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De Blasio Offers No Transit Plans as City Heads Toward 'Reopening'


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Mayor de Blasio rides the bus (photo: Edwin J. Torres/Mayor's Office)


New York City is set to begin a phased “reopening” on Monday, June 8, as indicators show significant progress in tackling the COVID-19 pandemic. But as many New Yorkers start heading back to work, Mayor Bill de Blasio has offered no solutions to balance city residents’ need for transportation, maintaining public health by preventing new coronavirus infections, and preventing all-out gridlock if too many New Yorkers turn to cars.

About 5.4 million people rode the New York City subway on an average weekday in 2018 and another 1.8 million rode city buses, according to MTA data. But the pandemic led to a precipitous drop in ridership as the city went into lockdown, and the MTA -- a state authority that runs the subways and buses -- eventually instituted overnight system closures of the subways for thorough cleanings of trains and stations and the removal of homeless people from the system.

With the long-awaited first phase of “reopening” almost upon the city, transit advocates and commuters have been largely left in the dark about how government will ensure that people can safely use mass transit without the fear of contracting the coronavirus and what measures will be put in place to expand mass and other transit offerings. In order to maintain adequate social distancing, trains cannot be packed to the brim as they were during rush hour before the pandemic. Many people, including transit advocates and some elected officials, worry about a major increase in vehicle traffic, further clogging the city’s infamously congested streets and polluting its air. 

For weeks, de Blasio was largely dismissive of calls for a transit plan, insisting that the city was nowhere close to seeing a crush of people commuting and that it was up to the MTA to lead the subway process, which he said the city would participate in. The mayor appeared at ease with the idea of an increase in car use and to have thought little about creative solutions to offer additional or new options to people.

De Blasio estimated that the first phase of reopening – which will allow construction, manufacturing, wholesale, and commercial retail, by pickup only, to resume operation – will involve between 200,000-400,000 people going back to work.

“There’s not always a chance to help people all the time in terms of their transportation needs,” de Blasio said at his daily coronavirus briefing on May 29, when asked about transit plans. “People are going to have to improvise and I believe they will.”

In an interview on WNYC’s The Brian Lehrer Show later that day, de Blasio defended his comments. “I think we're nowhere near the number of people on the road or the number of people in the subways that we normally would have,” he said, noting that more than a million people have lost their jobs while others are working remotely. “Even if everyone uses their car, it's not in the next few months going to create the kind of congestion we're used to by any stretch. So, I want people to feel comfortable with mass transit, but I know a certain number of people are going to use their car. For the next few months, we're going to get by with that. Going forward though, the future is mass transit. In fact, the future has to be a doubling down on mass transit once we get out of this crisis.”

The mayor’s words were further confirmation for his critics that he has never been particularly focused on the woes of commuters, and that his defense of car drivers can override transit policy. Advocates and experts note that though de Blasio does not control the MTA, which is in practice run by the governor, he has authority over the streets and can use his power to expand transit alternatives, expand and build new bike lanes and facilitate a broad expansion of the bus network to handle commuters returning to work while a pandemic is still significantly impacting behavior.

“I think it's fair enough to say that he's passing the buck,” said Nicole Gelinas, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. “The city should be doing a lot to reconfigure the streets to take pressure off of the subway system, including just putting out much better protected bike lanes so that as many people as possible can ride a bike to work.”

Gelinas said the city could rent out open air tour buses so that commuters can safely travel to work without worrying that they may get infected in a closed-air environment where virus transmission is more likely. “I don't think they’re being very creative at the city level,” she said.

Compounding the issue has been the apparent lack of coordination, at least on public messaging, between the mayor and the MTA. “Optimally...any type of major announcement, you would have the mayor and the MTA chiefs make it together so that everybody knows everyone is saying the same thing,” Gelinas said. But the mayor and interim MTA New York City Transit President Sarah Feinberg have disagreed publicly, with the mayor saying on Friday that he has received little clarity from the MTA. Feinberg responded on Twitter, “With all due respect. We have no idea what the mayor is talking about. The MTA has briefed City Hall multiple times on reopening, including another productive meeting held just yesterday. If the Mayor has questions, he can pick up the phone and call us at any time.”

As Gelinas noted, “It's not a hallmark of a government that's functioning well during an emergency.”

On Tuesday the mayor called on the MTA to take seven specific steps to meet imminent increased ridership demand, including by increasing service during peak hours, limiting capacity on buses and trains to maintain social distancing, limiting crowding at subway stations, providing face masks, and installing hand sanitizing stations, among others. In his request, de Blasio said the city would provide 1 million masks and called on the MTA to do the same.

Barely two hours later, the MTA put out its own letter to the de Blasio administration outlining the steps it will take to ensure a smooth reopening. In a clear indicator that the two parties did not coordinate their releases, the MTA said the state would provide 1 million masks and called on the city to do the same, after the mayor had already said he would.

The MTA estimated it would need the city to provide it with 3,000 volunteers to help implement the reopening plan as well as to deploy additional NYPD officers in the transit system. And though the plan states that subways and buses will return to “full, regular service” by day one of phase one, an MTA spokesperson told Gotham Gazette that 24-hour subway service will not resume; the 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. nightly overnight cleaning shutdown will continue.

 On Wednesday, June 3, the mayor said he would release plans to expand bus service in the coming days. “We’ve got to get back to the process of creating faster bus service. I'll have more to say on that as we can get through these next days, obviously. But we do want to absolutely deepen that effort,” he said at his daily briefing in response to a reporter’s question. “I think people do feel more safety right now in health terms in the buses than they do in the subways. I want to see people feel healthy and safe about both. But we do need to double down on buses. And we'll certainly have more to say on the specifics of that soon.”

Transit advocates and urban experts believe the mayor is wasting precious time, and was doing so well before the incidents of the last few days with widespread protests against police brutality and significant looting in some pockets of the city. His delays now appear likely to be compounded given he’s now been dealing with a situation that led him to institute a curfew.

“The mayor is being very complacent and that complacency can end up being very dangerous,” said Ben Fried, communications director for TransitCenter, a think tank and advocacy group. “He really does have a lot of power to make transit work for people, even in challenging circumstances, because he controls the streets and if he doesn't act on the power he has, then most riders are going to get stuck in traffic and there will be cascading effects that are no good for anyone.”

Last week, TransitCenter and other transit advocacy groups including Riders Alliance, Tri-State Transportation Campaign, NYPIRG Straphangers Campaign, and Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition wrote to the mayor calling for a network of emergency bus lanes to ensure that essential workers can continue commuting to work smoothly and to prevent additional vehicular traffic on the streets. “Time is of the essence. To lead an equitable recovery for the New Yorkers who have been most affected by the pandemic, City Hall must get out in front of rising car congestion,” the letter reads.

The groups called for 20 miles of busways (where most car traffic is prohibited) and bus lanes for medical facilities and essential workplaces by the end of this month and 20 more miles over the summer, particularly in Queens and the Bronx where the Department of Transportation has already looked at bus priority projects.

“Today, implementing an emergency bus lane network is an urgent matter of racial justice, public health, and economic necessity,” the letter reads. “Nearly half of regular NYC bus commuters are classified as essential workers. The vast majority are black and brown New Yorkers. They are tending to the sick and vulnerable, ensuring the city doesn’t go hungry, and keeping the lights on.”

Fried gave the mayor some credit for ramping up the expansion of bus lanes and pledging to increase bus speeds by 25% by 2020, which he promised in his State of the City speech last year but has made slow progress on. “He risks squandering that progress if he doesn't act now,” Fried said. More bus lanes would mean buses can run more frequently leading to less crowding, Fried noted. “That is the path toward a more successful reopening,” he said.

During his most recent Friday morning Brian Lehrer Show appearance, a caller implored de Blasio to restore millions in planned cuts to his bus lane program. “I'm going to go back and look at this again because I think you're right,” de Blasio told the caller, Beth. The mayor said buses could be somewhat safer than trains and pledged to take a careful look.

“But I think what Beth is saying is ringing a real bell with me that if buses are where people are going to feel more comfortable, then we should lean into buses more and work with the MTA to figure out what's going to help us maximize usage of buses,” de Blasio continued.

Later in the appearance he reiterated he is working with the MTA but also awaiting a plan from the authority. “People have to know that there is a plan to limit the number of people on a subway car or a bus,” de Blasio said. “What that looks like, what that number should be, how it's going to be enforced, how we're going to educate people – and we're ready to partner with the MTA on it.”

As the experts noted, mass transit isn’t an end in itself. It is crucial to the very reopening that de Blasio is trying to undertake. For businesses to get back on their feet, they will need workers and customers, and short of creating safe ways for people to get around, only those within walking distance will be able to shop at stores or dine at restaurants, Gelinas said.

Eli Dvorkin, editorial and policy director at the Center for an Urban Future, a think tank, said, “I see this as a real test of our ability to be prepared to reopen. Without trust in public transit, we're literally going to grind to a standstill.”

“There is a long-term risk of a general breakdown of the transportation system that the city's economy relies on and that is causing people who have the option to leave the city to go somewhere else,” Fried said.

The contrast with other cities has been stark. Early on during the pandemic, de Blasio repeatedly claimed that New York City was uniquely unsuited to instituting widespread open streets, like Seattle had done, for instance. He eventually caved to demands from the City Council and the public and announced a plan to create 100 miles of open streets, where most car traffic is disallowed indefinitely.

“San Francisco and Boston are taking steps to ensure that people can get around without cars,” Fried said. “They're not waiting months to formulate a plan. They are getting stuff done in a matter of weeks and New York really has to be thinking on the same timetable.”

De Blasio has slowly announced more bike lanes, albeit temporary ones that are less effective than alternatives in keeping bicyclists safe, while also cutting funds for permanent bike lanes that were originally proposed in his budget for the next fiscal year.

“He's never really put himself in the pedals of a bicyclist,” Gelinas said. “It's very striking that in Paris, in London, you have the mayors just building out a huge network of bike lanes almost overnight...In Paris, you have the mayor riding a bike and setting a good example.”

She also noted that in cities like Tokyo and Seoul, transit systems have been adapted to ensure that people can travel back and forth safely. “But we don't really have either of those things at the city level,” she said.

On WNYC, de Blasio appeared to acknowledge the need for the plans he has not presented. The subways and buses need to be handled well, the mayor said. “We also know, honestly, a lot of people are just going to refuse to take the bus and subway in the short-term and they're going to try and find other alternatives,” he continued. “We’ve got to navigate all of this. This is so unlike anything we're used to in New York City.”

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by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

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Note - this article has been updated with the mayor's comments from his June 3 press briefing. 

After the Apex, Nurses Look Over the Uncertain Coronavirus Horizon


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Nurses remain on the front lines of the coronavirus crisis (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)


During the COVID-19 pandemic, New Yorkers can be split between the people who have been patients in or staffed hospitals, where wards were likened to war zones, and those living and working everywhere else. 

In the first weeks of the crisis, as the city braced for the "apex" in the number of coronavirus hospitalizations, nurses perhaps more than anyone else became the de facto front lines of the pandemic and a symbol of the immense societal effort to overcome a crushing threat. As the crisis began to build, they saw their floors inundated with people dying or clinging to life with the worst always believed to be yet to come.

The apex came in early April and has since ceded to a slowly diminishing onslaught, where infections, hospitalizations, and deaths continue even as the sound of ubiquitous ambulance sirens fades. For nurses, doctors, and other medical professionals, the daily trauma of witnessing the human costs of the virus remains. Now, as the city moves toward reopening the economy and New Yorkers gather in protest of police violence against black people, nurses are looking ahead to an uncertain future. With many still processing what they have been through, the fear of a resurgence is almost too much to bear.

"There's like this feeling of dread," one intensive care nurse said by text message in the dark hours of a recent morning during a break in her shift. She has been working 12-hour nights, from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m., three to four shifts per week, since her floor was converted into a coronavirus unit in March.

"All these pictures of a million people out at the park is making us feel bad and scared," she wrote, "Bc we all feel like we can't handle doing this that much longer." She spoke under the condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisal from her employer. There is common anxiety among the nurses Gotham Gazette spoke with that more lax behavior in public will lead directly to more infections and more hospitalizations.

In ten weeks of crisis, New York City hospitals have seen more than 50,000 COVID-19 patients and 16,500 deaths, three-quarters of the health department's official city count of coronavirus fatalities. At its height in the first week of April, over 1,500 people were being hospitalized each day. Over the course of 12 days, more than 5,000 people died from the virus. Auditoriums became makeshift intensive care units. Hospitals, facing severe staffing shortages, often assigned nurses to positions for which they were undertrained. Protective equipment was scarce, its applicable uses stretched, and guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and from the New York City and State health departments changed regularly.

"Nobody ever wants to be there again. That was horrible," said Judy Sheridan-Gonzalez, an emergency room nurse at Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx and the president of the New York State Nurses Association. "We lost faith in our government, our hospitals, our scientific agencies, and we had to all sort of do our own research and it was madness. Nothing was OK."

"Having people die in such huge numbers, or to be so sick and not have family around, and not being able to touch them precisely because you didn't have the right PPE, you couldn't even spend time. It was just anathema to what a nurse is supposed to do," Sheridan-Gonzalez said. She said there will be a large need for mental health services for nurses in the coming months, and attrition may be high if nurses aren't better supported in the event of a resurgence.

At least 30 NYSNA nurses have died from the virus. The actual death toll is likely much higher, Sheridan-Gonzalez said, as hospitals and institutions have generally not been forthcoming with information, even when pressed by union leaders. Nurses and other front line workers have also been asked by their employer or insurance carrier to prove they contracted COVID-19 on the job in order to get workers' compensation and death benefits, an absurd proposition to the workers themselves.

The trajectory of the number of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths was brought down through the massive social distancing effort that included an unprecedented shuttering of social and economic activity. Over the last week, daily hospital admissions for COVID-19 in the city have hovered around 60, and the death toll has dropped below 50 per day for over a week.

The crisis has put a unique level of stress on nurses because, unlike most other disasters that have a discernible beginning and end, the coronavirus pandemic is indefinite, Sheridan-Gonzalez said. Nurses across the board are coming to terms with the possibility that the crisis will never really end.

"This is what work now is,” said a nurse working in a psychiatric ward at a Manhattan hospital during a recent phone interview. “This is what we need to learn to get used to,” she added, of the threat of the virus.

The city has met nearly all of the state benchmarks required to begin reopening non-essential businesses, most of which have to do with hospital capacity and admissions rates. With 32 percent of ICU beds available and nearly the required 30 percent of total hospital beds, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced the city would begin to ease restrictions on certain public activity on June 8.

"Everyone's like enjoy it while it lasts bc it's gonna get bad again," the ICU nurse wrote, shortly before the phase one reopening date was announced. "We don't want to get too optimistic about the situation bc it's very unpredictable and out of our control. And it's better to just prepare for the worst mentally."

At least 3,780 NYSNA members have been exposed to the coronavirus, of which 58 percent showed symptoms, according to the union, which represents 42,000 nurses statewide. The physical toll has come with a psychological one.

"Anyone who worked during this period of time...has been deeply traumatized, particularly people who are taking care of patients who had this illness," Sheridan-Gonzalez said. "And our hospitals were not prepared -- our country was not prepared -- for this huge influx of very sick people for which we had no cure."

"We're just starting to process the trauma that we went through. I think we are going to see a lot of mental anguish and PTSD," she said.

The ICU nurse said she believes she has post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, which occurs in people who have experienced trauma, like abuse or war. "It just feels like it's never gonna be over," she texted.

"It feels like the whole thing is totally futile," she added, commenting on efforts to reopen safely and knowing the high mortality rate on her unit over the last few months. She is also concerned about the long-term care of patients who suffered strokes related to Covid, which she believes comprises many of the survivors.

"When this is all over our census is going to be skyrocketing,” the psychiatric nurse said. “It's going to be non-stop...Because mental health is going to take such a hit after this. Depression is shooting up, anxiety is shooting up."

The nurses union is eying the response of the city and state governments, and private hospitals, to the next chapter of the pandemic in New York and the potential of a second wave of infections.

"If this happens again and it's not under control, I think people are going to quit," Sheridan-Gonzales said. “Some people will quit the profession, but I think people are just going to walk right out. I don't know if they're going to be able to take it."

The national unrest that has emerged in the last week over the killing of George Floyd, a black man, by Minneapolis police officers, has added a complicated dimension to the next phases of the coronavirus crisis. Since Thursday, nightly protests in New York have become some of the first mass public gatherings since the city entered a state of emergency in mid-March.

In a statement Monday, Sheridan-Gonzalez wrote: "Unfortunately, President Trump’s calls to 'Liberate Michigan!,' notably appearing without a mask, rallied his supporters to assemble in huge numbers—the vast majority without masks—to rush reopening cities across the country for many weeks. We're relieved that most people protesting George Floyd’s murder are wearing masks, but we're concerned about those who don’t and the lack of social distancing. The tension between safety and the right to protest is challenging, something we're examining.

Asked what she thought of people gathering to protest Floyd's killing and other acts of racialized police violence, the ICU nurse texted: "I hope that people who are most at risk of getting very sick from COVID (people with preexisting medical conditions) will stay home and try and support the movement in other ways."

"It would be incredibly tragic if this led to many more COVID-related deaths, especially because the disease has already had a disproportionately negative effect on the black community," the nurse, who is white, said.

She added: "I also think it’s important that if these protests do result in more cases of coronavirus, people recognize that it’s a result of the police brutality and do not place the blame on the protesters. It’s important that the medical community comes together and supports the movement, regardless of how people choose to protest, especially because there is so much racial injustice in medicine."

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by Ethan Geringer-Sameth, reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

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2021 Comptroller Candidates Offer Different Ideas for Addressing City's Fiscal Woes


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The city's economy & budget are in free-fall (photo: Benjamin Kanter/Mayor's Office)


New York City’s fiscal woes are worsening by the day as the COVID-19 pandemic has deprived the city of much needed tax revenue while likely forcing severe budget cuts that could be compounded by reductions in state aid. Though there is broad agreement that the best solution can only come in the form of a federal bailout, various other strategies and contingencies are being debated. And several of the candidates seeking to become the city’s next chief fiscal officer -- running for New York City Comptroller in the 2021 election -- differ as they evaluate and propose steps the city itself should be taking to stem the crisis.

Mayor Bill de Blasio proposed an $89.3 billion executive budget for the 2021 fiscal year beginning July 1. It was a budget pared down by $6 billion from earlier spending plans and which relied on $4 billion drawn from city reserves. At the time the mayor released that budget in mid-April, the city projected a $7.4 billion drop in revenue through the next fiscal year, which begins July 1. That projection has since increased to $9 billion.

On Wednesday, the mayor called on the state Legislature to give the city authorization to borrow $7 billion for operating expenses, which it currently cannot do on its own, as he also continued to demand federal aid as outlined in a package passed by the Democrat-led U.S. House of Representatives but not taken up by the Republican-controlled Senate.

Under state law, the city’s budget has to be balanced each year, which was a result of the financial crisis of the 1970s when the city’s out-of-control spending, including regularly borrowing to cover operating expenses, almost led to insolvency. That is also the reason the city cannot create a dedicated savings fund that does not count as part of the balanced budget.

De Blasio’s desperate plea comes as federal aid is held up in Congress and as Governor Andrew Cuomo threatens more than $8 billion in cuts to local aid, which would largely affect education and health care.

The four declared or exploring 2021 city comptroller candidates, all of whom are Democrats – Manhattan State Senator Brian Benjamin, Queens Assemblymember David Weprin, Brooklyn Council Member Brad Lander and Manhattan Council Member Helen Rosenthal – offered varying perspectives on whether the city should borrow funds and on other measures that could help cut costs, cover expenses, and boost revenue. 

Budget experts and City Comptroller Scott Stringer, a term-limited Democrat running for mayor, have repeatedly warned against the idea of borrowing for expenses, a proposition that could lead to debt payments for decades. Stringer has estimated that the $7 billion debt would require either $11 billion in payments over 20 years or $12.5 billion over 30 years.

“The Mayor should be singularly focused on ensuring our City gets the federal relief we need,”  Stringer said in a statement. “While it's too soon to rule out any specific budget action, New Yorkers should know that under the Mayor’s proposal our children could be paying over $500 million a year for the next 20 years. I urge extreme caution.” Stringer has also called on de Blasio to find more efficiencies in a city budget that has grown more than $20 billion in the mayor’s six-plus years in office.

Cuomo called the idea of borrowing for operating expenses “fiscally questionable” and the state Legislature refused to take up a vote on it on Thursday (despite the fact that in April Cuomo and the Legislature gave the state itself permission to borrow billions for operating costs). City Council Speaker Corey Johnson has expressed opposition to the current bill that would authorize city borrowing, saying it does not include strong enough guardrails.

Rosenthal, who previously worked for the Mayor’s Office of Management and Budget for seven years, is the only one of the three comptroller candidates who definitively believes the city should borrow funds for expenses. “We have to remember that this is a revenue problem. It's not an expense problem,” Rosenthal said in a phone interview. “So the circumstances are

wildly different than the 1970s where we were irresponsibly borrowing.”

Rosenthal suggests that the borrowing be limited to $2 billion, to address a part of the problem, while making cuts, finding new productivity savings and new revenue. She also said the mayor should only pull $2 billion, not $4 billion, from reserves.

The borrowing should be overseen by a new “revenue oversight board,” Rosenthal said, with a “laser focus” on revenue-building rather than the city’s expenditure, which is currently under the purview of the New York State Financial Control Board. “The Financial Control Board, those three words have baggage and connote wild and irresponsible spending,” she said, arguing that the opposite is true since the city’s bond rating was going up before the pandemic.

Among the fiscal control measures that have been floated by budget experts and elected officials are increased taxes on high earners (a favorite of de Blasio’s, though he has tempered calls for higher taxes amid the devastation of the coronavirus recession for fear of higher earners leaving New York) and freezes on wages for hundreds of thousands of unionized municipal workers that are set to increase under the various labor contracts negotiated by the city, alongside deferred retro-payments negotiated when de Blasio first came into office with all the unions operating under expired contracts.

Rosenthal pushed back against possible wage freezes, which she said could hurt working class New Yorkers employed by the city. “That, to me, is not a useful idea,” she said. She added, “When I think of city workers, I think of social workers, I think of people paving the road, I think sanitation workers, police, firemen, teachers, most of whom don't make over six figures.”

The main solution Rosenthal recommended is undoing the state’s 100% rebate of the stock transfer tax, which is imposed by federal law on stock transactions by brokers and brokerage firms and collected by the state. Those firms can then apply and receive a full refund.

The tax brings in as much as $16 billion annually, and even a partial reduction of the rebate would mean billions in new revenue that could be split between the state and city, Rosenthal said. “[That’s] a piece of low-hanging state legislation that should be pursued,” she said, noting that elected officials would be hard-pressed to defend that rebate. During the Democratic presidential race, entrepreneur Andrew Yang, former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders had all called for expanding this tax.

“The [phrase] ‘taxes on the wealthy’ is a trope and has become a lightning rod for the governor and he won’t agree to it, and that is why we should do the stock transfer tax...I want to hear people say that they don’t want to go after brokers and brokerage houses,” Rosenthal said, noting that these very businesses have been making money during the pandemic. 

Rosenthal said the money recouped from that tax should go specifically towards covering the city’s revenue shortfall as well as launching a new jobs program that can put New Yorkers back to work at a time of record unemployment because of the pandemic.

Lander has been ardently opposed to the mayor’s proposal to borrow for immediate expenses, and would rather see more funding for the city’s capital infrastructure program, which involves borrowing for long-term construction projects and can create thousands of jobs. In light of the pandemic, the mayor significantly reduced capital spending over the current and next fiscal years in his latest budget plan, while pushing most planned spending to later years (when he will be out of office).

“Borrowing for investments for the long-term actually makes a lot of sense right now,” Lander said, noting that the city is well below the 15% limit that experts recommend for debt services costs, which are paid in the operating budget. “For infrastructure, for economic development, for affordable housing, the kinds of things that are capital projects. That is the kind of borrowing that we have room to do.”

“Keynesian economics say that the one counter-cyclical thing that you can do if you're not the federal government in a time like this is make some of those long-term investments,” he added.

Lander noted that the city still does not have a grasp on how much revenue it will have next year or an idea of when the economy will fully recover. “It's like you're a family that goes to the grocery store, and takes out a loan to pay your groceries. And the problem is, next week you're still gonna need groceries,” he said. “You’re not going to have more money. And now you're going to owe for next week's groceries and the interest on this week's groceries. So you really, really want to avoid that.”

Lander’s “number one” solution for revenue is closing the “carried interest” loophole that allows private-equity and hedge-fund managers to pay the capital gains tax, applied at a lower rate, rather than income tax. Cuomo proposed eliminating the loophole but it would only go into effect if neighboring states also took the same measure. Eliminating the loophole, which could bring in $1 billion in revenue each year, is particularly feasible right now, Lander noted, as New York is coordinating its coronavirus response with those very states (he made the argument in a recent op-ed).

Other measures could include a tax on the ultra-wealthy and restructuring the corporate tax, though that would not have an immediate effect. Lander also said the city should still move forward with the proposed restructuring of the property tax system, which the mayor has promised for years but has dragged his feet on. “We should restructure it so that as we start to come out of the pandemic and it is possible to start to make the kinds of investments that we need to make, that future increases are equitable and that they come from people like me whose properties have been underassessed and not from people who are already paying more than their share,” he said.

In particular, he said that he is “not a huge fan” of the idea of reducing or eliminating the rebate on the stock transfer tax. That move would be easy to circumvent, he said, since those transactions are electronic and brokers could easily move their transactions through another state. “That is basically like an electronic fiction,” he said, insisting it should be done at the federal level.

Lander was more circumspect about union wage freezes, though he said that the city should work with labor leaders to look at every possible option to cut costs and find savings. “In New York City's history, there have been plenty of moments of crisis when labor leaders worked with the city to come up with different kinds of savings,” he said. “Those savings can take many different forms, and it's definitely a moment where that dialogue needs to be underway.”

Benjamin, who chairs the Senate Committee on Revenue and Budget, has also warned against the city borrowing funds in the near term. “I wouldn't be asking for the $7 billion of [borrowing] authority right now,” he said in an interview this past week on the Max & Murphy podcast, “because to me, if you're going to ask for the $7 billion authority right now granted to you, then that tells the federal government, ‘Well they solved their problems. They don't need anything from us, right.’"

But he also hedged his answer, saying the city should have clear criteria for spending any borrowed funds “specific to COVID-related emergencies or emergencies that are created because of COVID-related issues.” He added, “I think if the city has a very thoughtful need for any of this $7 billion, that that money would be granted.”

Senator Liz Krueger, also a Manhattan Democrat, introduced the bill last week to allow the city to borrow the $7 billion. It passed a rules committee vote and is before the finance committee that Krueger chairs.

[Max & Murphy Podcast: State Senator Brian Benjamin on Rescuing New York's Finances & More]

Benjamin was also open to the idea of renegotiating contracts with labor unions on wages and other costs. “It wouldn't be prudent to not look at every single thing. I don't know how you don't look at that,” he said.

Benjamin has sponsored legislation to allow the city to create a dedicated rainy day fund and has emphasized that the pandemic made it all that more urgent. “This is the precise time to [create] a rainy day fund...because now we are very clear on what are the consequences when we don't have one,” he said. The bill passed both houses of the Legislature last week.

He also indicated that property tax reforms are dead in the water in Albany this year. “We're really dealing with the COVID crisis,” he said when asked about property tax reform, which he had taken a major interest in. “And so I would imagine that we will fervently look at property taxes next year.”

Assemblymember David Weprin said rather than looking at the city’s borrowing proposal, state and city officials should be presenting a united front on seeking federal aid. “I think everybody has to unite together, the mayor, the governor, every elected official, to really push for a full-court press on Washington,” he said.

“Generally it's not a good idea, in my opinion, to borrow long term for operating expenses,” he added.

Weprin proposed several measures that he said could create permanent revenue streams for the city and state. Chiefly, he supports restoring the Metropolitan Commuter Transportation Mobility Tax, commonly called the Commuter Tax, which was imposed on nonresidents working in New York City till 1999. “When it was repealed by the legislature, it was just done when the city and state had surpluses. It was very good fiscal times. Obviously, that’s not the case now,” he said. Weprin proposes implementing a 1% tax (it was originally between 0.45 and 0.65%) which he said would bring in about $1.6 billion in recurring annual revenue.

He also said he would support a temporary increase in income taxes on the rich, though not without some reluctance. “I wouldn't do that in the first instance but having said that, I think there's a lot of new taxes we can create which would also create new industries and the industries themselves would create revenue,” he said.

Weprin wants to legalize online sports betting on professional and college sports, which would require an amendment to the state constitution. He has sponsored a resolution on that amendment along with State Senator Joseph Addabbo, but their efforts have stalled in Albany. As Weprin noted, New York is losing out on easy revenue as state residents travel to neighboring New Jersey, where online sports betting is legal, to place wagers. “We're losing hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue,” he said.

He also supports granting a new casino license in New York City with a revenue-sharing agreement between the city and state that he said could raise hundreds of millions. “I think we have to look at creating new industries that'll produce revenue and also produce jobs at the same time,” he said.

Weprin was wary of the idea of renegotiating labor contracts that could affect firefighters, police officers, nurses and other government employees who he said are already fighting for additional hazard pay. “I certainly wouldn't be looking to reduce their benefits. They're heroes. They've been on the front line during the Covid-19 crisis,” he said. “When you’re in a major multibillion-dollar fiscal crisis, you don't want to rule anything out, but I certainly would not be looking to change agreed-upon, negotiated labor contracts.”

***
by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

Read more by this writer.

Note -this article has been updated. 

Note - this article has been updated with an interview with Assemblymember David Weprin. 



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