Coucil Member Vanessa Gibson, right (photo: William Alatriste)
New York City’s civil legal services went under the microscope Tuesday at a hearing held by the City Council’s Courts and Legal Services Committee. One in a series of City Council hearings on Mayor Bill de Blasio’s $84.67 preliminary budget, the committee heard from representatives of the Department for Social Services about its programs and budget needs.
Testifying before the committee, DSS Commissioner Steve Banks delineated his department’s spending, focusing specifically on the programs rolled out by the Office of Civil Justice. Established in June of 2015, the Office of Civil Justice was created to “oversee, manage, and monitor the City’s programs to provide civil legal assistance to New Yorkers in need,” Banks stated in his testimony. These programs include anti-eviction, immigrant protection, domestic violence, and federal benefits assistance services, helping low and middle-income New Yorkers to access affordable legal assistance.
These services have been a focus of the City Council under its Speaker, Melissa Mark-Viverito, and of de Blasio, who recently agreed to a standing Council proposal to fund more lawyers for people in housing court. The city has significantly increased its spending on anti-eviction legal services under de Blasio, and seen success, as well as in immigration legal services.
Though questioning from the committee members present for Wednesday’s hearing touched on a number of areas, the Council members were most interested in two topics: DSS’s new right-to-counsel program, which provides universal access for low-income tenants facing eviction, and immigrant protection services such as the Immigrant Opportunity Initiative.
While Banks emphasized the progress of anti-eviction initiatives even before the recent right to counsel announcement, citing a 24 percent drop in residential evictions since 2013, there were concerns from committee members about the five-year implementation timeline of the right to counsel program.
“We have to be smart as we phase in universal right to counsel,” Council Member Vanessa Gibson, who represents part of the Bronx and is a co-sponsor of the right to counsel bill, told Banks. “The only family intake is in the Bronx, so every homeless family in this city goes through the Bronx before they’re dispersed to other places...We have a saturation already.” Gibson said capacity must increase for access to counsel to also increase.
On immigration, Council Member Carlos Menchaca, who chairs the Council’s immigration committee, pressed Banks to address the need for greater flexibility around immigration services, especially considering the uncertain future of federal immigration policies and the expected rise in the quantity and complexity of immigration cases under President Donald Trump. “We need to be mobile enough, responsive enough to the times that we find ourselves in and I hope this executive budget reflects that,” Menchaca told Banks, referring to the next iteration of the mayor’s spending plan, which is due in early spring after City Council hearings and formal response.
The mayor’s fiscal year 2018 preliminary budget is slated to provide the Office of Criminal Justice with $11.2 million for immigration legal assistance, as well as $62.2 million for legal services for tenants facing eviction, harassment, or displacement. OCJ’s proposed 2018 allocation totals $111 million.
Reiterating Menchaca’s sentiment that the budget should reflect the changing immigration landscape, Council Member Gibson advocated for strategies to be put in place to ensure that those with uncertain immigration status can access the legal services they are entitled to. “I want to be preventative more than reactive...we know that there are a lot of families that are living in darkness and in asylum right now that want to come forward, but their immigration status may be the issue that’s holding them back,” she said. “We have to reach families and touch them where they are, they’re not all going to housing court, their children aren’t always in schools, so we have to be a little bit more creative.”
There was not much contention or disagreement between Council members and Banks on these issues, as the Council and de Blasio administration have been largely in lock-step on housing and immigration aid.
While immigration and anti-eviction dominated the early proceedings, the issue of non-profit funding garnered significant attention in the latter half of the hearing. In what is a major sticking point of budget negotiations and an early theme in budget hearings, Council Member Helen Rosenthal, who chairs the Committee on Contracts, was particularly concerned that DSS’ current non-profit funding approach is unsustainable. As it stands, DSS allocates money based on the number of cases that an organization handles.
“Why are we paying on a per-case basis?” Rosenthal asked. “Shouldn’t we just fund to keep the doors open, so that administrative overhead is contemplated, the cost of legal fees is contemplated.”
After Banks’ testimony, a panel of lawyers and paralegals from the Legal Aid Society, The Bronx Defenders, and Brooklyn Defender Services articulated their plight to the committee, arguing that if DSS is to rely on their services, their contracts must be structured to ensure they are funded adequately.
Lisa Schreibersdorf, the executive director of Brooklyn Defender Services described how, prior to the Bloomberg administration, legal aid organizations were funded much differently. ”They were cost-reimbursement contracts, we showed what we spent...it was seen as obvious that they needed to fund the project itself so that it could run.” Schreibersdorf went on explain that while the cost per case has not risen for these organizations, overall costs associated with operating in New York City have, and that funding should reflect the increase in rent and living wage.
“All of us who have done this work have struggled with trying to make it work, watching our staff stretch to the limits either because of cases or lack of resources,” Justine Olderman, the managing director of Bronx Defenders said. Olderman recounted how her staff had to go “door-to-door” to raise money to meet rent on their office space.
Capping off the hearing, Rosenthal attempted to drive home the inadequacy at play by equating non-profit funding to construction, saying that the current system is “not funding the cost of the service...We would never say to a construction firm ‘OK, you’re telling us it costs $100 million, we’ll give you $80 million, and you just cross-subsidize with the private sector’...We wouldn’t do that.”
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by Luke Foley, Gotham Gazette
@GothamGazette
Mayor de Blasio (photo: Ed Reed/Mayor's Office)
Mayor Bill de Blasio’s recent meeting with federal prosecutors signalled that the investigation into his fundraising for his 2013 campaign and his now-defunct nonprofit, the Campaign for One New York, are winding down. There’s no indication yet whether the mayor or any of his associates will face charges, and the mayor’s office has stated that de Blasio himself is not the target of the probe. The administration is confident that “at all times the Mayor and his staff acted appropriately and well within the law,” according to a statement from the mayor’s press secretary, Eric Phillips, after the meeting.
For much of a year, de Blasio has been dogged by a trickle of news about the federal investigation and others being conducted, including that by the Manhattan District Attorney into his involvement in 2014 state Senate races, and relentless media questions. The mayor has fielded question after question about whether he encouraged a pay-to-play culture at City Hall by fundraising vast amounts from entities with city business.
Federal investigators and prosecutors are said to be looking at whether donors to the Campaign for One New York or de Blasio’s 2013 campaign were promised or given special treatment by de Blasio’s administration.
Along with arguing generally that he and his associates did nothing illegal, on multiple occasions the mayor has sought to defend himself by pointing out that the Campaign for One New York served a worthy cause, centrally the effort to establish universal pre-kindergarten, and was not meant as an instrument to enrich him or anyone else involved.
“What we were trying to do in those efforts was about things that would help everyday New Yorkers,” de Blasio said of the Campaign for One New York at a December 13 news conference. “You know there’s lots of other situations out there in the world, where people tried to line their pockets, you know work for their personal advantage. This was about trying to pass policies that would help everyday New Yorkers.”
What de Blasio’s rationale doesn’t account for, however, is that the consultants who worked on the Campaign for One New York -- the same consultants who worked on his 2013 mayoral campaign and are also employed in his 2017 reelection effort -- received hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees as they pushed its agenda. This, while at the same time some had clients with business before the city and some were also members of de Blasio’s inner circle, crafting government policy while not on the city payroll.
At a news conference on May 3, 2016, de Blasio first used the defense, when asked by a reporter if his actions were comparable to those of Sheldon Silver, the disgraced former speaker of the New York State Assembly who was convicted on federal corruption charges that same day. “I think these are entirely different matters,” the mayor said. “First of all, to the credit of everyone involved in this discourse, no one is talking about anyone lining their pockets, which unfortunately has happened in way too many instances.”
The Campaign for One New York (CONY) effort did push progressive policies, including universal pre-kindergarten and affordable housing policy, both core components of the mayor’s first-term agenda. The accomplishments in those areas also form the core of the mayor’s reelection message. The investigation into CONY does not appear to focus on whether people in the mayor’s orbit personally profited from the work, but whether government favors were offered or given to donors.
The CONY disclosures, voluntarily provided by the mayor’s team, show that his top consultants earned significant monetary compensation for their efforts running the nonprofit. These include BerlinRosen, which spearheaded the mayor’s 2013 campaign communications and continues to helm his reelection efforts. The company made nearly $550,000 for its work on CONY, out of about $4 million that the nonprofit raised in total over about two years.
Jonathan Rosen, who heads BerlinRosen, is also one of five consultants termed “agents of the city” by the mayor’s legal team in order to shield their communications with the administration from the public when those communications don’t involve their clients. Rosen and others have been intricately involved in helping de Blasio craft strategy and policy, though under fire for such arrangements and entering his reelection year, the mayor has removed those advisors from meetings. (De Blasio’s campaign spokesperson, of BerlinRosen, was also the CONY spokesperson, and declined to comment for this article.)
AKPD Message and Media received the most compensation from CONY, about $1.35 million, for promoting pre-kindergarten and affordable housing. John Del Cecato, a partner at AKPD, is also one of the “agents of the city” and was integral in de Blasio’s 2013 campaign.
Another two “agents of the city,” Nicholas Baldick and Bill Hyers of Hilltop Public Solutions, were also involved in CONY, earning just over $400,000 for their work. Hyers was de Blasio’s campaign manager in 2013 and his firm is also involved in the 2017 campaign. On Twitter, Hyers has repeatedly criticized the investigations into de Blasio, calling the federal probe "a pointless investigation" and the group "pointless inquiries."
Much of the money raised by the Campaign for One New York came from labor unions and real estate interests with city business. That money then went to the same consultants that helped de Blasio get elected -- his 2013 campaign, though, was limited by city election law both in how much it could raise from entities with city business and how much it could spend. CONY had no such restrictions.
The mayor’s defense hedges between what is legal and what is ethical, with the former up to prosecutors and grand jury members, and the latter a matter of some debate. “What he should’ve said was no one was lining their pockets illegally,” said Douglas Muzzio, professor of political science at Baruch College, calling it a “critical distinction.”
Muzzio noted that, if the investigations were to establish a quid pro quo among the administration, the nonprofit, and the donors, then the mayor’s defense “doesn’t fly.”
“It does raise questions about the role of consultants and the nebulous role of working for the campaign and turning around and lobbying the mayor,” he said. “De Blasio’s relying on a very fine distinction between what is ethically suspect and what is legal.”
Many have questioned whether the mayor, even if he was within the law, was right to do what he did. Comptroller Scott Stringer, a potential challenger to the mayor in the upcoming Democratic primary, called CONY a “slush fund” in July 2016, saying it should never have been created. “I think it does not work for this city and I think we need to enact strong rules," Stringer said the day the city’s Campaign Finance Board ruled that the mayor had not violated any laws in fundraising for the group.
The CFB nonetheless criticized de Blasio for bending the rules to the point of breaking. “New York City’s system depends on reasonable contribution limits that reduce the appearance that influence can be bought or sold through campaign contributions,” said then-CFB chair Rose Gill Hearn. “It defies common sense that limits that work so well during the campaign should be set aside once the candidate has assumed elected office.”
Since then, the city has adopted new laws -- originated and passed the City Council, then signed by de Blasio -- to limit groups like Campaign for One New York.
Jennifer Rodgers, executive director at Columbia Law School’s Center for the Advancement of Public Integrity and a former federal prosecutor, said that the mayor's money-into-pockets defense is understandable. “I think that when he says no one is lining their pockets, he means himself and people in his administration in their personal capacities,” she said. “It’s not that money wasn't being contributed.”
The significant sums of money that CONY paid to consultants appears to be beside the point of the investigation, Rodgers noted.
“You are not allowed to give political favors in exchange for money going anywhere,” Rodgers said. “I understand his point that no one is lining their pockets personally, but that doesn’t really matter and also is not what the public cares about. The reason for bribery laws is not to stop businessmen giving money, it’s to stop politicians from giving favors.”
Shortly after the news broke in December that two grand juries were hearing testimony on the federal and state investigations, de Blasio made his weekly appearance on WNYC’s The Brian Lehrer Show. “What matters here is we did everything by the law for good causes...The work we did was by the law, appropriate, above board to win pre-K, affordable housing, a Democratic State Senate,” de Blasio said. “And those were the right things to work for. Everything disclosed. No, no influence given to anyone in exchange.”
Amid accusations of doing favors for donors, the mayor in May promised that his administration will make public a list of donors who asked favors of the administration but were denied -- proof that his administration was not influenced by CONY or other donations. He has yet to produce that list and recently said he still plans to, but that the investigations must run their course first.
“It’s a whole conundrum, Brian, facing our entire campaign finance system,” de Blasio said on December 16 on WNYC. “What we should have is full public financing of elections. We should have a whole host of reforms that take money out of the equation in general. But since Citizens United, what we’re really living in is a world where a lot of people want unilateral disarmament. They want the wealthy and folks who, for example, have done huge amounts of advertising against me such as some of the hedge fund folks, to have all the freedom in the world to not disclose and spend anything they want. When the rest of us try to fight back and do it above board and with disclosure and with no inappropriate activity, it becomes such a major issue.”
[Related: The Risks of De Blasio's Interview with Federal Prosecutors]
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by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
@samarkhurshid @GothamGazette
Mayor de Blasio at Trump Tower (photo: Gotham Gazette)
Perhaps so as not to pour salt in the wound, Mayor Bill de Blasio took a few days to give his assessment of what went wrong for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential race. But, since he started to explain his take on how the Democrats blew it and the country wound up with Donald Trump as President, de Blasio has laid out in sharp terms what he believes should have been done differently.
“I think the campaign became about the wrong thing,” de Blasio said during a February 10 taping of Pod Save America, a podcast hosted by former aides to President Barack Obama, “...[it] focused on what was wrong with Donald Trump -- his character, his personality -- and not what we needed to do for the American people and how we needed to change things, and didn’t reference that extraordinary progressive platform enough.”
The mayor’s analysis, which he delivered almost jubilantly on the podcast and has given several times in recent months, appears to further validate his own 2013 victory and his philosophy around how Democrats must campaign throughout the country. It also seems to have served as definitional for him as he prepared his 2017 State of the City address, which he delivered on February 13, three days after taping the podcast in front of a live, friendly audience at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM).
“In the end,” de Blasio said on Pod Save America, “one thing you learn if you’re sort of listening to people, is everyone needs something to vote for, not just something to vote against.”
A few nights later at the Apollo Theater, in front of another supportive crowd, de Blasio headlined his primetime State of the City speech with a pledge to create 100,000 “permanent good-paying jobs” over the next 10 years. These, the mayor promised, will be jobs mostly in growth sectors like life sciences and pay at least $50,000 annually. The mayor framed it as “the next front line in the battle” against inequality and the city’s affordability crisis.
De Blasio outlined his approach to delivering on that promise to explain his administration is working to provide opportunity for people and, as he is also seeking re-election, giving them that “something to vote for.”
“I'm going to talk to you about the things that we are going to do as a city government, the investments we're going to make, and the impact we expect it to have,” de Blasio said during his State of the City.
Reading not from prepared remarks but from notes, de Blasio was at times repetitive, especially in hitting home that his activist, interventionist brand of government is doing what New Yorkers need.
He explained his “deeply held belief that the simple role of government is to respond to people's everyday lives, to constantly show that we can be there for people, that we can do something to change their lives.”
It was a speech, of course, but at times the mayor fell into the de Blasio pattern of telling instead of showing -- he was sure to say out loud what he wanted the emotional takeaways to be.
Directly connecting his analysis of the 2016 presidential election and his mayoralty, de Blasio said, “I have to tell you that so much of what we've seen this last year, so much of what we're talking about in this city and this country honestly stems from the fact that for too long people felt their lives weren't seen, their pain wasn't responded to, their needs weren't met. They felt that here, they felt that all over the country. They felt that when they looked at Washington D.C., and a lot of people voted in 2016 based on a pain that was very economic, very real. Because they hadn't seen answers.”
The same type of dissatisfaction with government, de Blasio was saying, propelled him into office in New York and Trump into the presidency.
One year after voters chose Trump in a stunning upset, de Blasio will be back on the ballot. He has begun his 2017 campaign by rolling out endorsements from several labor unions and elected officials. At events in which he accepts those endorsements, whether union halls or a Bronx church, de Blasio has showcased what his administration has delivered for New Yorkers -- universal pre-kindergarten, more affordable housing, neighborhood policing along with lower crime, and more. He must now convince voters, at least the Democrats that make up his political base, that he not only heard them, but followed through on his 2013 pledge to create a more equal city.
During his State of the City, before he turned to his new jobs push, de Blasio discussed the other side of the affordability coin: housing. He not only extolled the progress of his affordable housing plan, which aims to build or preserve 200,000 units of rent-regulated apartments over ten years and is on track to do so, but explained anti-eviction measures the city is undertaking to keep people in their homes and, in many cases, out of a shelter system that is busting at the seams. (The city’s homelessness crisis is a source of vulnerability for de Blasio.)
In the lead up to his speech, de Blasio had announced a deal with the City Council to fund a “right to counsel” in housing court, whereby qualifying tenants would receive free legal guidance or representation from the city.
Explaining the policy during his State of the City, de Blasio carefully articulated to New Yorkers that his administration is both fighting for them and giving them that “something to vote for.”
Describing the specifics of the policy, he provided the three instances where “you get a lawyer.”
When he turned to jobs, he said, “If it's going to be your city, we have to help you keep climbing the economic ladder. We have to help you get more and more opportunity.”
In the 2016 election analysis de Blasio had delivered just three nights before, he said that Hillary Clinton “had a working majority in...states that she lost, but people stayed home because it didn’t feel enough it was for them and about them.”
During his State of the City, de Blasio read his playbook out loud, saying, “People have to see and feel every single day that their government is working for them, is on their side, find a way to make their lives better.”
At a recent press conference, Gotham Gazette asked the mayor when he decided to eschew the traditional State of the City model of running through a lengthy list of proposals, plans, and goals in favor of focusing on one central theme, that of affordability.
After saying that the State of the City is worked on year-round and tinkered with until the last minute, de Blasio said, “Really, over the few weeks leading up to this speech, I thought a lot about what I had heard from people all over the city and what I heard at town hall meetings.” Because of how much he hears about affordability, he said, “I felt that it would be smart to focus on it.”
The mayor added that he felt he had given much public discussion to his policing and education agendas, among other well-worn topics, and, “When I thought about where we needed to add more to the public’s understanding of the direction we were taking, it seemed to me it was around affordability.”
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by Ben Max, Gotham Gazette
@tweetBenMax @GothamGazette