Like sex offenders, gun offenders present terrible risks for communities, and they should be required to regularly verify their addresses with the police. And second, a law to make criminal possession of a loaded gun a Class C felony with a three-year minimum jail sentence. There is simply no reason why judges should have the discretion to let criminals who carry loaded illegal guns get off the hook with probation. Illegal guns have one purpose: to kill. Period. End of story!

We will do more than ever to detect and punish gun offenders, but when more than eight of every ten guns used in crimes come from other states, we must reach across state lines.

And we will. Right now, about one percent of gun dealers account for almost 60 percent of guns used in crimes nationally. This year, we are going to launch lawsuits against these irresponsible dealers, and we are going to hold them accountable for the terrible damage their guns cause.

We will also reach out to elected officials in other states to discuss potential policy and legislative changes, and new ways of sharing information. In our conversations with our sister cities and states we will not seek solutions that infringe on the rights of gun owners but we will seek to move beyond the knee-jerk opposition that special interests invariably pose against even the most basic and common sense efforts to clamp down on illegal guns.

Getting tough on illegal guns is not a conservative or liberal issue. It’s an issue of law and order and an issue of life and death. Only a few miles from here Detectives Rodney Andrews and James Nemorin were viciously murdered nearly three years ago. They were conducting one of the buy-and-bust operations that police officers do every day to keep illegal guns out of the hands of criminals. In the past four years, Detectives Patrick Rafferty, Robert Parker, Dillon Stewart, and Daniel Enchautegui all were gunned down in the line of duty. Today, I’m honored to say, we are joined by members of their families, and I’d ask them to stand.

To all the family members here with us today: We will never forget the debt we owe to your loved ones and to all the men and women who have paid the ultimate sacrifice protecting us. But we will also never forget your sacrifice. And I make you this promise: I will never give in to those who accept the spread of illegal guns and their deadly consequences. Never. I will do whatever it takes –- in the memory of your sons, your husbands, your brothers, your fathers, and our brave heroes.

COUNTER-TERRORISM

Taking on the toughest public safety challenges means we must also confront any obstacle that stands in the way of our counter-terrorism efforts. Even though the NYPD is the most sophisticated counter-terrorism police force in the world, much of our transportation infrastructure – which we know has been targeted by terrorists in the past – is policed by the MTA and the Port Authority.

One of the most important lessons of 9/11 was the need for greater communication and integration among government agencies. This year, our Administration will work with the governors of New York and New Jersey – and the leaders of the Port Authority and MTA – to establish a security protocol for our city’s vital transportation infrastructure that is more integrated, accountable, and effective. And today, I am announcing that we will propose legislation, in New York and New Jersey, giving the city’s Police Commissioner a permanent seat on the MTA and PA boards to ensure that the NYPD has a voice in both agencies’ security planning, capital project planning, and incident command.

THE BUDGET

Building a more secure future requires us to take on the toughest long-term challenges wherever we find them – and we find several of them in the city’s budget. Over the past four years we have cut the city’s discretionary spending by almost $4 billion. But spending has continued to grow because our non-discretionary costs increased by $7 billion in the same period. These costs are continuing to soar and will result in ballooning deficits in the years ahead. And when bad economic times return – and they always do – those deficits will explode and New Yorkers will pay a heavy price, both in increased taxes and reduced services.

The only chance to avoid this is to correct the budget’s structural imbalances, and that means we must rein in health care and pension costs that have spiraled out of control. Today, nearly all private sector employees contribute to their health care and the few companies that continue to offer “defined benefit” pension plans are moving to “defined contribution” plans.

Our Administration has worked closely with labor leaders in the past, to create fair, long-term contracts. Moving forward we will work with them to reach agreements that include a provision that is familiar to most people: employee contributions for health care. At the same time, we will work with labor and legislative leaders on innovative pension modifications for future workers. Only by making the tough decisions today will we be able to finance the wage increases that our outstanding workforce will deserve tomorrow.

GOOD-GOVERNMENT REFORMS

Improving the long-term health of government also means strengthening its integrity. We need only look to the scandals in Washington to see what happens when lobbyists and campaign contributors create a culture of “pay-to-play.” Last week, many members of Congress proposed a ban on all gifts from lobbyists. We should do that here. And they proposed requiring lobbyists to file disclosure reports electronically. We should do that here, too. But most of all, let’s finally honor the “pay-to-play” referendum that voters overwhelmingly passed more than seven years ago!

This year, we will work together with the Campaign Finance Board to create an online database that will allow us to implement the referendum and strengthen the integrity of city government. When voters go to the polls, they should have no doubt that all the decisions they make will be respected.

And when they appear before a judge, they deserve to know that justice – not politics – will be served. This year, we will take an important step to improve our administrative tribunals – the places New Yorkers go when they contest a fine, a parking ticket, or a building code violation. We'll bind all of the city’s administrative judges to a code of ethics, just as the voters directed us to do in a public referendum in November. And I will also sign an executive order creating an Administrative Justice Coordinator to improve the workings of the tribunals so that all New Yorkers are treated justly.

Of course, reforming the election of judges is a more formidable task, but two weeks ago, we received an important sign that our reform efforts are paying off. I’m very pleased that Assemblyman Denny Farrell, Chairman of the State Democratic Party, has announced that he will urge all county organizations to adopt independent judicial screening panels that will select only the most qualified candidates so that we can end an election process that is too easily – and too often – corrupted. I wish Denny all the best, but reform should not be an issue for debate among the County chairs. It should be a matter of state law! It’s time to put an end to the backroom deals that should have died with Tammany Hall!

I think that’s a good point to end on today, because no matter what the issue – from judicial reform to education to poverty – we have the ability to make this city better for all who live here, but only if we put partisanship aside. This year and in the years ahead in every single area of this city, working together, we can lock in and extend our gains. We can take on the toughest issues and get results. And we can make sure that our success touches every block of every neighborhood so that our unity remains the rule not the exception.

This does not mean there will be no obstacles on the road ahead. There will be. But if we stay united, we’ve shown there is no obstacle large enough to stop us.

Jeanne Raleigh and Speaker Quinn, if you both will indulge me, I would like to conclude by saying to everyone here: “May that road rise up to meet us.” All of us. And let’s walk it together –- with hope, kindness and courage. Thank you, and God bless.

 

 



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