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De Blasio Breaks with His Police Department as Council Passes Surveillance Transparency Bill


de Blasio NYPD

Another chapter between Mayor de Blasio and the NYPD (photo: Edwin J. Torres/Mayor's Office)


A long-stalled bill meant to shed light on the surveillance equipment used by the NYPD has suddenly moved through the City Council with the support of Mayor Bill de Blasio, despite being virtually unchanged since the mayor and NYPD leaders raised dire alarms about it in recent years. Now de Blasio is breaking with his own police department, which he has maintained has been on board with a slew of recent changes to NYPD oversight and discipline in the wake of national unrest.

The Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology (POST) Act would require the police department to report what monitoring equipment it has and the rules governing its use, which is almost entirely unknown outside of the NYPD. The City Council, which passed the bill 44-6 Thursday, says it will provide much needed transparency on how spy tech is used on members of the public, but the mayor and NYPD have for years said it would pose a threat to officers' safety and that decades of progress thwarting terrorist plotters would be lost. Department officials continued to speak out against the act as it was being passed.

Yet on Wednesday, in response to questions from a reporter about whether he would sign the bill, de Blasio said that he does indeed support it. "I've looked at [it] carefully and, as I think I said to you, my concern was to balance transparency with our ability to deal with profound safety concerns, including terrorism, which unfortunately still is a part of our lives. But I am convinced that the wording of the act is appropriate, is balanced, so I'm comfortable supporting it," he told Jillian Jonas of WBAI radio at a press briefing, who asked him about the fact that Council leaders had announced plans to pass the bill, which was first introduced in 2017 during the last Council class and de Blasio's first term.

The bill now awaits the mayor's signature.

The legislation has not changed substantially since it was first introduced in June 2017 and the NYPD still strongly opposes it. In a statement to Gotham Gazette Thursday, shortly before the POST Act was passed, NYPD spokesperson Detective Sophia Mason wrote: "With a minor change, this bill would achieve both transparency and public safety and safety for our most vulnerable officers, our undercover police officers. Unfortunately, the version being voted on today does not achieve these goals."

"To be clear, the bill, as currently proposed would literally require the NYPD to advertise on its website the covert means and equipment used by undercover officers who risk their lives every day. No reasonable citizen of New York City would ever support that," she wrote. Mason did not specify what the "minor change" was that NYPD had sought.

The POST Act mandates the NYPD publish the "description and capabilities, rules, processes and guidelines, and any safeguards and security measures designed to protect the information collected," according to the Council's plain language summary of the bill. It also requires the department to solicit public feedback on usage policies before finalizing them.

NYPD officials have maintained that revealing how surveillance technology is used would give terrorists and organized crime a step-by-step guide to avoiding the department's eyes and ears and could endanger undercover operatives and witnesses.

Last fall, the police department had roughly 2,000 members working in its intelligence and counterterrorism units, according to Deputy Commissioner for Intelligence and Counterterrorism John Miller, speaking on the Max and Murphy podcast. In the two decades since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the city's Joint Terrorism Task Force expanded from a dozen detectives to over 100, Miller said. During that time, the NYPD has purchased military grade surveillance equipment, from cell phone monitoring devices, and X-ray vans, according to a statement from Council Speaker Corey Johnson, to thousands of security cameras and license plate readers. How exactly those technologies are used and interact with the new frontier of artificial intelligence, like facial and speech recognition, is not known.

Over the same period, the nature of terrorist threats in New York City has changed almost entirely from large-scale attacks made by complex terrorist organizations, like Al Qaeda, to lone-wolf rampages by radicalized individuals, Miller said. The police have been using surveillance since well before the NYPD had a counter-terrorism office, and Miller frequently noted the POST Act could also endanger narcotics operations, raising questions about the extent of public surveillance within and beyond the scope of counter-terrorism.

The assertion that the POST Act could jeopardize officer or public safety is "plainly wrong because we are only requiring a privacy policy associated with new technology," said one the bill's original sponsors, former Council Member Dan Garodnick, in an interview. "This equipment today is bought in secret, used in secret, and there is absolutely nobody outside the NYPD who could attest to the fact that New Yorkers' privacy is being protected."

"Today, NYPD surveillance often is no better than digitized stop-and-frisk. These programs are biased, broken, and deeply damaging to a democratic society," wrote Albert Fox Cahn, executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, which advocated for the legislation.

Garodnick and NYPD officials had several tense back-and-forths after the bill was introduced.

In June 2017, de Blasio said he opposed the bill because privacy protections were "baked in" to police practices and that "real checks and balances" were already in place, AMNY reported. Last week, the mayor told reporters, "I would have to see the language," before he could support the legislation.

The language is largely unchanged, except for a provision requiring the impact and use policies include an analysis of potential disparate impacts on any protected group defined in the city's Human Rights Law, according to Michael Sisitzky, lead policy counsel at the New York Civil Liberties Union, which supports the bill. "Otherwise, there’s just some technical things like renumbering of sections," he said.

After co-sponsoring it last session, Council Member Vanessa Gibson reintroduced the bill this session (Garodnick was term-limited out of office after 2017), and there have been similar exchanges between members of the Council and the NYPD at hearings where the bill has been considered. Earlier this week, Johnson, Gibson, and other Council members decided to advance the bill along with a package of other police reforms against the backdrop of weeks of protest.

The mayor's newfound support for the bill is part of a slew of about-faces he has taken on police issues in recent days in response to massive protests demanding changes to police practices -- and widespread criticism that he has aligned with the NYPD over demonstrators despite fashioning himself as a police reformer. The mayor's office did not answer questions about how he has come to support the bill after long siding with his police department.

Police Commissioner Dermot Shea, who had been a regular fixture of the mayor's daily briefings, has been absent in recent days as the mayor has announced significant changes to NYPD transparency and discipline.

Along with the two public hearings, the NYPD met with the bill sponsors to share concerns several times since it was first introduced.

Last fall, Deputy Commissioner Miller said on Max & Murphy, "We said if you made these changes this bill could work for both causes. Both transparency but not so much transparency that we would either be letting criminals get away or putting police officers or witnesses or victims in danger -- and they took copious notes." But Garodnick returned with the same bill, Miller said, having addressed none of the department's concerns.

"Despite these reasonable discussions, the council has repeatedly introduced the same bill with no changes," wrote Detective Mason, the NYPD spokesperson, Thursday. "The NYPD cannot support a law that seems to be designed to help criminals and terrorists thwart efforts to stop them and endanger brave officers."

"It became clear to me that they did not want to have a serious conversation about how to address any concerns they might have," Garodnick said Thursday. "They just wanted to kill the bill. I can't even say that I could articulate what their specific [requests were] -- and I was always willing to have that conversation."

In an op-ed published in the Daily News Thursday, Felicia Richards and Larry Fuchs, presidents of the NYPD's Guardian Association and Hispanic Society, respectively, wrote that an additional sentence in the bill could go far to protect undercover officers and informants: “The Police Commissioner will have the authority to exempt from this reporting any device(s) used by officers acting in an undercover capacity, or individuals acting at their direction (informants or cooperating witnesses) if the description of the technology or device and public disclosure of same would endanger the lives of police officers or others.”

It’s unclear why the officials waited until the bill was being passed to provide that sentence publicly.

Asked why she thought the bill was moving ahead now, Gibson told Gotham Gazette, "Today’s vote would not be possible without the Speaker’s leadership on this issue and the persistent push from several of our civil rights and civil liberties groups that have been by our side from the beginning."

"The decision to move forward with a vote on the POST Act is a tremendous win for us and all of the amazing advocates that have supported this bill since its conception," she wrote in an email.

"This is an important transparency initiative to protect the privacy rights of New Yorkers and to provide real oversight of the NYPD," Garodnick said. "That's what it was then and that's what it is now. The difference is that there is now a will to get it done."

***
by Ethan Geringer-Sameth, reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

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Juneteenth Arrives Amid Resurgence of Black Lives Matter Movement


Black History Month at Gracie Mansion

A Black History Month celebration at Gracie Mansion (photo: Rob Bennett/Mayor's Office)


Activists plan to utilize Juneteenth, which each June 19 commemorates the end of slavery in the United States, as a way to continue momentum behind the Black Lives Matter movement. Advocates, Black elected officials, candidates for office, and others will rally, protest, and celebrate with events around the city, in continuation of the uprising reignited after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

“Black joy is an act of resistance,” said Natasha Capers, the director of the New York City Coalition for Educational Justice, which will hold a virtual block party for Juneteenth. June 19 marks the day in 1865 that Major General Gordon Granger of the Union Army announced to enslaved people in Texas that they were free, two-and-a-half years after Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.

Along with policing and criminal justice reforms, long-standing calls to make Juneteenth a holiday have gained additional attention this year. Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, a Texas Democrat, has repeatedly introduced federal legislation to observe Juneteeth as a national holiday with appropriate ceremonies, activities, and programs. Senators Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Ed Markey, and Tina Smith just announced their intention to introduce a bill with the same purpose.

Forty-six states recognize Juneteenth, according to a fact sheet by the Congressional Research Service.

New York acknowledges the day’s significance but currently does not celebrate it as a holiday with time off. Governor Andrew Cuomo issued an executive order this week observing June 19 as a holiday for state employees, and promised to advance legislation, which has been championed by Queens Assemblymember Alicia Hyndman, to make it an official state holiday next year. The same day as Cuomo’s executive order, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams sent Mayor Bill de Blasio a letter asking him to make Juneteenth a city holiday. On the morning of Juneteenth, de Blasio announced that he would be moving to make it a city and school holiday starting in 2021.

Friday gatherings will occur in-person and online, with organizers integrating commemoration with their desire to push for reform and action. In recent weeks in New York, Cuomo, the State Legislature, de Blasio, and the City Council have all moved several reforms related to police accountability and racial justice.

Cuomo signed several pieces of what he called the “Say Their Name” agenda, bills passed by the Legislature that repeal the 50-A section of state civil rights law blamed for shielding police disciplinary records; ban chokeholds by law enforcement officers; prohibit false race-based 9-1-1 reports; and designate the Attorney General as an independent prosecutor for matters relating to civilian deaths at the hands of the NYPD. The Legislature also passed and Cuomo signed a law requiring the state police to wear body cameras, and more.

On Thursday, the New York City Council passed a package of bills that make police chokeholds and the covering of police badges illegal; bring more transparency to what surveillance tools the NYPD uses; mandate the police department use a “disciplinary matrix” to ensure clearer lines of accountability; and more.

Those bills come after de Blasio has pledged to make some police body camera footage available within 30 days; and create an online database of police disciplinary charges and outcomes, which he said is allowed based on the repeal of 50-A. The mayor also announced new, shorter timelines around police discipline in some of the most serious instances of alleged misconduct.

And, de Blasio said that he would work with the City Council to shift some yet-to-be-determined amount of funding from the NYPD’s $5.9 billion operating budget to youth services, though he said that the $1 billion reduction in the police department’s budget that City Council Speaker Corey Johson and others called for is too high a number. He also said he disagreed with calls from Johnson and others to move school safety out of the police department.

With significant wind at their backs, some organizers see Juneteenth as an opportunity to push for more change and demand specific promises to move police funds to Black communities.

Capers said that with its fourth annual Juneteenth event, the New York City Coalition for Educational Justice aims to combine celebration and advocacy, spreading awareness about education disparities while enjoying the day.

“Our goal is to, one, have a joyous event that allows us to have some laughs, allows us to be in community and fellowship together, just as Juneteenth allows us to have every year to celebrate who we are as a people,” Capers said. “But to also do some deep organizing and continue to put pressure on Mayor de Blasio and Speaker Johnson.”

According to Capers, CEJ’s current top priority is rerouting NYPD funds to education as the July 1 deadline approaches for a new city budget. She said repurposing $1 billion of NYPD funding could mean no cuts from education and support for programs like youth mental health services.

According to the CEJ event page, the Juneteenth advocacy rally will call for de Blasio and Johnson to defund the NYPD, implement police free schools, and fund culturally responsive education. CEJ will use creative ways to spread the message virtually through games, song, dance, and art, according to Capers.

As an education-focused organization, she said CEJ also wants to use the day to educate others on Black history.

“I think it’s always important for us to uplift these important days,” said Capers. “But we also use that as an opportunity to tell folks more about Juneteenth, and to elevate, this is actually why we need culturally responsive education in our schools.”

While Capers plans CEJ’s fourth annual Juneteenth event, Giselle Burgess readies her first. 

Burgess is using her organizing skills as a Girl Scouts of America program manager, as well as a candidate for the City Council’s 26th District in Queens in next year’s election. She said she appreciates the elected officials who have shown support for the Black Lives Matter movement, but the city needs to move NYPD funds towards social issues such as affordable housing, education, public assistance, and food security.

“I know they can’t guarantee change as fast as we want it,” Burgess said of elected officials. “But at the same time at least, you know, some type of support is what I’m expecting in return, and also knowing if there’s policy changes that you hear us crying for and shouting for, make it happen.”

Burgess said recent organizing around George Floyd’s death inspired her to start the Black Lives Initiative, a non-profit organization that will teach activism to city youth. She partnered with a local young person, Larry Malcolm Smith Jr., to plan her Juneteenth march from 83rd Street and Roosevelt Avenue in Queens to the Flushing Meadows Park Unisphere.

“We’re opening a path for youth to continue leading and so we see sustainable change,” said Burgess. “And I want the youth to feel encouraged and see that they have a support system.”

Other candidates for office -- such as Diane Morales, a Black Boricua and former CEO of a Bronx-based social services nonprofit who is running for mayor in the 2021 election -- and current Black elected officials -- such as Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, State Assemblymembers Alicia Hyndman and Clyde Vanel, and City Council Members Farah Louis, Laurie Cumbo, and Daneek Miller are attending or leading Juneteenth celebrations. Many officials and New Yorkers of other races and ethnicities will also be participating. City Comptroller Scott Stringer, for example, will join Public Advocate Williams, Reverend Mark Thompson, and others for a motorcade and march from Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn to the Adam Clayton Powell Jr. State Office Building in Harlem to honor lives lost to police brutality.

Although people recognize Juneteenth as a day of joy, planning protests around justice for Black people still feels bittersweet to some. D’Nike Amma, a mental health counselor and church youth director, is planning a protest called “When Mothers Cry,” which will rally mothers together for Juneteenth. As a mother, grandmother, and maternal figure in her community, Amma said she felt troubled by George Floyd’s call for his mom in his final moments.

“I could not sleep,” said Amma. “Whether we are white or whether we are black, every mother could have related to that incident.”

Amma, who speaks as a youth director at the 67th precinct’s clergy association, plans to go to the 67th and 77th precincts in Brooklyn and invite police chiefs to pray with protestors. She said she feels the 67th precinct does interact with the community, but that there are problems.

“Every police officer has a mother and my question to them would be, ‘Would your mother be proud of what you did?,’” said Amma. “It is an honor to be a policeman, it should be a privilege to be a policeman because you get the opportunity to turn things around.”

While Amma works on behalf of youth, young people have started leading their own protests. For some like Jalen Robinson, a 20-year-old Brooklynite and college junior, Juneteenth will mark their first time organizing a march. Robinson said he expected to raise $100 for protest supplies through his personal Venmo and Cash App accounts, but ended up securing over $1,500, the surplus donated to the National Police Accountability Project.

“The outpouring of support has been extremely inspiring, and it shows that there’s a lot more people in this fight than we think,” said Robinson. His aims for the protest, which will start at the Brooklyn Museum and end at Cadman Plaza, include amplifying Black creators, fighting for all Black lives, and productive conversation, he said.

Robinson said that while he appreciates Governor Cuomo’s police-centered legislation, the city should cut the police budget, stop over-policing in Black neighborhoods and reinvest into underfunded communities instead of more reforms to the NYPD.

“I know the governor has made comments recently about how like, we’ve won already and we should stop protesting because we won and it’s over,” said Robinson. “And I think the biggest message that we’re trying to send is that it’s not over and that there’s a lot more work we need to do.”

***
by Melissa Lent for Gotham Gazette
@melmollyrose @GothamGazette

How New York City Should Make 'Hard Choices' to Close Growing Budget Gap, Per Watchdog


6 presents fiscal year

De Blasio makes a budget presentation (photo: Mayor's Office)


New York City’s political leadership is staring at major challenges with a new city budget due by the July 1 start of the next fiscal year. Mayor Bill de Blasio and the City Council are facing massive drops in tax revenue given the coronavirus shutdown, and must still craft a balanced budget.

The mayor has sought a federal “bailout” to replace several billion dollars in lost revenue, but while the Democrat-led House of Representatives passed a massive relief bill the Republican-led U.S. Senate does not appear inclined to take it up. De Blasio is also seeking mandatory state approval for the city to borrow billions of dollars to cover operating expenses, but that effort has also stalled.

The Citizens Budget Commission, a nonprofit fiscal watchdog, is calling this the city’s “most severe fiscal crisis in generations.”

And to address that crisis, CBC recently released a report, “Hard Choices That Can Balance New York City’s Budget,” which includes a series of concrete proposals aimed at mitigating harm to New Yorkers and maintaining the city’s competitiveness while balancing the budget.

“If city leaders make the right hard choices, we can manage to close the budget gap without layoffs and without borrowing,” said Andrew Rein, the president of CBC, in an interview. “City leaders need to start now,” he added, but “addressing the crisis is doable.”

“Part of our concern is when you have a crisis like this it’s multi-year impacts and it takes a while to recover,” said Ana Champeny, CBC’s director of city studies and author of the new report. “The city needs to be thinking long-term.”

When Mayor Bill de Blasio released his executive budget plan in April, his administration expected revenue to fall by $5.3 billion in the next fiscal year, and put forth a tenuous plan to balance the budget based on that projection. But a month later, in the mayor’s annual revenue letter to the City Council, the administration projected another $1.6 billion in lost revenue for fiscal year 2021, with the gap then totaling $6.9 billion. The CBC report addresses how the city can rebalance the budget after this downward revision of the revenue forecast.

While de Blasio is seeking state borrowing permission for up to $7 billion to cover operating expenses, which he called a backstop if federal aid doesn’t come through, Rein and a number of other prominent voices have warned against this. Governor Andrew Cuomo has expressed significant skepticism (even as the state moves to do its own additional borrowing), while City Comptroller Scott Stringer has questioned the idea citing long-term costs of the debt services and a lack of serious belt-tightening by the mayor, who has overseen an exploding city budget in his six years in charge. City Council Speaker Corey Johnson and others, including State Senator Brian Benjamin, key voices in the process, have also been skeptical, saying the mayor needs to show a real plan if he’s seeking such borrowing capacity.

“Borrowing should be at the bottom or near the bottom of any choice,” Rein of CBC said. “It pushes off current costs so future New Yorkers have to pay for services they’re not getting and constrains future budgets through debt service.”

“There are times that [borrowing] has been necessary but we’re not at that time yet given current projections and options available to us,” Rein said.

The $1.65 billion in gap-closing measures for next fiscal year identified by CBC include reducing the city’s workforce, increasing property taxes, and other budgetary maneuvers. That number increases in subsequent years, by CBC’s design.

CBC is also proposing that the city uses $1 billion of its budgeted reserves by freeing up $750 million of the $1 billion in the current budgeted general reserve and the entire $250 million capital stabilization reserve.

The biggest gap-closing measure that CBC proposes is a 9,000-employee reduction in the city’s 334,000-person workforce, which would come solely through attrition, meaning not filling positions vacated due to retirements and other voluntary departures. The city sheds about 7% of its workforce every year, according to Rein, but those departures have been replaced and then some under de Blasio.

“We’re talking about bringing the workforce back to where it was in 2016,” Rein said, in reference to the fact that the city’s personnel roster has grown significantly under de Blasio, who took office in 2014.

Per the CBC plan, the largest personnel reductions would come from NYPD officers and Department of Education administrators. These would save the city $450 million in the coming fiscal year and $898 million in the following fiscal year (FY2022).

CBC is also advocating for a two-year temporary increase in the property tax. It suggests a start date of July 2021 for the increase, so it would coincide with an expected economic recovery. A 2% increase in the property tax could boost the city’s coffers by $690 million for fiscal year 2022, with the average homeowner paying $143 more as a result, according to CBC.

Additionally, CBC reiterated its calls for de Blasio to address inefficiency in city government that could yield further savings. Citing prior reports, CBC says welfare fund consolidation could save the city $164 million, while productivity improvements at the Department of Sanitation and the elimination of the Absent Teacher Reserve, which would both require collective bargaining, could save a combined $160 million. If the city centralized procurement at the Department of Citywide Administrative Services, the savings could be $80 million, the report says.

CBC also believes that all agencies could cut 1% of their budgets, for additional savings of $700 million.

The report also suggests that the city reform its health insurance policies so that city employees and retirees contribute towards the cost of insurance. The city would save $350 million if retirees paid 16% of the premium for pre-Medicare insurance and 25% of the premium for Medicare Part B and Supplemental Medicare coverage. The city would save another $700 million annually if employees making under $65,000 contributed 6% for single coverage and 8% for family coverage and employees over $65,000 contributed 14% for single and 16% for family coverage. The CBC notes that these contribution rates are equal to or under the rates for New York State employees.

The report also recommends that the city’s five-year capital plan be reduced by $6.7 billion (or 10%). This includes savings of $2.4 billion in reduced new school construction and $4.3 billion by delaying and limiting expansion projects.

And, CBC suggests the sale of parking lots and underutilized buildings owned by the city could generate $50 million for next fiscal year.

Given recent events and the ongoing discussion around how much by which to reduce the police department’s roughly $6 billion annual operating budget, the CBC proposal to reduce the number of NYPD uniformed officers by 1,174 is noteworthy. This would represent a 3.1% decrease in the total number of uniformed police officers in the NYPD. It would also come five years after the NYPD added nearly 1,400 uniformed officers at the request of the City Council, then under Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito.

The current Council Speaker, Corey Johnson, supported that push as a rank-and-file member but has recently called it a mistake as part of the new effort he and other Council members are making to reduce the NYPD budget by $1 billion next fiscal year, a number de Blasio has called too high, though he has pledged to shift some funding from the NYPD to youth and social services.

The change in the NYPD force suggested by CBC would come through a combination of attrition and adjusting the sizes of incoming police recruit classes. It would save the city $57 million next fiscal year and $100 million annually in the years to come.

It would also represent a 1% reduction in the NYPD operating budget, currently $5.9 billion, for the new fiscal year and a fraction of the $1 billion (16.9% of NYPD budget) that some activists and local lawmakers have been clamoring for. Comptroller Stringer, by contrast, has put out a plan to reduce the NYPD budget by $1 billion over four years.

“We will be moving funding from the NYPD to youth initiatives and social services,” the mayor said at a June 7 press conference.

“The details will be worked out in the budget process in the weeks ahead,” de Blasio recently said, not putting a specific number on how much of a reduction he thinks the NYPD budget should or will see.

The CBC report also identified four streams of potential federal aid, which could help reduce the city budget gap. FEMA could waive the 25% local share for disaster funding, which means the city would gain $600 million. An extension of the enhanced Federal Medical Assistance Percentage (eFMAP) by another six months to July 2021 would mean an additional $224 million in federal funding. The city could also receive an additional $717 million in federal education aid through the state for fiscal years 2022. Lastly, the city could receive general disaster aid from the federal government and CBC estimates that $5 billion would be a reasonable figure. In total, CBC believes that the city could receive $8.2 billion in additional federal funding, based on similar events, such as the Great Recession.

“There’s no question that the federal government should cover the additional costs,” Rein said, referring to the pandemic and resulting recession. However, the likelihood of such aid cannot be counted on. According to Rein, “the federal government has stepped up more in the past than it has in the present.”

“Quite frankly the city needs to adopt the budget, it cannot wait for the federal government,” Rein said.

The city has already received several billions of dollars in federal aid to cover costs related to the coronavirus public health crisis, which has killed over 17,000 New York City residents.

In the race to succeed Stringer as the city’s chief fiscal officer, some of the declared candidates have put forward their own proposals for solving the city’s budget issues. Most proposed increasing taxes on the wealthy to close the budget gap, which would have to happen at the state level, unless the property tax levy is adjusted as CBC is suggesting.

Manhattan City Council Member Helen Rosenthal is the only of the four declared 2021 comptroller candidates who supports the city borrowing to close the gap. She would limit borrowing to $2 billion, she said. She also proposes to undo the 100% state rebate on the stock transfer tax, which could generate billions of dollars split between the state and city governments. She opposes wage freezes for the city workforce.

Brooklyn Council Member Brad Lander proposes to eliminate the “carried interest” loophole, which allows private-equity and hedge-fund managers to pay a lower rate on their earnings than the income tax. Lander is opposed to borrowing for closing the city budget gap, but says that it would be a good time to borrow more for long-term capital projects. He said labor leaders should work with the city to find cost-cutting options.

Manhattan State Senator Brian Benjamin, who chairs the Revenue and Budget Committee, is skeptical about city borrowing, but has said it needs to be among the considerations. He also said the city should bring labor leaders to the table.

Queens Assemblymember David Weprin opposes borrowing for operational costs. He has proposed several solutions, including a commuter tax, legalizing online sports betting, and granting a new casino license in New York City.

Virtually everyone from CBC leaders to Stringer, Johnson, and the 2021 comptroller candidates is calling on de Blasio to find more in city agency savings, while not hurting New Yorkers who rely on the extensive social safety net. De Blasio has been reluctant to demand more in efficiencies from his commissioners and budget officials but has warned that without federal help or state borrowing permission, there will likely be deep, widespread budget cuts coming soon.

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by Andrew Millman, Gotham Gazette
   

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