(photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)
It is taking more time than promised for the city’s property tax reform commission to come out with its initial and final reports with recommendations for changes to the antiquated and unfair system, a delay that threatens to undermine the de Blasio administration’s footing in Albany, where many of the changes would need to be made.
The Advisory Commission on Property Tax Reform, created by Mayor Bill de Blasio and City Council Speaker Corey Johnson in 2018, was expected to issue a preliminary report with recommendations this past summer, followed by a round of public hearings and a final report by the end of the year, to serve as the city’s basis for advocacy in the state capital. But officials now say the commission’s preliminary report will be published “soon,” staking out an indefinite wait that may pose a challenge to achieving a city-driven reform agenda in the 2020 state legislative session, which begins in January.
“This commission is coming back this year with recommendations,” de Blasio, a Democrat, said on WNYC radio in July, responding to a caller. “Two things then happen: some will be part of city law...and the other has to be done by state law. The state legislative session begins in January. We’re coming up to the point where these things are going to be put on the table and resolved.”
In a September letter to the editor in Crain’s New York Business, Deputy Mayor Vicki Been, who previously served as the property tax reform commission’s co-chair before returning to the de Blasio administration, wrote, “The mayor will not wait; he will be in Albany next session pushing for this historic reform.” (The assertion came days after a Crain’s event where Been said it was not “realistic” to achieve property tax reform before de Blasio leaves office at the end of 2021.)
That reassurance now appears far less solid given delays in releasing the preliminary report. Commission Chair Marc Shaw told Gotham Gazette this month that the body had made “significant progress” but a few issues remain that are holding up publication.
A spokesperson for Johnson, a Democrat, told Gotham Gazette the commission still intends to hold hearings to solicit public feedback once its initial recommendations are out, which will influence the final report. But the hearings will not be scheduled until after the preliminary report is made public, the spokesperson said.
With just over two weeks until session begins in Albany, it is virtually impossible that the city will have a comprehensive property tax reform plan to push when the political action and agenda setting gets fully moving (Governor Andrew Cuomo has already begun laying out his 2020 priorities ahead of his January 8 State of the State speech).
Asked about the commission's work and the path ahead at a press conference on Thursday, Johnson acknowledged that it is behind schedule and that the prospects for changes being passed in Albany in 2020 were slim. He added that 2021 would be more likely, and he is hopeful that timeline can be met. Johnson said he is encouraged by what he's seen so far from the commission and looks forward to the next steps.
"I think it’s an important thing and I hope that we make some very significant changes by the time I’m done being speaker,” he said. Like the mayor's, Johnson's term as speaker ends in 2021,
Much uncertainty remains in the city’s timeline for crafting and advancing its property tax reform agenda in Albany’s legislative calendar, which ends June 2 this year. Most of the action in Albany typically takes place in the lead up to the state budget, which is due by April 1 each year. De Blasio typically testifies at a state legislative budget hearing in Albany in early to mid February, at which time he lays out the city’s top state-level priorities, both policy and financial.
“We will have more to say soon,” wrote Laura Feyer, a spokesperson for de Blasio, in an email.
City Council Member Joe Borelli, a Staten Island Republican, has made property tax reform a priority in recent years. “While glad the report is finally moving, I imagine the timeline will make it tough for a deal to come out of Albany this session,” the former Assembly member wrote in a text message to Gotham Gazette.
“Pushing back a session year, considering our NOPV’s must go out early in the year, means that NYC residents won’t see a correction before fiscal year 2022 at best,” he added, referring to the city’s Notice of Property Value, which influences how much is assessed in real estate taxes.
“That’s troubling,” he said.
New York’s current system was written into state law in 1981 and for decades the city’s property taxes have been criticized as onerous and unequal. While the city has control over the tax rate and certain levy practices, state law dictates some of the most fundamental assessment criteria, a number of which contain major flaws, experts and stakeholders say.
Because real estate taxes impact virtually every constituency, changing a system that benefits some at the expense of others has come with political challenges. As the state’s largest municipality, New York City plays an outsized role in any conversation around property tax reform in Albany.
State Senator Brian Benjamin, a Manhattan Democrat, views the city as a key partner in hammering out changes to the system, but as chair of the Senate’s committee on budget and revenues, he has been hampered by the city’s shifting timeline.
“I was originally of the impression that the preliminary report would have been out before I had had a public roundtable with a lot of leading experts. What I thought was happening was that we would have been able to use that time to look at the report and have some comments and thoughts,” he told Gotham Gazette, referring to a forum he held early this month.
“We are not prepared to have, at the last minute, something shoved down our throat,” he said.
Assemblymember Sandra Galef, a Westchester Democrat and chair of the Assembly’s committee on real property taxation, said the issues being discussed by the city advisory commission are not likely to sail through Albany, once recommendations arrive. She told Gotham Gazette she believes a number of the bills her committee may ultimately take up are likely to also have to go through other committees, like Rules, Codes, and Ways and Means.
“It’s not this quick turnaround, and it’s probably controversial, I would assume,” she said of the yet-to-be-seen recommendations.
As with this year’s session, Galef expects the pre-budget season to see a number of bills advance, as less can be done during 2020’s truncated post-budget period, adjusted due to a change in the election calendar that moved state primaries to late June.
“Once they do their major report they need to come back to us right away, given the fact that we’re out the first week of June. So I would say, if you’re looking for a deadline to get something done, it really has to be pretty much I would think the beginning of May,” she said, “and I don’t know whether that works for their timeframe.”
“It is our hope that the city would be able to provide us with something to look at with enough time to make some solid decisions before we leave,” said Benjamin.
Galef, who said the city is often “very slow in responding” to state legislation, would like to see the city “in some way, come to us with the preliminary report and give us an overview of what they’re thinking just so we start the process.”
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by Ethan Geringer-Sameth, reporter, Gotham Gazette
@GeringerSameth @GothamGazette
Note: this article has been updated with Speaker Johnson's Thursday comments.
SI BP James Oddo, right, with Mayor de Blasio (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)
James Oddo, the outspoken Republican Staten Island Borough President, doesn’t want to talk about President Donald Trump or the contentious congressional race heating up in his borough, and says he won’t run for mayor of New York City or any other elected office ever again. But none of that’s to say that the zip is coming off Oddo’s trademark chin-music political fastball.
“The bureaucracy is too big and and the reality is but for one time—during Rudy Giuliani—that's when we were treated really well...So yeah, I would want to see us be our own city,” Oddo said of Staten Island secession from New York City, during a recent appearance on the Max & Murphy podcast.
Oddo, an avid baseball fan, was asked the question of the ongoing but recently rekindled debate about Staten Island becoming its own city, jump-started again as his fellow Staten Island Republicans, City Council Members Joe Borrelli and Steve Matteo, have now introduced legislation seeking a study of secession.
Oddo said that after Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, a Republican, gave Staten Island special treatment, it was dealt with fairly well, as “one of five,” under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a Democrat-turned-Republican-turned-independent (and now Democrat again as he seeks the presidency), but frustrations have grown again under Mayor Bill de Blasio, a liberal Democrat.
As for de Blasio, whom Oddo considers a personal friend, he said: “The perception, whether it's the truth or not, let's put that aside; the perception of this administration from early on was they're not about delivering services. Well, it's the Mayor's Office; it’s the Department of City Planning; it’s the Department of Transportation. That's your job. And so my job is, instead of working with my partners in government, is too often dragging them along.”
“Some commissioners, some agencies...they want to work with you,” Oddo said, digging into one of his favorite topics: his battle with government bureaucracy. “Some aren’t led well and there’s bureaucracy... some agencies again are really responsive -- School Construction Authority...Lorraine Grillo: absolute best; City Planning: absolute worst; insular; indifferent defiant.”
Oddo emphasized that his goal as borough president has been to steer clear of partisan bickering and instead focus on improving the effectiveness of his office and the city agencies it interacts with on a daily basis in its efforts to provide better services to Staten Islanders.
“My mission was to get Staten Island a little better,” he said during the wide-ranging interview, reflecting on what will soon be six years as borough president. “I’ve never been ideological. I see my job as to establish relationships in order to get stuff done,” he said. As he often does, Oddo indicated that he works the phones and schedules meetings and pushes buttons in order to get answers and action from city agencies, but stressed that such progress shouldn’t depend on whether he can personally call the mayor and get him to spur a city commissioner to action.
Oddo continues to search for broader systemic change in how government does business. What does it ultimately come down to? Leadership at the top that establishes the right get-it-done culture, including striking the right balance of delegation and empowerment.
“You have to be hands on. You have to lead. You have to have to surround yourself with talented people who are leaders. You have to allow them to lead, but there's got to be accountability to you,” Oddo said.
A major difficulty in delivering effective government services comes down to a dysfunctional agency culture, Oddo said. City commissioners, for instance, enjoyed considerable power during the Bloomberg administration; Oddo called this the “golden era” of being a commissioner as Bloomberg kept many of the same officials for much or all of his 12 years, allowing the commissioners to run their departments without extensive outside accountability. The negative side of that era, Oddo said, is that those commissioners who were there a long time could become too calcified in their ways.
Local Issues
Oddo takes a very conservative approach to development on Staten Island, in part, he says, the island’s infrastructure can’t handle significant population growth and in part because Staten Islanders like their communities the way they are, and live on Staten Island to have something of a suburban lifestyle.
The borough president is frustrated by the recently-passed rezoning of part of northern Staten Island, which was led by the City Planning Department and approved by City Council Member Debi Rose, and he says the area isn’t ready for given its limited infrastructure.
“The biggest lesson in the history of Staten Island is...you have to plan because we have no infrastructure,” Oddo said. “We already have three-and-a-half rush hours. We already have sewer backups in people’s homes. We already have communities that don’t have storm sewers. So, when you say you want to add density, you have to do it smartly and you have to put the investment in infrastructure.”
Oddo said he received support about combating “irrational development” from de Blasio, but that the results have been disappointing. The mayor charged City Planning with taking on the issue on Staten Island, but the department only created a working group, which met once, and no further action was taken, Oddo said.
But Oddo’s pleased with progress, in part due to his partnership with first-term Democratic Congressional Rep. Max Rose and federal funding, on the way in the form of an East Shore Seawall, as well as the coming expansion of the city’s fast ferry service to the borough.
Oddo’s list of priorities over his final two-plus years in office include implementation of the early phases of the seawall and the ferry service, continuation of his public health agenda, and devoting resources towards philanthropic organizations such as Meals and Wheels and Staten Island’s Children’s Aid Society.
“I don’t want to say it's, like, ‘It's personal, it's my time,’ but some of this is, when I look back, I want to make sure that, you know, I live true to my values,” he said, indicating repeatedly that he is focused on getting as much done as possible over the next two-plus years before he’s term-limited out of office.
Community health and wellness has been a major focus for Oddo, including efforts related to the proper amount of sleep, especially for young people. And Oddo argued that the benefits of investing in local health programs extend to all taxpayers.
“And if you're a taxpayer, if you are in my political party and you’re like, ‘What is Oddo doing on health and wellness? That's not what government should do,’ I could sit down and have a cold beer with him and I think make the argument from a very conservative point of view about as a taxpayer why I'm tired of paying for people's health care,” Oddo said.
Policing
On issues related to policing and crime in the borough, and the ongoing aftermath of the death of Staten Island resident Eric Garner, including the recent firing of NYPD Officer Daniel Panatalo, Oddo expressed overall optimism and in particular cited the increased presence of neighborhood coordination officers (NCOs), part of the neighborhood policing model de Blasio has instituted across the city, as a successful program.
“I think we are in a much better place today than we were a few years ago in terms of overall police-community relations,” Oddo said. “The NCOs and community policing has gone a long way. It’s a major success on Staten Island…[Neighborhood policing] works for different reasons in different parts of the borough in terms of race relations. I think the community has gotten to build a relationship with these cops. I think the police officers have gotten to build relationships with the community. I think the tensions have dissipated to a large degree.”
On Pantaleo’s firing and the atmosphere on Staten Island, where many NYPD officers live, Oddo said that the process, while difficult for the community, had not appeared to undermine the progress around police-community relations or how officers are doing their jobs.
“There’s been no ‘Pantaleo effect’ that we can see,” he said, referring to the notion that after Pantaleo’s firing officers took few police actions out of hesitation or protest. “They’re going out there, and they’re doing a good job,” Oddo said of police officers.
Politics
“You won’t see my name on a ballot in a competitive race again,” Oddo said at one point in the interview. But why not run for mayor, given Republicans’ only chance to win could be a more moderate, government service-oriented straight-talker? “I don't think I can win. And I don't want those parts of the job,” he said of some of the politics.
He continued: “I do, though, have aspirations and ambitions of actually being on the inside...Put me on the inside with some TNT and watch me blow up the bureaucracy.” Oddo has previously said a dream job for him would be first deputy mayor. Reminded of this during the interview he said he wouldn’t even need that high of a position, just some control over key pieces of the city government he’s been wrestling with for so many years from outside mayoral administrations.
Before the city is fully focused on the next mayoral race, the 2020 elections will dominate local and national politics. Those themes meet on Staten Island as first-term Democratic Representative Max Rose seeks reelection in New York’s 11th Congressional District, which includes all of the island and a slice of Brooklyn. Rose is expected to face State Assemblymember Nicole Malliotakis in the general election in a race that already has a lot of national attention, given that the seat has been somewhat reliably Republican in the past.
Oddo, who has developed a strong working relationship with Rose and does not appear close with Malliotakis, declined to give support for either candidate. However, while insisting that he was not taking “veiled shots” at either candidate, he broadly criticized what he called “perpetual campaigns” by career politicians seeking office over and over again.
“I don't like perpetual campaigns and I don't like two-year campaigns,” Oddo said. “And what this will be is...if Nicole Malliotakis beats Max Rose, Max Rose is going to run against her two years later. So this will be a perpetual campaign for four years. I don't think that's good for Staten Island. I don't think that's that that's good for the body politic.”
Superstorm Sandy Recovery
On New York’s recovery from Superstorm Sandy, roughly seven years after the storm hit and devastated many parts of Staten Island, Oddo expressed grave disappointment.
“The recovery has been the single most infuriating, heartbreaking experience of a nearly 30-year career in public service,” Oddo said, adding that he laid most of the blame on the administrations of Mayors Michael Bloomberg and Bill de Blasio.
“We had the opportunity to take the harder path and rebuild a different way, and we didn’t. We did incremental instead of transformative,” he said. Oddo’s hope was that the city would engage in acquisition for redevelopment, buying out homeowners in some places, and rebuilding communities more comprehensively, with real planning conscientious of a variety of needs and of potential disasters like Sandy. While he’s pleased about the coming East Shore Seawall, that is still years away and little has been done since Sandy hit to prepare Staten Island for future major storms.
New York is “no better prepared for the next storm” than before Sandy, Oddo said. “When you look at the final product, it doesn’t honor the people we lost [during Sandy] and it really is an example of government at its worst.”
[LISTEN: Max & Murphy Podcast: Staten Island Borough President James Oddo]
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by Ben Max & Stephen Wyer
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by Ben Max, Gotham Gazette
@tweetBenMax @GothamGazette
Christine Quinn (photo: William Alatriste/City Council)
Christine Quinn is frustrated. Quinn, formerly the Speaker of the New York City Council and currently the CEO of Win, a nonprofit that is the largest provider of shelter and permanent supportive housing to families in New York, believes much more can be done to support homeless New Yorkers.
The city continues to grapple with an immense homelessness crisis, with more than 60,000 people in city shelters each night, roughly 3,000 people living on the streets or in the subways, and several thousand others in various drop-in centers and other types of temporary shelters. About a third of the city’s homeless population is children.
Win houses 5,000 people a night, roughly half of whom are children under the age of 18.
“Twenty-five percent of everyone in shelters tonight are six years of age or younger. The face of homelessness in New York right now is a mom with a little child,” Quinn said during a recent appearance on the Max & Murphy podcast, where she discussed the city’s homelessness crisis, her work at WIN, and other topics, including former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s then-imminent entrance into the presidential race.
Two major factors in driving homelessness among families in New York City are high rates of domestic violence and evictions, even if the city has taken major steps to reduce the latter in recent years. The administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio, who defeated a field including Quinn in the 2013 Democratic primary for mayor, regularly says that its many homelessness-fighting strategies have helped “break the trajectory” of increase that the city was on when de Blasio became mayor, and that homelessness would be much worse if not for its programs, which include free legal counsel to many low-income tenants facing eviction as rental vouchers.
Quinn said that 80 percent of mothers in Win shelters report having experienced domestic violence in their adult lifetimes, and the actual number is likely higher. Despite such a staggering rate of abuse, Quinn believes that the city’s support for these women has been lackluster.
“We don’t get any special money from the City of New York to address the 80% of our moms who are experiencing domestic violence...why wouldn’t you have these shelters prepared to take on domestic violence?” Quinn said. “All the current administration cares about is getting to the day where they can have a press release saying that we’re not at an all time high [of homelessness].”
Quinn wants to see more affordable housing and increased rental vouchers for families being rehoused; such vouchers can pay up to 70% of a family’s housing cost. While Quinn gives credit to de Blasio for having reinstated the voucher system in New York City, she also emphasized the need to do more with the program.
“Right now the amount that a voucher covers for a family of four is $1,551 [a month]...we’ve done a study, there’s nowhere in the borough of Manhattan [where a family can live for this amount],” she said. “We have people in shelters waiting months and months, working trying to find an apartment that will take their vouchers.”
Quinn does believe the city needs to build new shelters, which de Blasio is in the midst of doing, in part to get homeless families out of commercial hotels and unsafe “cluster site” shelters, which have often been rundown private apartments that the city rents. Part of the work at Win is identifying sites for new shelters and working with community stakeholders to encourage a welcome response to a new shelter and its residents. Win shelters often see less pushback than those for single adult men.
“The Win shelter has 24-hour security, CCTV cameras everywhere except the private rooms. These hotels have none of that,” Quinn said comparing Win shelters and the hotels. “We have extensive social services, security, job training, after-school homework help for kids, daycare, for our shelters.”
Asked about the debate between those advocating the “housing first” model of addressing homelessness, emphasizing the need for increased economic opportunity, and those who believe that homelessness cannot be tackled without first addressing other issues that cause people to become homeless in the first place, such as mental illness and past trauma, Quinn was dismissive of the debate, saying that such arguments served more to distract from taking necessary action.
“The last thing we have any time for is an academic ivory tower debate,” Quinn said. “All sides of that argument are correct. There’s different reasons people end up homeless. There’s different needs that need to be addressed. Not one of the families we have in Win have the same story...All sides are right, let’s get working...this is not brain surgery.”
“You can have a good proces conversation and move to perfection on process until you’re blue in the face,” Quinn said. “There are good people out there who want to talk about process and then there’s people who just want to delay the process and hope that the homeless people will go away because of their fear — we can’t get confused about which is which.”
Responding to the critique of a “shelter-industrial complex” leveled by those who believe that the shelter systems are too large and bureaucratic, Quinn made it clear that she felt the critique was completely illegitimate.
“We have 60,000 people living in shelter...you can cancel all of Win’s funding, you can make every private funder who funds us take our money away — where will the homeless go? Beyond humanity, we have a legal requirement to house all of the homeless. Where will they go — when I tell the 200 families living at one of our shelters tomorrow that they have to leave? The majority of people who work at organizations like Win do not make a lot of money and could be making a lot of money elsewhere.”
Bloomberg 2020
Shifting topics, Quinn addressed questions related to former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s since actualized entrance into the 2020 Democratic presidential primary field. Quinn, who worked closely with Bloomberg when he was mayor and she led the City Council for eight years, said that she thought that Bloomberg’s move was unwise, as it’s already late in primary season.
“I don’t understand the strategy...at this point in the race when the field is narrowing how it’s a viable or appropriate moment to enter the race,” Quinn said. “As a former campaign staffer I don’t see it and I don’t get it,” Quinn said, adding that Bloomberg’s campaign announcement “feels like a distraction.”
While Quinn and Bloomberg worked collaboratively a great deal when they were both at City Hall, they also disagreed at times. Their relationship, including their work together to extend term limits, also appeared to hurt Quinn in her 2013 bid for mayor. Since that election, Quinn has been a vocal presence in Democratic politics, including an alliance with Governor Andrew Cuomo and frequent appearances on cable news to discuss national politics. She has not made an endorsement in the Democratic presidential primary, but made it apparent that she is not considering Bloomberg, who was a Democrat before becoming a Republican to run for New York City mayor in 2001. He later switched to independent.
New York City 2021
Regarding the next mayoral election in New York, set for 2021 and where her name comes up regularly as a potential candidate, Quinn said she hopes that the race would be focused on “the big issues of the moment,” such as homelessness, a lack of affordable housing, and New York’s issues with mass transit.
“I hope that the conversation around homelessness in the mayor’s race unites the reality that the affordability crisis and the homelessness crisis are two sides of the same coin,” she said. “We need to continue to have a big, bold, and specific conversation around mass transit transportation, the car traffic that’s on the streets, that’s an issue that’s not just a quality of life issue but it’s an economic development issue, it’s a job retention issue. This is critical to making sure that people who can’t afford to live at the center of Manhattan can be a part of that economic opportunity,” she said.
Asked how likely she is to be a candidate for mayor herself, Quinn said the question “sounds like a bet, and I’m not a betting girl.” Regardless of whether she pursues public office, Quinn maintained that she would remain politically active and listed a variety of issues she sees as important to the next big citywide debate about the future of the five boroughs.
“Whatever position I’m in in 2021...I will advocate aggressively, strongly, and God-willing effectively for the issues I care about; women’s issues, LGBT issues, the issues of homeless mothers and their children, the issues of homeless single men and single women, the issues of those who have been incarcerated for too long or unfairly, the issues of sustainability and environmental issues, and really make New York the urban leader in the climate crisis. Whatever position I’m in for whatever reason, I’m gonna make sure my mouth is loud and strong in 2021,” Quinn said.
In closing, Quinn was asked about how her perspective on issues of public policy had changed after serving in both the public and private sectors. She said that in general she was disappointed by what she identified as a failure in government to devote resources towards combating issues such as homelessness, which she argues shifts the burden further onto nonprofits.
“I now see really clearly how we don’t fund our service providers correctly, we don’t listen to them when they come forward with needs. Everything is too driven by the Office of Management and Budget, and the number crunchers, and not first by the issue,” she said. “I’ve also seen how not giving enough resources also burdens nonprofit service providers unnecessarily...I am just struck by the lack of partnership, the adversarial posture government takes towards service providers.”
[LISTEN: Max & Murphy Podcast: Christine Quinn on Homelessness, Bloomberg 2020 & Her Future]
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by Ben Max & Stephen Wyer