Mayor-Elect Eric Adams’ Biggest Campaign Promises
Eric Adams at a press conference with Mayor de Blasio (photo: Erica Sherman/Brooklyn BP's Office)
Eric Adams, the Democratic nominee for mayor, is running on a combination of classic political charisma, a blue-collar background, and a host of promises to transform New York City.
His nuanced approach to public safety and resume as a former cop and police reformer distinguished him in the Democratic primary, where he was among the more moderate candidates in a large field. In part because of his background and in part because the primary unfolded amid a large spike in gun violence, Adams' marquee campaign promise is to make the city safer while ensuring that policing is done appropriately and without racial bias. But his platform goes beyond pragmatic policing -- touching on many issues and problems with a range of proposed solutions.
As the Democratic nominee in a city where Democrats outnumber Republicans 7-to-1, Adams is almost assured to win when ballots are counted after the polls close Tuesday evening. Then, attention will shift to how he forms his government ahead of taking office January 1 and the steps he will take to follow through on his many promises.
Adams’ commitments revolve around making the city safer, services more accessible, and the economy more hospitable to doing business, whether for traditional mom-and-pop stores, big corporations, or burgeoning industries in the science, technology, and environmental sectors.
He is promising to create more affordable housing, significantly improve city schools, revamp public health, and take on climate change. A major part of his platform is making city services more accessible to New Yorkers and information more available to bureaucrats and watchdogs alike in an effort to improve their efficiency and effectiveness.
He has promised to be a huge friend to labor and to titans of industry, appoint the city's first woman police commissioner, transform what kids eat at school, create a single digital portal to distribute all city services, and more.
“We’re too bureaucratic, too expensive and too difficult to do business in,” Adams, the Brooklyn Borough President, said during the first of two mayoral debates against Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa. “We can turn around this economy by number one, looking after the families, getting them employed. And number two, have a more efficient government.”
But while ambitious in quality, Adams rarely puts numbers on his goals -- whether they are budget estimates, timelines, units, or recipients. There are some notable exceptions, like his commitment to creating 150 miles of new bus lanes and 300 miles of protected bike lanes. Or his goal of completing an ongoing effort to build 15,000 units of supportive housing by 2025.
Before public safety took center stage in the Democratic primary and Adams leaned into his policing bona fides, his biggest single idea on the campaign trail was his so-called MyCity app -- a one-stop shop where New Yorkers could sign up for virtually all government services. Through it New Yorkers could receive anything from pre-K to bulk trash pick-up. In his campaign policy book, this tool gets a lot of mileage, serving as a solution for problems ranging from food insecurity to unemployment to small business support.
The idea runs parallel to another big one: a single data platform to house every city government metric, which could be used by agency officials and the public to create a more efficient and accountable government.
"MyCity will allow users to type just one number into a secure app or website to instantly received [sic] every service and benefit they qualify for — such as SNAP — without an abundance of paperwork," Adams’ campaign website states.
He has also offered the portal as a solution to health disparities, as a conduit to existing city services, which he's promising to update and enhance.
The portal is also his biggest promise to small businesses, claiming it will ease administrative and financial burdens and cut through red tape. "They will be able to better manage paperwork and have direct access to permitting agencies, such as the Department of Buildings," the website reads, pledging: "Those who opt-in can use a chip-enabled City ID to sail through in-person interactions with agencies, instantly have access to a bank account, and even get loyalty discounts at participating local businesses. In sum, this a 311 for the digital age."
Veterans of city politics have noted how difficult this will be, especially for Adams, who, as borough president, has not had to manage a vast workforce or particularly complicated systems. "It’s going to be awfully hard to get this done; even the city’s Department of Education has had trouble consolidating and connecting its data systems," wrote Josh Greenman of the Daily News editorial board last July.
Part of centralizing the city's data would be a massive initiative to "skills map" each City Council district to find out what job skills are common and what training is needed to develop the workforce. Workforce training providers have been advocating for skills mapping and bridge programming for years but the city has so far only engaged in piece-meal initiatives. Doing what Adams promises will require significant person-power and funding; he has not said explicitly where these would come from but the answer may lie in some of the cost savings programs he's also promised -- if he can achieve them.
One of the salient themes of Adams’ platform is improving the services the city already has.
Looking ahead to managing the city’s roughly $100 billion annual operating budget and projected multi-billion-dollar deficits, he wants to institute a Program to Eliminate the Gap (PEG) to potentially reduce city agency spending from 3-5%, "while using an inequality impact test to protect programs vital to lower-income New Yorkers." The program would be overseen by a new "Efficiency Czar" who conducts quarterly agency audits and oversees large contracts, especially with utility companies, to ensure compliance with new standards. He also wants to establish an inter-agency advisory council to align city work toward his goals.
On Day 1, Adams said he would review use of all city property and contracts over $10 million to ensure New Yorkers are getting the most bang for their buck. Better using the city workforce and resources would also, ostensibly, enable the two-year hiring freeze he's promised to save $1.5 billion.
Efficiency and better management also applies to his approach to policing, where he wants to civilianize parts of the NYPD to save $500 million in personnel costs each year. He also wants to recruit more officers of color, insist new officers live in the five boroughs, and send top NYPD brass to executive leadership training. He has promised that within a year of his mayoralty, New Yorkers would see a drastic difference in policing and members of the NYPD would feel much more supported by the public, in large part because more supported, better trained, and more accountable department.
When it comes to on-the-ground tactics, Adams says his NYPD would continue using the controversial practice of stop-and-frisk but properly, meaning judiciously. “The average person can’t talk about how to properly use stop-and-frisk, but I can,” he told Eric Lach of The New Yorker, before the primary in May. “We’re not talking about just some average cat coming around. This is why people know me.”
Curtailing shootings is a top priority. Adams wants to "reinvent" the now-defunct plainclothes “anti-crime” unit as a dedicated gun violence squad without the belligerence and lack of accountability that made it so controversial. His website says he'll make this transformation not through structural change but with more sensitive recruitment: by "hiring officers with the skills and temperament for this kind of intense, on the ground police work by removing overly aggressive cops and by targeting known shooters with precision policing tactics." He has discussed creating a tri-state consortium to crack down on arms trafficking and place gun checkpoints across the city's transit system.
To improve police accountability, Adams has committed to publishing a "monitoring list" of cops identified as exhibiting bad behavior and making it easier for officers to report on one another anonymously. One of his goals is to create "a citywide law enforcement intelligence committee," with appointees from the Mayor's Office, City Council, Public Advocate, and borough presidents. The committee would have the power to view secret information on police cases and operations and determine how and when certain details would be made public. And Adams said he would give community boards and precinct councils the power to veto precinct commander hires.
Adams has vowed to continue on a trajectory of fostering new sectors of the city economy that dovetail with the changing climate.
He has promised to continue to build wind power generators along the city waterfront -- at South Brooklyn Marine Terminal, the Red Hook Container Terminal, Port Richmond, and the Brooklyn Navy Yard -- in tandem with upgrades to the city's electrical grid.
He has promised to change regulations to develop new industries, chiefly making New York City "the life sciences capital of the world," already a big priority of Mayor Bill de Blasio. "We will double-down on the existing life sciences initiative with incentives and zoning changes that will draw in private investment and federal dollars for research," his website says. On expanding urban agriculture, another of his lofty promises, Adams said he would change building codes and business regulations, and create tax breaks and guaranteed city contracts for entrepreneurs in the nascent industry.
After Hurricane Ida pummeled the city, killing more than a dozen New Yorkers, Adams released a climate resiliency plan. It included updating the city's early warning systems for extreme weather -- an effort already underway and something de Blasio recently committed to expediting -- bringing basement apartments up to code, and creating a building retrofit incentive program. The plan also included finishing unfunded NYCHA resiliency projects and "requiring a single comprehensive citywide resiliency plan," which is in line with legislation the City Council has now passed to mandate a climate adaptation plan and de Blasio is expected to sign into law.
On the campaign trail, Adams has advocated for year-round public education, more after-school options, and an expanding the Summer Youth Employment Program into a full-year initiative. He wants to improve remote learning options with more devices and better WiFi subsidized by a "data tax" on big tech companies that use and sell people's personal information.
Adams has indicated he opposes de Blasio's recent plan to phase out the city's gifted and talented programs for a new universal enrichment model with accelerated learning opportunities at every school, instead favoring a major expansion of the "G&T" enrichment courses, especially in underserved areas. He supports universal dyslexia screening and other support initiatives to curtail the school-to-prison pipeline. He's indicated he will support the expansion of charter schools in New York City, which are now limited by a state cap that has been hit. He has promised to take aggressive action to desegregate the city's highly-segregated schools, but it's not clear what those steps will be, other than through his affordable housing plans that he says will better integrate neighborhoods.
On the city's elite specialized high schools, which enroll disproportionately low numbers of Black and Latino students, Adams supports keeping the Specialized High School Admissions Test (SHSAT) as the sole admissions criteria for the eight schools where it is currently in place, five of which are under the city's control. He has said he will build a new specialized school in each borough that will consider the SHSAT and other academic metrics for admissions, in part to expand the number of specialized high school slots for top-performing students in each middle school. For the three specialized high schools -- Bronx Science, Stuyvesant, and Brooklyn Tech -- that require the SHSAT under state law, he has said it is up to state lawmakers to decide on any changes to admissions criteria.
One of Adams’ biggest promises is to create a “prenatal to career” continuum, including by providing childcare for children 0-3 for every family that cannot afford it. His childcare proposal focuses on subsidizing space for providers through tax incentives, building bonuses, and the use of city-owned buildings. His plan also depends, in part, on the success of childcare provisions in President Joe Biden's $1.75 trillion Build Back Better reconciliation plan, which is currently being negotiated in Washington: his policy book states, "we must also get much more out of our federal government."
On his website, he proposes using $6 billion in pandemic-related federal aid (much of which has already been spent by the de Blasio administration) to convert vaccination sites in low-income neighborhoods into permanent healthcare centers. He also wants to improve access to healthy foods, substance abuse treatment, and preventative care. Part of that includes reevaluating the location of treatment centers and expanding telehealth options.
On housing, Adams says he wants to chart a different path from the de Blasio administration, whose Housing New York initiative has been the biggest affordable housing program since the Koch administration. Where Housing New York has largely focused on rezoning lower-income neighborhoods to create more housing, including rent-regulated units, Adams wants to upzone wealthier neighborhoods and eliminate ‘community preference’ rules that opponents say contribute to racial segregation. One of his biggest promises in this regard is rezoning a large part of Manhattan's West Side.
"For years, our re-zonings focused on adding apartments in lower-income areas — which led to higher-income people moving in, making communities less affordable, and often forcing out longtime residents," Adams' website reads (though those assertions are disputed).
Unlike de Blasio’s goal of 300,000 new or preserved affordable units over 12 years, Adams' housing plan offers few specific figures as of yet. He says he will convert "a number" of city buildings into fully affordable housing and create "hundreds-of-thousands of affordable apartments" by legalizing accessory dwelling units, basement apartments, and SROs. It is among the many issues where expectations will be high for a Mayor Adams to release a more specific blueprint not long after he is in office.
One concrete housing commitment is to speed up the timeline of de Blasio's 15/15 Supportive Housing Initiative, intended to create 15,000 units of supportive housing over 15 years. Adams promises to reach that goal in 10 years, or by 2025.
Adams has promised to update the city's streetscape for greener modes of transit. He has backed Transportation Alternatives' 25x25 Challenge to repurpose a quarter of city streets for pedestrian and public transit use. Part of the plan is to build up the city's bus system with 150 miles of new bus lanes and busways and an "interconnected Bus Rapid Transit system starting on roadways with service roads in transit deserts."
Another part is adding 300 miles of protected bike lanes. He also wants to "speed up our conversion to all-electric buses," without commiting to a timeline.
One of his most straightforward and ambitious promises is committing a full 1% of the city budget to the Parks Department. By expanding the parks budget "we can fund long-deferred maintenance projects while achieving vital goals," his policy book states, like "making sure 100 percent of New Yorkers live within a 10-minute walk of a park by opening dozens of new public spaces, closing the park equity gap in high-need, underserved neighborhoods, and transforming 100 asphalt schoolyards into new green community playgrounds."
The current Parks Department budget is roughly $620 million -- about .6% of the $98.7 billion overall budget. Bringing it to 1% of the current budget would add over $360 million to the Parks Department, an increase of more than 150%.
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by Ethan Geringer-Sameth, reporter, Gotham Gazette
@GeringerSameth @GothamGazette
8 Things to Watch on Election Day 2021 in New York City
Voters voting in NYC (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)
Voting in the 2021 general election concludes on Tuesday, November 2, as New Yorkers elect a new mayor, City Council, and other citywide and borough-wide officials. There are likely to be few surprises, with Democrats expected to easily win most races because of their massive voter enrollment advantage in the city.
But anything can happen in politics and there are also several competitive races that may not be decided on election night, with many thousands of absentee ballots still to be counted. And there are a number of other important outcomes to keep tabs on that will impact the future of New York City and State.
Polls are open on Election Day in New York City from 6 a.m. and 9 p.m., and many winners are expected to be declared shortly after they close. New Yorkers and others are awaiting official word on who the next mayor of the country’s largest city will be, as well as the results of voting across the state on five proposed constitutional amendments, and much more.
Here are several things to watch as Election Day 2021 arrives:
1. Turnout
In the June primary election, voter turnout surged, in part thanks to actions the state took to encourage voting amid the COVID-19 pandemic and certainly due to the highly-competitive races for mayor and many other seats.
In the 2013 general election, the last time all of city government was on the ballot and few incumbents were eligible to run due to term limits, just over 1.1 million New Yorkers voted, out of roughly 4.6 million registered voters -- about 24% turnout.
In 2017, the last citywide election with a race for mayor (and one of the first Trump era elections where engagement leaped), the turnout number climbed slightly higher to about 1.16 million votes out of roughly 5 million registered voters -- about 23% turnout.
So far in the city’s 2021 election, 169,879 voters went to the polls during the nine-day early voting period that concluded October 31, the first time early voting has been allowed in New York for a mayoral race. It is unclear how many voters are casting ballots by mail in the still-expanded absentee voting method, though the New York City Board of Elections issued in the neighborhood of 200,000 ballots based on requests.
There are now roughly 5.6 million registered voters in New York City, including nearly 3.8 million Democrats, more than 1 million ‘independents,’ and 564,000 Republicans.
2. Adams on the Cusp of Victory, But by How Much
Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, the Democratic nominee for mayor, is poised for victory over his Republican rival Curtis Sliwa, founder of the Guardian Angels. With registered Democrats outnumbering Republicans nearly seven to one, Adams is all but assured a landslide victory. If he wins, Adams would become the second Black mayor in the history of New York City, after David Dinkins.
For most, the question is not if Adams will win, but by what margin.
In 2013, the last time there was an open race for mayor, Bill de Blasio won the general election with 795,679 votes, or 72.1%, against Republican Joe Lhota, who received 263,600 votes, or 23.9%. In 2017, de Blasio handily won reelection to a second term against Republican Nicole Malliotakis, who was then a member of the New York State Assembly and went on to be elected to the House of Representatives. De Blasio defeated Malliotakis 65%-27%.
3. Other Citywide Races
Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, a Democrat, is running for reelection after first winning his seat in a special election in 2019, when the then-Public Advocate Letitia James was elected State Attorney General. Williams is expected to easily defeat his opponents, which include Republican nominee Dr. Devi Nampiaparampil, Conservative Party nominee Anthony Herbert, and Libertarian Party nominee Devin Balkind.
Williams previously ran for lieutenant governor in 2018 against the incumbent at the time, Kathy Hochul, who became governor after Andrew Cuomo resigned earlier this year. Williams is openly considering a run for governor in the Democratic primary next year, which would pit him against Hochul and James in what is likely to be an intense and competitive race.
Brad Lander, a Brooklyn Council member who succeeded Bill de Blasio in District 39, is the Democratic nominee for comptroller and is expected to win against his Republican opponent, Daby Carreras, as well as Conservative Party nominee Paul Rodriguez and Libertarian nominee John Tabacco Jr.
Williams and Lander, both of Brooklyn, are longtime allies representative of the strength of the city's progressive wing that was unsuccessful in advancing a mayoral candidate.
4. Next Borough Presidents
Though most of the contests for borough president aren’t likely to be competitive, some could have significant ramifications for the different boroughs. While the position has limited formal powers, it comes with a significant voice in land use issues, a solid bully pulpit, and an opportunity to rise to higher office (as Eric Adams appears to be showing).
On Staten Island, there is one of the few competitive general election races in the city, in the one to succeed term-limited Borough President Jimmy Oddo. Republican Vito Fossella, a scandal-plagued former U.S. Representative, is attempting a political comeback. He faces Democrat Mark Murphy, who previously ran for Congress in 2012, and Conservative Party candidate Leticia Remauro.
In the Bronx, Council Member Vanessa Gibson, a Democrat, is likely to win and will make history as the first Black woman to serve in the borough-wide seat. She faces Republican Janelle King and Conservative candidate Sammy Ravelo.
In Manhattan, Council Member Mark Levine, the Democratic nominee, is expected to win the borough presidency. He faces Republican Louis Puliafito and Libertarian Michael Lewyn.
In Brooklyn, Council Member Antonio Reynoso, a progressive Democrat and a reformer, is set to succeed Eric Adams as borough president. Reynoso’s main competitor is Menachem Raitport, who is running on the Republican and Conservative Party lines. Also on the ballot are Shanduke McPhatter on the Voices for Change party line and Anthony Jones on the Rent Is 2 Damn High party line.
Reynoso’s ascendency would mark a notable development in the borough for both the progressive wing of the Democratic Party and the forces of change in Brooklyn who have been challenging the county party machinery. And, as the 2021 races are assessed more broadly, Reynoso’s win in Brooklyn has been joined with the strength of Williams and Lander, both Brooklynites, as part of the argument that the left has had a strong showing despite the more moderate Adams winning the mayoral primary over the progressive standard-bearer in that race, Maya Wiley.
In Queens, Borough President Donovan Richards will likely sail to reelection against Thomas Zmich, who is running on the Republican, Conservative, and Save Our City party lines. Richards won the seat last year in a special election and defended his spot in a close, contested primary in June.
5. The Next City Council
New Yorkers will elect a new class of the 51-member City Council on Tuesday, with dozens of new members as many current members are term-limited out of office. The Council is slated to hold a majority of women members for the first time, though the margin will not be clear until absentee ballots are counted and all races are decided.
While almost all of the 51 races are likely to go to Democrats (the Council currently has just three Republicans and a handful of conservative Democrats), there are a few competitive contests that are worth keeping an eye on.
In District 43 in southern Brooklyn, Council Member Justin Brannan, a first-term Democrat who is seeking to become Council speaker, is running for reelection. He faces Republican challenger Brian Fox. [Read: In Southern Brooklyn, Democratic City Council Member and Speaker Hopeful Tries to Hold Off Republican Challenger]
In District 32 in Southeast Queens, Republican Council Member Eric Ulrich is term-limited. Felicia Singh, a far left progressive Democrat, is attempting to flip the seat and faces a tough challenge from Republican nominee Joann Ariola, the conservative chair of the borough’s Republican Party and a Trump supporter (unlike Ulrich, who is a Never Trumper but is backing Ariola in the race). [Read: GOP County Chair vs Progressive Educator as Republicans Try to Hold Lone City Council Seat in Queens]
In District 50 on Staten Island, Republican Council Member Steven Matteo is out because of term limits. There is a three-way race to replace him in a district that has only ever elected Republicans. On the ballot are Republican nominee David Carr, Matteo’s chief of staff; Conservative Party nominee George Wonica, a real estate broker; and Democrat Sal Albanese, a former Council member from Brooklyn who moved to Staten Island several years ago and is also an attorney, former teacher and three-time mayoral candidate, and appears on the Staten Island 1st party line as well. [Read: Staten Island City Council Race One of Few Competitive General Election Contests]
In District 47, with Democratic Council Member Mark Treyger term-limited, there is a competitive race for his seat. The district, like neighboring District 48, tends to be more conservative than the rest of the borough. Democrat Ari Kagan, an aide in Treyger’s office who was hired to work there in the lead-up to his run for office, is facing off against Republican Mark Szuszkiewicz, a known sympathizer to the dangerous QAnon conspiracy theory.
The District 48 seat in Brooklyn has been vacant since the former Council Member Chaim Deutsch was expelled from the Council after pleading guilty to charges of tax fraud. Democrat Steven Saperstein, a special education teacher, is running for the seat against Republican Inna Vernikov, an attorney and small business owner. Though the district twice elected Deutsch, a Democrat, he was among the most conservative members of the Council, reflecting the political leanings of his district.
There are a handful of other Council races, including those in Districts 5 and 19, where Republicans may be able to post stronger margins than in most other districts in the city where Democrats dominate, while the safest Republican seat in the city, Staten Island’s 51st, is likely to remain represented by Council Member Joseph Borelli, an ardent Trump supporter and the likely next minority leader of the Council.
When the election is over, the race to be the next City Council Speaker, a position of immense power whose occupant is selected in January by the other members of the body, will take center stage.
6. Manhattan (and Brooklyn) District Attorney
Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, a three-term Democrat, declined to run for reelection this year while facing intense criticism over his handling of several cases and issues, triggering a competitive Democratic primary that saw eight candidates seek the nomination. Alvin Bragg, a progressive with prosecutorial experience, emerged victorious and is facing Republican Thomas Kenniff, a defense attorney, in the general election.
Given that the officeholder has immense powers of justice as the top prosecutor in Manhattan, and thus broader sway given the high-profile nature of the office, the race is among the most important of the 2021 election cycle. [Read: Debate Over Reform and Safety in Manhattan District Attorney General Election]
[WATCH: Manhattan District Attorney General Election Debate]
Meanwhile, Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez, a Democrat, is running unopposed for reelection to a second term.
7. Ballot Proposals
Voters across the state are faced with five yes-or-no questions on their general election ballot to approve or disapprove amendments to the state constitution. The measures, which are on the ballot after passing two consecutive classes of the state Legislature, include changes to the state’s redistricting process, an addition to the state Bill of Rights that would give New Yorkers a "right to clean air and water, and a healthful environment," same-day voter registration, no-excuse absentee voting, and expanding the jurisdiction of the New York City Civil Court.
[Read: New York Voters to Decide Fate of 5 Proposed Constitutional Amendments on General Election Ballot]
[WATCH: Get Ready to Vote on the 5 Ballot Questions]
8. Performance of the New York City Board of Elections
As with every election, all eyes will be on the New York City Board of Elections, which has a reputation for mismanaging the vote and has brought significant criticism upon itself, including after the primary this year.
There have long been calls to reform the Board to rid it of its patronage hiring system and partisan structure. In September, the State Senate held a hearing to examine the problems at the BOE as it considers legislation to improve its administration.
[Read: State Senate Examines Board of Elections at Oversight Hearing]
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by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
@samarkhurshid @GothamGazette
Ben Max contributed to this story.
Note - this article has been corrected to reflect the accurate early voting numbers. 169,879 New York voted early, not 724,680.
Eric Adams Vows to Overhaul How City Government Works; Experts Point to Several Essentials to Following Through
Eric Adams (photo: Erica Sherman/Brooklyn BP's Office)
Eric Adams believes government inefficiency is at the root of many ills that plague New Yorkers. The ineffective delivery of public services and waste of taxpayer dollars, he says, create the very inequality and suffering that city government is meant to ameliorate.
For years leading up to and throughout his run for mayor this year, Adams -- the two-term Brooklyn borough president and former state senator -- has been calling city government “dysfunctional” and pointing toward a new way of doing government business, a “real-time governance” model he says can revolutionize how the city serves New Yorkers.
Now on the verge of becoming the next mayor, the Democratic nominee has a plan to improve city government efficiency and service-delivery, reign in profligate spending, and ease access to public benefits. Though it is vaguely defined and missing an estimated price tag, among other details, Adams’ plan involves revamping and redesigning how city agencies coordinate and use data and technology. It is a monumental task that experts say can’t be done overnight and will require a drastically different approach to how the city currently employs and procures technological tools, among other shifts.
“Our city’s dysfunctional,” Adams said in an interview with Gotham Gazette, just prior to launching his campaign. “Inefficiencies are leading to inequalities that are causing the injustices that we are witnessing.” He has harped on that theme throughout, even recently at the second official general election debate. “We’re too bureaucratic, too expensive, and too difficult to do business in,” he said. “We can turn around this economy by number one, looking after the families, getting them employed. And number two, have a more efficient government.”
The mayor of New York City is in charge of what is now a $100 billion budget, more than 300,000 public employees, and a sprawling city government that includes roughly 40 departments and offices. It is at once inefficient and bloated, full of calcified bureaucracy and stifled by many rules and regulations meant to avoid past abuses of the public trust and also capable of nimbly accomplishing major feats and bringing some order to the sprawling, diverse city of almost 9 million residents. Adams is promising, if elected, to turn it on its head.
The former police captain references often that he started his career in law enforcement as a programmer, and he wants to take an approach to city government that replicates CompStat, the NYPD’s digital crime-tracking tool that delivers regularly updated information on incidents around the city and is regularly used for intra-departmental and public accountability, strategy reevaluation, and more. It is credited by many, including Adams, with significantly improving policing via the use of data and analytics and a more proactive and precise approach. Adams’ plan to fully use real-time governance across city government would be similar, but would be a massive undertaking.
He has promised to establish a single data platform for all of city government under an “efficiency czar,” with constant information sharing among city agencies to eliminate duplicative work and “go from a reactive management approach to being proactive and, eventually, predictive,” according to his campaign website.
Each agency would have a real-time public score – as opposed to the twice-a-year Mayor’s Management Report on city agency performance – akin to Boston’s CityScore system. A public score would show, if Boston’s system is any indication, whether trash collection and parks maintenance is on time, if graffiti is being cleaned, if homicides, shootings and stabbings are trending up or down, for example.
And Adams has pledged to create the centralized MyCity digital portal allowing New Yorkers to immediately access city services and benefits like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (colloquially known as food stamps), rental assistance, business licenses, unemployment assistance and the like.
“It's a long time coming to actually build a personalized version of NYC.gov,” said Noel Hidalgo, cofounder of BetaNYC, a civic technology group. “And to do so it is a massive investment in building digital services for all New Yorkers, which we have not seen.”
Adams has promised to ensure that city agencies will stop working at cross-purposes, in part by following what he’s said will be a Day One order to reevaluate their mission statements in concert. And, broadly speaking, things involving government will happen much faster, he’s pledged: for example, new restaurants will be able to get their permits and inspections done and open more quickly under an Adams administration.
“Eric believes that many of the problems created by the City’s dysfunctional agencies can be addressed through better use of data and technology,” said Evan Thies, a spokesperson for Adams’ campaign. “One of Eric’s top priorities during transition would be to vet possible solutions to improving the systems we rely on for the efficient delivery of City services so that he can immediately begin providing a better quality of life to New Yorkers who depend on their government every day.”
Adams has yet to offer more detail about those plans, the timelines for achieving them, or the costs they will incur. Experts say those proposals would require a new technological and digital service infrastructure to replace the antiquated and disparate elements that currently manage different functions. For instance, the city has a Mayor’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer and a Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications, which are separate entities with overlapping purviews that report to different deputy mayors. (There is also a centralized Cyber Command that oversees cyber defense for all city agencies.)
However complicated they may be to execute, Adams’ ideas aren’t pie in the sky. There are current models employed in other jurisdictions. Besides Boston’s CityScore, experts point to gov.UK, the United Kingdom’s national centralized portal that covers everything from applying for state financial benefits to citizenship applications, drivers licenses, and even filing taxes. Another example is the government of Estonia, where 99% of government services are online.
“This could be done extremely inexpensively and easily, basically, at this point,” said Devin Balkind, a civic technologist and Libertarian candidate for public advocate.
Balkind said the city needs to move away from its current approach to building technological solutions, which relies on contracts with large tech firms that deliver customized and proprietary products (as opposed to open source) that city has a difficult time leaving behind. “The city basically contracts out all of the software to people who, their number one economic incentive is to make sure that they keep getting contracts,” he said.
“If Adams follows the IT strategy that the city has been following for decades, which is outsourcing software development to for-profit companies that are developing proprietary solutions that lock him in, he is in for a billion-dollar boondoggle,” Balkind added.
Instead, he said the next administration should model best practices like those used by the federal government through 18F, a digital services team housed under the General Services Administration. If Adams follows the digital service organization principle, “which is open source first, build it in-house leveraging open source components, publish it as open source, engage the developer community, he could do this faster, better, and cheaper,” Balkind said.
Civic tech experts like Balkind have for years railed against the city government’s slow pace to adapt modern digital solutions. City agencies at large, he said, have been resistant to establish automated decision-making processes. There have been some efforts, however. The Bloomberg administration launched ACCESS NYC, which helps people determine their eligibility for government benefits. The portal was relaunched in 2017 by the de Blasio administration and, spun out of it, the city created ACCESS HRA where New Yorkers can apply for SNAP benefits. It was only in March 2020, when the pandemic hit the city, that ACCESS HRA allowed online applications for cash assistance too.
ACCESS NYC was an innovation of NYC Opportunity, which is housed under the Mayor’s Office with the stated goal of reducing poverty and inequality in the city. Under de Blasio, the office attempted to create a centralized ‘data locker’ of sorts that would store all the necessary information that New Yorkers would need to apply to various city services.
Hana Schank, director of strategy for Public Interest Technology at New America, a nonprofit think tank, worked with NYC Opportunity on that project, which was funded by The Rockefeller Foundation. “That was three years ago,” Schank said in a phone interview. The team did produce a digital product that ended up being delivered to the city of Baltimore. “The one that was produced for New York ran into so many hurdles that we haven't even been able to pilot it,” she said.
Part of the reason the project failed, she said, was “because there was no executive muscle behind the project...It's been completely derailed by the fact that there isn't a champion.”
“You cannot make these projects go without someone at the very top saying, ‘This is the most important thing. This is your North Star. This is what your agency is now focusing on,” Schank added. “At least since Bloomberg, there has been no tech North Star for the city.”
“There's a tremendous amount of inertia in government that he's going to have to overcome to be able to deliver these solutions,” Balkind said of Adams, if he’s the next mayor.
As Balkind noted, the next mayor already has access to all, or at least much of, the data needed to produce (a close approximation of) real-time scores of city agencies. The city collects hundreds of data sets from agencies and periodically publishes them to the Open Data Portal. For example, things like the number and type of 311 requests made every year, the number of active for-hire vehicles on city streets, motor vehicles collisions, and citywide payroll data, to name a few of the most popular data sets.
The next requisite steps would be to make that data easily machine readable, update it faster and more regularly, and figure out performance metrics for city agencies, which could require establishing new benchmarks. Adams has not detailed what his version of real-time city governance would look like and how it would be used on a daily or weekly basis by his administration, other than as a public accountability tool.
“It has almost nothing to do with funding...It has everything to do with changing the way the city builds technology,” Balkind said of creating the necessary infrastructure.
“All the ingredients are there for massive success. It's a question of whether he can understand the game and deliver reform,” he added.
“He hasn’t as borough president done anything that I've seen that indicates that he has a grasp of how to actually implement digital solutions,” Balkind cautioned. But, the mayor of New York City has far greater resources at their disposal than a borough president, and Adams has now promised to deliver this new way of doing government and showing its effectiveness as among his top campaign promises.
Chris Whong, a civic technologist and Outreach Engineer at Qri, had a series of prescriptions for a potential Adams administration. Whong previously spent three years at the New York City Department of City Planning, where he founded NYC Planning Labs, a digital services unit that has launched interactive digital portals using data to visualize the city’s urban landscape.
In an email, Whong said the new administration should require all agencies to publish performance metrics in a standard machine-readable format, create reasonable data standards for city services, hire the right people, use free and open source software and be agile.
“The last bit is important. You can't really be agile if you specified all of the functionality up front in a contract,” he wrote. “They say software is done like the dishes are done. It's not a project, it's a program. Fund it and maintain it as such.”
He also noted that the products created by the city should be consumer-friendly. “Quick and inexpensive are only part of the equation,” he wrote. “The products must also be good. Delightful even. ‘The software must not suck’ is not something you can put in an RFP, you need someone in charge who has the vision and resources necessary to build delightful digital products.”
Among the challenges that Whong and other experts pointed to is the city’s civil service system for government jobs, which “doesn't have roles that match those required for modern digital service delivery. Product Managers, UX/Interaction Designers, Content Designers, Frontend, Backend, Full-stack engineers, etc, are all required to build modern digital services.”
The solutions that Adams has promised have been a cause for optimism for Rohit Aggarwala, senior fellow at Cornell Tech’s Urban Tech Hub, under the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute on Roosevelt Island. Aggarwala led the Hub’s efforts to examine technological solutions for the city’s future, presented in a report titled “Rebooting NYC” that was released in May.
“All of Eric Adams’ ideas are the right ideas,” Aggarwala said in a phone interview. The centralized platform for services is “long overdue,” he said, and that real-time reporting would be a drastic improvement on the Mayor’s Management Report, which was once considered state-of-the-art but hasn’t been for decades.
“It would be ridiculous to think that these should be billion-dollar proposals,” Aggarwala said, echoing Balkind. “The challenge with these is not actually going to be cost...The challenge with these is going to be how you organize the technology functions within city government, and whether you can staff up so that you can manage technology problems.” He cited the duplicative nature of the city’s CTO and DoITT as epitomizing that issue. “They, as far as I can tell, don't work together very well and that's not about the individuals, that's institutional,” he said.
Aggarwala, who was previously director of long-term planning and sustainability under Mayor Michael Bloomberg and was a founding member of Sidewalk Labs, said Adams should avoid the pitfalls of how technology has been handled by mayoral administrations so far.
“We've allowed there to be what happens in many corporations where none of the really senior people, i.e. no deputy mayor, nobody who reports directly to the mayor is both focused on technology implementation and sufficiently savvy about the technology to manage it well,” he said. Among the recommendations of the Rebooting NYC report is that the city should establish a Deputy Mayor for Technology to replace the Chief Technology Officer and break up DoITT into smaller agencies that report to that deputy mayor.
Currently, DoITT runs and maintains the city’s information technology infrastructure, performing that function for all city agencies. It’s purview also includes managing 311 operations, expanding broadband to underserved communities and generally improving the city’s technology services.
Another necessary step Adams should take, Aggarwala said, is to bring in a mass of new technology talent, to prevent outsourcing of work and to build tech tools more efficiently. He cited, for instance, the disastrous attempts at technological solutions to respond to the covid pandemic. The most egregious example was the city’s and state’s failure to create stable working systems for vaccine appointments, which led an independent software designer, Huge Ma, to develop the widely praised TurboVax website. (He received a State Senate proclamation for his efforts, among other recognition.)
“A well-run government shouldn't need that kind of help for core mission critical functions,” Aggarwala said.
[Read: Experts Release Agenda for Next Mayor to Better Use Technology in Solving City Problems]
Most of the experts interviewed for this article pointed to the slow evolution of the city’s digital technology. As Aggarwala noted, when the Mayor’s Management Report (MMR) was first launched, it was state of the art. The same could be said about NYC.gov, the city’s website, and the 311 helpline. But they have all stagnated, experts agree.
“I think we learned after this pandemic how important government technology is in delivering services and we saw many failures,” said Emil Skandul, founder and principal of Capitol Foundry, a digital innovation firm, in a phone interview.
Skandul said the city needs to replace the current waterfall approach to technology – chronologically delivering a project that may become outdated in the years it takes to complete – with a more agile method, relying on adaptable and modifiable technology that can be tweaked and improved constantly with “an entire team around this that's going to exist permanently, that's going to grow.”
“The way that we envision a City portal right now, it’s needs are not going to be the same two or three years from now,” Skandul said. “There's going to be other technology that's going to exist, there's going to be new features that are going to have to be built into it. So it can’t just be a project that’s handed over to city government at the end of a six-month contract and boom, we're done.”
“This is such an ambitious project that I really think that it will take many years to develop and build,” he added of Adams’ vision. “And if it's done correctly, it's going to be one of the most impactful things for New Yorkers over the next decade.”
Adams’ ideas already have some apparent support in the City Council. Council Member Bob Holden of Queens introduced a bill in June to create a “centralized mobile application for accessing city services.” Holden’s office did not respond to a request for comment for this article.
Council Member Ben Kallos, a Manhattan Democrat, has been an evangelist for improving municipal digital services, particularly through open source software. “The fact that we're in the 21st century and so much of the government still requires a paper application is a problem,” he said in a phone interview.
Kallos, who is term-limited out of office at the end of this year, has repeatedly expressed frustration at the meager progress in civic technology solutions under the current administration. “Mayor de Blasio rolled out a lot of dashboards, but at the end of the day, 311 still doesn't work,” he said, pointing to a City Council oversight hearing on Tuesday on the NYPD’s apparent mishandling of 311 complaints. He was optimistic that an Adams administration could make major strides, and reiterated the expert consensus that the city needs an agile in-house team of software developers to create and consistently improve digital service platforms, rather than relying on major technology firms to deliver a finished product.
“If Eric approaches this with a Big Tech mindset, spending millions of dollars to launch something that is ready on day one with a big bang, then we're gonna have healthcare.gov all over again,” Kallos said, citing the Obama administration’s botched rollout of the Affordable Care Act’s enrollment portal. “We can do this inexpensively, we can do this scalably. And we can do it in-house so that we can keep making changes,” he said.
But, Kallos warned, “none of this works unless we end the digital divide. Because the same people who are going to get these benefits are the same people who need the internet to get them.”
The pandemic exposed the harsh truth that in the richest city in the richest country in the world, nearly one out of five New Yorkers lack consistent access to the internet, which was a necessary tool to interact with the government when the city shut down. Mayor de Blasio has taken slow steps to bridge that digital divide, including with his Internet Master Plan, which he launched in January 2020 and accelerated in July at the height of the pandemic.
On Thursday, he announced several milestones and new projects under the plan. By the end of the year, 40,000 NYCHA residents in 18 developments will receive free or low-cost internet options. Over the next 36 months, the city will spend $157 million to build publicly-owned, open-access broadband infrastructure, reaching 1.6 million people. And the city will also choose several companies to provide affordable internet options to 70,000 NYCHA residents and 150,000 residents in neighboring communities by early 2022.
Kallos and Adams have their own plan for expanding broadband. The two partnered on a white paper with several proposals, including “rezoning to require affordable Mandatory Inclusionary Internet, just like we required affordable housing with Mandatory Inclusionary Housing.”
“This next administration is going to have to hit the ground running and work on multiple things at the same time,” Kallos said. “It's the equivalent of building a car while you're driving it.”
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by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
@samarkhurshid @GothamGazette
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