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The Week That Was in New York Politics, Jan. 25-29


week in review bus readers

photo: Stanley Kubrick via Museum of the City of New York


Gotham Gazette's Week in Review, Friday January 29

PHOTO OF THE WEEK: Mayor de Blasio and others during last weekend's blizzard, via The Mayor's Office on flickr; De Blasio testifies in Albany, also via The Mayor's Office;

de blasio blizzard others

bdb testifying albany clock

TOP FIVE STORIES OF THE WEEK:
1. De Blasio in Albany:
Mayor de Blasio was in Albany on Tuesday to testify before the state legislature on Governor Cuomo’s proposed state budget and to lay out New York City’s financial priorities. Yet the mayor wasn’t able to focus much of his nearly five-hour testimony on issues with the governor’s budget proposals or affordable housing, mayoral control of schools, or other issues important to him, and instead was left to defend the city’s spending, tax policies, and his refusal to agree to a property tax cap. [Read: De Blasio Heads to Albany to Fund Agenda, Fight Cuts & In Albany, State Senators Ambush De Blasio on Property Tax Reform]

2. Pay Raise and Reforms for City Council: On Wednesday, February 3, the City Council will hold a hearing on legislation outlining salary increases for all of the city’s elected officials, as well as several good government reforms related to how Council members operate and are compensated. Details of the package were announced late Thursday evening, and the Council intends to raise their salary even higher than the commission tasked with reviewing the compensation levels of electeds recommended. [Read: City Council Announces Bill to Increase Pay, Reform Position]

3. Education Testimony: Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña made the case for long-term extension of mayoral control of schools once again as she testified before state lawmakers on Wednesday. Also on Wednesday, state Education Commissioner MaryEllen Elia testified for a streamlined statewide pre-k program, professional development, and full and fair funding of public schools, reminded lawmakers that Governor Cuomo’s budget is $1.4 billion short of what the Board of Regents requested, and said that this year’s state standardized tests for 3-8 graders will not be timed.

4. Council Considers Decriminalization: A package of bills was introduced in the City Council on Monday which would change the way the city deals with low-level, quality-of-life offenses, such a public urination and littering. The move would encourage civil penalties, rather than arrests or criminal summonses for certain low-level, nonviolent offenses.

5. Snow Storm Scrutiny: Blizzard Jonas dumped 26.8 inches of snow in New York City over the weekend, leading Mayor de Blasio and Governor Cuomo to declare a state of emergency and (separately) impose travel bans during the worst hours of the storm. De Blasio’s handling of the storm was generally met with praise, though some Queens residents and elected officials criticized the city for under-plowing streets in certain areas of the borough.

THIS WEEK’S NUMBERS:
26.8 inches of snow fell in Central Park during snowstorm Jonas, making it the biggest storm since 1869, the New York Times reports.

32% salary increase for Council members, up to $148,500 from 112,500, outlined in legislation announced by the Council Thursday evening, Gotham Gazette reports.

4 days will be spent campaigning for Hillary Clinton in Iowa by Mayor de Blasio this weekend, the Daily News reports.

6 minutes after a neighbor called 911, Officer Liang radioed for help following the shooting of Akai Gurley in the stairwell of a Brooklyn housing project, the New York Times reports.

8.875% sales tax on feminine hygiene products like tampons and pads could be scrapped, as the City Council will soon pass a resolution calling on the state to pass a bill introduced in the Assembly to eliminate the so-called ‘tampon tax,’ Gotham Gazette reports

95 ethnic newspapers in New York have a combined circulation of about 2.9 million people, more than one-third of the city’s population, yet little of the city’s advertising budget goes to ethnic media, Gotham Gazette reports.

200-plus educators received erroneous scores from New York State on a measurement that ties how well their students do on tests to their performances, the New York Times reports.

THE GLORY AND THE GOAT:
It was a good week for
new State Senate Finance Committee Chair Sen. Catharine Young, who is providing over legislative budget hearings and led an especially tough grilling of Mayor de Blasio.

It was a bad week for City Council members, who are facing criticism for both the size of the raises and the timing of the vote on the legislation that will give them that raise, with some saying it seems Council members have agreed to back de Blasio’s controversial plan to limit the horse-carriage industry in exchange for his approval of their larger raises.

THE FLASH:
Around this time 41 years ago
, on January 24, 1975, four people were killed when a bomb exploded outside historic Fraunces Tavern in downtown Manhattan.

GOTHAM GAZETTE HIGHLIGHTS OF THE WEEK
City Council Announces Bill to Increase Pay, Reform Position, by Ben Max

City Council Members Move to Improve Tampon Access, by Meg O'Connor and Ben Max

Just Ahead of Oversight Hearing, City Announces Ethnic Media Plan, by Samar Khurshid

Council to Examine City Support for Ethnic Media, by Samar Khurshid

In Albany, State Senators Ambush De Blasio on Property Tax Reform, by David Howard King

De Blasio Heads to Albany to Fund Agenda, Fight Cuts, by Ben Max

Green Jobs Gone Missing, by Jarrett Murphy (City Limits)

The Numbers on NYC's Property Tax Non-Problem, by Jarrett Murphy (City Limits)

Time to Support New York Students with Billions Still Owed from Campaign for Fiscal Equity, by Council Member Daniel Dromm (opinion)

Criminal Justice Reform Act is No Alternative to Broken Windows Policing, by Alex S. Vitale (opinion)

Common Core Mistakes Worth Not Repeating, by Stephen Sigmund and Denise Toscano (opinion)

Give New York Manufacturers the Space They Need, by Matthew Rigney (opinion)

MORE FOR THE WEEKEND:
Gotham Gazette Executive Editor Ben Max appeared on Inside City Hall along with Politico New York’s Gloria Pazmino, DNA Info’s Jeff Mays, and Ginia Bellafante from the New York Times to speak with Errol Louis about the horse-carriage deal and the mayor’s preliminary budget.

City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito appeared on WNYC on Thursday to speak with Brian Lehrer about the proposed Criminal Justice Reform Act, which will encourage officers to issue civil offenses, rather than criminal offenses, for some low-level quality-of-life violations.

Mayor de Blasio spoke with Brian Lehrer on WNYC Friday about his plans to campaign for Hillary Clinton over the weekend, housing plans, pedicab drivers, crime, and the Council’s legislation to reform their position and raise the salaries of all of New York City’s elected officials.

Chair of the Committee on Public Safety Vanessa Gibson and chair of the Committee on Courts and Legal Services Rory Lancman joined Errol Louis on Inside City Hall to discuss reforms being in considered in the Council to change the way low-level offenses are handled by the NYPD. 

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NOTE TO READERS: we hope you enjoy this new Gotham Gazette weekly feature - please share it if you do; on Twitter, use our handle @GothamGazette.

If you have feedback on this feature for us, you can email editor Ben Max: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Watch Sunday evening for our latest Week Ahead in New York Politics, which gives you a preview of key issues and events to be aware of for the week about to start. In the meantime, catch up on the latest original reporting from Gotham Gazette here. And have a great weekend!

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by Meg O'Connor and Ben Max

City Council Announces Bill to Increase Pay, Reform Position


mmv menchaca background

Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito (photo: William Alatriste)

 


 

On Wednesday, Feb. 3, the New York City Council will hold a hearing on legislation outlining salary increases for various city elected officials as well as several good government reforms related to how Council members are compensated. Largely based on the recommendations of an independent commission tasked with outlining the first pay raises since 2006 for the Mayor, City Council members, and other officials, the Council announced the details of its package late Thursday evening.

In one significant departure from the commission's recommendations, the Council has decided to go even further with its own salary increases. A Council spokesperson said that the addition was being made to account for the fact that Council members would no longer be able to make significant sums of outside income. While the compensation commission called for making the Council member position full-time and instituting a ban on almost all sources of outside income, it did not indicate that it was adding to its salary recommendation based on this change.

Instead of sticking with the commission recommendation of a $138,315 salary for Council members, up from $112,500, the legislation being introduced will outline a salary of $148,500. The Council is advancing without adjustments the commission's recommendations for increasing the salaries of Mayor, Comptroller, Public Advocate, Borough Presidents, and District Attorneys.

While Council members are already hearing criticism for the size of its raises, the announcement also comes at a curious time: on Friday, Feb. 5, the Council is set to vote on both the compensation legislation and on Mayor Bill de Blasio's horse carriage deal, which has been questioned widely since it was announced, including by many Council members.

To some, it appears that Council members have agreed to back de Blasio's move to limit the horse carriage industry in exchange for his approval of their larger raises. The mayor must sign off on whatever the Council passes.

Eyebrows also rose when it became clear the Council would introduce its plan before taking public testimony.

Good government group Citizens Union released a statement Thursday criticizing the move and questioning the timing. Not holding a public hearing before introducing legislation "is unconscionable because it denies the public the input that it had during past cycles of reviewing and commenting on the matter of elected official salaries before a bill was introduced," said Dick Dadey, executive director of Citizens Union. Dadey added that the move shows "disregard for our democratic processes."

Dadey and Citizens Union did compliment the Council's planned reforms, though, noting that there are four key changes being made that the group had been calling for over a number of years. The Council will end bonuses, known as lulus, for chairing issue committees; ban almost all outside income for Council members; make future raises prospective; and require that officials' conflict of interest forms are posted publicly on the internet.

As outlined by the compensation commission, the Council bill calls for raising the salaries of the city's other elected officials: for the Mayor ($225,000 to $258,750); Comptroller ($185,000 to $209,050); Public Advocate ($165,000 to $184,800); Borough Presidents ($160,000 to $179,200); and District Attorneys ($190,000 to $212,800).

Fritz Schwarz, Jr., chief counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice, chaired the pay commission, and, in an interview before the Council plan was released, told Gotham Gazette he expects he will testify at the hearing.

Schwarz said he would oppose any pay increase that is not "contingent on these reforms being made," referring to the commission's recommendations to ban lulus and outside pay of almost all kinds. It is unclear what Schwarz may make of the Council bill.

Schwarz did say that while his commission did not recommend changing the timeline for raises so that they occur prospectively and Council members aren't voting through raises for their current class, "it would be valuable for the city to look at that question and consider changing the system."

Citizens Union has called for any raises to be made prospectively - only to go into effect for the next class of elected officials, in this case after the 2017 election cycle. Mayor de Blasio has repeatedly stated that he will not accept a raise this term.

"Citizens Union urges the Council to avoid the conflict of interest that exists if they raise their salaries during this current term. We ask the Council to delay all raises until the start of the following term, beginning in 2018," Dadey said previously.

Council members, however, are voting to make the raises retroactive to Jan. 1 of this year, which is in line with the commission's recommendations. Significantly, though, the Council bill will dictate that future pay increases can only be made prospectively. By law, the Mayor is required to empanel a compensation commission every four years. This has not always been followed.

The reforms being passed build on what is becoming a significant legacy for City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito and this group of Council members. In 2014, the Council changed several ways in which it does its internal business, including by modifying the process by which individual members are allotted discretionary funds to spend in their districts. The system was democratized. Eliminating lulus will be another step toward removing ways in which Council speakers have typically rewarded allies and punished those who've crossed them.

In a statement about the new bill, Mark-Viverito said that "The City Council is embarking on unprecedented, substantial reforms that will strengthen New York City's legislative body and help Council Members better serve the districts they proudly represent. Restricting outside income and eliminating all member stipends, while also designating Council Members' positions as full-time jobs, reflects the extensive work Members conduct in their communities and across the entire City. The Council's legislation incorporates many of the recommendations of good-government groups and sets a new standard for disclosure and transparency for elected officials. We look forward to hearing our bill next week."

The vote will come a little over a month after the commission tasked with reviewing the compensation levels of New York City's elected officials released its report recommending at least a 12 percent salary increase for all offices, with a 15 percent increase for the Mayor, and a 23 percent salary increase for City Council members. In January, Mayor de Blasio decided to back all of the commission's recommendations and sent them to the Council for review. The Council has outlined 32 percent raises for its members.

"Our proposed raises for the office of City Council member are conditioned upon, and inseparable from, our proposal to eliminate lulus and to formally classify the job of City Council members as full time," the commission's report says.

The three-member commission was appointed by Mayor de Blasio in September and released its recommendations in December. The commission had arrived at the 23 percent increase for Council members by taking the "$447,000 now budgeted each year for all lulus" and folding it "evenly into the salary for each non-Speaker seat on the City Council," which "would result in each non-Speaker seat receiving an additional $8,940 on top of the 12 percent base increase for all elected officials," and a three percent increase to account for the growth of Council members' responsibilities.

The commission recommended an even bigger salary boost for City Council Speaker Melissa-Mark Viverito, up to $154,375, which would reflect the inclusion of the $25,000 lulu the speaker position comes with into the base salary. By the Council proposal, the Speaker's salary will increase to $164,500.

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by Ben Max, Gotham Gazette
     

Read more by this writer.

Note: Gotham Gazette is an independent publication of Citizens Union Foundation, sister organization of Citizens Union.

Just Ahead of Oversight Hearing, City Announces Ethnic Media Plan


Menchaca rally el diario

Council Member Menchaca at Wednesday's rally (photo: Samar Khurshid)


Mayor Bill de Blasio and City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito launched on Wednesday an online directory of ethnic and community media and a new effort for city agencies to work with those outlets. The push to expand outreach and public messaging across different languages and communities comes as El Diario, the country's oldest non-English daily newspaper, and other ethnic publications are struggling.

The timing of the announcement raised a few eyebrows - it came barely an hour before an oversight hearing of the Council's immigration committee on ways the city can support ethnic and community media. Critics have said that the city is not doing enough to advertise and communicate with such outlets.

New York has about 95 ethnic newspapers with a combined circulation of 2.9 million people, more than one-third of the city's population. Combined, there are nearly 200 outlets across television, digital, print, and radio covering more than 30 languages. But, in the past, city government has largely relied on English-language publications. A 2013 report from the CUNY School of Journalism found that only 18 percent of the city's advertising budget in Fiscal Year 2012 went to ethnic media, while the rest went to mainstream outlets such as the New York Times, the New York Daily News, and the New York Post.

According to a press release from Mayor de Blasio and Speaker Mark-Viverito, the city will create "a system to ensure accountability with the aim of having equitable communications across diverse ethnic, racial and geographic communities. The Mayor and Speaker will convene community-based journalists in the coming weeks to discuss these efforts."

The online directory was a collaborative six-month effort, a city official stated. It involved the Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs, the Mayor's Office of Operations, the City Hall Press Office, the City Council Speaker's Office and the CUNY School of Journalism. MOIA will now work with these other offices to update and maintain the online database.

"MOIA's executive director of Language Access works to implement citywide tools, training, and reporting mechanisms in regards to language access, including ethnic and community media outreach," the official said.

The new strategy also includes annual reporting of agency budgets on advertising through ethnic media to help the city improve on its record. "In the city of immigrants, no person should be denied access to vital services or information due to their language," said Mayor de Blasio in the announcement. Pointing to the fact that nearly one out of six New York City households are proficient in languages other than English, he said, "Today we are ensuring that the City speaks the language of our people."

Under Mayor de Blasio, there has been a shift towards multilingual outreach campaigns, particularly for large city initiatives. The campaign for the city municipal identification program, IDNYC, spent $340,000 on ethnic and community media, which was 64 percent of total print ad buys. These ads were featured in 32 publications, covering 10 languages.

The Department of Consumer Affairs made similar efforts, spending 27 percent of ad money for the paid sick leave campaign on ethnic media, and 37 percent on ethnic media to promote the Earned Income Tax Credit.

"Government has a responsibility to engage diverse media equitably so that we can communicate with a wide range of constituents," said Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, who is a native of Puerto Rico and bilingual, in a statement, adding that this would make for a more "inclusive city."

The timing of the announcement was not lost on City Council Member Antonio Reynoso, who, at the oversight hearing, wanted to make sure that his colleague and immigration committee chair Carlos Menchaca received the credit he was due for pushing this discussion. "If it wasn't for this hearing, I don't think that announcement would have come out today," Reynoso said.

Council members, advocates and journalists held a rally before the hearing, where some held signs that said "Save El Diario."

At the hearing, Reynoso questioned Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs Commissioner Nisha Agarwal on whether IDNYC was the exception to the rule in the city's engagement with ethnic media. "Money is what talks," he said, insisting that the city has so far come up short on this front.

The numbers appear to back that up.

A joint report from the offices of Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams and Comptroller Scott Stringer, released specifically for the hearing, analyzed the city's advertising spending from Fiscal Years 2013-2015. It found that the city contracted with three ad firms to spend roughly $20 million through 954 publications over the three years. Only $2.5 million went to 37 ethnic media outlets. These ads included job listings as well as legal notices and public campaigns. In fiscal year 2015, the city spent $7.28 million on advertising, of which $1.3 million or 18.91 percent went to ethnic publications. While this number was up from 7.87 percent in FY2013, it is only marginally better than FY2012.

Based on these numbers, the report recommended that the city should review the performance of existing ad contracts, clearly define ethnic publications to avoid inadvertent exclusion, consider adding new vendors to target specific communities, and objectively evaluate how ad agencies spend money based on a publication's readership and circulation.

MOIA Commissioner Nisha Agarwal, in response to Council Member Reynoso, made the point that the uptick in advertising through ethnic media was part of a broader initiative, one that showed its success in the IDNYC and other campaigns.

The announcement by the city was welcomed by advocates and journalists. "A significant portion of New Yorkers depend on ethnic and community media as a source of news and information," said Jehangir Khattak, co-director of the Center for Community and Ethnic Media at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. "By providing city agencies with this media resource, the city will better connect with immigrant communities across the five boroughs."

Steve Choi, executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition, which includes more than 200 community-based and immigrant direct service organizations across the state, said that ethnic media outlets "are lifelines for immigrants who learn about programs and policies that impact them in their own languages first." Choi praised the new directory, calling it "a vital tool for city government, agencies, and community organizations to strengthen their connections to the reporters and journalists who are at the frontlines of immigrant issues and who will ensure that our communities are fully informed."

Gotham Gazette reported on Monday about the impending immigration committee oversight hearing where local journalists, non-profit groups, academics, and union representatives also testified. Council Member Menchaca is leading the "fact-finding mission" and hopes to formulate additional policy recommendations from today's testimony. "We need the press," Menchaca told Gotham Gazette earlier this week, "to be able to talk about how we're opening the doors of government to different communities."

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by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

Read more by this writer.



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