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10 Candidates Qualify for First TV Debate in Public Advocate Special Election


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(l-r) Melissa Mark-viverito, Ydanis Rodriguez, Dawn Smalls, Jumaane Williams Rafael Espinal; Danny O'Donnell, Michael Blake, Erich Ulrich, Nomiki Konst, Ron Kim


Update: This article and its headline have been updated to clarify that 10, not 11, candidates officially qualified for the first televised debate of the race. The original version of this article included Assemblymember Latrice Walker, who appeared to have crossed the financial threshold but was ruled not to have by the Campaign Finance Board after its review of her filings.

It’s going to be a crowded stage -- but not as crowded as it might have been.

Ten of the 20 remaining candidates in the special election for New York City Public Advocate have officially qualified for the first of two televised debates in the race, scheduled for February 6. Candidates had till last week, when the latest campaign finance filing was due with the city Campaign Finance Board, to raise and spend at least $56,938. The citywide election is February 26.

The ten candidates are former City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, Assemblymember Michael Blake, attorney Dawn Smalls, City Council Member Jumaane Williams, Assemblymember Ron Kim, City Council Member Rafael Espinal, City Council Member Ydanis Rodriguez, City Council Member Eric Ulrich, Assemblymember Daniel O’Donnell, and activist Nomiki Konst.

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Mark-Viverito leads the pack in funds raised, with $346,000, though about half of that was transferred in from her prior campaign account, and spent $166,000 (which, notably, is just $4,000 short of the financial threshold for the second “leading contenders” debate on February 20). All of the ten candidates are participating in the CFB’s public matching funds program, which is meant to incentivize campaigns to raise money from small-dollar donors, though there are two systems within the program they must choose from.

Candidates can opt in to one of two models -- the old model that matches contributions up to $175 at a 6-to-1 ratio or the new model, which gives 8-to-1 matches for donations up to $250. Both are at play in this special election and others through the 2021 city cycle, after which the new model takes over completely. That model was passed by voters after being recommended by Mayor Bill de Blasio’s 2018 charter revision commission, and the City Council recently passed legislation to apply it to this year’s public advocate races (the special election and subsequent fall election).

Mark-Viverito is the only one sticking with the old system while the other nine candidates opted in to the new one, which also comes with lower contribution limits overall. When the City Council passed legislation to allow the new system into the special election, Mark-Viverito indicated a belief that the Council members running and others in the body were acting in order to hurt her chances of winning. Some responded with confusion or indignation, pointing to the fact that the new system seeks to reward small-dollar fundraising and remove the influence of larger donors.

To qualify for public funds for the public advocate special election, the candidates have to meet a dual threshold, raising at least $62,500 from a minimum of 500 contributors. Initial numbers indicate that, of the 10 candidates who have raised enough to get into the debate, Rodriguez and Konst are the only two that don’t seem to have met the public funds threshold yet. The first round of public funds will be disbursed on Wednesday. First, the city Board of Elections will meet on Tuesday for a hearing to rule on several challenges to candidates’ ballot petitions and therefore finalize the February 26 ballot -- there is therefore a chance that not all ten candidates who have qualified for the debate will be on stage, as some do have petition challenges against them.

Both the February 6 and 20 debates will be broadcast by Spectrum News NY1, and will be freely accessible on its website and Facebook page. It will also be livestreamed on NYC Life, the city-run media channel. The debate sponsors include Politico New York, Citizens Union, the League of Women Voters, the Latino Leadership Institute, Borough of Manhattan Community College, NAACP New York State Conference Metropolitan Council, and Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., East Kings County Alumnae Chapter.

The special election is occurring because former Public Advocate Letitia James was elected Attorney General and vacated the seat. The winner is only guaranteed the position through the end of this year, while the fall election will determine who holds it for 2020 and 2021, the next city election cycle.

[READ: Everything You Need to Know About the Special Election for Public Advocate]

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by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

Read more by this writer.

City's 311 Upgrade Set for Mid-Year Launch


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former Mayor Bloomberg at 311 (photo: Edward Reed)


The city’s 311 non-emergency call center for information about city services and to lodge complaints is nearing a mid-year re-launch, its first major overhaul since being introduced by Mayor Michael Bloomberg in 2003. The revamped system, estimated to debut in July, will modernize 311’s currently outdated system that limits its capability to assist New Yorkers. The next iteration of the system will eventually allow for increased language access, user accounts to track inquiries and complaints, and a better app experience.

The City Council’s Committees on Government Operations and Technology held a joint oversight hearing on 311 last week, the first of two such hearings that will be held over the course of several months. The January 17 hearing was focused on the functions and management of 311, and also dealt with two Council bills related to the call center, while the second hearing will focus on city agencies’ responses to 311 complaints and service requests.

City Council Speaker Corey Johnson led the hearing, alongside Government Operations Committee Chair Fernando Cabrera, a Bronx Democrat, and Technology Committee Chair Peter Koo, a Queens Democrat. Johnson, a Manhattan Democrat, began the hearing by saying that “the solutions and technology of 2003 are serving New Yorkers in 2019 and that I believe is unacceptable” and that “other cities are moving past us.”

The implementation of 311’s new “customer relationship management” (CRM) platform was a focus of the hearing. The new system 311 is transitioning to is back-end first, so callers will not immediately notice a difference from the old platform. The update is meant to provide a foundation so that 311 will then be able to offer new features to the public, including better language access, a second major focus of the recent hearing.

According to 311 Executive Director Joe Morrisroe, 311 fields over 120,000 calls per day and 42 million contacts per year. This is more than all other municipal 311 systems combined. Morrisroe said “the 311 team is focused on meeting the customers where they are.” He said that 311 conducts two customer surveys per year. One of the surveys, conducted once a year by the CFI Group, a consultancy, showed that “311 ranked equal to or better” than private sector contact centers. 311 also conducts quarterly in-house surveys.

However, as Koo noted, the surveys are only conducted in English. This may skew the results because of the disparity of service between English-speaking callers and non-English-speaking callers, a key theme of the oversight hearing, which included discussion of a bill related to 311 and foreign language access.

The language barrier faced by many New Yorkers when contacting 311 was the most frequent issue brought up at the hearing. Under the current system, callers are asked through an automated message to select their language, but all callers, even those who select one of the six non-English options provided, are then directed to an English-speaking 311 operator, who has not been informed of their language selection. Callers must then communicate their language preference to the operator, who can then connect them to a translator in one of 182 languages.

As several Council members noted, this requires the caller to know some English to then be able access 311 in their preferred language, a protocol that may lead many callers to give up and not access the information they are seeking when they first dial -- an issue that a Council bill is seeking to explore through new reporting requirements. Johnson called the language barrier “unacceptable.” The speaker said that he had an Armenian staff member attempt to call 311 and it took 17 minutes for the staff member to be connected with the proper translator.

To address the issue, Council Member Carlos Menchaca, a Brooklyn Democrat, has sponsored a bill, Intro. 1328, which would have 311 develop a new protocol for the languages spoken by callers and would require 311 to track and report calls dropped seemingly because of insufficient language assistance. Menchaca said the bill is important because “everyone has a dignity to be heard and every day we’re trying to figure out how that can happen in their preferred language.”

“I can empathize,” Morrisroe of 311 said, adding that “311 wholeheartedly agrees with the spirit of the legislation.” However, Morrisroe gave two reasons for opposing the bill. He said that 311 already has a protocol in place to identify languages and the technology to support the bill’s requirements is not currently available. He called operators not knowing about a caller’s language selection a “limitation” of the current system and said that 311 would make solving the issue a “priority” going forward.

Menchaca was not satisfied with that answer, stating that the City Council creates policy and city agencies are meant to implement that policy. He then said “the fact that this does not exist out there right now has nothing to do with the fact that we can pass this bill and really force you all in a room to figure this out with the [telecommunications] industry.”

Another language-related issue brought up at the hearing was that currently the automated message that begins every 311 call includes options for six languages. This offering is below the ten-language requirement from a previous city law. Morrisroe said that the languages were chosen and sequenced based on the volume of calls received and that current technology limited the number of languages that can be included.

During the discussion of the transition to the new customer relationship management (CRM) platform, Samir Saini, the commissioner of the city’s Department of Information, Technology, and Telecommunications (DoITT), said the new platform will be ready to be rolled out by “the middle of the year.” Saini said that the platform upgrade will focus on the back-end of 311’s system, which will modernize a system that hasn’t been updated since it was first installed in 2003 and allow the agency to offer new features later. These features, like potentially 10 language options instead of the current six, will not be available right away when the new platform debuts later this year, but will gradually be added to the new system.

DoITT currently has a 12-month, $24 million contract with IBM to transition from the old system, dating back to 2003 when 311 was created, to a new modern system for receiving and tracking service requests and complaints. After the roll-out, DoITT will be able to manage the system on its own without IBM’s assistance.

The platform upgrade will allow customers to create online accounts to track the progress of their complaints and service requests, which Johnson had brought up as an example of 311’s current system being outdated. The upgrade will also allow 311’s mobile app to be offered in languages other than English, along with needed flexibility for new features on the app. Currently, the options to make complaints on the app are limited (Johnson pointed out that New Yorkers are unable to report mold through the app). Saini said that there was a “queue of enhancements” already planned to be made, but did not elaborate further.

Council Member Ben Kallos, a Manhattan Democrat, said that homelessness was the top 311 complaint for his Upper East Side district. He pointed out that the current mobile app does not allow for a specific location for a seemingly homeless person on the street, and instead locates them by the nearest address. Saini said that changing this will be a top priority for the new mobile app.

The second bill discussed at the hearing was Intro. 0188, which is intended to stop harassment of property owners through 311. The bill would have 311 stop referring anonymous calls about a property that has been harassed with repeated complaints “that cannot be substantiated or that are substantiated but not illegal.” Morrisroe of 311 objected to this bill, stating that “while 311 understands the intent of the proposed bill, we believe that what this bill proposes will have two unintended consequences.” He said that landlords could potentially game the system to get a temporary reprieve from complaints and that the bill risks a citizen’s right to report a complaint without fear of retaliation, citing immigrants and tenants as vulnerable populations.

Council Member Kalman Yeger, a Brooklyn Democrat, took an issue with Morrisroe’s objections to the bill, telling the 311 director that “not everything that comes out of this Council is dumb.” He told Morrisroe that he’d like to “roll the dice” and see if abuse Morrisroe predicted would actually happen. On the second objection, Yeger said he did not think it would be a concern and did not see a correlation between the bill and an increased risk of retribution. He also said he thought the bill wasn’t harsh enough on abuse, saying that he would like to make it a crime to make repeated unsubstantiated complaints about the same property.

Council Member Cabrera asked about the ten-second increase in wait times for 311 callers in the past year. In 2018, the average wait time was 28 seconds, which is just under the 30-second industry standard for 311. Morrisroe said it was in part due to the extreme cold temperatures of January 2018, which led to an increase in complaints about problems with heat or hot water. Additionally, he pointed to 311 taking on the responsibility of handling appointment requests for bulk item collection as a cause of increased wait times.

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by Andrew Millman, Gotham Gazette
   

Read more by this writer.

2021 Comptroller Race Now Features Two City Council Members


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(photos: Emil Cohen & John McCarten/City Council)


New York City Council Member Brad Lander, a Democrat from Brooklyn, has declared his intention to run for city Comptroller in the 2021 election, joining Council Member Helen Rosenthal, a Manhattan Democrat, as the only declared candidates in the race.

The 2021 municipal election will lead to a sea change in city government, with all three citywide positions on the ballot along with the five borough president posts and all 51 City Council seats, about three dozen of which will be “open” due to term limits. Among the citywide posts, both Mayor Bill de Blasio and Comptroller Scott Stringer will be closing out their second terms and unable to run for another term.

Lander and Rosenthal are among the Council members who are serving their final terms, many of whom will be seeking higher office through the 2021 elections. Several Council members facing term limits are currently running in the special election for Public Advocate, which will be held February 26 of this year. The winner of that race will have to run for the office again this fall and, if victorious, will serve the remainder of now-Attorney General Letitia James’ term. That candidate could potentially serve two full terms in that office from 2022 till the end of 2029.

Befitting a race for comptroller -- the city’s chief fiscal officer tasked with auditing city agencies and monitoring city finances, among other responsibilities -- both Lander and Rosenthal are among the wonkier members of city government, with clear devotion to crafting policy, examining budgets, and evaluating contracts. They also both represent especially politically-engaged areas of the city that are often home to high voter turnout -- for Lander, it’s parts of brownstone Brooklyn; for Rosenthal, the Upper West Side.

Lander currently serves as the Council’s deputy leader for policy. He has master’s degrees in social anthropology and city planning, and was elected as one of a younger crop of progressive candidates in 2009 after leading a neighborhood group focused on affordable housing and social services. He was co-chair of the Council’s progressive caucus, which he helped create, and previously chaired the Committee on Rules, Elections and Privileges in the last Council session, 2014-2017.

His district, previously represented by Mayor Bill de Blasio, covers Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, Gowanus, Park Slope, Windsor Terrace, Borough Park, and Kensington.

“I love serving this city, I love it,” Lander said outside City Hall on Thursday, when asked about the fact that he had recently filed with the city’s Campaign Finance Board to run for comptroller and his pursuit of the position. “I get up everyday thinking I get to work with my neighbors, with other New Yorkers to try to solve problems that make the city better and I love doing that and I would be really honored to keep serving the city.”

While he was reluctant to talk much about the next election, citing the nearly three years until the votes will be cast, Lander did say he believes his experience in the Council qualifies him for the position. “I think I have built a good track record here in the Council of working together with New Yorkers who are facing problems, helping come up with solutions and getting them implemented,” he said, citing his work on legislation ranging from freelancer protections, workplace scheduling for fast food workers to wages for for-hire vehicle drivers and anti-tenant harassment measures, among others. “Those are all examples of working with different kinds of New Yorkers facing different kinds of problems, many of them caused as a result of the ways our economy is shifting and changing, and coming up with policy solutions that we can implement here in New York that make people’s lives better.”

Rosenthal, who chaired her Upper West Side community board and worked in the Mayor’s Office of Management and Budget for seven years between 1988 and 1995 before running for the City Council in 2013, filed her paperwork for comptroller last year. This term she chairs the Council’s Committee on Women, having previously headed up the contracts committee through which she conducted several probing oversight hearings, particularly with regard to contracting at the mammoth Department of Education and problems with how the city contracts with human services nonprofits.

“I’m really excited to be running for comptroller,” Rosenthal said in a phone interview. “I think that the city’s $90 billion budget needs to be kept a close eye on, and I think it’s critical that the money goes to the people who need and deserve it. And it’s been my experience on the City Council that that doesn’t always happen.”

Rosenthal cited her work leading the Council’s contracts committee, particularly the role she played in breaking up an over-inflated contract awarded by the Department of Education in 2015 -- after she raised the issue, it was reduced from $1.1 billion to $472 million. “When I raised a red flag, people listened...Can you imagine having a comptroller who’s qualified to do these types of audits going after our $90 billion budget and making sure it’s fiscally responsible?”

She also said the next comptroller must be independent of the mayoral administration, a quality she said she showed in the school desegregation battle in her district when she stood with elected parent representatives pushing a rezoning plan to desegregate schools.

Rosenthal did not address Lander’s candidacy, though she said she expected several people to run for the seat.

Asked about his potential opponents and the issues he may run on, Lander was reluctant to respond, saying he was focused on a slew of bills he wants passed. “It’s a long time from 2021 and there’ll be time to talk about that race in a way that’s more like it’s a present election which it’s not yet,” he said. “So I’m not gonna start talking about other people running or my policy platform…There will be a time to talk about policy issues in the 2021 race but it is not in January in 2019.”

Lander has just under $137,000 in his campaign account, and has opted in to the Campaign Finance Board’s public matching funds program that was recently approved by the City Council and will provide an 8-to-1 match for the first $250 of every contribution. Rosenthal has nearly $20,000 in campaign funds and is already abiding by the new rules of the public matching funds program. She said she has returned donations that are above the new limits.

Other potential candidates rumored to be mulling a run for comptroller include State Senator Kevin Parker of Brooklyn and Assemblymember Robert Rodriguez of Manhattan. Both are Democrats. No matter who runs, the 2021 race is unlikely to match the spectacle of the 2013 Democratic primary between the eventual winner, Stringer, who was Manhattan Borough President at the time, and former Governor Eliot Spitzer, who was attempting a political comeback after having resigned from office over a prostitution scandal. Stringer won 52-48 percent. Now in his second term, Stringer is all-but-certain to run for mayor in the coming election.

The comptroller’s office, with more than 800 employees, is a big step up from the City Council or state Legislature, where members have roughly ten staffers working under them. As the city’s top fiscal officer, the comptroller’s duties include auditing the work of city agencies, overseeing management of the city’s $160 billion-plus pension system, analyzing city spending and revenues, and reviewing and approving city contracts.

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by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

Read more by this writer.

Ben Max contributed to this article.

Note - This article stated earlier that Council Member Rosenthal had begun returning donations above the new CFB limits. It has been updated to clarify that she has already returned all such donations. 



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