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Climate Change and Disaster Recovery: The Soul of Our Work Together


Karlson

The author participating in clean-up efforts


On the evening of October 29th, 2012 Superstorm Sandy struck the New York Metro area with unbridled ferocity and though city planners were aware of the risks, the infrastructure was not at all prepared to deal with the immediate effects or the aftermath of such a massive natural disaster.

Superstorm Sandy proved to be the intersection of climate change and a compassionate response to disasters in a way that I could never have envisioned before. I had been stewing over our society's lackadaisical response to climate change, and what the potential consequences could be. But in my role as Disaster Response Coordinator for the Unitarian Universalist Association (a grant-funded role specifically created for post-Sandy needs), I began to really see how all the social justice work I am called to do matters little if we continue to ignore what we are doing to the earth.

At the moment, faith groups are preparing to join thousands of others who will be coming to New York City at the same time as a UN Climate Summit at which world leaders will be discussing a global deal on climate change. While all these discussions continue at a global scale, it is crucial that we show that communities are coming together to say that we are committed to climate action. That being said, our responsibilities do not begin or end on this day. Metro New York's capacity to respond to climate change was, of course, tested long before we began organizing for this march.

After Superstorm Sandy, a number of community organizations demonstrated that low-income renters—mostly people of color and immigrants—were disproportionately impacted by the wrath of Sandy. But they had another strike against them: recovery assistance available to them was paltry in comparison to that of Sandy-pummeled homeowners. Obviously this was not a first time occurrence. Renters on the Gulf Coast were also hit hard by Katrina and assistance to renters there also was minimal (see "Treading Water: Renters in Post Sandy New York City" by Make the Road New York).

I am still working with congregations of volunteers coming to Metro New York to assist with Sandy relief, particularly for the most marginalized homeowners. But the issue that keeps me up at night is the slow and dispassionate response to the needs of low-income renters, many of whom are fearful to sign up for the few benefits available to them. Many undocumented renters are fearful that they might be deported or be profiled. Some immigrants do not understand the materials written in English and translation services are unavailable in many cases. Renters also have to go into Manhattan to apply for some forms of assistance while homeowners often can simply go to nearby local offices.

Two years is too long to respond to any massive disaster. Storms such as Sandy or Katrina, both of which we are still recovering from, will keep testing us. We need to respond with compassion and care to find homes, housing, food, and other services for people. Above all, we need to plan and understand our holistic relationship to this earth, to the skies, and to the seas that surround us. We need to look at climate change head on, not avert our eyes any longer because the pain and sorrow will not go away.

Like Katrina, Sandy was amplified by the changing climate: warmer oceans, jet stream weakening, and a wetter atmosphere. Climate Change is here. And we, the people of this planet, with brains and hearts to creatively deal with this climate crisis turn the other way.

Every faith asks that we respond in solidarity with those with the greatest needs. Our prayers, our actions, our community gatherings all must be centered in responding to climate change. There is plenty we can do. Most certainly, turning away will not ameliorate the climate crisis brewing in our universe.

Sweet Honey in the Rock, a beautiful acapella African-American singing group, put Gandhi's words rousingly to music: "We are the ones we've been waiting for." Indeed, we are. Let us join one million strong in New York City for the People's Climate March on September 21. Let us share this earth and join in solidarity to show the leaders of the UN Summit that we will not turn away. We are one and we are marching with one voice.

***
The Rev. Susan Karlson is a Unitarian Universalist community minister currently working on Superstorm Sandy Recovery throughout the Metro NY area. She is also the co-chair of the New Sanctuary Coalition of New York City, an interfaith organization that supports, empowers and witnesses with immigrants, and she is a 2015 Green Faith Fellow.

Two Cheers for Andrew Cuomo


Cuomo Duffy

Gov. Andrew Cuomo, left, has some nearly-forgotten accomplishments (photo: @NYGovCuomo)


New York is suffering from mass political amnesia: no one seems to remember the condition of the state's polity when Andrew Cuomo assumed office. The Senate was barely functioning. Executive-legislative relations were in shambles. Key social policy issues went unaddressed. The Upstate economy languished. Budgets were regularly late and structurally out of balance. Summing up, Dal Forsythe, a former Budget Director and respected authority on state government, wrote: "[T]he state's governance system is widely regarded as among the worst in the nation, and its leaders seem unable to achieve effective cooperation for the accomplishment of common goals."

In his 2010 campaign manifesto, The New New York Agenda: A Plan for Action, candidate Cuomo proposed dozens of initiatives organized around five broad themes: integrity in government; fiscal probity; governmental efficiency; economic development; and social policy. Candidates eschew priorities to build winning coalitions; governors must have them to governor. Andrew Cuomo, after election, gave primacy to putting New York's finances in order.

Economies were sought not only from state government operations – austere labor agreements, restructuring state operations - but by encouraging localities to collaborate, reduced assistance to general purpose local governments and school districts, and capping and freezing the property tax, local governments' lifeblood. On the revenue side, state taxes were largely held in check. A start was made to open up new sources of money: constitutional change to allow casino gambling. Changes were made in funding key state functions to ease demands on the general fund (e.g. the "rational tuition policy" for SUNY).

This focus on creating a sound state budget was a reasonable priority for Cuomo, perhaps the best priority. It offered extraordinary synergies. Financial integrity is intrinsically important for a state's health. Achieving it through sequential years of timely budgets demonstrated competence to govern, and was a major step toward restoring confidence in government. A sound budget, with taxes constrained, requires attention to efficiency and underlies economic growth.

The respected Citizens Budget Commission wrote this May that New York's fiscal discipline "has markedly improved the State's fiscal condition." In June, Moody's Investors Services raised the state's bond rating to its highest level in half a century. In July, State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, a co-partisan but no great political friend of the governor, reported: "New York has made significant budgetary improvements since the Great Recession to put it on solid financial footing, and the result is that the state's fiscal condition is the best it has been in years."

Most politics involves giving to get. We have a legislature. It shares power. Its members are elected; they are not gubernatorial appointees. So to get what he wanted most, to build the necessary coalitions, Cuomo often found it necessary to give ground on his other agenda areas.

One casualty was political reform. Legislators are winners under current electoral rules. They don't like changes that restrict their discretion - like ethics reform - or diminish their hold on office - like genuinely neutral redistricting or campaign finance reform. In the face of their resistance, even to ideas most Assembly and Senate members pledged to support during the 2010 election, like independent redistricting, reform became a lesser priority for the governor. It was not abandoned, but its evisceration was accepted.

A second was the social agenda, or large elements of it. Majority Senate Republicans were aligned with Cuomo's fiscal goals; an easy sell. But many of them relied on Conservative Party backing. They resisted same-sex marriage, and the reproductive rights element of the women's equality agenda. Cuomo had to modify, delay, or put aside these high profile social policy goals to advance his first priority. After a delay, same-sex marriage was achieved. Two Republican Senators who supported same-sex marriage were defeated in the next election. Reproductive rights is still an agenda item.

The steps Cuomo took to advance his fiscal goals angered some in his party: Senate Democrats who were shut out of power, and local elected Democrats who felt the squeeze of property tax limits. They also provoked opposition from interest groups that usually supported Democrats: public employee unions, education activists - in general, those who advanced various elements of the so-called "progressive agenda."

Most politics involves giving to get, but not all. Some things cannot be negotiable for a governor, things like opposition to corruption. Dissolving early his own Moreland Commission on Public Corruption deprived the governor of directive moral authority; it reduced him to the status of 'ordinary politician.' Cuomo, regarded as extraordinarily politically astute, erred in treating the Moreland Commission as one more occasion for ordinary transactional politics. Moreover, he failed to realize that a very powerful actor from outside state government – federal prosecutor Preet Bharara – would be drawn into the arena by his actions in connection with this commission, in the midst of the election season. The unfolding is still unknown.

A second political miscalculation was an underestimation by the governor of the political costs of the priority he chose, and those he compromised. Disappointed or angered Democrats, he calculated, would nevertheless be unwilling to support a Republican. They would have no real alternative at the polls, except to not vote at all. The importance to the governor of the Working Families Party nomination was in accord with the strategic goal of denying disaffected Democrats an alternative to him on left in the general election. But Zephyr Teachout, energized by her spirited but failed bid for the Working Familes nomination, unexpectedly decided to fight on, qualified for the Democrat primary ballot, and survived Cuomo's legal challenge to her residency. Teachout emerged as a David against Cuomo's Goliath, offering the very alternative in a Democrat primary that the governor sought to avoid.

Critics suggest that Andrew Cuomo had the wrong priorities, and made the wrong tradeoffs. In fact they suggest that tradeoffs were not necessary, and say that he could have achieved all that they really wanted, and he said he wanted, if he truly desired to do so. Their vision of a single person fully empowered to rule New York would be frightening if it were true; fortunately it is not in our power sharing system.

Andrew Cuomo in his first term has been a serious, focused governor who advanced the right priority for New York, but also has made some very bad choices and judgments. Under Cuomo's leadership New York has been better governed than at any time in the state's recent past, and is poised for further renewal. But now we need a new first priority: we must adopt the institutional and process reforms that will allow us to restore our democracy, to be fairly and cleanly governed.

For political system change, as the experience of the past four years again painfully shows, we cannot rely on any governor and any legislature. We must bypass those in power. Our institutional means for doing this is to call a Constitutional Convention.

We are required to be asked at referendum in 2017, during the term of the governor we elect this year, whether we want such a convention. Calling one to achieve comprehensive reform in our politics and government reform was part of Andrew Cuomo's New New York Agenda in 2010. It must be a leading priority for the next elected governor.

Meanwhile, two cheers for Andrew Cuomo. Not one. Not three. Two cheers.

***
Gerald Benjamin is Director, Center for Research Regional Education and Outreach (CRREO) - SUNY New Paltz

***
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Opening Doors for the City's Small Businesses, Neighborhoods, and Job Seekers


Maria T-S SBS

SBS Commissioner Maria Torres-Springer, the author (photo: Rob Bennett/Mayor's Office)


There are more than 200,000 small businesses in New York City, which represents nearly 98 percent of all businesses across the five boroughs. Small businesses give our neighborhoods their unique character, and employ more than half of New York City's private sector workforce. But they also achieve much more. As the daughter of immigrant entrepreneurs, I personally understand that for many people, owning a business can be their first chance for economic self-determination and a path to the middle class.

When Mayor de Blasio appointed me as Commissioner of Small Business Services earlier this year, he tasked me and the leadership of all City agencies with fighting inequality in all its forms, on all its fronts, and building a city where everyone can rise together. With this charge in mind, my vision for the Department of Small Business Services (SBS) is to ensure that every job seeker and business owner has access to the resources they need to succeed. I plan to achieve this by impacting three key pillars: good jobs, stronger businesses, and a fairer economy.

SBS is dedicated to addressing the unique needs of local entrepreneurs through a variety of free services that help businesses in all five boroughs start, operate, and grow. We work with business owners like Maggie Kwok, who utilized our agency's NYC Business Acceleration services to open her first restaurant, Shanghai Asian Manor, in Lower Manhattan. Maggie was so happy with the City's services, when she was ready to open a second location in Flushing, Queens, she knew to come to the City for help. NYC Business Acceleration guided Maggie through the City's regulatory process, helping her interface with numerous agencies to open both locations faster, providing jobs for more than 60 New Yorkers.

Small business owners like Maggie Kwok face many challenges. In my first few months at SBS, we have launched numerous new initiatives to ensure that government's infrastructure works better and harder for the small businesses and neighborhoods that most need our help.

- NYC Business Acceleration is one way we are helping small businesses cut through the City's red tape and open their doors faster. This service has helped more than 2,000 restaurants across the city open an average of 2.5 months faster, and we recently announced that we are expanding the program to serve small businesses in retail and manufacturing as well.

- Small Business First: We are not only providing direct services to small businesses, but we are also working with City Hall and more than ten partner agencies to help reduce fines and violations on small businesses through Small Business First. This multi-faceted inter-agency initiative is about changing the way government interacts with small business owners by improving the regulatory climate in New York City and helping businesses avoid penalties and fines through collaboration, simplification, and education.

- Immigrant Small Businesses: As we expand our services and collaborate with partner agencies to help small businesses, we are also working to fundamentally change the way government provides services to New York City's immigrant entrepreneurs, who make up nearly half of the city's small businesses owners. Already, we have doubled our agency's non-English business course offerings and are launching our NYC Craft Entrepreneurship program in Spanish, so unemployed and underemployed New Yorkers with craft skills can earn supplemental income from selling their crafts online. With support from Citi Community Development, we have launched the Immigrant Business Initiative, developing partnerships with community-based organizations to help identify and execute new services to strengthen immigrant-owned businesses, particularly in the Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Haitian-Creole, and Russian communities.

Stronger small businesses mean stronger neighborhoods and more good jobs for New Yorkers. Last year, SBS assisted more than 15,000 business owners, helped nearly 7,000 new businesses open across the city, and connected entrepreneurs to more than $45 million in capital. The City can help with free services including pro-bono legal advising, business courses, access to capital, recruitment services, certification, help navigating government, incentives, and more. I encourage anyone with an interest in small business services to call 311, visit our website, or drop by an NYC Business Solutions Center in one of the five boroughs. 

***
by Maria Torres-Springer, Commissioner, New York City Department of Small Business Services

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