Every two weeks the New York City Council meets for its Stated Meeting to introduce and pass legislation. Gotham Gazette covers these meetings and posts a summary of the bills passed.
QUOTE OF THE DAY:
"The unions saved this city in the 1970s, they were part of the inception of campaign finance in the 1980s, and they should be given a fair and equal opportunity to have full participation [in the political process.]" - Councilmember Leroy Comrie on easing campaign finance restrictions for union donations.
MEETING SUMMARY:
CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS FROM UNIONS
New York City's Campaign Finance system, which offers candidates matching funds in return for agreeing to spending limits, has been hailed as a model for the rest of the nation. It is also a system that has benefited all 51 City Council members, who receive $4 for every $1 they raise in small donations.
On November 16, the City Council voted to amend the Campaign Finance law as it relates to donations from labor unions. The council says it is protecting city workers' interests; critics say it is giving too much power to organized labor.
Earlier this year, the Campaign Finance Board voted to prevent unions, who can give up to $2,750, from using their local affiliates to funnel additional money to candidates. Under the decision, a union like the Service Employees International Union could only give one donation to a candidate even though it is comprised of local groups like Local 32B and 32J, which represents maintenance workers, and 1199, which represents health care workers.
The council argues that the Campaign Finance Board went too far and is being unfair to workers, who have distinct needs and may want to support different candidates. For example, in the recent election, Local 32B-32J supported Mayor Michael Bloomberg, while 1199 supported Fernando Ferrer.
Under the council's bill (Intro 564-A), a candidate can accept multiple donations from a union and its affiliates as long as:
- the donations come from different bank accounts
- the unions maintain different signatories
- they have distinct governing boards
- and they do not share a majority of officers.
"This is an important effort to protect the rights of free speech of working men and women and protecting their ability to participate in the political process," said Councilmember Bill deBlasio, who authored the bill.
"The unions saved this city in the 1970s, they were part of the inception of campaign finance in the 1980s," said Councilmember Leroy Comrie, "and they should be given a fair and equal opportunity to have full participation."
But critics say that the council has created a loophole that gives labor unions too much influence. Newspaper editorials have called the legislation a "City Council Money Grab" and "a suck up to [labor] bosses."
The measure passed easily by a vote of 43 to 3; only Madeline Provenzano, Eva Moskowitz, and Andrew Lanza voted against it.
Councilmember Peter Vallone, Jr. abstained, calling it a "flawed bill."
Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he will veto the measure; the council has more than the 34 votes needed to override the veto.
PROPERTY TAX RATE
In an effort to shift the city's property tax burden from homeowners to commercial property owners, the council approved a change in the tax rates.
Although the citywide property tax has remained the same since Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the City Council increased it by 18.5 percent in 2002, the state adjusts rates annually to keep pace with the real estate market.
The council's action lowers the state's proposed 7 percent tax increase for single family homes to 4.3 percent , which will save the average homeowner $80. It also increases taxes for Class A office buildings; the average building in Manhattan will see a $168,000 hike.
While most council members applauded the move, others complained that homeowners will still see an increase when their next bill arrives.
"While we can all be pleased that we are doing the right thing... the next tax bill they get will be more than the last," said Councilmember Lew Fidler. "I guarantee you at the end of December, my office and all of yours will be besieged with phone calls saying, 'How come you raised our property tax bill again.'"
The three Republican members - James Oddo, Andrew Lanza, and Dennis Gallagher - voted against the adjustment, arguing that property taxes should be reduced.
The council's action does not affect the $400 property tax rebate for homeowners, which the mayor has promised to continue next year.
PROTECTING RELIGIOUS PROPERTIES
In 2004, there were 350 documented Anti-Semitic incidents in New York City, according to the Anti-Defamation League. In response, the council passed a bill (Intro 703-A) increasing fines from $10,000 to $25,000 for vandalizing religious properties.
"I am not sure it will be a deterrent for a knucklehead who is so full of hate and stupidity that he desecrates a house of worship," said James Oddo. "It is intended to be a 'financial life sentence' of sorts."
SPORTS STADIUM CONDUCT
In 2003, the City Council passed a law making trespassing on professional sports playing areas a misdemeanor and increasing fines and penalties for those who violate the law.
The council strengthened its "sports stadium security policy" with a bill (Intro 528-A) that adds spitting, throwing objects, or physically hitting someone on the field to the regulations.
"Our families should not be intimidated by drunken idiots in any stadium," said Councilmember Peter Vallone, Jr.
RECYCLING BATTERIES
The council also approved new recycling programs (Intro 70-A) for rechargeable batteries.
"Rechargeable batteries have many toxic substances and people throw them away by the millions," said Councilmember Oliver Koppell. "They get into the waste stream, and they poison our land and our water."
Manufacturers and marketers of products that use rechargeable batteries will fund the project. Approximately 37,000 retail stores throughout the city and on the Internet, such as Radio Shack, Home Depot and Verizon Wireless will collect the batteries and send them to manufacturers. There is no cost to the city.
Only one member, Simcha Felder, voted against the measure.
PLUMBING CODE
The council approved a new 400-page plumbing code (Intro 478-A). It is the first part of an entire overhaul of the city's building code that the council's housing and building committee has been working on for much of the last four years.
DUMBO BUSINESS IMPROVEMENT DISTRICT
The council also voted to create a business improvement district (Intro 691) in the Brooklyn neighborhood DUMBO. Business improvement districts provide activities or amenities that promote business in a specific area, including maintenance and sanitation, holiday decorations and other efforts. They are funded by assessments on property owners within the area and overseen by the city's Department of Small Business Services.
All bills (except for the campaign finance, property tax adjustment, and the battery recycling program) passed unanimously by a vote of 48 to 0. Maria Baez, Phil Reed, and Larry Seabrook were absent.
The next Stated Meeting is scheduled for November 30, 2005.
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Michael Bloomberg has demonstrated that a mayor can “competently manage the city without building a personality cult at City Hall,” a commentator wrote recently. No one would say that about Ed Koch. “Mayor Koch was so in your face for so long that a whole generation of children grew up thinking â€Mayor’ was his first name,” said former Daily News editor Michael Goodwin.
Recently – 28 years after Koch won the mayoralty – a panel revisited the Koch years. They recalled a mayoralty that revived a city scarred by fiscal crisis, crime and decay. They paid less attention to Koch’s defeat in 1989, when voters, tired of the “shtick” and disgusted by corruption and racial tensions, ended Koch’s time in office.
The following discussion, moderated by Goodwin, featured journalist and novelist Pete Hamill; Stephen Berger, former director of the Emergency Financial Control Board; New York Times columnist Joyce Purnick; the Reverend Al Sharpton; and Victor Gotbaum, former executive director of the municipal workers union, District Council 37. The forum launched “New York City Comes Back: Ed Koch and the City,” an exhibition currently on display at the Museum of the City of New York.
This is an edited transcript of the discussion.
Intro - "The Good Fight and the Good Quip"
Pete Hamill - "Our Pain in the Ass"
Stephen Berger - "He Would Balance the Books"
Al Sharpton - "He Launched My Career"
Ken Auletta - "Entertaining Conflict"
Joyce Purnick - "The Unstoppable Ego"
Victor Gotbaum - "His Enemies Created Him"
Ranking Koch Among Mayors
Corruption and Scandal
What Koch Did Not Do
Michael Goodwin: In January it will be 28 years since Edward I. Koch first took the oath as the 105th mayor of the city of New York and 16 years since voters made him a private citizen. The 12 years in between were like no other in the recent history of the city. The Koch years were unique -- all the energy and change and drama. The fate of the city was at stake. It wasn’t just the finances sinking. It was the civic spirit that was sagging too. Once a great metropolis, New York had fallen and it couldn’t get up.
But it did get up -- because Ed Koch pulled it up. In a 1984 interview, the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, “Ed Koch has given New York City back its morale…And that is a massive achievement.”
Indeed it was. The ride was not always smooth. How could it be with Ed Koch at the helm?
One thing was always certain. We knew who was boss. Mayor Koch was so in your face for so long that a whole generation of children grew up thinking “Mayor” was his first name. He relished the good fight and the good quip. Here are a few of his favorites:
“The UN is a monument to hypocrisy.”
“I don’t get ulcers; I give them.”
When he refused to pet a tiger at Madison Square Garden, a bystander yelled, ”Mr. Mayor, a coward?” To which the mayor responded, “No, the mayor is not a coward. And the mayor is not a schmuck.”
Then there are those comments he made to Playboy magazine just as he was starting the 1982 campaign for governor. Koch called them “the dumbest he ever made.” There’s no argument here, considering some of what he said: “Living in rural areas is a joke.” “Have you ever lived in the suburbs? It’s sterile. It’s numb. It’s wasting your life” And he talked about wasting time in a pickup truck when you have to drive 20 miles to buy a gingham dress or a Sears Roebuck suit. To top it off, he said, “Living in Albany would be a fate worse than death.”
On Election Day, he was spared that fate.
The time is right for a second look at those years.
Pete Hamill: When Ed Koch took office on the first of January 1978 there were neither parades, rallies, preparations for bonfires nor any sense of celebration. The fact was that we had gone through such a terrible time there was no reason to celebrate.
It’s hard to imagine now what faced Ed Koch when he walked into City Hall. In the fall of ’75, the fiscal crisis erupted. There were layoffs: cops, firemen, sanitationmen, teachers, librarians. At the same time, there was a kind of nexus – a gathering together – of three factors: youth, drugs and guns bringing a sense of menace to our city that simply wasn’t there before.
Crime was growing. But the dailiness of our lives was even worse. Bags of garbage opening in the streets. The South Bronx and Brownsville were burning. The homeless suddenly appeared among us. They were not black or white or Latino. They were everyone. Some of them had been displaced by the burning of the South Bronx and had lost their places to live. Some of them were drug addicts, some of them were alcoholics, some of them were lost souls who have been in this city since the time of the Dutch. The shopping bag lady became a symbol of New York. Not a criminal, but just another lost soul wandering around with all her possessions.
At the same time, a guy named David Berkowitz, better known as the Son of Sam, was roaming the streets. His miniature psychopathic crime wave started in July of ’76 and didn’t end until August of ’77.
And along came Koch. At the beginning, no one gave him a chance. He was the classic Greenwich Village liberal. He had gone to the South to march for civil rights. He opposed the war in Vietnam. He was the object of all the stereotyping that goes along with a place like the Village. And he started running. Nobody paid much attention. Later, a new player in town named Rupert Murdoch decided that Ed Koch was his man and gave him a little more ink than he was getting anywhere else.
Then on July 13, we had a power failure. Twenty-five hours. Fires broke out, there was looting of some of the worst junk in the Western hemisphere. Paintings on velvet. The worst looking television sets available anywhere in the United States. Crappy little toys. The police, undermanned as they were, made 3,776 arrests.
The sense of despair among many New Yorkers was genuine. A lot of my friends said, “I’m leaving." Some of them committed a form of suicide and moved to New Jersey. Others went to Florida and, God help us all, California. It wasn’t simply a matter of us losing their tax money. We lost the thing that they were – New Yorkers.
Along came Koch. And in the first month, we suddenly started paying attention in a way we had not during the election. Here was a mayor who was a combination of a Lindy’s waiter, a Coney Island barker, a Catskill comedian, an irritated school principal and an eccentric uncle.
He talked tough and the reason was, he was tough. He was in combat during World War II as an infantryman. He was awarded two battle stars and came home a sergeant in 1946. He didn’t profit from the war like so many. He fought it.
That toughness was key to what I began to think of -- and I’m sure everyone else did -- as “the act.” He also was very wise and intelligent about the way he approached his job. He knew he couldn’t govern in the traditional sense because of the fiscal crisis. The power had fallen to Hugh Carey, Felix Rohatyn, the Municipal Assistance Corporation board, faceless bankers. But while Koch couldn’t govern traditionally, he could entertain us. In a way, that was better.
He came at us with a sort of scorn for weakness and self-pity. All sins were permissible in New York except self-pity. Admittedly, he could be ugly in conversations. But most of the time he made you laugh out loud. And it worked. It worked because he knew the problem in New York was not crime. It was morale.
And he went at it with a sense of joy, a sense of combat, a sense that made us all know “that’s the voice of New York, that’s what we are.”
There was something touching about him too. When the lights went out and the rallies were over, there was a sense of loneliness in Koch -– something that made him more human. Then you think about what happened in the third term when so many people he trusted betrayed him, and his sense of isolation grew. He should not have had to go through that.
The press failed him too. We were covering candidates and not paying attention to all those little offices where Bartleby the Scrivener sat in the corner.
I always think of him now with an enormous affection. He was a huge pain in the ass, but he was our pain in the ass, and we’re lucky to have had him.
Stephen Berger: Once upon a time, the state legislature was controlled by upstaters and the city had wealth. We were actually exporting revenue into the state.
We also had continuing waves of immigration. So we had very strong social programs in the state. If you look back, you see that a historic deal was openly cut. We live with it today. You see it with Medicaid and welfare programs. It’s basically a deal that said, that unlike any other state in the United States, in New York the local government –- in this case New York City -– would pay half of the state’s cost of many of these social programs.
The second piece is that Albany was not just 150 miles away from New York City. What we learned during the fiscal crisis was that neither the city nor the state really understood that they were two black boxes held together with a piece of string. They didn’t understand how we worked, we didn’t understand how the state government worked and there was a total breakdown in communication between the state and the city.
Third, New York City’s commitment to social programs came with an arrogance and a self-righteousness, which overlooked the range and scope of programs, that a state with full taxing power would have had trouble maintaining.
There were many warnings of the fiscal crisis. New York City raised taxes 15 times [during the 1960s and 1970s]. We were constantly outspending our budget. The city spent all its reserves. The city raided its capital budget, robbing its future to pay for its present
From the mid 1960s to the early 1970s, there were public commissions, city commissions warning of the coming crisis. It would take every dollar of personal income inside New York City to find that money. By 1975 –- this was how broke the city was in 1975 -- it had effectively borrowed every dollar it was going to raise in local revenue for the next year. You start January 1, and you’ve already spent more than you’re going to take in the next year. Now that’s exactly where we were. It was $7 billion. Even in today’s terms, $7 billion is a fair amount of money.
Finally, the lenders said, “we’ve had enough.”
From 1976 to 1977, the [financial] control process was put in place. It stabilized the situation and created a new financing structure.
But for the city to restore itself and return to self-government, it had to show it could run itself efficiently and effectively, balance its budget, year in and year out. The revenues had to match the expenditures. The city had to keep it balanced and then persuade the lenders.
No one was better prepared to take over than Ed Koch. In part that was because he was an observer at the Financial Control Board. He was not an outsider. He had an understanding of the problems. So, he knew why he had to balance the budget. He had to manage the city. He had to persuade the workforce to do more with less. He had to rein in spending for the poor. He had to persuade the lenders to believe in us again.
He brought the energy and the discipline that remain today and are the basis of the confidence that people have in the city. Unlike his predecessors, he would balance the books.
Al Sharpton: Part of the thing that was most refreshing and most appalling about Koch is that he will stand for what he believes in. He will not say what you want him to. And he will not be intimidated either way.
He always was a bit of a showman and was a good politician in terms of being able to convince people. He has my daughter convinced that the only reason he was the first to arrest me was to launch my career.
It was on April 4, 1978, which was the anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King... We arranged a meeting with the mayor. The fact that he would even see four unknown ministers showed that he was more open than we gave him credit for.
We wanted to demand that the federal government replace the cuts in summer jobs for youth that summer. And Ed Koch, unlike many liberals at the time, looked at me and said, “No, and I’ll tell you why.” And I said, “What do you mean no?” He says, “No. I’m not going to do that.” And I said, “Well if you don’t, we’re not going to leave your office.” And he said, “Let me explain to you why your approach is wrong.”
He had a job to manage the city and I think that, even if he felt our core reason was right, he felt he had to have an administration that would appear to not deal with [those who did not] stay within certain boundaries of the law. So, after he lectured us for an hour that the federal government had fiscal problems, the city had fiscal problems, that of course he wanted young people to be working and our approach was not the best approach to get him to do it, he asked the police to come in and remove us. I remember the young man who was standing in uniform with handcuffs. And he said, “Well, we need a complainant.” Koch says, “I am. Arrest them. I’ll sign the complaint.” And we were carted out on the stairs of City Hall. It was the first time I was arrested, and some 20 some years later at my birthday, he reminded me that no one had heard of Al Sharpton until then.
I invited him to my birthday. About 2,000 people were there -- mostly African Americans. He and I had been working together on the Second Chance program. I didn’t know how these Harlem people were going to respond. And he came on stage and everybody stood and started clapping. He walked to the microphone, and he looked at the crowd and said, “Do you miss me?” Well, after Giuliani we really did miss you.
At the end of the day, he had respect for African Americans and Latinos. He respects us enough not to placate us. We probably would have liked it better if he told us what we wanted to hear. But he respected us enough to talk to us like adults and tell us what he was and wasn’t going to do. And as I got older I learned to respect people more that didn’t give me empty promises just to get me out of their office. When he said yes, I could go and say he would keep that yes and when he said no he meant no. Even when I thought he was wrong, I never felt he was disingenuous.
Michael Goodwin: Could you elaborate more on racial tensions and his effect on race relations.
Al Sharpton: Well I think the tensions were national and that the mayor inherited a lot of things in the African-American and Latino community that were happening then.
His personality became an easy target because he was so in your face. I think it was not so much his stand on the issues as his style that caused confrontation at the time.
Race relations because of Howard Beach and Bensonhurst and other incidents became very, very bad. The legacy of those years was that we did get through. What no one talks about is that New York had no riots like South Central or Watts. One of the reasons I think is because we dealt with it openly, and we dealt with it squarely. The lasting situation in the city is that we talk about the issues. I don’t think we’re anywhere near racial harmony, but there is more racial sensitivity than there was.
Koch steered the ship through some very turbulent waters...
Ken Auletta: When Koch ran for mayor in 1977, he believed that the city government and the city administration were much too compromised. He believed that special interests ran the city. And he spoke words sharply, and the press loved hearing that.
And he had this way, as Reverend Sharpton said, of standing up to people and not trying to placate them. That married very well with the press’ interest in conflict. And it also married very well with the mood in the city at that time.
Then what happened –- the secondary thing –- is that Rupert Murdoch stepped in and not only endorsed Ed Koch -– the New York Daily News endorsed Ed Koch, the Times endorsed Mario Cuomo -– but Murdoch not only turned his editorial pages over to Ed Koch, he turned his front page over to Ed Koch.
As a congressman, Koch did not fill a room. We knew he was smart. We knew he was outspoken. But when he ran for mayor, Ed Koch was transformed. He became what we call a personality. And I think he filled that room.
In 1978, he starts giving press conferences and so he met the second bias of the press: to be entertaining. He gave great sound bites. And the TV press played that up. He was very charming for a long period of time, just asking that question, “How am I doing?” But after a while, particularly with the media, it begins to wear thin.
And, as Pete said, it may have caused problems because we tended to focus on the personality of the mayor and to ignore the government. And in truth, there a second question he should have been asking which was, “Hi, how’s my government doing?”
By his third term, that second question became predominant. If you look back on his three terms, you see he performed in a way that no mayor had since La Guardia. As Pete eloquently said, he gave us back our morale, but he gave us back our self-government too.
Joyce Purnick: I know I’m getting old when I hear Reverend Al Sharpton speak in laudatory terms of Ed Koch.
I will try to summarize a half-century of Ed Koch’s political evolution in five minutes. He was a Greenwich Village liberal who moved to the center -– some say to the right –- as he saw more and experienced more of government. There is no doubt that Koch’s evolution was a reflection of what was going on in our society, particularly among many Jews. There was a souring of the traditional alliance between Jews and blacks partly because of the changes in the city during John Lindsay’s years, with middle class anger over Forest Hills and Ocean Hill-Brownsville (in PDF format).
I’m not convinced Koch was ever quite the classic Village/West Side liberal that some people thought he was. I don’t think his focus in his liberal youth was as much ideological as it was tactical.
In any event, by the time he ran for mayor he was taking on the teachers union. He won the primary in large part because he ran in the center -– to the right -- and in large part because of his temperament, his candor -- not his sense of humor because Ed Garth kept that under wraps in 1977.
I think that it’s fair to say that Ed Koch wasn’t as revolutionarily a centrist as he might have wanted to be. But there were the unions. There was the Board of Estimate to deal with, the state legislature to get legislation through. You can’t be fighting with everyone all the time.
The inclination was to govern more as Rudy Giuliani did eventually. Even Giuliani didn’t stray as far from the traditional as he would like us and the rest of the country to believe. If Koch wanted to govern that way, I don’t think he really could have. There were realities to deal with. And, as we all know, he couldn’t keep fighting the party leaders. Instead Koch made alliances with those leaders.
He said he did so to govern, to get legislation through Albany. And I’m sure that is part of it. But I think in part it was also his ego. By making those relationships, Koch signaled his acceptance of those leaders and the way they functioned. Inadvertently that led to corruption scandals of his third term.
Now not even Koch’s harshest critics have ever accused him of personal corruption. The problem was two-fold. The bad guys thought they could get away with it. The other problem was Koch’s naivetĂ©. What else could explain his kissing Donald Manes on the forehead after Manes' attempted suicide?
I remember when Koch turned against Manes and called him a crook. At the time, Ed Koch seemed shocked. I don’t think the pattern of corruption seemed possible to him. I don’t think he understood that doling out low-level patronage in City Hall’s basement could have led to corruption. I don’t think he realized it sent out a message to those intent on abusing the system.
I do not think that the corruption scandal will be anywhere near the center of Koch’s place in history. I think it will be overshadowed by two pieces of his legacy. One, as we have discussed, getting the city back on track after the fiscal crisis with the kind of spirit and energy that the city needed and which the entire world would know. The transit strike. The “how am I doing?” stuff. The unstoppable ego. He loved to talk to us about the city and we loved to listen.
Secondly, I think that Koch was a harbinger of a major change in the way we govern large cities. He began the change from the old coalition of labor, liberals, minorities and the clubhouse that has since taken us through Giuliani and to Bloomberg. It’s popular today to credit Giuliani with changing of the city’s politics as usual, but I think that began with Koch. He took it as far as he and his roots would let him. Giuliani broke the rules, Bloomberg ignores them, and Koch wrote his own rules with his personality and his spirit and with his love of politics.
Victor Gotbaum: It’s really an oxymoron for me to be up here praising Ed Koch. He was tough. He didn’t discriminate when he took office –- he zinged everybody he thought didn’t fully do the job of helping New York City.
And I must say that, at the beginning, I didn’t dislike Ed Koch. I despised him.
A woman I know [Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum] – I happen to be married to her – said, “The reason you don’t like him is because you and he are so alike.” I didn’t talk to her for at least six minutes.
An interesting aspect of Koch is that his enemies made him. The 1980 transit strike. Any labor leader knows that you can’t win the hearts of the public if you go on strike. You may have to do it if workers are really repressed, but in the mainstream you take a terrible, terrible beating. It was the ’80 strike that really made Ed Koch. He took a strong stand. He walked across the bridge as you all recall. Labor might have hated him for it, but he knew exactly what he was doing.
[In another case,] he wanted 35 layoffs, and I opposed him. I knew that if I took him head on, it would be a bad mistake. So I negotiated with him on changing the titles where they would do work and get federal money. He listened and then I discovered something about him: He could negotiate and he would negotiate.
The only reason Koch and I get along at all is that Betsy liked him. She mentioned two things: that Ed Koch didn’t represent the city, he was a piece of the city. He was a part of the city. You couldn’t divorce Ed Koch from the city.
Another aspect of him – and I was trying to think of another word – but he was pure schmaltz. I mean that in a positive sense. He was so much a part of the city that he could get away with it. He would do things that other mayors couldn’t do.
It was his brashness, his moving forward, and his feeling, his strength that he was doing the right thing for this city. So you could negotiate with him, be angry at him, but he would never, never hurt the city that he loved so much.
Michael Goodwin: Of all the New York City mayors of the 20th and 21st centuries, where would you rank Ed Koch?
Pete Hamill: Second or third after La Guardia. If you had to write a novel about a New York City mayor, you’d rather write about Koch than Robert Wagner, and Abe Beame would be like writing about a turnip or something. But I think the three would be La Guardia, Koch and Giuliani – the first term. Not the second term.
Stephen Berger: I would focus more on the first two terms where Ed was an architect and an engineer. He was a cheerleader. And he not only put stuff together but put them together in a way that it’s held up by and large now for 35 years. That’s got to put him right up there.
Joyce Purnick: That sounds right to me. Everyone puts La Guardia at the top. Bloomberg has accomplished a lot of what Giuliani claimed to have accomplished.
Ken Auletta: It depends upon whether you count Bob Moses as a mayor – then you have to assess whether his influence was good or bad. But I think Ed Koch is up there with La Guardia.
It reminds when I said to Hugh Carey, “You know you’re probably going to go down as probably the third best governor in this century.” And he said, “Really? Who are the other two?”
Michael Goodwin: How would you describe Ed Koch’s greatest failures?
Pete Hamill: He didn’t pay enough attention to Bob Dylan in "Subterranean Homesick Blues," particularly the line, “Don’t follow leaders, watch the parking meters.” In many ways it’s admirable that he did not see people as potential felons. But he trusted some people who betrayed his faith. That’s nothing to be ashamed of.
Stephen Berger: We never had a mayor who had more potential to do what should be done in the state. This is to take all the cities and all the counties –- all the local governments –- and lead them against a state bureaucracy, a state government, which is clueless about local government. He had the political skills and the political instinct to put that kind of coalition together. The problem is you have to go north of the city to do that. I think if Ed had done that he could have made a difference.
Every one of those guys throughout the state, whether you’re in Erie County or the mayor of Syracuse, has some of the same problems that the City of New York has. I think being in a real coalition with those guys could have made a real improvement.
Joyce Purnick: Hubris. If you take it down a few pegs you don’t have Ed Koch, so it’s double edged, but maybe half a peg.
Ken Auletta: If you go back to Greek mythology that virtue is also a vice, then if you review Ed Koch’s vices, narcissism, his preoccupation with himself and being on stage, you also remove some of his virtues. I think the good comes with the bad and the bad with the good.
Michael Goodwin: Victor, if you could change one thing, what would you change about Koch?
Victor Gotbaum: I wouldn’t let him get elected.
Audience member: There were failures in his administration in my opinion. He let the public schools deteriorate, Westway was never built, race relations did not improve, and for the buildings along the Cross Bronx Expressway that had been decimated, [his] solution was to put up decals.
Michael Goodwin: There were many problems that did not get solved. He tried to focus on some of them. Education obviously was a big one. Interestingly, I think we’re now looking at education as a key issue just as crime was a key issue in the previous eight years.
So you have a kind of changing of the guard of ideas that are considered prime topics. With Mayor Koch, obviously finances were the first problem. You have a limit to what you can achieve.
Stephen Berger: You have to be able to focus on a few things if you want to be successful. You cannot do 20 things and do them well. What works is what the mayor or chief executive decides is going to work.
“New York Comes Back: Ed Koch and the City” is on display at the Museum of the City of New York through March 26, 2006.
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This year New Yorkers will face sharp rises in home heating costs, and while there is some government assistance available to individuals of low income, it is likely that the great majority of those eligible will never receive it.
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita significantly damaged oil-refining capacity in the Gulf Coast, and oil prices climbed to more than $70 a barrel in late August. What this means for the average New Yorker who uses home heating oil, according to Senator Charles Schumer, is an increase of some $450 in heating costs over last year.
Many New Yorkers use natural gas to heat their homes, and the major hub for transporting natural gas to the Northeast is also located in the Gulf Coast region -- which is why the average New Yorker using natural gas will see a price rise that is even higher, at some $473.
Northeastern senators of both parties have called upon the Department of Energy to release heating oil from the Northeast Heating Oil Reserve . President Bill Clinton established the reserve in 2000 in order “to reduce the risks presented by home heating oil shortages”. As of early November the department has refused this request, arguing that the situation is not serious enough to justify tapping into the reserve.
Another idea that has gained the support of Democrats as well as typically tax-averse Republicans, is to impose a "windfall tax" on oil companies . All of the major companies posted record profits in the third quarter of 2005, at the same time that many consumers faced record-high gasoline prices. Some proceeds from this tax would help poor and elderly Americans pay their heating bills.
The oil companies argue that their profits are not disproportionate, and that a windfall tax would reduce their incentive to locate new sources of energy. They have a powerful ally in President George W. Bush, who is opposed to the idea.
Regardless of how the political skirmishes are resolved, the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) will help individuals pay their heating bills. This is the primary federal program for this purpose, and it took effect in New York State on November 1, 2005, though it is not yet clear how much money will be available. (For fiscal year 2005, New York State received $235.6 million in such funds.)
In New York City, these funds are administered by the city's Human Resources Administration. Individuals can receive assistance whether they pay their heating costs directly or if these costs are included in their rent. Eligibility is based on an individual or family’s monthly income, and the program provides both regular and emergency benefits of up to $400 a year. The city estimates that it provides almost 440,000 grants each year, for a total of about $31 million.
The National Fuel Funds Network, an umbrella group for 250 organizations nationwide (including in New York City, the HeartShare Neighborhood Heating Fund) that raise donations to help people with their heating costs, estimate that only 15 percent of individuals eligible for the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program actually receive assistance. Marcus Banks is a librarian at the New York University School of Medicine.Â
"All I wanted -- and you gave it to me -- was four more years," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said on election night.
But in his reelection campaign, Bloomberg focused on the past, not the future, boasting of his record during his first term, but avoiding until the last few weeks his agenda for his second term.
Mayor Bloomberg's plans for the next four years -- which are outlined in a document on his Web site entitled, "Moving Forward: The Bloomberg Vision for New York City" -- are notable, not only for what they promise, but for what it will take to accomplish them. They depend largely on the mayor's ability -- not much tested in his first term -- to win battles outside of the city.
On education, the mayor wants to double the number of pre-kindergarten and day care slots to serve more than 300,000 children. Key to the plan, however, is funding from the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit and the $23 billion the court has ruled the city schools are owed in education funding. The mayor has said that the governor and State Legislature in Albany must contribute the full amount and that the city should not pay a cent. Governor George Pataki is appealing the court ruling.
On housing, the mayor recently expanded his previous housing plan and promises to build or preserve 165,000 affordable homes by 2013. His plan, however, depends on the continued strength of the real estate market, developers willing to work with the city, and hundreds of millions of dollars in financing from philanthropic and financial partners. And for every new affordable apartment built, the city loses others as rent-stabilized apartments drop out of the state-controlled system. One of the reasons the city has such a housing crisis, some experts say, is that lawmakers in Washington have slashed federal housing subsidies.
On crime, Bloomberg focuses on strengthening state gun laws and securing more homeland security funds from the federal government. He is also calling for the governors of New York and New Jersey to create new seats on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and Port Authority for the city police commissioner to help the city plan for future terrorist attacks.
On economic development, the mayor is banking on the rebuilding of Ground Zero, a site still mired in controversy, owned by the Port Authority, and leased by private developer Larry Silverstein. When Bloomberg recently called for more housing to be built in lower Manhattan, he was roundly criticized by nearly everyone involved including Governor Pataki, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who represents the area, and the two U.S. Senators from New York, whose job it is to lobby for federal rebuilding money.
And the mayor's second term agenda is also notable for what it does not say: how he plans to address the looming $4.6 billion budget deficit. The only tax the mayor and the City Council can raise without permission from the governor and State Legislature is the property tax, which was already hiked by 18.5 percent in 2002. And Bloomberg has declared budget items like debt payments, labor pensions, and funding for Medicaid as "uncontrollable," meaning he can do little to change a third of the city budget.
The mayor proved he was capable of big victories in Albany when he convinced the State Legislature to give him control of the schools. Beyond that, many of the mayor's most significant accomplishments happened "in house." He used his knowledge of technology to create the 311-call system. He lobbied the City Council to pass his smoking ban in bars and restaurants. He successfully negotiated contracts with city workers. But he avoided battles - like taking a more active role in Ground Zero or pushing for a commuter tax - knowing that the power of City Hall only extends so far.
The mayor, who has touted himself as a non-partisan, apolitical manager of the city in his first term, may ultimately be measured by how successful a politician he can be in convincing people in Albany, Washington, and elsewhere to help him achieve his vision for New York City.
Mark Berkey-Gerard, city government editor of Gotham Gazette, was in charge of campaign coverageÂ
For more details on these ballot questions -- essays arguing pro and con, transcripts of debates -- click on The Fine Print on the Ballot. |
When New Yorkers go to the polls on November 8th, many will be surprised to find that — in addition to being able to choosing the city’s mayor --- they can vote on four ballot questions – two statewide and two for New York City alone. Here is a quick rundown of the measures:
Question 1: Amending the State Budget Process
This measure would amend the state constitution and would enact several pieces of legislation, already approved by the legislature, concerning the way the statewide budget is formed. It calls for the creation of a contingency budget, which would automatically go into effect if the governor and the legislature do not agree on a budget by the beginning of the fiscal year. That contingency budget – based on the previous year’s budget – would provide the basis of the new budget. Under this scenario, legislatures would have greater power to shape the budget than they do now and than they would if they agreed to a budget earlier in the year -- without the contingency budget. Other provisions of the ballot measure would establish an Independent Budget Office whose members are appointed by the legislature, and move certain items onto the general budget that are currently funded independently. (Read an overview by the Rockefeller Institute in .PDF format)
Proponents (in .PDF format) say the amendment will bring accountability and transparency to the state's budget process. The specter of a contingency budget, they say, will encourage on-time budgets, while shifting some power from the governor to the legislature would bring New York into line with most other states.
Opponents argue that, because lawmakers will have more power over the budget once the contingency budget is in effect, there is an incentive for them to stall. After the beginning of the fiscal year, critics say, the governor would have practically no power over the legislature, which they think will lead to irresponsible spending.
Question 2: Transportation Bond Act
This state measure establishes a $2.9 billion transportation bond issue – in other words, it calls for New York State to borrow $2.9 billion for various transportation projects. Voter rejected a similar measure in 2000. Half would go to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to help fund the construction of such mammoth projects as the Second Avenue subway, extension of the Long Island Rail Road to Grand Central Station and new buses and cars for subway and commuter rail lines. The rest would go toward road and bridge projects around the state including some in the city.
Governor George Pataki and Mayor Michael Bloomberg back the measure, as do a range of organizations including the Straphangers Campaign, which argues the MTA needs money, and the New York Building Congress, which sees such borrowing as a necessary investment in the future. Opponents, such as the Citizens Budget Commission (in .PDF format), argue that the state is already burdened with too much debt, while E.J. McMahon, director of the Empire Center for New York State Policy within the Manhattan Institute, has argued the measure includes too many ”amenities” along with essential projects.
Question 3: Establishing an Ethics Code for Hearing Officers (in .PDF format)
This measure would amend the City Charter by having the mayor establish a code of ethics for administrative hearing officers, who resolve citizen complaints and adjudicate a range of non-criminal matters, such as parking tickets, noise complaints and building code violations.
The lack of a code of conduct governing hearings is “a matter of special concern” because many people who appear before them do not have lawyers and are not familiar with city rules, Ettina Plevan, president of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, 2005 told (in .PDF format) the charter revision commission in March.
The measure has attracted little attention. Assemblymember Richard Gottfried has said he opposes it because it would shift power from the City Council to the mayor. Others question why such an arcane matter should go before voters. ''Charter revision commissions should be used to meet serious challenges to the city's constitution, not to advance the mayor's politics,'' said Council Speaker Gifford Miller, who backed a measure on class size that was kept off the ballot because of Questions 3 and 4.
But Ester Fuchs, the Bloomberg adviser who heads the charter panel, said in July that an ethics code for administrative judges and hearing officers merits a referendum because of the gravity of the issue.
Question 4: Adding Financial Management Requirements (in .PDF format) to the City Charter
Under this measure, the city would be required to balance its budget by generally accepted accounting principles and ensure that the annual audit of the city's accounts also follows such principles. The city would have to create a four-year financial plan, as well as keep a minimum general reserve of $100 million. It would also be restricted in its use of short-term debt.
The city is already compelled to do these things by the Financial Control Board, which is set to lose much of its power in 2008.
Proponents of the measure say that the charter revisions would guarantee that the city would continue to act responsibly after the board's expiration.
Those arguing against the revisions say that they do not adequately replace the board's requirements. Without a specific, independent entity to assess whether the city is fulfilling its responsibilities, they argue, there is no way to keep city officials honest. Â
An Overview of the Four Ballot Questions
A guide to all four questions on the November ballot.
More...
Question 1: Amending the State Budget Process
Should the state budget process be amended to give more power to the State Legislature?
-Overview of Question 1
-Transcript of a forum on Question 1
-Vote Yes by Megan Quattlebaum and Blair Horner
-Vote No by Gerald Benjamin and Charles Brecher
Question 2: The Transportation Bond Act
Should the state borrow $2.9 billion to fund mass transit and road improvements?
- Overview by Bruce Schaller
- Vote Yes by Jeremy Soffin
- Vote No by Nicole Gelinas
Question 3: Ethics Code for Hearing Officers
Should the mayor create an ethics code for administrative judges?
-Overview by Joshua Brustein
-Vote Yes by Peter J. Kiernan
-Vote No by Richard N. Gottfried
Question 4: Adding financial management requirements to the City Charter.
Should the city add fiscal controls to the City Charter to ensure a balanced budget?
-Overview of Question 4
-The Fiscal Crisis After 30 Years by Joshua Brustein
Â
Transcript of Final 2005 General Election Mayoral Debate
On November 1, 2005, the New York City Campaign Finance Board and WNBC played host to a final debate with mayoral candidates Michael Bloomberg and Fernando Ferrer. It was moderated by Gabe Pressman. Questions were asked by reporters Melissa Russo, Jay DeDapper, David Ushery, and Jorge Ramos. The following is a transcript of the debate.
CAMPAIGN ADS
Melissa Russo: Mr. Mayor, as a Republican in a city of Democrats you like to say that you are a non-partisan kind of guy, that there is no Republican or Democratic way to pick up the garbage. But you have also contributed millions of dollars to Republicans even though you admit that some of their policies are out of step with, and even harmful in some cases, to New York City - most recently the sweeping protection for the gun industry. This political tightrope subjects you to criticism like the following cartoon released yesterday by your opponent. [A clip of the Ferrer campaign ad depicting Michael Bloomberg riding a horse with George W. Bush plays].
Mr. Mayor, is this ad really unfair and disgusting as your campaign called it or are you trying to have it both ways at a time when this country is bitterly divided along partisan lines?
Michael Bloomberg: Melissa, I don't know that comic books are very important in this election. We should be talking about real issues. Most of the money that I have given was to the same organization that the New York Times did, a non-profit organization that was set up to finance the convention that came to this town. We would have done the same thing for the Democrats. What I've tried to do with my own money is try to give money to people who I think can help New York, whether it is Washington, Albany or in New York City. But this is really about getting the schools better, this is really about improving social services, this is really about making this city safer. As you said yourself, there is no partisan ways to do that. We have to deal with everybody and we are going to try to get help from everybody.
Melissa Russo: Do you believe that ad is disgusting as your campaign is quoted as saying in today's paper?
Bloomberg: That is the first time I've seen the ad. I saw about two seconds earlier today. I didn't see the whole thing.
Melissa Russo: Why not just admit that you a Republican by label only if that is what you want New Yorkers to believe?
Bloomberg: I don't know that I want them to believe that. I believe in some things in the Republican Party. I believe in some things in the Democratic Party. The Republican Party gave me an opportunity that the Democratic Party would not give me. It was a chance to change this city. It is a chance to leave a better world for my kids. And I took advantage of it.
Melissa Russo Mr. Ferrer, do you really expect New Yorkers to believe that Mayor Bloomberg is a right-wing Republican after four years in office serving New York City? And isn't it a good thing to maintain close ties with both parties if you are a mayor trying to get things done?
Fernando Ferrer:Ah, come on. I don't think there is anybody in America who honest to God believes that a $7.5 million contribution to the Republican National Convention is non-partisan. Or being one of the largest donors to George Bush and his party. It is a party that has promoted policies that have hurt this city. It is anti-choice, anti-gun control, and pro privatizing social security.
Melissa Russo:But has Mayor Bloomberg really governed as a conservative Republican in your opinion?
Ferrer:Look, you can't disclaim for the policies while you are opening your checkbook wide. My grandmother had a saying about all this. In English, it is "tell me who you walk with and I will tell you who you are." Mike in two languages you are a Republican.
Melissa Russo: Is that true? Are you a Republican?
Bloomberg:Well I did give $2,000 to George Bush. I gave more than that to Bill Clinton when he was running. I try to do what is right. And I am going to continue to do that. If someone can help us, I am going to continue giving them the money.
Melissa Russo: Mr. Ferrer, we would like you to respond to a new ad from the Bloomberg campaign. [A clip of an ad calling Ferrer a "flip-flopper" plays.] Is that true, Mr. Ferrer? Do you flip-flop?
Ferrer: Sounds to me like an ad that George Bush ran against John Kerry. Look, people who know who I am after 20 years of elected public office. They know this about me. There is only one principle that has ever guided any decision I have ever made. That is this - that every New Yorker who works hard and does right should get the tools they need to build a better life here in this city.
Melissa Russo: Mayor, do agree?
Bloomberg: I think everybody knows what my opponent stands for. He stands for complaining. He stands for identifying problems and never coming up with solutions. And that is different than governing. It is easy to be a critic. It is very hard to lead. The city is going in the right direction. And I think the policies that we have had for the last four years are the policies we should continue.
WAR IN IRAQ
Gabe Pressman: We should move on to another subject. As I have visited neighborhoods across the city I have found that Iraq is uppermost in the minds of many voters. My question to both of you is: Do you think the next mayor should use his office as a bully pulpit to try to influence the federal government's policies on Iraq?
Ferrer: You bet I do. Mike Bloomberg has said previously he didn't think the war in Iraq was a local issue. Explain that to 37 families who lost soliders fighting in Iraq. Explain that to people who watch us build firehouses in Iraq while we are shutting them down in New York. Or spending billions of dollars to promote that war instead of doing the things we need to do to promote decent and affordable housing, good schools, or health care.
Gabe Pressman: What would you advocate for the president?
Ferrer: I would advocate for the president to get our troops out of there as promptly as possible. Look, they are still looking for weapons of mass destruction. And tell you the truth, it's a war that has cost too much in terms of human life and in terms of our national wealth, and the distortion of our national priorities.
Gabe Pressman: Mr. Mayor, do you agree with him that the war should be brought to an end as soon as possible?
Bloomberg: Let's see why we are here, Gabe. There was a point where intelligence reported that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that could have threatened our country and destabilized the world. The Senate, our two senators, Senators Schumer and Clinton, the President, most of Congress thought that we should go in and get rid of those weapons of mass destruction. It turned out that there was a massive intelligence failure. But you are there. And now we have lost over 2,000 of our men and women, 37 from New York City. Walking away that this point would make all of them to die in vain. It would be an outrage. What we have to do is stay there until the generals say that Iraq's government can maintain peace and maintain a democracy. And in the meantime, we should continue to support our troops so that can continue to protect themselves and continue to carry out the mission that we have asked them to do. Nobody is happy to be there.
Gabe Pressman: Do you think we were mislead into that war?
Bloomberg: I think there is no question that there was a catastrophic failure of the intelligence community.
Gabe Pressman: Mr. Ferrer, don't the men and women from New York serving there deserve to have their commander-and-chief respected while they are there?
Ferrer: Of course they have every right and expectation to have the full support of the American people - for themselves, for their bravery, for their sacrifices. For those 2,000 who made that supreme sacrifice. But that doesn't make that war correct. It doesn't make the predicate for that war true.
SECURITY IN NEW YORK CITY
Jay DeDapper: I want to direct us back to New York City for a minute to security and terrorism. You two have complained along with every other New York politician that the amount of money that we get from Washington in homeland security funding. Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said a few weeks ago, "This city isn't getting its fair share of homeland security money and I think we have to continue to push the effort." So Mr. Bloomberg, what would you do differently if get the money? What aren't we doing now that we could do if we got this money?
Bloomberg: Ray Kelly is talking about security money. This city does not get its fair share from Washington, the state doesn't. If we had more money, it would, number one, allow us to do other things. But what I have said is that we are going to provide the security we need regardless of the cost. And then I am going to go and find a ways to pay for it.
Jay DeDapper: What are the other things we could do if we got the extra money?
Bloomberg: We would use it to solve our other budgetary problems. But we have bought every piece of equipment I think is necessary to protect this city. We have a police force of the size I think is necessary to protect this city. We give them the training that is necessary so they can come home safe at night to their families and protect this city. And we are going to continue to do that. And I have never looked at the cost of it when I have made a security decision. But we'd love to get more help from Washington.
Jay DeDapper: Mr. Ferrer, you've said the same thing. You don't think the mayor has done enough getting that money?
Ferrer: It is plain as day that we are not getting homeland security funds based on risk, based on the fact that New York City took it on the chin for the rest of American in the attack on 9/11. But let me give you a specific example of that. Some months ago, at a subway station in Brooklyn, Borough Hall, I put forward a mass transit security plan. The simple fact is that I have criticized this mayor and his four appointees to the MTA board. Not any four appointees, the four high ranking appointees of Mike Bloomberg. And they sat there like potted plants. When they failed to spend $390 million that was allocated to upgrade security in our mass transit system. Recently, they put out a few contracts and they managed to bungle that. Look, those $390 million were absolutely necessary, and not to install, as the mayor put it, "a bunch of cameras," but to train the MTA personnel in anti-terrorism and surveillance techniques, to install surveillance cameras, explosive detection technology, and to improve communication below ground and above ground.
AVIAN FLU
David Ushery:Earlier today, President Bush unveiled a $7.1 billion preparedness plan to confront an outbreak of the bird flu, the avian flu. But given the governments much criticized response to hurricane Katrina, do you have confidence in the federal government's ability to confront this outbreak? Mr. Ferrer, we will start with you. What would you do as mayor to protect the city?
Ferrer: There is no question that we have to lobby them strenuously and vigorously to get the help we need. But in the end, this is a city that must do for itself and leave no one behind. And that is why in every one of our disaster preparedness plans, we have to prepare to such an extent that in a hurricane, we leave no one behind in low-lying areas. In the case of avian flu, to have enough vaccine stockpiled so that we can take care of New Yorkers so that we can preserve life and safety.
David Ushery: The president mentioned earlier the guaranteeing parts of the country, perhaps a city or beyond. Do you think the city should be prepared to do that?
Ferrer: I think the city has to be prepared to fight avian flu, but I'm not ready to go as far as the president has. Of course, I don't think the president has any plans about this. And that is really the tragedy here.
David Ushery: Mr. Bloomberg, do you have confidence in the federal governments ability to protect the city?
Bloomberg: At the moment we don’t know what the risk is. What I am first concerned about is to make sure that this year, for the kinds of flu that around that we get everybody their flu shot. 35,000 Americans will die from flu this year. I am trying to make sure that particularly vulnerable parts of our city, our seniors and our young children, get flu vaccine. In terms of down the road, we have plans. Everybody's got plans. But we don't know if there will be a vaccine available to prevent or to deal with an avian flu that has yet to mutate into something that we've got to worry about. The federal government has shown again and again that they can help, they can give you money, but we have to be prepared locally. That was the lesson of 9/11, that was the lesson of Katrina, you have to be able to handle, at a local level, the problems. Whether it is quarantine, or getting people vaccines, which we are incidentally practicing right now. Using the incentive to get the current flu protection, we are planning we are practicing for the avian flu.
CAMPAIGN FOR FISCAL EQUITY
Jorge Ramos: One of the most pressing issues facing the city is how to improve education and how get the money to do it. The city has been awarded billions in a lawsuit filed by the Campaign for Fiscal Equity. But the state has appealed that decision. A teacher in the Bronx has this question for both candidates.
Teacher in the Bronx: I am a teacher at PS 62 and I would like to know with all of the money that the state of New York owes the city of New York, when are we going to get this money to help our children succeed? When is he going to fight for that?
George Ramos: So Mr. Bloomberg you have had exactly a year to get that money out of Albany. Some say you haven't fought hard enough. So if you are elected, what would you do to get the billions the court say are owed to the city of New York.
Bloomberg: Keep in mind I went and testified before the arbitrator's panel. I went and had our corporation counsel argue in court to get this money. It is now tied up in the courts and when we get the money, I have already put out a plan of how we would spend the $5.5 billion a year that we hope to get. But I haven't waited for that. What I have done is increase city spending on the schools by $2.5 billion. I have raised our school construction budget to $13.5 billion over five years, the biggest in history, splitting it with the state. And when the state didn't come through with the money, the city came up with the money. I am not waiting for CFE money. We have given our teachers a 33 percent raise over the last four years. We've got to educate the kids of today. And when the money comes, we have laid out a plan, first priority will be universal pre-k. But we are not sitting around waiting for it. In the meantime, let's hope the courts continue to rule our way as they have in the past.
George Ramos:Mr. Ferrer, you have said the city must ante up to "prime the pump." If we are entitled to that money, why should we offer to pay?
Ferrer: First of all, I congratulate the mayor on increasing the school budget. But if we still have a 50 percent drop out rate - and I hope we talk about that at some point in this debate - than I would argue that Mike Bloomberg instead of doing more with less, is doing less with more. But let's talk about CFE. I was proud to be an early participant in that action. I was prouder still in the last four years to be a member of its board. They owe us money. They have been cheating the kids of this city - all 1.1 million of them - for years now. I don't think you can approach this as a CEO in a negotiation by putting zero on the table and waiting for them to come up. In fact, the corporation counsel of this city, an appointee of my opponent, who said this city will not spend a nickel. If we have to put up a nickel, no thanks. Well, quite frankly if you listen to the governor, the plaintiffs in this case, and the legislative leaders, they have all said that the city will have to come up with something. I am proud to have come up with a school investment plan that asks a global investment community to invest pennies our children's future.
DROP-OUT RATE
Jay DeDapper: We are going to talk about the drop-out rate. There is a lot of confusion about this: drop-out rate vs. graduation rate. I want to show you want Schools Chancellor said on September 10, 2004. Gabe Pressman asked, "What is the drop-out rate now?" Joel Klein very simply, "In practical terms or in statistics, I mean in real terms, one out of two kids doesn't get a diploma, 50 percent - that's the real world." Mr. Bloomberg, let's settle this once and for all between the two of you. Is the drop-out rate 50 percent as your chancellor said?
Bloomberg: Joel was wrong. He meant to talk about the graduation rate. The graduation rate was 50 percent; it has gone up to 54 percent. In the Bronx, it was 40 percent; it has gone up to 52 percent. But you know, Jay, what has happened here for 20 years is that the elected officials did absolutely nothing for our children. They just said we want to have better schools, but they never came up with any money and they never tried to improve standards. I came into office and said, give me control of the school and I'll make it better, hold me accountable. And when my opponent had the opportunity to do that for 19 years in office, he did nothing. He didn't even talk about graduation rates until all of a sudden he is running for mayor. You can't have it both ways. Everybody knows one child not getting through is one child too many. But we have to do something about it. And that is why we ended social promotion in the third grade, and the fifth grade, and the seventh grade.
Jay DeDapper:Fifty-four percent is something you are not proud of, I assume?
Bloomberg:Fifty-four percent is the number that graduate in four years. A lot more graduate after five, six, and seven years. A lot go on to other schools and are not counted in that number. In four years, 16 percent drop out, 54 percent graduate, and the other 30 percent go on.
Jay DeDapper: Mr. Ferrer, 50 percent? What is it?
Ferrer: Joel Klein is right. Even more than that, Mike, for you to pass the buck for a guy who was out of office for four years, but in office as a councilman and a borough president for nearly 20. I allocated millions to improve technology and school libraries and school construction and security. It’s beneath you. Look, it’s a 50 percent drop out rate. One out of two kids without a diploma, without a future, and without a job. We’ve got to do something about that. And the only way we do something about that is improving teaching and learning in all the grades. Not teaching to a standardized test. But teaching to the highest standards, improving pre-k and after-school programs, music, art, athletic programs, family literacy centers, building new classrooms and new school buildings to relieve the vicious overcrowding that we see in high schools. Schools built for 3,000 students that have 5,000 students.
YEAR AROUND SCHOOL
Gabe Pressman: I’ve got a couple of questions on education requiring short answers. Do you favor, Mr. Ferrer, year around school as a way of developing students who can compete with students from other countries, who have much more intensive educational programs?
Ferrer: Yea, I think the kids who are struggling and need more time on task, extending the school year makes an enormous amount of sense, as does extending the school day and week.
Gabe Pressman: Do you agree with that?
Bloomberg: We are doing it. We have summer school for kids who need more help. And the new teachers’ contract has an extra period, four days a week for the kids who are struggling, every class, every school.
Gabe Pressman: Year around means virtually 12 months with a few vacations in between.
Bloomberg: School with summer-school goes almost year around.
MILITARY RECRUITING IN SCHOOLS
Gabe Pressman: Do you favor, Mr. Mayor, having military recruiters in our schools?
Bloomberg: If we allow businesses to recruit, we should allow the military to recruit. There is nothing wrong with presenting to our high school kids the option of going in the military in the same way that they should have the opportunity to know what jobs they can have.
Gabe Pressman: Short answer, Mr. Ferrer.
Ferrer: No. I want our kids to get jobs. I want them to have the tools they need to be economically self-sufficient. They can make that decision on almost any street corner in this city.
COST OF LIVING
Melissa Russo: Rent, subway fares, taxi cabs, food, the cost of everything in New York City always seems to go up, never down. We are going to hear now from a single mother in lower Manhattan who has a question about affordability.
Woman from Manhattan: How are you going to help the working class in New York City? This is supposed to be a city for everyone, but it is really now just for the rich. And I want to know what are you going to do that I, who live in the city and work in the city, and am a parent in the city, and pay my city taxes, that I can afford to live here? What are you going to do about that?
Melissa Russo: Mr. Ferrer, this woman has a job. She has an apartment. What would you do to make her cost of living go down?
Ferrer: She should be able to live in this city, but increasingly this city is becoming unaffordable to working- and middle-class people. Let’s review some of the facts. The working- and middle-class are being priced out of their own homes. Moderate-income people can’t find a decent place to live that they can afford. That is why I put forth a plan to cut their taxes; not a $400 rebate check on a discretionary basis every year, but a full tax cut, a permanent tax cut. And to give renters tax assistance as well. And to build and maintain the affordability of 167,000 New Yorkers, homes that they can afford.
Melissa Russo: Mr. Bloomberg, is that a good plan? Is that a better plan than you have put forward?
Bloomberg: Mr. Ferrer wants to cut taxes, but he also wants to build affordable housing with tax revenue. So you can’t have it both ways. You have to understand, this is an expensive city. It always has been. And probably always will be. But we have to do is find ways for people to afford to stay here. That is why I fought against the increases in the fares in the MTA. That is why I fought in favor of getting the minimum wage raised. That is why I fought to make sure we are building affordable housing. We have an 86,000 unit program being built with capital dollars and private dollars and we are better than half way there. That is why I want to bring jobs here, because in the end the best answer is a job for everyone.
Melissa Russo: Well, this woman has a job already, she has an apartment. What do you think you will be doing in the next four years if you are elected that will help here?
Bloomberg: We’ve got to keep making this government as efficient as possibly can. We want the services that government provides. We want to keep the cost of those services as low as we possibly can. That is why we have managed to cut $4 billion annually out of the city’s budget and we can do more.
FIGHTING POVERTY
David Ushery: While Melissa’s question focused on the working and middle class, I would like to get some specifics from you gentlemen about New York City’s poorest of the poor. The Bronx is one of the poorest counties in the country, and that didn’t happen overnight. Mr. Ferrer, we’ll start with you because you mentioned your 20 years in elected office as a councilman, as borough president. Did you do enough to combat poverty then? What will you do as mayor?
Ferrer: You mean working with two mayors and scores of community organizations to build 66,000 units of affordable housing? To turn a borough that most people left for dead into a place that President Bill Clinton called a national example for urban renewal? Or you mean working with President Bill Clinton in getting small business programs in the borough to help build 34,000 good jobs for people? No, I’m very proud of that record.
David Ushery: Mr. Bloomberg, let me ask you, a number of experts say that a number of people have slipped into poverty over the last couple of years. You’ve talked a lot about those who have prospered under your reign. Do you have to take some responsibility for those who are not faring as well?
Bloomberg: The numbers show that we are getting 100,000 immigrants from overseas every year. They typically come without formal education, and in many cases with not great command of the English language. And their earnings prospects at the beginning are problematic. That’s why I’ve tried to focus on the kinds of jobs they can get at the beginning -- travel, tourism, restaurants, hotels. Those are the kinds of jobs that we have to bring to this city.
We’ve got to bring construction jobs and open the construction unions up to everybody. And that’s why I’ve negotiated a deal with the construction unions for the first time - a historic deal - where they will open up a big percentage of their apprentice programs to immigrants and to people who have just started to work their ways up the economic ladder. That’s why we have this new women- and minority-owned business program where the city’s business is now being given out to businesses started by people in every community. They’ll get city business and they employ people from their community. That’s why we have to go and build things like the Atlantic Yards, why we have to build the Bronx Terminal Market and why we have to develop Willets Point. Those are the jobs for the future.
NEWSPAPER ENDORSEMENTS
Jorge Ramos: At this time, each of you is invited to ask the other a question. Mr. Bloomberg, you may ask the first question to Mr. Ferrer.
Bloomberg: I guess I’d ask my opponent, the New York Times and Newsday, the Post and the Sun, the Daily News and the Advance, Hoy all endorsed me. Do you think they’re wrong?
Ferrer: Well, Mike, we’ve learned the hard way in the last couple of years that the New York Times doesn’t always get it right. And don’t even get me started on the New York Post. Look, I’m proud of the support I’ve gotten from the neighborhoods and streets of this city. So, if I’m not the candidate of the people in the boardrooms, I’m proud to be the candidate of the kids in the classrooms of this city.
PUBLIC HOSPITALS
Jorge Ramos: Mr. Ferrer, you may ask a question to Mayor Bloomberg.
Ferrer: Sure. Mike, you’ve said in the past that the poor get better health care in this city than the wealthy. Do you honestly believe those words?
Bloomberg: What I was saying is I cannot tell you how proud I am of the progress that our public hospitals - our 11 public hospitals - have made. It is true if you go into those hospitals without any insurance, without any money, you will get the same care as if you can come in and pay for your services. And that care is the best medicine available anyplace in the world today. Thirty thousand people work in those hospitals and they have transformed hospitals that people were willing to walk away from, wanted to sell, wanted to close, into 11 of the best hospitals any single place in this world. You betcha I’m proud of them.
ATLANTIC YARDS
Jorge Ramos: Let’s go on to another important subject. Mr. Ferrer, you’re against a major economic development project in Brooklyn, the Atlantic Yards. We went to Brooklyn and found this man with concerns about this project. Let’s listen.
Man on tape: We’re talking about Brooklyn, downtown Brooklyn, the Atlantic terminal area that comprises Prospect Heights and the Clinton Hill area. I believe that that area is an area that needs to be revitalized. I believe that the arena, if built, would be an economic boost for the neighborhood, but I’m concerned about whether or not affordable housing will be a key concern if it is in fact developed. That is my major concern. Is it going to be an area that’s going to have affordable housing for residents of the Brooklyn community?
Jorge Ramos: Mr. Ferrer?
Ferrer: You see I don’t confuse economic development projects with billion dollar boondoggles. In fact, this is looking more and more to me like the twin brother of the West Side stadium boondoggle.
Let me tell you some of the things that I have been impressed with in this project. Fifty percent housing affordability. I thought that was powerful. A community benefits agreement that would include people from the community and small businesses in the full economic life of the project.
But I have not supported the lack of transparency and the fact that there’s been no planning for the kind of mass of this project and the kind of infrastructure it would take to support it. But even more important, secret Mets begin to emerge like the one that says, “we’re going to give you Site 5 and we’re going to use the city’s condemnation power to take out existing businesses so you can create 2,600 units of luxury housing. Well that breaks the 50-50 percent.
Jorge Ramos: One of your allies, Al Sharpton, supports this project because it’s going to create jobs. Forty-five percent of those jobs are set aside for minorities, which is what is needed in the area.
Ferrer: It is amazing, Jorge, that we need boondoggle projects to try to do the right thing for communities and for people all across this city. Let’s put them â€em to work. Let’s ramp up small business. Let’s provide real job opportunities for them ongoing.
Jorge Ramos: Mr. Bloomberg?
Bloomberg: You know you can complain about everything, but the real world is you have to go and do something. And the Atlantic Yards is a project that should go ahead. It will create affordable housing. It will create housing for middle-class people. It will create a great spirit in Brooklyn. It will give us commercial space. It will fill a void that’s been empty since they wanted to build a new Ebbets Field there. It will create jobs for this community. And if there’s any project in this city that has been well studied, and studied out in the open, and that has worked with the community; one developer, if you have to pick one in this city, this developer is the one you want to pick to make the neighborhoods blend in with the project and to really make sure that everybody benefits.
Gabe Pressman: You look skeptical Mr. Ferrer.
Ferrer: Yeah, I am skeptical. I mean, if everyone’s reviewed this project, why are there secret memos emerging about the city guaranteeing to condemn a property called Site 5 that will give this developer 2,600 units of luxury housing. By the way with tax breaks from the city. That’s nuts.
Gabe Pressman: Your response, Mr. Mayor.
Bloomberg: Well if the memo’s out, it’s certainly not a secret so I don’t think we have to worry about that. Look, the city’s investment in this is only $150 million. We’ll get our money back reasonably quickly. The only thing we’re doing here is the same thing we do for other projects. I have yet to hear one major development project in this city that my opponent is in favor of.
Ferrer: I’ll tell you one. I’m happy to tell you.
Gabe Pressman: You'll have to save it. Melissa Russo has a question.
Melissa Russo: I’m curious now.
Ferrer: Why don’t you ask?
OVER DEVELOPMENT
Melissa Russo: We’ll see if it’s on Staten Island because we’re going to talk about economic development on Staten Island, maybe you’ll be able to work it in. But economic development can obviously be a good thing, and when it’s uncontrolled it can also have a serious impact on quality of life. We’re going to hear from a mom on Staten Island right now.
Woman on tape: Just what do you intend to do about the traffic on the secondary roads on Staten Island? The Staten Island Expressway is backed up at all hours of the day. The overflow is coming into the secondary roads and they just can’t handle it.
Melissa Russo: Mayor Bloomberg, do you have a plan?
Bloomberg: We are downzoning an awful lot of Staten Island for exactly this reason. The truth of the matter is the roads are too small for the amount of traffic today. And if you allow building in many of the neighborhoods of Staten Island to continue at the pace it’s been doing, you will not be able to get a police car or a fire truck or an ambulance to your home. You won’t be able to find a school that has classroom space. You won’t have a sewer system or a water system that can handle it. It’s controlling development.
Staten Island, however, is only one borough. In all five boroughs, overdevelopment has become a very serious issue because we’re building so much housing in this city. We’ve built 100,000 housing units in this city, and overdevelopment is becoming a very serious problem. This year, we’re on track to have a record number - 30,000 housing units - built.
Melissa Russo: Mr. Ferrer?
Ferrer: OK. Let’s get this straight. What this woman is talking about is the lack of infrastructure planning on Staten Island. New houses built, but not enough schools, not enough roads, not enough space for people to get emergency vehicles down a road. By the way, that’s going to be the same complaint around the Atlantic Yards because we’re not doing adequate infrastructure planning there.
Melissa Russo: On one hand though you criticize the mayor for not building enough housing. On the other hand, you are criticizing him for the consequences of the development that has happened.
Ferrer: No. What I’m talking about is building affordable housing. Look, I don’t confuse this with multimillion dollar condos. Again, building affordable housing on sites that we already know, on sites in this city and on sites that can be upzoned in this city with a special investment from the city itself. To induce 50 percent housing affordability. That’s my plan.
MAYORS AND SUBWAYS
Jay DeDapper: You both said that you ride the subways a lot. The Number 7 train is the favorite of a lot of people because it goes through so many great neighborhoods with so much good food to eat at every stop. We went out to Sunnyside to talk to a gentleman who rides the No. 7 line and doesn’t have quite as fond a perspective perhaps as those of us who go to Shea do.
Man on tape: How will you improve on the service that we’re getting? I’m catching the 7 train and it seems like the trains are delayed all the time and when they do come they bypass the station to make up time. I don’t think that’s right when people have to go to work. And you raise the fare. I think the fare should be maintained.
Jay DeDapper: I hate it when they bypass your stop at rush hour. I know the mayor - and I think this gentleman has a misconception that a lot of people have at times that the mayor runs the subway and, in fact, the MTA runs the subways, But Mr. Ferrer, you ave called the four representatives on the MTA board “potted plants” a couple of times recently that the mayor has put on that board. But let’s do some simple math here. There’s 14 votes. You get four of them. Why would you be able to do anything differently than any other mayor? And, probably a more important question, do you think the subways should be taken over by the city again and taken away from the MTA?
Ferrer: Well first of all, Mike Bloomberg's predecessor Rudy Giuliani, used his four appointees to great advantage-- and I disagreed with him an awful lot -- for the straphangers of this city. Now I know I’m going to be criticized again for not being a cheerleader of George Pataki. But, excuse me, because I am not. The simple fact is we’ve had two fare increases in the last four years and service has not gotten any better. At the same time, the MTA reports a nearly billion dollar surplus, and they want to get into the real estate business by building a platform over the Hudson Yards instead of making those investments back into the subway system to make it safe, reliable and affordable.
Jay DeDapper: What does the mayor have to do with any of that. He’s only got four of the 14 votes. And do you think the subway system should be taken over by the city?
Ferrer: Four of the 14 votes and leadership and a bully pulpit second in size and mass only to the president of the United States. That’s leadership.
Jay DeDapper: Should the subway be taken over by the city?
Ferrer: I don’t think so. We’ve got to make the state and the MTA respond to the needs of our straphangers.
Jay DeDapper: Mayor, you’ve got four of 14 votes. You haven’t been able to stop a fare hike. You’ve complained about it but you weren’t able to stop it.
Bloomberg: We voted against it the last time. We couldn’t stop it. I’ve used the bully pulpit. Hopefully, we will not have one in â€07. I’ve argued that we should use some of the surplus to make sure that does not happen. You know, though, I was thinking that when I came to this city in 1966, the subways were covered with graffiti, there was crime rampant, there wasn’t any air conditioning, and they did bypass a lot of stations.
Jay DeDapper: And they were run by the mayor.
Bloomberg: And they were run by the mayor.
Jay DeDapper: Do you want control of the subways?
Bloomberg: When I first was running for office four years ago I thought that this city should be in control of its own mass transit. Then along came 9/11 and the economics changed. The city could not possibly afford to do it. And the MTA is all tied up with Metro North and the Long Island Rail Road. It is a regional transportation plan. It’s a regional authority, and everything that’s done has to be done by convincing people outside of this city to go along with us.
Jay DeDapper: But your compatriot in the Republican Party is George Pataki. You weren’t able to stop the fare increase. He’s a Republican. You’re a Republican. Doesn’t that diminish your argument you can get things done because you’re a Republican and Republicans run the joint?
Bloomberg: I don’t always agree with Governor Pataki. I tried to get us a commuter tax and I couldn’t do it. But I did get a Democratic speaker of the Assembly and I did get a Republican majority leader of the Senate to give us $2.7 billion over the governor’s veto and then I sued to make sure his veto did not stand up.
Gabe Pressman: Just to stand on the historical record, the MTA was created to take responsibility or reliability or accountability away from the mayor and the governor at the time it was created.
Bloomberg: The whole idea here was that the elected officials wouldn’t be responsible, that they couldn’t be blamed, and that’s exactly the problem with our government that we’ve had for a long time and that’s what I’m all about -- holding someone accountable. But unfortunately, we couldn’t take over the subway system and they wouldn’t give it to us. We do provide security and do a great job in doing that.
OBSCENE CAMPAIGN SPENDING
Gabe PressmanMr. Mayor, the New York Times in endorsing you said you were on your way to becoming one of the greatest mayor’s in city history. But the Times warned that your chances that status were reduced by one flaw, what the Times calls “obscene spending.” Now four years ago, you warned against obscene spending. How did you define obscene spending then and how do you define it now?
Bloomberg: Gabe, what I am trying to do is get my message out to everybody, every community, every single person, regardless of where they live. I’m doing it by buying time on television, radio, and in print. And I’m doing it by doing what I have for four years and that is trying to get to every neighborhood in this city. The fact of the matter is we’ve brought crime down. We’ve improved the schools. We have the best affordable housing plan going. I’ve got to tell people, what we would do, and why they should continue to support us.
Gabe Pressman: Are you saturating the airwaves with that message?
Bloomberg: I don’t know whether we will saturate them or not. We are going to find out on November 8. That’s what elections are all about.
Gabe Pressman: Mr. Ferrer, the fact that you are able to raise so little money, comparatively, does that indicate that you are just not getting wide spread support out there?
Ferrer: Well, you know, I can think of a hundred million reasons why New Yorkers are misinformed about Mike Bloomberg’s record. And that’s ok. It’s his money, he can spend it any way he wishes. But it doesn’t make it right. Now, he can buy all the TV ads, all the radio ads, all the print ads. I don’t think it’s right to avoid debate in this city. Elections are for holding contestants accountable. In fact, that is what debates are for. In 2001, Mike, you said that the public of this city was cheated by not having enough debates.
Gabe Pressman: You are debating right here now.
Ferrer: This is unfortunately the second and the final debate we will have. We should be having debates in every borough in this city. Mike, if you are proud of your record and if you are ready to defend it. And you don’t mind being held accountable, then debate me in every corner of this city. Come on, we’ve still got a week to do this.
Bloomberg: Having a debate about debates is not a good use of this time.
HOUSING PLANS
David Ushery: During the past ten days, Mr. Bloomberg, you have outlined a number of new proposals on housing and health care. And some observers have said they look a lot like Mr. Ferrer’s proposals. Do you think some of his ideas have merit and if not why do the proposals seem similar?
Bloomberg: He wants to build affordable housing and so do I. The difference is I have a way to do it with capital funds, he is going to have to do it with raising taxes. Look, what I have tried to do over the last months as this campaign has unfolded is tell people what I have done and what I would do if reelected. They have a right to know – what are your plans, how would they work, who do we hold accountable. How will we know that a promise made is a promise kept? And who is going to pay for it? Rather than just worrying about slogans and complaining and identifying problems, what I am trying to do is to lay out a clear plan that everybody can look at. Your vote is too precious to just waste. You should know who you are voting for. You should know what they have done in the past. And you should know what they are going to do in the future.
David Ushery: Your affordable housing plan had been out there for a while and then in the last week or so you expanded the number so they match Ferrer's, it would appear.
Bloomberg: What we did is that we had a plan to build 86,000 units of affordable housing funded by a variety of ways, not taxes. We are ahead of schedule on that plan, roughly 47,000 of the 86,000 either under construction or completed. We think we have a ways with private money, philanthropic money at the beginning and then private money, to double the size of that. I comes out to be roughly the same number.
David Ushery: Let me ask Mr. Ferrer conversely, if there is such perceived similarities, why should the voters change direction now?
Ferrer: Well, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then I am flattered. The simple fact is I've yet to meet a New York family who can live in a pipeline. Now the number keeps on growing as the election draws closer. Thank goodness for elections. But again, we are in the middle of a housing crisis in this city. And it requires resolve, a serious plan, and a plan that can be funded. I have put forward all three.
BUDGET CUTS
Melissa Russo: Mr. Ferrer, you have said that if you are elected, you would not cut the police department nor services for senior citizens. You have not ruled cuts however to the schools or the fire department. Now you have also promised to cut taxes, and as mayor you would have to close next year's $4.6 billion budget gap. What would you cut?
Ferrer: You mean the budget gap in Mike Bloomberg's next budget?
Melissa Russo: Correct. Unless you are convinced he is going to win reelection?
Ferrer:Well some people are, but I am not. It goes like this. There are important things we need to do to get this budget under control. And one of them is going to the governor, going to the legislature and finally getting serious about ending the fraud, waste, duplication, and abuse in the Medicaid program that cost the city and the taxpayers several billion dollars a year. And here is another way to do it. As I proposed the other day, going against the governor and the state legislature and saying look we have had enough of this. We had a commuter tax in this city; I want it reinstated. That will give us more than $500 million a year of dedicated revenue to not only to deal with that budget deficit, but pay down budget deficits going forward.
Melissa Russo: Mayor Bloomberg, you always talk about how more and more of city spending is mandatory. Things like pension costs and salaries that can't be cut. Your opponent is talking about getting revenue from elsewhere. You know being mayor for four years you have to make cuts. What would you cut?
Bloomberg: What we have done is cut about $4 billion out of the expense budget, either by finding ways to do more with less or by finding alternative funding sources. That is why the quality of services in this city has actually gone up over the last four years. What we have also done is try to get as much money out of the federal and state government. Remember, it was the Democratic led Assembly that ended the commuter tax. And we will not see that back, I think, for a long time. I have fought for it for four years. I will continue to fight for it. But the truth of the matter is that the votes from the suburbs are sufficient to keep the city from getting a commuter tax. What we have to do is be self-sufficient. The ways to do that is to grow the economy so our tax revenues come in. That's from having big projects, from getting jobs here.
Melissa Russo:What are you going to cut?
Bloomberg: I believe we can maintain services that we have now and improve the quality of them without cuts.
Ferrer: I'll answer that question.
Jorge Ramos: We have to go to another topic here.
Ferrer: Oh, I'm so sorry because this was so good, because I can't let New Yorkers labor under the misimpression that Mike Bloomberg fought for the restoration of the commuter tax for four years. That's not true.
WHAT DO YOU MOST ADMIRE IN YOUR OPPONENT?
Jorge Ramos: The thing is you have been criticizing each other for the last 50 minutes. Fernando Ferrer, what about Michael Bloomberg do you most admire?
Ferrer: Here is the one thing I do admire. Mike Bloomberg did not go down the path of exacerbating racial tensions in this city. And as a New Yorker, Mike, I thank you for that.
But at the same time, you didn't do much about the fact that there are two New York's. And by the way neither New York could afford you multi-billion dollar tax payer funded Jets Stadium.
Jorge Ramos: This is about admiration. This is about admiration for Michael Bloomberg.
Ferrer: I just expressed it.
Jorge Ramos: Mr. Bloomberg, what do you most admire about Fernando Ferrer?
Bloomberg: I think my opponent is a great family man. And I think he speaks Spanish better than I do. Pero estoy aprendiendo.
Jorge Ramos: Anything about his public service?
Bloomberg: Most of it took place before my time. But from what I have read he was in a position where he criticized the school system but he never took the opportunity to fix it. Every child that is in high school today was in elementary or middle school when he was in office.
Gabe Pressman: That is admiration mixed with other things. Jay DeDapper?
REBUILDING GROUND ZERO
Jay DeDapper: Mr. Bloomberg, it was three weeks ago when you began pushing for a bigger role for the city at Ground Zero. There have been numerous reports over the years that you have had a tacit understanding with the governor that you would get the lead role on the West Side where the stadium was going to be developed and he would get the lead role at Ground Zero. First of all, is there such a deal, was there such a tacit understanding?
Bloomberg: Never discussed it. Never had the understanding. And we were part of what was done over the last four years downtown.
Jay DeDapper: But you have got to admit that the governor is the lead down there. The Port Authority is controlled by the governor and acting Governor Cody in New Jersey. The LMDC board is controlled by the governor.
Bloomberg: Jay, three years ago I tried to get the Port Authority out. I tried to swap the land for the city land under the airports for that site, for exactly that reason.
Jay DeDapper: But in the last three years, with the exception of that beginning time, a lot of people say, "where have you been for the last three years while you were doing the West Side and while the governor was doing press conferences at Ground Zero?"
Bloomberg: Jay, we were part of the process that picked the master site plan. We were part of the process that picked a design for a memorial. We are not trying to walk away from this at all. What I have said is that recently if you take a look at the marketplace downtown, it may be shifting. And for buildings that we have not yet started, buildings 3, 4, and 5, we should take another look at what the plan called for – not where they are – but what they would be used for. I'm not sure that we should change. But the marketplace is the following: 9,000 housing units have been built downtown, just since 9/11. If you go back and take a look at the need for commercial space, at the moment, there does not seem to be the need for 10 million square feet of office space down there.
Jay DeDapper: Mr. Ferrer, you have criticized him for being missing in action at Ground Zero, but we have not heard from you a defined detailed plan of what you would do differently at Ground Zero if you become mayor in January.
Ferrer: You heard in the last debate but let me be even more specific now. First of all, talking about 9,000 units of housing. Too many of them are multi-million condos, luxury rentals that we are giving them tax breaks for. That's nuts. We need affordable housing in this city. But let's talk very specifically about the hole that is Ground Zero. We need to replace office space and commercial space. Before all of that, we need to have a fitting memorial, not only to the nearly 3,000 New Yorkers who perished in that attack, but to the hundreds of emergency service workers, police officers, and firefighters who perished there.
Jay DeDapper: But that is underway. Fundraising is going on...
Ferrer:And we still haven't seen one brick piled on another. We've waited four years. That's wrong.
CLOSING STATEMENTS
Gabe Pressman: Now to the one minute closing statements. Mr. Mayor, you are first.
Bloomberg: I came to this city with nothing but dreams and I have been very lucky. I was elected by the voters four years ago to run this city. It was a very difficult, tough time for this city. People were worried, people were scared. We pulled together. This is a city that I am proud to lead and proud to be part of. I think if we continue to do we what we are doing. Continue to make sure that every child gets a good education. If we continue the course of making sure that this city is safe, safe from criminals and safe from terrorism. If we keep building and getting investment to come here and jobs to come here, then the future for the city is something that we will all look back on and say, we stood the test. I want my children to look at me and say, “Daddy, you governed honestly. You governed fairly. You didn’t report to anybody but the public that you work for. When you had the opportunity to do what was right, even when it wasn’t popular, you stood up and did it.” And I think that is exactly what this city wants and will continue to want.
Gabe Pressman: Mr. Ferrer?
Ferrer: Mike Bloomberg says this city is going in the right direction. In some ways, that is true. But in too many other important ways, it isn’t. Look, I was brought up on a tough corner in the South Bronx. What brought me from that corner to this podium tonight, was crossing over a bridge of hope and opportunity. I am running for mayor for the millions of New Yorkers who are finding it increasingly difficult to walk over that same bridge I did. I am running for school kids and the education they deserve. After-school programs, ending overpopulation, overcrowding in their schools, ending the drop-out rate. Instead of teaching to a standardized test, teaching to the highest standards. I am working to lift up from poverty and unemployment New Yorkers who need a good job and that can be fueled by small businesses having access to capital and doing business with this city. Cutting the taxes of moderate- and middle-income homeowners being priced out of their homes. And providing a bold housing program to build affordable homes for everyday New Yorkers.
Gabe Pressman: Times up, Mr. Ferrer.
Ferrer: I’m asking for your vote next week. And if you vote for me, I’ll make you proud you did.
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This November New Yorkers have a chance to vote on a measure that, simply put, promotes justice. With Ballot Proposal Three, the charter revision commission has placed on the November ballot the recommendation that the city charter require that the mayor, acting jointly with the city's office of administrative trials and hearings ("OATH"), establish a uniform code of conduct and ethics for administrative law judges and hearing officers. The New York City Bar Association supports this recommendation and advocates its passage.
Quasi-judicial, administrative tribunals focus on matters of city law and regulation enforcement, in order to relieve congestion in the courts. The network includes tribunals like the Environmental Control Board, which assesses fines to those charged with violating city environmental laws such as putting household garbage in street-corner trash cans. The Departments of Consumer Affairs and Health & Mental Hygiene, the Loft Board and Parking Violations Bureau are among other agencies that conduct administrative hearings. Those charged with violations have the right to a hearing headed by officers appointed by the agency whose regulations are being enforced. Their daily volume is enormous.
For most New Yorkers, the city's administrative tribunals are the only place in which they interact with the city's law enforcement mechanisms. Citizens are rarely represented by counsel, language issues often present challenges. The resulting impression can be intimidation, confusion and the absence of due process. Justice requires fairness, efficiency, consistency and independence. These objectives would be served by uniform standards.
Unlike judges, however, administrative hearing officers are not bound by a uniform requirement of standards, ethics, procedures, conduct or even qualifications. There is no practical or compelling reason for this. Standards and minimum requirements of justice do not vary by the amounts in controversy or the laws being enforced. Neither do the standards and minimum requirements of ethical conduct.
There was a charter revision commission in 2003 proposing a similar measure to this year's, which also required the mayor to appoint an administrative justice coordinator to promote a uniform training program and professional standards for administrative hearing officers. The voters rejected it. The Bar Association applauded that effort but argued such an appointment did not require a charter amendment; it only required an executive order. This year, the Charter Commission accepted the recommendation and urged the mayor to appoint the coordinator under his own authority. The coordinator would have a major role in establishing a standard code of conduct.
Most city agencies continue to be the fact finder, prosecutor, and judge in their administrative enforcement proceedings. The establishment of uniform standards would bring a greater measure of independence to those agencies’ proceedings. As with the office of administrative justice coordinator, it is not clear that a charter amendment is required to establish these standards. However, such standards are sorely needed, and by approving Ballot Proposal 3 the voters can firmly establish them in law.
Peter J. Kiernan is the chair of the New York City Bar Committee on New York City Affairs Â
On October 26, 2005, the New York City Bar Association held a forum on Proposition 1, the state ballot initiative to change the state’s budget process. The following is an edited transcript of the debate. The panel was moderated by Daniel Feldman, executive director of the New York State Trial Lawyers Association.
“Vote Yes” - Modest, But Important, Reforms” - Megan Quattlebaum, New York Common Cause
- Better Than the Status Quo” - Blair Horner, New York Public Interest Research Group
“Vote No” - A Classic Bait and Switch” - Gerald Benjamin, Professor of Political Science, SUNY New Paltz
- Making a Bad Process Worse” - Charles Brecher, Citizens Budget Commission
In New York, the turn of the 20th century was a period of fairly irresponsible spending by the New York State Legislature. It prompted a tremendous public outcry for what’s called an executive budget. That is to say a budget drawn up by the governor with the legislature’s role limited to rejection, deletions, reductions and criticism. In 1927, New York’s new constitution incorporated that reform.
In the 1970’s the State Legislature began to develop staff capability that really allowed it to engage in what I would characterize as increasingly serious budget analysis. While the legislature and the governor continued to joust over budget power, I would say it was generally the legislature, not the governor’s office that imposed substantive conditions on budget items in the context of the budget process. From 1998 through 2004, however, the legislature and the governor engaged in more heated controversy over budget powers and exacted litigation over budget powers. The controversy centered really on the degree to which either could oppose substantive law in the context of budget bills.
When the dust finally settled on the litigation, known as Pataki v Assembly and Silver v. Pataki, just last year in 2004, the Court of Appeals essentially gave the governor, not the legislature, considerable leeway in imposing substantive policy though budget bills. In particular, the court upheld the governor’s right to insert into a budget bill, pages of revisals and conditions.
In 2005, the governor and the legislature responded to public outrage over twenty years of continuously late budgets by passing the budget on time. Nonetheless, the decision of Pataki v Assembly, many would argue, leaves delay by the legislature as the only effective weapon left in attempting to combat the governors now increased leverage in budget negotiations.
I would think that it was largely in response to that “decision” that the legislature has placed Proposal 1 on the ballot.
The most significant element of ballot Proposal 1 would shift much budgeting power to the legislature in the event that the legislature could not or would not agree to the governor’s budget, even after imposing reductions in or elimination of budget items. The only limitations the legislature could make to the governor’s budget proposal.
This ballot proposal is a response by the legislature essentially to retake a very substantial increase in budget power and some would say it would take much more than the power the court has taken away from them.
Proposal 1 is part of a larger reform movement that we have been pushing for in Albany for over three decades.
So I want to step back a bit and talk a little about where we are now in the budget process in Albany. Common Cause has long criticized the budget process for being too secretive, too unaccountable and too uncertain.
For example, the Health Care Reform Act, which is approximately $4 billion in spending and revenue, is controlled entirely by the governor with very little oversight by the legislature and comptroller. In the past, Health Care Reform Act funds were used to create pay raises for the workers of the 1199 Service Employees Union. Those were the product of secret meetings between the governor and the head of that union and a few of the legislative leaders. That may have been a good decision or a bad decision, but we believe that it directly resulted in Pataki being endorsed by that union a few months later. We think that’s not a good way for budget decisions to be made.
Issues of secrecy, issues of accountability, issues of uncertainty – these are the things that drive Common Cause to seek reform of the budget process in Albany.
For those problems, we think that Proposal 1 offers a modest, but important, solution. We would never refer to it as a panacea. But we do see it as part of the larger spectrum of reform. But Proposal 1 would take steps to making the budget more open, accountable, and certain.
It will put things like the Health Care Reform Act funds on budget.
It will create an Independent Budget Office to help take some of the spin off of the budget numbers coming out of Albany.
It will create a contingency budget so that if the governor and legislature cannot agree on a budget on time, there is always a budget in place for schools and agencies that rely on state funds.
And it will create two-year school budgets, so schools can plan ahead for the future.
These are some of the smaller, but equally important parts of Proposal 1. It is part of a larger reform movement.
Anyone who is a student of the Albany process knows that you never get what you want, but you may get what you need, in the words of the famous British philosopher Mick Jagger.
The greatest point of debate on Proposal 1 is the contingency budget.
This passed in 2004 and in 2005, and the criticism is that it will create a power grab by the legislature that will lead to runaway spending. One Assemblymember said it was like letting children in a candy store without adult supervision; a pretty strong charge.
So we looked at how the power relationship outlined in this contingency budget stacks up against how budgets are done in the rest of the country.
What we found is that New York is one of four states with extremely powerful executives. The remainder of the country gives the legislature more budgetary authority than New York.
Now, no other state does exactly what this proposal calls for. But if you look at that relationship - where the legislature has a lot of authority subject to the line item veto of the governor – it is a similar relationship in most states around the country.
The contingency budget along with the rest good things in this package are, on balance, better than the status quo.
That is the vote on November 8. There are only two choices. You keep things the way they are, or you change.
We think that the change – the improved openness in the development of the executive budget, the Health Care Security Act funds being subject to scrutiny, the creation of an Independent Budget Office – we think that as a package, Proposition 1 offers something better than what we have.
I regard this as a classic bait and switch. It proposes reform, when it in fact undoes the greatest reform ever made in the 20th century in New York governance – the executive budget system. It undoes the executive budget system, which was adopted to a discredited 19th century legislative budgeting system.
The motivation for Proposition 1 is the legislature’s loss in the litigation of Pataki vs. Assembly, and Silver vs. Pataki, that closed the door on any hope that the legislature could alter its role in the budgeting under the current rules.
The legislature feels it has no other option than to change the State Constitution. The legislature is uniquely situated to change the Constitution without a convention. It can propose the change twice, and bring it to the people without the governor having a role in it.
The legislature is trying to replace the separation of powers - that is the core issue. The other issues are peripheral.
The legislature, in my opinion, is right. It has been unduly marginalized in budgeting by the decisions of the Court of Appeals. But it is overreaching in trying to establish itself as the sole power in budgeting.
Under Proposal 1, if the governor’s budget is not adopted by the beginning of the fiscal year, the contingency budget goes into effect and the legislature has almost entire control.
The best reason to provide a contingency budget is to assure that it is never used. The contingency budget should be so offensive to both houses of the legislature and the governor that they work hard together to avoid it ever happening.
What we have here is a high incentive for the legislature to allow the contingency budget to come into force, and a very low incentive for the legislature to accept the governor’s budget or to negotiate. So we have reversed the dynamic, but we have not remedied it.
We have an executive budget system for good reason. The elective chief executive is accountable to the whole polity. The legislature, as an institution, is distributive in its character; it has to please a lot of people who represent a lot of different interests and places. It is less situated institutionally to do the balancing of revenues and expenditures.
I agree that the legislature is far better situation to deal with budgeting and fiscal issues than it was in the early 20th century. But the fundamental institutional issue remains.
There is an alternative. It is legislation, called Senate 3195/Assembly 4630, which was given first passage this year. It requires the governor to propose changes in permanent law apart from and not within appropriation bills that the legislature may alter. If Proposition 1 fails, the legislature will advance it for second passage next year. And then it will be on the ballot.
The legislature is not going to quit. It is not going to accept the status quo with the governor. If it can’t get its goal by overreaching, then it will accept a lesser goal.
Most New Yorkers think they are being presented with reform. The value of the reforms being advanced is overstated. The core issue being avoided is the undoing of a fundamental reform in New York government. We must resist and vote “no.”
All of these arguably “modest improvements” – putting the Health Care Reform Act funds on the budget, the creation of an Independent Budget Office, and the instituting two-year school budgets - are not what you are voting on November 8th.
What you are voting on with Proposition 1 is the creation of a contingency budget if the legislature doesn’t pass a budget on time.
That might be called a good thing, if it really were a tool. A contingency budget ought to be a hammer that you get hit over the head with if you don’t pass a budget on time. That is not what this is.
This is an incentive for the legislature not to pass the budget on time because they get more power under the contingency budget. This is going to make this process that we all agree is bad, even worse. It is going guarantee that the budget is late because that is how to make the legislature more powerful. If the contingency budget kicks in, they will have almost unlimited power to pass supplemental appropriations.
This would create a schizophrenic budget process. Up until May 1, the governor has all of the power. After that, the legislature has all the power. It’s a crazy way to do fiscal business in the state.
We have problems. This isn’t going to fix it. Don’t’ make it worse. Don’t’ vote for this. Let’s focus on the real issues.
Â
Transcript of First 2005 General Election Mayoral Debate
On October 30, 2005, Michael Blomberg and Fernando Ferrer participated in a live mayoral debate. It was moderated by Bill Ritter of WABC News. Questions were asked by reporters - Dave Evans of WABC News, Errol Louis of the Daily News, and Denisse Oller of Univision. The following is a transcript of the debate.
For a transcript of the November 1 debate, click here
CAMPAIGN SPENDING
Dave Evans: Mr. Bloomberg, a lot has been made over the last couple of days that you have spent about $64 million of your own money on this campaign. I would predict that you will probably go over $100 million this year in spending. If you have done such a good job as you claim, why the need to spend so much money.
Michael Bloomberg: First I want to say thank you for having me and thank you to the sponsors. Let me get to the question. I am trying to get my message out to every community in this city. It costs a lot of money. I don't have a big Democratic machine behind me. The city is five to one Democratic. I am trying to have a good record. I am trying to tell everyone exactly what we have done. And I am trying to focus on what we still have to do. This city has gone in the right direction. But I believe that we can do an awful lot more. Explaining the facts to the people takes time, it takes organization, and it takes a lot of TV time.
Dave Evans: As a follow up, turn to 2001, in an interview with New York Magazine, you said talking about $30 million at that time and this is the quote. You said, "At some point you start to look obscene. There is a limited amount of ad time that you can buy. It becomes dysfunctional. You begin to annoy people with your ads." The question is: Are you buggin people?
Bloomberg: I don't think there is any evidence. I think people look at our ads, there is a positive message. Every ad I have tried to be substantive and tell people what we've done and what the potential for this city is. And how together we can take this city forward.
Dave Evans: Mr. Ferrer?
Fernando Ferrer: Look, Mr. Bloomberg is a wealthy man and he certainly has a right to spend his money any way he wishes. But that doesn't make it right. It doesn't make it right to distort debate in this city. It doesn't make it right to destroy the platform from which you make good public policy. $100 million buys a great deal of television and radio ads, but here is something you won't hear on a Mike Bloomberg ad: we have a 50 percent drop out rate. Another thing you won't hear in a Mike Bloomberg ad: one out of five New Yorkers today lives in poverty. Another thing you won't here in a Mike Bloomberg ad: vetoed three bills that would have made it easier for the hungry to get food stamps, a federal program. Those are things you won't hear in those ads Mike Bloomberg ad.
Dave Evans: But you have had trouble raising your own money. What does that say about you and your candidacy?
Ferrer: You know, if this were a normal race, if I were overspent and outspent by a huge sum of money, what I am raising would be considered good news for a Democratic nominee, or any nominee. But these aren't normal times. Look, I don't begrudge anyone spending his own money on this race. It was earned honestly and I congratulate Mike Bloomberg on that. However, it does distort debate. It does destroy the platform from which you discuss important public policy issues. And in fact, up until now, I have been the Democratic nominee for seven weeks and this is our first debate. It's too bad.
ATLANTIC YARDS PROJECT IN BROOKLYN
Bill Ritter: Next question from Errol Louis for Mr. Ferrer.
Errol Louis: Mr. Ferrer, in the first few weeks of his administration, Mr. Bloomberg undid many of the initiatives of his predecessor. If you are elected mayor, which if any initiatives of the Bloomberg administration would you plan to undo?
Ferrer: Well, there is one important one that I will undo and that is Atlantic Yards. I will call a halt to that project and reevaluate it. As we are beginning to scratch under the surface of a Nets arena and the construction of thousands of units of housing, the original promise was 50 percent affordability. Now we are finding secret memos emerging that talk about condemning businesses that are already ongoing and then building 2,800 to 2,600 units of luxury housing. Those are things, I think, that deserve full view and a full review of the people who live there.
Now I supported and I felt strongly about the power aspects of the 50 percent affordability, the community benefits agreement that would bring small businesses and community people into the full life of that project. But I object to the lack of transparency. I object to the backroom deals. I object to the things we are beginning to see emerge about a project that is becoming the twin brother of the West Side boondoggle.
Bill Ritter: Mr. Bloomberg?
Bloomberg: Well, I couldn't disagree more and I think Al Sharpton who has supported my opponent said it very well, this is about jobs for people in that community. This is about housing for people in that community. This is a project that has had as much scrutiny as anything, community boards, scrutiny from the newspaper boards, and scrutiny from every single state agency that is involved. This is the right kind of project for this city, builds houses, creates jobs, helps the spirit of Brooklyn, and takes a place that has been vacant for decades, 50 years or more, and does something with it that will help this city.
JOBS
Denisse Oller: Mr. Bloomberg, blacks and Hispanics workers have among the highest unemployment rates in the city. According to the Community Service Society, more than 10 percent of blacks and 8 percent of Hispanics are out of work. How specifically would you help these groups find jobs?
Bloomberg: The first thing is to recognize that is a fact and it probably comes out of the poor education. Unfortunately our school system failed these people. But the question is what can we do for them today. When I came into office, the city was hemorrhaging jobs, it was right after 9/11. It took a year to stabilize it. But in the last two years, more than 150,000 New Yorkers have jobs today than did then. But we have to open up the unions and I have a historic agreement with the unions to make sure they take people from the entire community. I went to the Carpenters Apprentice Program a couple weeks ago, 40 percent of the people had to be people of color. We have minority and women owned business programs to make sure that small businesses no matter owns them have a chance to get city business. Small businesses employ half of the people in this city. We have to go and make sure that every job is open to everybody. And we have been doing that. It is economic development. That is what we need. The more jobs, the more economic opportunity.
Bill Ritter: Mr. Ferrer?
Ferrer: I certainly would not have confused an economic development program with globetrotting for the Olympics. That is not an economic development program. And I certainly wouldn't confuse putting people to work who have been chronically unemployed with going for multi-billion dollar deals like the West Side stadium, like the Nets arena. There is a better way to put people to work and that is small business. Mike Bloomberg is right about small business, but wrong about his approach. In fact, in the last four years, the number of minority owned businesses who have had access to doing business with this city are no better than his predecessor Rudy Giuliani. I would do better.
OLYMPICS, WEST SIDE STADIUM, GROUND ZERO
Bill Ritter: Continuing along this economic development theme, Dave Evans for Mr. Ferrer.
Dave Evans: Along that line, for small businesses, we've seen a significant drop in the wages earned by low income and middle income new Yorkers, and as Iâ€ve just mentioned you've talked a lot about small businesses. But what's your effort to get big industry, who pay a lot of money, say a Citibank or a Chase, what's your effort to get those kind of businesses to New York City?
Ferrer: Well, it's important that we focus on the vital things: rebuilding the centerpiece of an economic engine that served the centerpiece of lower Manhattan – and the rest of this city – well. Rebuilding Ground Zero. And unfortunately we've been spending time as a city and state obsessing over the Olympics, or building a billion dollar football stadium for the Jets on the west side of Manhattan, but forgetting about the important work and the important commitment of restoring to Ground Zero the economic capacity we need to generate jobs that support jobs in lower Manhattan and the rest of this city. That's the most important work we can be doing, and it should have been done in the last four years.
Dave Evans: Do you think at all that the city and the state has paid too much money, for example, to keep Goldman Saks at Ground Zero?
Ferrer: Well, I'm really glad you asked about Goldman Saks. There isn't a better illustration of the two New Yorks than that deal. Let me give you the picture. In the Bronx, [a woman] lives in a hovel. If she's late on her rent one month, she's out on the street. But she's been waiting two years for the city to force her landlord to make repairs. By contrast, we can't do enough to get Goldman Saks from Midtown back to lower Manhattan, with a king's ransom of $1.7 billion in tax abatements. That's the example I'm talking about.
Bill Ritter: Mr. Mayor you have the liberty of answering two questions here, so go ahead.
Bloomberg: Do I have double the time?
Bill Ritter: You'll have a little extra.
Bloomberg: Number one, the Olympics would have brought 100,000 plus jobs and 12 billion dollars of economic activity and tourism for decades. It is a big economic thing, and that's why every city wants the Olympics and it's a shame we didn't get it.
The west side, yes we didn't get the stadium, but we rezoned the whole west side, we're extending the number 7 lines. That's going to bring a 100-plus thousand jobs, and housing, an enormous amount of housing on the west side. Those are good things for the city.
And in terms of Goldman Saks, Goldman has a brand new building that they spent $1 billion plus right across the river on. They could have moved over there any day. We gave the minimum we had to do to keep them in the city. If there's any administration that has not been willing to not give willy nilly tax breaks to companies it's our administration. We've given virtually none. This is the one case where we thought they could have moved – it might have been in their economic interest to move – and we wanted to get those jobs here. The monies that we gave them, we will get back very quickly, because the economic activity that they will create in lower Manhattan really makes a big difference.
Bill Ritter: Your response to the west side stadium criticism?
Bloomberg: The west side stadium I thought would have been great for the city. I don't care so much about the ten football games. I cared about another expansion to the convention center, I cared about a place for 75,000 new Yorkers to get together all year round. And we would have had an outsider come in and spend the $1 billion; the city would have spent only $300 million, and we would have gotten our money back. But we need those kinds of things, and it's a shame we didn't get it. But we're doing plenty of other things at the same time and the West Side is going ahead regardless.
TAXES
Bill Ritter: Thank you, gentlemen. Errol Louis for Mr. Bloomberg.
Errol Louis: Mr. Bloomberg, as mayor you've raised property taxes over 18 percent, you've raised fees, you've raised fines. With a four billion budget gap looming, should voters expect to see more of the same if you're reelected?
Bloomberg: No, I think they can expect to see a continued focus on doing more with less. But because we made those decisions – and it wasn't popular to go, I came into office and didn't want to raise taxes, said I wasn't going to, but we had an emergency, I had to do it so we could keep cops and firefighters and teachers. And I think while those were not politically popular decisions they turned out to be the right decisions.
Today the economy is growing. And I would think for the next fiscal year, starting next July 1, if we focus on doing a little more with less, with the expansion of the economy we would get through that year without any tax increases or fee increases. In fact, I've been trying to reduce fees, uh, taxes. We have that $400 rebate, we got an early end to the sales tax on clothing of $110 or less, I've said we should sunset the personal income tax surcharge on time as scheduled. The city's economy is getting better, and we have the highest credit rating this city has ever had in history. So the outside observers – the financial experts – say we're going in the right direction.
Bill Ritter: Mr. Ferrer?
Ferrer: I think the people who are paying the increased fees, ticket blitzes, increased taxes, would say something different. They want a modicum of tax relief, to be able to afford to live in the homes that they've lived in for years. That's why I'll cut their taxes. That's why I'll also provide 167,000 affordable homes and apartments. Those fees, those fines, those penalties are doing little to help middle class and working class people be able to live in their own neighborhoods, to be able to live decently in this city. To be able to pass on dreams and hope and opportunity to their children, to their families.
Errol Louis: If you had been faced with the same budget deficit four years ago, what would you have done differently?
Ferrer: Ah, well let's review that. Mike Bloomberg did promise no new taxes. Again, in his inauguration speech in January 2002, and waited for a year while George Pataki was safely reelected in order to grapple with some of the most vexing budget problems. Yeah, I would have implemented a hiring freeze immediately. I would have begun to make the economies we needed to make, so that the burden of taxes and fines and fees and penalties that were raised in the beginning of 2003 would not have been so severe.
Bill Ritter: Mr. Bloomberg, we'll give you 30 seconds to respond to that if you want.
Bloomberg: Well, we did put in a hiring freeze right away; we did try to economize right away. We borrowed money rather than raised taxes for the first year, because the economy was threatened, and people thought companies were going to leave this city. People were scared, and they didn't know whether we had a future, and you could not have raised taxes then. But I faced an emergency, and it wasn't popular, but I went I did what I want – what we had to do. I'll also point out, that if I read – watch the ads Freddie has proposed $12 billion in extra spending and $6 billion in tax increases already, and he isn't even elected.
FIREHOUSES
Denisee Oller: Mr. Bloomberg, you just mentioned firehouses. If reelected, will you assure us you will not close anymore?
Bloomberg: I can assure yo that we will look at the numbers. The only basis for where we site firehouses, where we site police precincts, is what the chiefs say they need to do the job. Deaths by fire are down to a level not seen since 1919. That's the real test. Yes response time is up, half a second because we closed some fire houses, but we have a bigger fire department today than we had back before 9/11. We have expanded the fire department because in the tragedy of 9/11 we lost so much experience, and we needed more firefighters. We opened one firehouse because response time had grown to six or seven minutes. The neighborhoods, incidentally, where we did close firehouses still remain below the average in this city. Were getting good protection.
Denisse Oller: Mr. Ferrer, you've been critical of the closings, as mayor, will you reopen them?
Ferrer: 4 of them immediately. On of them in Williamsburg, which by the way, is growing, not shrinking. Look, I have some experience with this. Mike mentioned my record as borough president. Well, Mike you may recall that as borough president I took the city to court to keep engine 41 open. Some might say, "Why did engine 41 need to be reopened?" Well they lost six men in the attacks on the World Trade Center. "Yeah, but we're good enough to sacrifice six men, they're good enough to protect New Yorkers."
Bill Ritter: Mr. Bloomberg, any response to that?
Bloomberg: No there's no response. We can't have a firehouse on every corner of the city. You've got to go and look. As our population moves, you've got to constantly reevaluate where to put our resources. An awful lot of firehouses were sited a hundred years ago when horses pulled the fire engines. It's a different world... Everyday it's a different world, and we've got to constantly look at the threats, look at our resources and redeploy as we retrain and enhance our services.
AFFORDABLE HOUSING
Bill Ritter: Mr. Ferrer, we both know how expensive it is to live in the city, and you've both come up with extensive housing plans over the last couple of weeks. But neither of your plans really addresses the fact that thousands and thousands and thousands of rent stabilized apartments will be coming off of the rolls over the next few years. So, how is this plan progress? Mr. Ferrer.
Ferrer: Sure it is. At least mine does. This man's talking about being in the blast of the housing boom you're talking about. Mike, I don't know what city you're living in, but not his city. Not in the one where he is, and a decent amount of others, are looking for a decent place to live at a rent or price that they can afford. It's simple, we've got to build and maintain the affordability of tens of thousands of units in this city to try to catch up with the enormous housing need. Mike Bloomberg promised 68,000 units of housing. So far he's only delivered a third of it. And then, we're beginning to focus on a failure to deliver, and he's promised even more. Now I'm glad, Mike, you're program is beginning to catch up to my plan, but the simple fact is housing is too important a factor to the lives of New Yorkers. I've seen the difference a decent affordable place makes in the life of a family that didn't have one before. In the life of a neighborhood in the life of a city. I want to make it every one of the five boroughs in New York.
Bill Ritter: Mr. Bloomberg?
Bloomberg: What's happening in this city is that because crime is coming down, because schools are getting better, the quality of life is better, more and more people want to live here. We have record population and the housing supply certainly has not kept up. You have to do a number of things. One, build affordable housing. Made a commitment to 86,000 units. We're way ahead of schedule. Completed before we said we would. And been financed with capital monies generally. Have a plan to go and get private monies, which is the only way we're going to get a lot more housing coming in in the next four years. I think we can double the number. What we've got to get is private capital to come in. And that comes from rezoning, making this a place where people want to invest, have confidence in the future. At the same time we've got to make sure people have jobs so that they can pay the rent. That means opening up all the jobs in this city to everybody. That means improving the educational process. That means making sure small businesses can stay in this city, and don't get pushed out by the residential real estate market, and can keep those jobs.
HEATING OIL COSTS
Bill Ritter: Let's continue with this theme on rent with Errol and a question for Mr. Bloomberg.
Errol Louis: Mr. Bloomberg, rents have already gone up because of higher property taxes and renters are going to get slammed again because of higher energy costs. Homeowners can get brakes occasionally, but is there a program that you would want to use to give direct relief to renters?
Bloomberg: What yo can do is you can help. We have programs for example: SCRIE [Senior Citizen Rent Increase Exemption] to help the elderly not have their rent go up. We have been keeping hard to keep Mitchell-Llama housing in Mitchell-Llama so that prices to go to market rate. There's a whole variety of things we could do. Unfortunately there's nothing we can do about the price of heating oil. That's something beyond our control. But what we can do is all of the other things. We can make sure that people who are struggling to make ends meet get a chance to get everything they can. Whether it's getting health benefits, public insurance - which we have a million more people today than four years ago. We can make sure they get a chance to use the Earned Income Tax Credit - the federal one, or the city one we put in. We can make sure they get paid the minimum wage, which I put supported a State increase. Make sure that the unions are open to everybody so they can get jobs.
Bill Ritter: Mr. Ferrer?
Ferrer: Too many New Yorkers are struggling under the burden of increased property taxes that Mike Bloomberg increased. Look, I'm gonna cut their taxes. Cut their taxes by $973 a year, permanently. Not on a year to year basis. And I'm also gonna offer tax help for people that live in regulated housing who are struggling under that same burden. $295 dollars a year. And a way to pay for it as well, that puts forward an idea that says that we have to have equity and affordability in every neighborhood in this city. Look, that we saw on the screen a moment ago in East Harlem, trying to find a decent place to live at a price that he can afford. Well, he just looks like he was caught in the housing boom that Mike Bloomberg talks about. But there is no housing boom, and he's proof of it.
HOMELESSNESS
Bill Ritter: Denise for Ferrer.
Denisse Oller: Mr. Ferrer, let's talk about the homeless. Some 32,000 New Yorkers sleep in shelters each night - an increase of six percent since the last city elections. Years ago in a program in a program by Mayor Koch, he set aside ten percent of all city funded apartments to the homeless. If you were mayor, would you make that commitment as well? Ten percent.
Ferrer: I know about that because I worked with Mayor Koch in my borough to create affordable housing, permanent housing, for homeless families and individuals. I'm proud of that record of achievement because it made a difference in the lives of families, especially in the lives of children. We have to have that same kind of commitment. Homelessness has risen six percent in the last four years. That means we are not building enough housing, not providing enough options for them. A woman that I talked about a moment ago who lives in this slum property in the Bronx. She's late on her rent for a month, she's in the homeless shelter. We've got to do more for families like that. We've got to do more for families in our homeless shelters. And the thing I'm talking about is building enough affordable for them to live decently to be able to give their kids big dreams.
Denisse Oller: So would you make a commitment of ten percent?
Ferrer: Absolutely.
Bill Ritter: Okay, Mr. Bloomberg?
Bloomberg: When I came into office, the homeless population was skyrocketing, partially because of 9/11, partially because of a national economic downturn which hurt this city very badly. We stabilized it, it is now coming down. We've had put over 90,000 homeless into permanent housing. When the Section-8 vouchers stopped coming from Washington we created our own voucher program which has been successful. In the process of ripping down the old intake unit in the Bronx, which was a disgrace where people were sleeping on the floor, we are building a new one. I think Linda Gibb [Commissioner, Department of Homeless Services] has done a spectacular job at addressing the issue. And most of our focus is now on preventing homelessness, rather than just worrying about how you take care of people. I might also point out we just closed the largest city this city had, Carlton House in Queens, because the homeless population is starting to go down. We're going in the right direction. We have a long way to go, make no doubt about it. There are certainly people who need help, that's where they need supportive housing and those kinds of things.
Denisse Oller: Would you commit to the ten percent?
Bloomberg: I'd have to take a look at it. You can't just go and commit ten percent of anything. You've got to take a look everyday. Linda is very successful in preventing homelessness. That's where our resources should be devoted, rather than saying the government is going to subsidise everybody.
Denisse Oller: That goes to my next question to Mr. Ferrer. Most candidates try to avoid proposing new taxes, but you specifically proposed at least two taxes to fund education and affordable housing. How will being known as the candidate of new taxes help you win the election?
Ferrer: First of all the tax I propose is a reclassification of the real property tax on vacant property that is being used as a commercial asset, a land bank to speculate on. Yes, I want make affordable housing a reality on those sites. And I want to discourage land banking and land speculation. That reclassification in the tax isn't about gaining revenue; it's about creating affordable housing. In case anyone hasn't noticed we are in the middle of an incredible housing crisis in this city.
And let's talk about my school investment plan. It asks the global investment community to invest pennies in our schools because for two and a half years, we have had the Campaign for Fiscal Equity decision, $23 billion owed to our schools. And you can't put zero on the table and expect something back, because that has been the result for the last two and a half years. We put zero on the table and zero has come back for our kids. Our kids and their parents can't wait another year for progress in our schools at all grades.
Bill Ritter: Mr. Bloomberg?
Bloomberg: If you raise the stock transfer tax you will drive thousands of jobs out of this city. I don't think anyone questions that. In terms of not getting CFE money, what we have done is not wait for CFE money. I hope the courts will rule the way the city has argued they should rule and the state gives us the money. In the meantime, we've added $2.5 billion to the school budget. We've raised the capital budget to build new schools to $13.5 billion. When the state didn't come through with the money, the city stepped up and gave their share. We've given the teachers a 33 percent raise in the last four years. We are not waiting for CFE money. We have to educate the kids today and fight for the CFE money, which we have been doing.
SECURITY AND SUBWAY SAFETY
Dave Evans: Mr. Bloomberg, for two and a half years, up until just recently, about $600 million in security money earmarked for the MTA security went unspent. The former head of security at the MTA said your appointees were "wimps on security." Why didn't you lead the charge to use that money now?
Bloomberg: I didn't hear him say that. I think it's true that the MTA did not go ahead and press for cameras and other technology that they could use. Fortunately now they have finally given Lockheed a contract to do that. But remember, the city provides the day in and day out security on the subway platforms. And we have gone ahead, if you look you see bag searches in some stations. You see more police than you have seen before. There are a lot of police there that you don't see, undercover; that guy sitting next to you on the train or that woman could very well be an undercover detective. We have gone ahead and increased the security. And I think in all fairness to the MTA if you look you will see that they finally got the message. And now you will see a lot more MTA employees on the platforms, in the subway. Every time I take the subway everyday, there is a noticeably greater presence. A lot of things in this city were designed without thought for security, like bridges and tunnels, that the MTA has been studying and has been working on.
Dave Evans: We just saw recently a couple of crossed wires and a fuse box through the whole system into havoc, it begs the question: are we safe?
Bloomberg: Some of things are - has the MTA been investing in the infrastructure for the last two decades to make this a modern, safe, reliable? - and the answer is clearly no. I have said until the MTA addresses those issues we should not consider fare increases. And my members voted against the fare increases. The point is we have to look forward and see what we can do now. Whether the MTA did a good job or didn't do a good job isn't the point. The question is are they doing it today and is the city providing the level of security they need, and yes.
Bill Ritter: Mr. Ferrer?
Ferrer: Well before the MTA came to their senses on the need to spend that money, it was $390 million that remained unspent, I put forward a mass transit security plan. We have to have a mass transit system that is safe, reliable, and affordable. The simple fact is I wouldn't have called Mayor Bloomberg's four appointees wimps; I would called them potted plants because for several years they have been sitting there while the MTA has declined and failed to spend that money until just recently. The MTA then bungles it. We have to put forward an effective and ongoing deterrent to anyone who wants to do harm to New Yorkers. Millions of New Yorkers use our mass transit system daily.
That is why I called for very specific things: getting a thousand cops out from behind the desk and putting them on patrol; cutting edge communication; explosive detection equipment; surveillance equipment; and surveillance training for the MTA workers below ground and above ground. Only putting those things, put together will create an effective and ongoing deterrent to keep all New Yorkers safe and our mass transit system safe and secure.
EMERGENCY MANAGMENT
Bill Ritter: Errol Louis for Mr. Ferrer.
Errol Louis: Mr. Ferrer, I want to ask you about the battle of the badges: the confusion and miscommunication that sometimes takes place during emergencies. Mr. Bloomberg has made clear that when it comes to these conflicts the NYPD is in charge during emergencies. Do agree with that approach? Would you have a different agency in charge?
Ferrer: No, I do not. When I was a young councilman, I saw a physical manifestation of the battle of the badges: the late Commissioner Ben Ward with then Fire Commissioner Joe Bruno, who is now the head of emergency management in this city. In 2001, the voters of this city decided, and I think correctly, to empower the office of emergency management by creating a commissioner. No mayor, at any time, can predict when and where an emergency or catastrophe will occur. But we have to be ready for it. We have to be in the position to settle all disputes on the ground and to coordinate all responders to keep New Yorkers safe and to preserve life and safety. That is why I would have a commissioner of emergency management, who reports directly to me, who settles all of these disputes right on the ground.
Bill Ritter: Mr. Bloomberg?
Bloomberg: We do have a commissioner of emergency management, Joe Bruno, who does report to the mayor and he does have a lot of authority. But when you go to an event, that happens hundreds of times a week, the police and the fire get there and they work together. They know who has responsibility for each thing. The senior people in both agencies train all of the time together. The people who drive the trucks and put out the fires and arrest the bad guys train together all of the time, they train together in tabletops and they train together out in the field. And they do a spectacular job. They are the reason this city keeps getting better. Crime keeps coming down; deaths by fire keep coming down. And we have reputation nationally of having the best police department and the best fire department in terms of training, communication and coordination, and spirit of any place in this country – and arguably of any place in the world. I am very proud of the job they do and they do it every day.
POLICE AND GUNS
Errol Louis: To get off the coordination problem for just a minute, we have 3,000 fewer police officers on the street now then when you took office. Crime is down, but there has been a 10 percent increase in shootings. Is the fewer number of police related to that increase?
Bloomberg: I don't think it's related. We don't have the money to have a cop on every corner, a firehouse in every neighborhood. We have to make choices. Take a look at what has happened in the last four years. Overall crime down 20 percent. Domestic violence crime down 38 percent. Crime in the subways down 15 percent. Hate crimes down 45 percent. Yes, shootings are up. There are too many guns on the street and we have to go and get the guns off of the street. We have a record number of gun arrests. We are devoting our resources to trying to do that, but we need the federal government's help to do that. I don't think we got any help from the borough president, when he was borough president. As a matter of fact, he is out campaigning with Howard Dean who is eight times endorsed by the NRA.
Bill Ritter: Mr. Ferrer?
Ferrer: Let's talk about Mike Bloomberg's support of the party and the president, whose policies have hurt this city.
Bloomberg: Not on this policy, I didn't.
Ferrer: You know you have supported right wing politicians, including the chairman of your own campaign, Mike, who voted for that disgraceful piece of legislation.
Bloomberg: I couldn't agree more, Freddy. I disagree with them.
Ferrer: You gave them money, Mike. You can't have it both ways. You can't disclaim responsibilities for the policies you politically and financially support.
Bloomberg: I am going to go and fight for this city, Freddy. And I can't have everybody in Washington vote for everything I'd like. I wish they would, but they don't.
Ferrer: You don't have to support them, Mike. And you know what you could do this city a big favor sometimes by putting your checkbook away.
Bloomberg: Ok.
Ferrer: Ok.
EDUCATION AND TEST SCORES
Bill Ritter: Education has been a huge issue in this campaign. Mr. Bloomberg, we all know that reading and math test scores are up significantly in the city, but they are also statewide, and they are also in parochial school. The criticism has been – as you have heard again and again – that maybe the kids aren't smarter, maybe the tests are easier. Given that criticism, do you think that after the tests are given that we, the public, should have the chance to look at them.
Bloomberg: The tests are provided by an outside service, all the professionals say they have not gotten easier. I think what is happening is that the teachers are doing a better job. If you take a look at what we did in the third grade, where we've ended social promotion, we identified which kids needed more help, we gave them that help during the summer. And how did they do in the fourth grade? In the fourth grade the kids we gave special help to did better than the kids didn't need the extra help. That's why we ended social promotion in the fifth grade; sixth grade teachers say they've never seen a more prepared class coming in. Seventh grade is happening this time. We are going in the right direction. The teachers, who are the ones who deliver the service, are excited. We have fewer resignations than we've had in a long time. We have more people coming from around the country that want to join this system. We're doing it right and we have to stay the course.
Bill Ritter: But my question is would you be in favor of letting the public see those tests.
Bloomberg: Sure, I didn't realize they weren't. Why shouldn't you? The test, unfortunately, are something we are stuck with. But if testing is can you read or can you do the math we're going to do the test.
Bill Ritter: Mr. Ferrer?
Ferrer: The answer to your question is yes. Look, I don't think you'll to find an educator in this city who is unqualifiedly happy about the simple fact that test scores are rising in the fourth grade. It's a reflection of one day on one test. But let's look far beyond that. Here's another thing you won't see in a Mike Bloomberg ad. You won't see 50 percent of our kids entering high school and dropping out without a diploma, without a job, without a future. I'll end that dropout crisis. We've got to end that. Look, I'm not running to be the mayor of the fourth grade. I'm running to be the mayor of all the grades.
Look, I commend Mike Bloomberg for taking control of the school system. Now you got to take responsibility for all 1.1 million kids. Nothing good will happen in their lives until the mayor says "they're my children, and I'll take their education personally."
Bill Ritter: Mr. Bloomberg, do you have a response?
Bloomberg: Let's take a look at the numbers. You have a right to your opinions, Freddie, but not to your own facts here. In the Bronx the graduation rate in four years has gone from 40 percent to 52 percent. In the city as a whole, after decades of doing nothing, it has gone from 50 to 54. But what do those numbers mean? Take a look: 16 percent drop out in the first four years, 54 percent graduate. That's 70 percent. What happens to the other 30 percent? Some go to other schools, some go to the army, and a lot of them graduate after five, six or seven years. Not every child can get through in four years. The total number of people that never get an education is distressingly too high, and we have to work a lot harder at it. But it's not 50 percent.
Ferrer: Mike, I am citing facts. They're facts cited by your own chancellor a year ago on Channel 4.
Bloomberg: Okay.
MAYORAL CONTROL OF SCHOOLS
Bill Ritter: Let's continue on this education theme with Errol Louis.
Errol Louis: Mr. Ferrer, you're commending the mayor for getting control of the schools, but when you ran in 2001 you opposed any change to the makeup of the board of education, and called mayoral control a “facile political gimmick.” As mayor would you give up control of the schools?
Ferrer: Let me tell you something. I will not. But what I was warning about turned out to be true. The panel for educational policy, where all the important decisions about educational policy in a $14 billion educational budget are made in some back office, and are all decided in a half-hour of very easy debate. Parents are shut out of that process; communities are shut out of that process. And we're talking about the future of our kids – and $14 billion budget – no one should be shut out of that process.
Bill Ritter: Mr. Bloomberg?
Bloomberg: It's a $15.5 billion project with a $13.5 instruction budget, and nobody's shut out, and mayoral control means mayoral control. And the mayor is being held responsible and I've said if I don't do a good job don't vote for me. At least the public finally has somebody to blame or somebody to give the credit to. In the past nobody did anything. For decades – and for decades while my opponent had somebody on the old board of education – nothing changed. All we did was focused on a patronage-laden system that didn't care about the kids, and promoted them just to push them through. We've changed that today. There's accountability. You have to learn and you have to behave and we are going to make sure that our children leave this system with the skills they need to participate in the great American dream.
Ferrer: Mike, I want to agree with you about one thing. I did have someone on the board of education and was involved in that patronage-laden thing...
Bloomberg: And she works for me now.
Ferrer: And now she's one of your trusted advisors.
Bloomberg: That's right, but she doesn't run my educational policy.
Ferrer: Thank goodness.
Bill Ritter: Thank you gentleman. Denisse.
Denise Oller: Mr. Bloomberg. The focus of your educational policy has been on the younger students. While high school graduation rates have improved slightly since you became mayor, rates are still very low especially among minorities. Why the lack of focus on high school students?
Bloomberg: It's not a lack of focus, but it's more visible when you work on the elementary and middle school kids who haven't in the past gotten the skills to do high school work. We have a bunch of high school kids today many of whom were left behind before, weren't given the skills they need. So what do we do? We're breaking up the big schools into small schools with themes to make it interesting for kids. We're adding a vocational component to make it relevant. Not every kid's going to go to college. You don't tell teenagers what to do. You've got to get them to come in and to want to participate. We have programs to get kids who have dropped out of school to come back into school, get a GED. When they got out into the real world and realized they can't get a job without an education, we're trying to tempt them back. And that's what we're going to continue to do. Twofold: the kids get the skills they need as they come up thought the ranks into high school; but at the meantime those in high school make it relevant, interesting, and try to help the teachers as much as we can to keep them there.
Bill Ritter: Mr. Ferrer?
Ferrer: That's a wonderful city. I just wonder, Mike, what city you're living in. Middle school students are already starting to think about dropping out, because we're losing them there. Fifty percent of kids are dropping out according to your own chancellor. I'm not running to be the mayor the fourth grade reading tests; I'm running to be the mayor of all of them. We can't leave any of them behind. I won't.
Bill Ritter: Mr. Bloomberg, you have a response?
Bloomberg: Nothing.
GROUND ZERO
Bill Ritter: Thank you gentlemen. Moving on to Ground Zero. Question from Dave Evans.
Dave Evans: Mr. Ferrer, I want to start with you seem to have some contradictory ideas about what should happen at Ground Zero. Four years ago while campaigning you said you would like to see the square footage that was lost in the attacks rebuilt, spread across the five boroughs. Then earlier this year – I think in the spring – you said you liked the idea that Donald Trump came up with of rebuilding the Twin Towers. Which one is it?
Ferrer: What I said was while we're trying to clean up the site we've got to build office space all around the city to keep these businesses from leaving the city, from walking out the door. And then turn our attention to Ground Zero so we bring them back and recreate the economic engine that supported lower Manhattan and the rest of this city. I still believe that today. I believe that our most important work is … building a fitting memorial to the hundreds of New Yorkers who perished trying to save so many others, and to the 3,000 New Yorkers – innocent New Yorkers – who lost their lives in that terror attack. And then we've got to set about rebuilding the economic engine. For four years we've wasted time. For four years we've chased Olympic dreams and sweetheart deals for West Side stadiums. Now it's time to rebuild that economic engine for all of New York.
Dave Evans: Do you think Giuliani could have done this?
Ferrer: That's not the point, Dave. I'm running for mayor so I can do it.
Bill Ritter: Mr. Bloomberg?
Bloomberg: Look, you have to do these things simultaneously whether it's building projects up in the Bronx that will create jobs and housing or on the other end of the city on Staten Island that will create jobs and housing, or all through Queens or Brooklyn, or other parts of Manhattan. You have to do all of that – there are different markets here. Downtown, we haven't wasted four years. We went through a very public process, we picked a great design by Michael Arad. Now we have a group of citizens who are trying to raise the money privately to pay for it; it's going to cost half a billion dollars or more by most estimates. In the meantime, we've got to take a look at building office space down there, retail space, residential space. And the market is constantly changing. We've got to make sure we change as it does.
Bill Ritter: Let's continue that theme with Errol Louis.
Errol Louis: Mr. Bloomberg, you've only recently begun to become more vocal and assert leadership over the development at Ground Zero. How do you respond to critics who say you should have been using your bully pulpit all along to further the process rather than focusing on, say, the West Side and the Olympics?
Bloomberg: We were not just focusing on the West Side. We were focused on a lot of things. And we were part of the process for the last four years. Take a look at what's happened downtown. River to river development – parks; open space; redoing infrastructure; all the transportation things – there's a new ferry terminal, a new subway terminal, the Fulton Street terminal's going ahead; the Freedom Tower's about to start going; Number Seven's been built. We're doing a lot of things, and we have been doing those things. What I said the other day was the market's changing, we're having difficulty in renting some of the commercial space. I think we should take a look and see, make sure that the other buildings which we haven't started yet – after the Freedom Tower, after number seven, after the memorial, keeping the same grand scheme, the original design – what should go in those buildings. And I think you have to be constantly willing to look and see whether things change. If you go back and remember when the World Trade Center was built it took 13 years to fill that 10 million square feet of space. And I want to make sure the market is there before we build more office space. In the meantime, since 9/11 there have been over 9 million housing units built downtown.
Bill Ritter: Mr. Ferrer?
Ferrer: I think the last thing we need down there are multimillion-dollar condos that are built with city assistance. Let's get real about Ground Zero. Let's get real about the things we need to do down there. It's not multimillion-dollar condos that are needed. We need to rebuild office space; we need to rebuild the centerpiece of an economic engine. And frankly while Mike Bloomberg is now interested in it – and I'm glad he is, I'm glad for the sake of all of New York – the problem is for the last four years he hasn't filled four vacancies on the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation that would have ensured full city participation in that debate, and in that project.
Bill Ritter: Mr. Bloomberg?
Bloomberg: We did have those places filled, the LMDC has basically made all of the decisions that they are part of. Now it's up to the developer, and the Port Authority, and the MTA. We have some vacancies – some people did quit recently – I don't think that it's fair for me to go out and appoint them with the presumption that I'm going to get reelected. I think we should wait until after November 8, at which point I will fill them. But they were there, and they were a part of it, and I was in favor of what we've done so far. Now the question is are we doing it right? Constantly re-ask.
Bill Ritter: The LMDC is the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, of course. Denise, question for Mr. Ferrer.
DIALLO SHOOTING
Denise Oller: Mr. Ferrer, you've said that you spoke carelessly about the Diallo shooting when you said it was not a crime. Given the sensitivity of the case, can you ensure us that as mayor you can be trusted to not speak so carelessly about matters on such gravity?
Ferrer: I'm a human being, and I made a mistake speaking carelessly. But that didn't mean that I didn't believe anything other than the shooting of an innocent man in the lobby of his own apartment building – which was the result of failures, as I said later in that question, failures of recruitment, training and supervision – should never have happened, it was a stain on this city. We've got to make sure that every day of every week of every year we build a policy department that actually does inspire the trust and confidence and support of every New Yorker. That's why I got myself arrested in protest of that in 1999. That's why in 2001 I called for the firing of those police officers. That's why I drafted the language that ultimately became this city's first anti-racial profiling legislation. I still feel strongly about it today.
Bloomberg: I have nothing to add other than I think our police department if you take a look at it is very diverse, it reflects the community. They have an enviable record over the last four years of bringing people together. One of the things that I'm most proud of is that we've brought crime down while improving police community relations throughout this entire city. I think they've done a great job, and sadly we're always going to have some bad people. We've brought down hate crimes by 45 percent but that's still too many.
REPUBLICANS AND GEORGE W. BUSH
Bill Ritter: Switching topics. Dave Evans?
Dave Evans: Mr. Bloomberg, you said four years ago that as a Republican you'd be able to get a lot out of our Republican governor, our Republican president. But some would look and say that we haven't received our fair share out of Washington and Albany. What went wrong?
Bloomberg: Well, I don't know that we will ever be happy no matter how much we get. The truth is that New York got $21 billion promised by the president, and mostly delivered by congress. Senators Schumer and Clinton and the congressional delegation and I have worked very hard. Just the other day, Schumer and Clinton with some help from me, we managed to avoid some cuts. The federal government has been cutting back.
The state government we've done much better. Even over the governor's veto, I fought against the governor when he didn't agree with us. I fight with him when he does and against us when he doesn't. My responsibility is to the people of New York City. And while this city still sends $12 billion or so more to the state government than we get back, $12 billion or so more to the federal government than we get back, in the end we are the economic engine for both the state and the federal government and for the country, and we've got to keep convincing them of that.
Bill Ritter: Mr. Ferrer?
Ferrer: I'm running for mayor to do battle, against a Democrat of my own party or Mike Bloomberg's party, a governor of my own party, or of Mike Bloomberg's party, for the benefit of 8.1 million people in this city. Any time an elected official – a mayor – loses sight of who you work for, that's the beginning of trouble. The kind of trouble that shows itself in the federal government cutting, for example Section 8 certificates and Section 202 programs for the elderly and handicapped in this city; the federal government cutting transportation, education, health care funding and homeland security funding, denying us what we need on the basis of risk. No, I don't think, Mike, that your being a Republican, that the checkbook has actually helped New York.
Bloomberg: Let me just point out that with a lot of help from Schumer, and Clinton, and the president that finally congress did decide to give most of the homeland security money based on risk, and this state and this city will do very well compared to others based on that.
Ferrer: Well, the president should at least have re-paid the compliment you gave him by saying he's done good for the city. Look, I'm a Democrat. I'm proud of the work that I did with Bill Clinton, and the support that I've got for him. You're proud of George Bush?
Bloomberg: George Bush is president of the United States. I agree with him on some things, I disagree with him on others. I represent the people of this city. When I've disagreed with the president I've been very vocal; when I agree with the president I've been very vocal. We're going to go ahead and do what's right for this city. You know, La Guardia said there's no Republican or Democratic way to pick up the garbage, which may be the reason I got the endorsement of the sanitation union, I don't know. I think that that's actually the case. There is we have to have a bipartisan approach. You can't go out and yell at people and then expect them to help you. You've got to work with everybody, they're not going to give you everything you want, and some people will vote with you sometime and you still need them later one.
Bill Ritter: Mr. Ferrer, how would you have done this differently?
Ferrer: Well, first of all I wouldn't have supported lavishly – I couldn't have supported lavishly – the president and the party whose policies that have been so bad for this city. But let's take one policy that has been bad for this city: the war in Iraq. Mike Bloomberg said it's not a local issue. Mike, I don't know what city you're living in again, but not in this city, where the war in Iraq has not only taken 37 innocent lives of soldiers of New York City families, but has also taken the needed billions we need to build firehouses here instead of in Baghdad, to build good schools, and hospitals and libraries.
PET PEEVES
Bill Ritter: Okay, we are running out of time. Before we get to closing arguments, we do have a quick, short question and answer. Twenty seconds each for you and Mr. Bloomberg. New Yorkers love to complain. What's your pet peeve about this city? Mr. Mayor?
Bloomberg: My pet peeve about the city is everybody wants to have more services, nobody wants to pay for them, me included, but I think that New Yorkers know that we're doing the right thing by maintaining the services even through tough times.
Bill Ritter: Mr. Ferrer, your pet peeve?
Ferrer: Ticket blitzes. When the meter goes to the red flag, there seems to be somebody lurking around the corner with something that scans your windshield and they can find out how many parking tickets you might owe, but they can't keep track of the number of kids who are dropping out of high school.
CLOSING STATMENTS
Bill Ritter: Each candidate will now have one minute for closing statements.
Bloomberg: I came to this city with nothing but some dreams. And I was honored by the people of New York to lead this city for the last four years. When I came into office, smoke was still coming out of the World Trade Center. They were tough times. People were scared, nobody knew what the future was going to hold, but we made tough decisions. They weren't popular, but I think they show that they were the right decisions.
I'm independent. I'm not beholden to anybody. I've always tried to do what is right for this city. And I'm proud of what we've accomplished.
We've brought crime down. We've improved test scores. We've made life expectancy in this city longer than the country as a whole. We've reduced deaths by fire and pedestrian deaths. We've gone and built housing in record numbers. We've brought jobs here. The economy is going. And people are getting along better than they have in an awful long time.
Is there more to do? Absolutely. And that is why I want another four years. It's the most wonderful city in the world and we are all lucky to be here. Thank you.
Ferrer: This morning you heard two very different visions of New York. Mike Bloomberg thinks everything is going just great in this town, and for some, it is. But for millions of others, it isn't.
There are two New York's. I know that well because I've lived in both. I grew up on a tough corner in the South Bronx and the only thing that brought me from that corner to this podium as the nominee of my party running for mayor of my city, is the bridge of hope and opportunity that I crossed. I am running for mayor so that millions of others can cross over that same bridge that I did.
Now Mike Bloomberg says everything is going just fine in our schools, but half of the kids who enter, don't graduate. I'll end the dropout crisis.
Mike Bloomberg says there is a housing boom, but the middle class is getting crushed by property taxes that he raised. I'll cut their taxes and provide 167,000 homes and apartments.
Mike Bloomberg admits that there are two New York's, but he hasn't done anything about them. Instead, he spent most of his time going after a sweetheart deal for a West Side football stadium, but forgot the fact that one out of five New Yorkers live in poverty. I'll do something about that. That is why I am running for mayor. Thank you.
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