(photo: Demetrius Freeman/Mayor’s Office)
Through a recently-signed resolution, President Donald Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress have struck a death blow to New York City’s plan to become the first city in the country to establish a retirement savings program for private-sector employees.
After advocates and elected officials identified a crisis in the limited amount most workers have saved for retirement and started calling for government action, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced during his February 2016 State of the City speech that New York would set on a path to create a system whereby almost all private-sector employees would have mandated access to a retirement savings program.
There would be no city match of money or guarantee of pension payouts, like with the public employee system, but the city would help launch, promote, and oversee a program that provided employees at most private-sector companies the opportunity to put aside retirement savings money in a managed investment account.
Two weeks after he announced the initiative, de Blasio and others who had spurred the effort -- especially Public Advocate Letitia James, City Council Member Ben Kallos, Comptroller Scott Stringer, liberal activist Bill Samuels, and members of AARP-NY -- held a celebratory rally at City Hall. They said they were pushing the federal Department of Labor to issue rules paving the way for their plan and that legislation would soon be introduced at the city level.
Several months later, in the waning days of the Obama administration, the Department of Labor did issue such a ruling, but just a few months after that, the new Congress passed a resolution to negate the permission the DOL had extended to large cities like New York. President Trump then signed the bill on April 13. According to multiple sources, and further illuminated by International Business Times reporting, the financial services industry has been opposed to allowing city and state-backed private-sector programs, which led to federal action.
In fact, rolling back city permission appears to have been a high priority for the Trump administration. In photos posted to Twitter by a visitor to his office (left), top Trump advisor Steven Bannon is shown to have listed the resolution number one under “Bills,” as part of several lists of priorities and pledges.
“This is a deeply disappointing move by President Trump and Congressional Republicans,” said Freddi Goldstein, a spokesperson for Mayor de Blasio, in a statement to Gotham Gazette. “As the mayor has repeatedly pointed out, fewer than half of all working New Yorkers have access to a plan that can help them save for their retirement years. This legislation does little more than block them from securing their futures.”
When city officials and advocates were celebrating their plan for such a program last year, they pointed out that “most private sector workers in New York City do not have any access to a retirement savings program, disproportionately impacting low-income, immigrant, minority, and female New Yorkers,” according to an announcement from the mayor’s office. It also said that “only 43 percent of working New Yorkers have access to a plan that can help them save for retirement: and “even those who have started to save do not have much: 40 percent of New Yorkers between the ages of 50 and 64 have less than $10,000 saved for retirement.”
Importantly, corresponding state-level efforts to create a private-sector retirement-savings program have not yet been nullified in Washington, D.C. -- several states already have programs in motion, but no cities. The House of Representatives passed a resolution to roll back the Department of Labor ruling dealing with states, and on Wednesday it moved through the Senate, and will head to President Trump's desk.
The Senate votes on both the city and state measures was 50-49, with one senator not voting.
In New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo established in 2016 a commission to study the issue and recommend details for a program. While that effort, known as The SMART Commission, has moved slowly, the governor’s office insists it is progressing. Perhaps sensing its slow pace, de Blasio and city officials decided to move on a program as well. Now, city stakeholders will have to watch to see if Congress disallows the state from continuing, and, if not, whether Cuomo will indeed act to create a system for private sector retirement savings.
“The SMART Commission continues its work examining all ways we can create a state-administered retirement system to bolster savings for New Yorkers,” a spokesperson for Gov. Cuomo emailed Gotham Gazette in late March. “The Commission continues to meet and a report on their findings will be issued in the coming months.”
Despite the move by federal officials to block cities from instituting such programs, Public Advocate James and Council Member Kallos decided to symbolically introduce legislation for a city system.
“The federal government is failing our seniors when it comes to retirement security,” James said in a statement. She and Kallos are urging Trump to veto the state-related resolution if it gets to his desk through the Senate.
Kallos told Gotham Gazette that he and James felt it was important to introduce the city legislation anyway, and that perhaps there is hope for the future. “We had wanted to introduce it before [the federal resolution] was signed, but even after it was signed we felt it was worth introducing, because maybe one day we’ll be able to move forward.”
“Most New Yorkers aren’t saving for their retirement,” Kallos said, adding that New Yorkers should know it is the federal government that is helping to hold them back. The city program would be “opt out,” meaning that eligible workers would be automatically enrolled through their employers and have to actively choose to not participate. The only contributions would be from the employees, likely starting at a low fixed percentage of earnings with the ability to dedicate more toward what would in most cases be low-risk investment.
Kallos said that he and James have been working closely with the de Blasio administration and its federal lobbyists. “Tish has been in the lead,” he said of James, “the City Council has played a role, and the Mayor’s Office has been pushing in D.C.”
The two bills (Int. 1574 and Int. 1580) introduced by James and Kallos would establish a program and a board to oversee it. “The Board would be established to administer the plan, engage in rulemaking, auditing, and reporting, along with public education and community outreach forums,” according to information from the offices of Kallos and James. “The plan would cover all employers with more than ten employees that did not already offer a retirement plan. At no cost to the employer, private sector employees would be automatically enrolled, with an option to decline, in a payroll deduction pre-tax retirement savings plan administered by the City.”
***
by Ben Max, Gotham Gazette
@tweetBenMax @GothamGazette
Note: this article has been updated to reflect the Senate vote on the state-related measure.
(photo: Edwin J. Torres/Mayor's Office)
The city is expanding an existing free legal-aid program for immigrants that was set up two years ago but has now gained particular importance under the Trump administration and a Republican-led Congress threatening to impose immigration policies that could affect thousands of New Yorkers.
The ActionNYC program, run by the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs, provides free legal screenings to determine if immigrants qualify for city benefits and also aids immigrant New Yorkers in preparing and applying for work permits, residency and even citizenship.
MOIA is now partnering with NYC Health + Hospitals, the city’s municipal health care system, and LegalHealth, a division of the New York Legal Assistance Group, to give immigrants legal screenings at health care facilities and to expand the agency’s legal training for community-based organizations (CBOs) that work with immigrants. The program expansion will formally be announced Thursday at a roundtable with the news media at City Hall. ActionNYC currently has a $7.1 million baselined budget, and the administration has proposed increasing that baseline by $900,000 for the 2018 fiscal year that begins July 1. By the end of the current fiscal year, the program will have served approximately 8,000 New Yorkers, according to MOIA estimates.
MOIA Commissioner Nisha Agarwal stressed that the program was needed now more than ever, and that the agency had seen a particular uptick in calls for ActionNYC appointments since January. “We’ve been encouraging immigrant New Yorkers to get legal screenings all along and certainly the current political climate...and the ramp up in outreach is driving people to seek legal assistance,” she said in a phone interview with Gotham Gazette.
Since the presidential election, New York City has seen a massive outpouring of advocacy and public sentiment in favor of immigrant rights. Activists and elected officials have consistently expressed concern about the Trump administration’s policies that are causing considerable anxiety among immigrant communities, including the city’s sizable undocumented population. Among the few steps the federal administration has taken, some less successfully than others, are an attempted ban on immigration from certain Muslim-majority nations in the Middle East, stricter vetting procedures in general for visa applicants, a ramp up in immigration enforcement action and deportations by federal officials, and a thus-far unsuccessful executive order aimed at cutting federal funding to so-called sanctuary cities like New York.
New York City government has responded in force, with top elected officials vowing to stand up to federal authorities. Mayor Bill de Blasio and City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito have already taken steps to limit cooperation with federal immigration officials on immigrant detainees in city jails, and, building on a City Council program, the mayor recently announced a $16 million investment in legal assistance for undocumented immigrants facing deportation and other related legal challenges. The city has also implemented other immigrant-friendly policies in the last three years, including the popular municipal identification program, IDNYC, which was ostensibly set up to aid undocumented immigrants in accessing city resources and interacting with city government.
The expansion underway for ActionNYC, budgeted at $1.3 million from the agency’s current fiscal year budget, will cover three NYC Health + Hospitals facilities -- in Elmhurst, Queens; Lincoln, South Bronx; and Gouverneur in Lower Manhattan. The Queens site is already up and running, while the others will begin operations in the coming weeks. “Hospitals are places where many immigrant families are seeking services,” Agarwal pointed out, noting that some immigrants could potentially qualify for health insurance but may be unaware.
ActionNYC will also award 20 fellowships to 17 community based organizations (CBOs) to bolster their legal aid activities, particularly for growing immigrant populations and “hard-to-reach and recently arrived populations from Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean,” according to a MOIA advisory. The CBO trainings will run from May through June. “We want to create a pipeline for those communities to access more city dollars,” Agarwal said. These CBOs, she said, have stronger ties to immigrant communities and are trusted by the people they serve, making it crucial that they have the capacity to meet an ever increasing demand.
“I think we’ve seen a huge need for that,” Agarwal added,” and we’re stepping up to meet that need.”
***
by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
@samarkhurshid @GothamGazette
Wednesday's forum (photo via Manhattan GOP)
Candidates running, or hoping to run, for the Republican mayoral nomination made the case for their candidacies at a GOP forum in Manhattan on Wednesday night, pitching their qualifications and levelling criticism at Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio. Indicative of de Blasio’s incumbent status and the nature of the opposition field, the event featured more criticism of the mayor than forward-looking policy talk.
The Metropolitan Republican Club, on the Upper East Side, hosted four candidates -- real estate executive Paul Massey, state Assemblymember Nicole Malliotakis, Harlem pastor Michel Faulkner, and retired NYPD detective and private investigator Richard “Bo” Dietl. The first three are registered Republicans and can compete for the nomination if they collect the required petition signatures, but Dietl is currently running as an independent and seeking a Wilson-Pakula certificate from Republican county leaders that would allow him to also run in the Republican primary. Dietl originally sought to run as a Democrat against de Blasio in the primary but made errors in his filing paperwork that precluded him from doing so and also left him out of the Republican Party, which he had been a member of for decades, he’s said.
Meanwhile, billionaire John Catsimatidis, who unsuccessfully sought the GOP mayoral nomination in 2013, was also in attendance Wednesday night. Catsimatidis has been exploring another run, but appears unlikely to enter the race. Malliotakis, who declared her candidacy this week, is close to Catsimatidis and has said she would step aside if he decided to run again.
“We are all here, united around one thing,” said Adele Malpass, chair of the Manhattan County GOP, in opening remarks. “It is to make Bill de Blasio a one-term mayor.”
Malpass said a Republican candidate has a path to victory if they can pull together a broad and diverse coalition that includes Republicans, independents, 150,000 families on charter school waitlists, the orthodox Jewish community that voted for Donald Trump, common sense Bloomberg Democrats on the Upper East Side that voted for Joe Lhota, small business owners, and rank-and-file first responders. A Republican can reach 51 percent, she said, scoffing at perceived media skepticism over a Republican’s chances of beating de Blasio. “I can guarantee you tomorrow, when you look in the newspapers, the narrative is going to be ‘Oh they can’t win,’” she said.
Wednesday’s candidate screening was for Republican leaders from across the city to gauge the viability of each candidate, in part with an eye toward attempting to coalesce around a single candidate and avoid a primary battle that could be damaging to their side. Over the course of nearly two hours, the candidates were questioned on why they would appeal to voters and their positions on various policies and issues including the city budget, transit infrastructure, public safety, quality of life, Rikers Island, and the Campaign Finance Board’s public matching funds program. Save for a few occasional jabs, the candidates refrained from criticizing each other.
Just two minutes were given to each candidate on each issue, contributing to a lack of concrete policy proposals. More so, the candidates lobbed critiques, and at times insults, at de Blasio, met often by applause and jeers from the 100 or so people gathered.
Malliotakis is currently the only woman on either side of the mayoral race and the only Republican candidate to have held elected office -- she represents parts of Staten Island and a sliver of Southern Brooklyn in the state Assembly. She called de Blasio a “tax and spend” mayor who is throwing “good money after bad money,” citing the significant increase in the city’s budget in the last three years. “I believe that we can change the direction of the city,” she said. As a daughter of immigrants and a Latina, she said, she’ll be able to pull votes from the Democratic base, and she was confident that she’ll be able to raise significant funds for her campaign, enough to meet the thresholds for the public matching funds program which gives 6-to-1 funds to each contribution up to $175.
“I’m not a big money politician,” said Michel Faulkner, who has so far struggled to raise funds, lending his campaign much of his own money and outspending what he has raised. But, as an African-American candidate, he believes he can build groundswell support and appeal to cross-party voters, particularly African-Americans and Hispanics. He prodded his fellow candidates, joking about Bo Dietl’s shifting party affiliation and taking a swipe at Massey for his maximum donation to de Blasio’s 2013 campaign, and made eye-catching, possibly tongue-in-cheek, policy pronouncements like vowing to put a homeless shelter in City Hall and an airport in every borough.
Massey, who so far has led the race in fundraising and spending by wide margins, called de Blasio corrupt and an “Olympic-level failure,” and said he would beat the mayor with a “legendary campaign” built on a massive ground game. Massey, who made millions in his real estate sales business, which he sold a few years ago, won’t be participating in the public matching funds program, since he doesn’t want to limit his spending, and has criticized the mayor for being a participant, since it means taxpayer money will go to his campaign. He expressed confidence that the party will eventually rally around him, since he also has the Independence Party’s endorsement and can build a fusion candidacy.
Massey, whose business operated across the five boroughs, lived in Westchester until recently, moving to the city in time to register to vote in last year’s presidential election (he has said he wrote in Michael Bloomberg for president) and to begin laying the groundwork for his mayoral campaign. NY1 reported that Massey rarely voted in Westchester over 20 years, which the candidate attributed to his busy work schedule. Massey is the only Republican candidate who has begun to lay out detailed policy proposals, though he has yet to show a strong command of city government or speak fluently about the nuts and bolts of policy. He is billing himself as an expert manager and above reproach ethically, both of which he contrasts with his criticisms of de Blasio.
Perhaps the most animated speaker of the night was Dietl, who said he could appeal to all New Yorkers as socially liberal and fiscally conservative. “I’m not beholden to any special interest group, and I’m not a career politician,” he said. A brash, tough-talking candidate, Dietl turned red with his varied and colorful critiques of the mayor. More than a few times he called de Blasio “Big Bird” and said the city was turning into a modern day Sodom and Gomorrah under the mayor’s first term, citing topless street performers in Times Square (desnudas) as illustrative of his point. He boasted that he could tap his numerous wealthy friends to fund his campaign and that, even though he tried to run as a Democrat, he is a Republican through and through. Dietl promises to be tough on crime but with a big heart. He also promised to rip out the city's bike lanes.
At one point, Dietl made an apparently racist remark when relaying the story of his appearance before a judge to appeal his registration in the Democratic Party. The judge, Debra James, he said, looked just like First Lady Chirlane McCray and he knew he was in trouble when he saw her. James and McCray are both African-American. Dietl later attempted to clarify, insisting that his comments were not meant to be racist and that the two did indeed look alike. He continued to stress the point on Thursday amid a storm of negative attention to the remarks.
On most issues, there was little daylight among the four. They all oppose the decriminalization of low-level offenses, critiqued the soaring city budget, hammered the mayor on the city’s homelessness crisis and decried his transit policies and the MTA (which the mayor often reminds people is actually controlled by Governor Andrew Cuomo). On certain policies they varied, albeit slightly, such as the closure of the Rikers Island jail complex. For instance, Faulkner supports reforming it but not closing it, while Massey supports closing it but opposes community-based facilities being built in its stead -- he wants modern facilities built on the island.
“I don’t know if this provided enough clarity tonight,” Malpass told Gotham Gazette, after the forum. “I was hoping there might be someone who knocks it out of the park and we would all coalesce. I think this kind of confirmed more opinions that people had. If you had a preconceived idea about each candidate, that kind of reinforced that.”
Malpass has been among the county chairs for the GOP interested in coalescing behind one mayoral candidate and pushing others out of the race, so that all resources can be focused on defeating de Blasio. She said Wednesday night that the next campaign finance filing, due May 15, might shed more light on which candidate is doing well on fundraising. Besides, she said, there are four valid candidates and other citywide nominees -- public advocate and comptroller -- to choose as well.
In the mayor’s race, however, “We might have a primary,” she said. “I don’t know if we can prevent it.”
***
by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
@samarkhurshid @GothamGazette