Gotham Gazette

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Open Government

Eliot Spitzer, Governor


Gotham Gazette’s Reading NYC Book Club recently met with Brooke Masters, a reporter for the Financial Times whose book, Spoiling for a Fight: The Rise of Eliot Spitzer, details Eliot Spitzer’s career as New York State Attorney General. Masters talked about Spitzer’s new job as governor of the state; he was inaugurated on January 1, 1007. Below is an edited transcript.

Gotham Gazette: In the time covering Spitzer and in your time writing the book, what did you learn that you think it's important for people to know about Eliot Spitzer?

Brooke Masters: This is a guy who is extraordinarily ambitious...[but] unlike other politicians I've run into who are ambitious because they want to be somebody, he's ambitious because he wants to do something. That's going to make him an interesting governor. He's going to put himself on the line and risk losing... That's what made him such a controversial and successful attorney general – he would take on cases that were not obvious winners, and that might be on the edge and controversial, because he truly thought that what he was doing would accomplish a goal that he had set for his office, or were a way he saw of improving society.

SPITZER, ISSUE BY ISSUE

Gotham Gazette: Tell us how Spitzer's experience with issues as attorney general might indicate what his priorities or approach might be as governor.

White Collar Crime

Gotham Gazette: A good place to start is his fight against white-collar crime on Wall Street. Is there any obvious way Spitzer would continue this campaign as governor? Does the office have duties of oversight on Wall Street?

Brooke Masters: Well, that's what made him famous. There are very few attorneys general that people can name, even their own, and Spitzer is famous pretty much around the country because of the white collar crime cases.


Spitzer knows that simply screaming at people isn't going to work. Whether he can avoid screaming at people, I don't know.


 

As governor he would appoint the folks who are in charge of the banking department, and the folks who are in charge of the insurance department, and have an overall policy role. He wouldn't be doing enforcement cases, but he would have some role in setting up rules on how banks and insurance companies treat their customers, and what the disclosure rules are. So sort of on the margins he would have an effect on that.

The Wall Street cases were a part of Spitzer's view – which he is happy to go on at length about, and does at the drop of a hat – about economic opportunity. His family went from nothing to fabulously wealthy in one generation. He believes in capitalism, he believes in the markets, and believes that government's role is making sure those opportunities are there for everybody. You're more likely to see him as governor emphasizing ways of encouraging economic opportunity in a less statist role. I think he's going to try to get away from the traditional Democratic style. Although he's probably in favor of raising the minimum wage and things like that, he will probably focus on trying to find ways to foster economic opportunity and make the markets fair.

Public Education

Gotham Gazette: What else is on Spitzer's list?

Brooke Masters: Obviously, the Campaign for Fiscal Equity solution in relation to the funding of New York City schools is a big issue. He's been given a gift, because the Court of Appeals says he only has to spend $2 billion. But he himself said it would take $4 to $6 billion. I think he'll try to come up with some compromise numbers, and try to use that in a motivating way –- there will be a caveat that a lot of the money will have to go to unusual programs like the small schools that Bloomberg has been doing.

He's not a voucher guy, but he is in favor of charter schools – that there should be competition between regulators, there should be competition between schools, and that ultimately choice is what leads to improvement, and that people should be allowed to vote with their feet. That is part of his whole marketplace idea of the world.

Medicaid

Another priority is Medicaid. Anybody who follows the state budget knows that Medicaid is the fastest growing and largest part of the state budget. It also contributes to high property taxes, because the local governments also kick in for Medicaid...If Spitzer could bring down Medicaid costs, he'll have lots of money to do other things, but he'll also win points with the suburbanites who are paying high taxes.

He has made a no new taxes pledge, which was an interesting choice for a Democrat, particularly one who was running so far ahead in the polls. I don't think he had to; he's doing it because he believes it. If he solves Medicaid, he can bring taxes down without hurting other things.

Gotham Gazette: Has he given an indication as to how he thinks the Medicaid problem should be solved?

Brooke Masters: He talks a lot about streamlining and technology. He got really excited the other day about trying to improve hospital information technology, so when you go to a hospital all the other tests that you've had at the six other hospitals and doctor's offices you've been to will pop up, so they won't retest you for the 25 things that you've already been tested for. Particularly for Medicaid, which is paying those bills, if you could even cut down on a fifth of the tests, it would actually amount of substantial savings.

He's also talked about trying to expand primary care to cut down on emergency room visits. Everybody likes to talk about wouldn't it be nice if there were fewer emergency room visits. But I think that he's actually interested in setting aside money to do it.

Albany Reform

Gotham Gazette: One of the things that Spitzer mentioned as a priority during his campaign for governor is so-called Albany reform – fixing how the state government actually works. Some of his critics have said that as attorney general he had the chance to deal with this but did not. Do you think that's a valid criticism?

Brooke Masters: I think it's unfair to say that Spitzer won't take on Albany simply because he hasn't taken on Albany. The attorney general, like any public official, has limited resources. And he did clearly choose to do Wall Street, rather than Albany.

Also, if you look at the staff he gathered, he did not have a particularly strong grounding in Albany. Public corruption cases require above all really good informants, really good sources, and a really good understanding of exactly how business is done. Taking it on as a prosecutor means you have to put together cases, and that is particularly tough.

As governor he might have the clout -- as someone who just won the election with a large margin of victory -- to pass lobbying reform, and agency reform, and commission reform as legislation.

Bob Zane: Eliot Spitzer has been on record as critical of public authorities. Do you think he will try to get more control and get them to be more efficient?

Brooke Masters: Yes. The authorities control so much money. If you are going to try to get the state budget under control and refocus it, you have to get the authority money or you're never going to be able to do it. I don't know if it will work, but I wouldn't be surprised to see that on his agenda in the first two months.

Henry Stern: Doesn’t he appoint the members of the authorities?

Brooke Masters: Most of them do not serve at the pleasure of the governor, so they are going to be holdovers from former Governor George Pataki for quite a while. There's a lot of skullduggery being talked about – people resigning so that Pataki can re-appoint them now, so that Spitzer won't be able to appoint their own people. There's a long history of doing that in New York.

Gotham Gazette: One goal that Spitzer put on his agenda was to reform the redistricting process, and on the uber-technical side of things, do you think he’ll be successful in that? You’ve already touched on sort of what his working relationship might be with the legislature, but do you think he actually will be able to put his foot down on that?

Brooke Masters: I think he’s going to try. But I think he's going to do lobbying reform and campaign finance reform and authority reform first. They're all an easier sell. None of the others put the legislature at risk of their jobs.

Gun Control

Brooke Masters: Gun control was Spitzer's big loss. It’s going to be interesting because he worked with Andrew Cuomo on this and they both completely failed in the late 1990s. Cuomo in particular says he's still interested in pursuing it.

In the 1990s, New York was getting all these illegal guns from Virginia, because people would go to Virginia, buy a dozen guns – there are very loose rules there – and sell them here. Spitzer's theory was that the gun manufacturers knew full well which retailers were selling to lots and lots of people who were using the guns in crimes, and that if they just cut off a few of the bad dealers it would cut down on illegal gun crime.

He brought a lawsuit against the gun manufacturers arguing that they were creating a public nuisance by putting illegal guns on the streets. It was absolutely torched by the courts. They were not interested in this theory; they thought it was ridiculous.

It is a classic Spitzer thing to do. He takes this law – public nuisance – which is generally used for environmental cases and noise, and tries to apply it to something completely different, in this case illegal guns. It didn't work, but you might see Cuomo come back at that issue somehow. He and Spitzer both remain convinced that it was the right thing to do.

But he and Cuomo also tried to work with gun companies to see if they could get them to go along and create a screening program for retailers. It will be interesting to see if that comes back.

Gotham Gazette: As governor he might find fertile ground to work with that, since Bloomberg is so into combating illegal guns right now.

Brooke Masters: Exactly. I could see him working with Bloomberg on this. He and Bloomberg want to work together on a lot of stuff. They like one another, and they have a similar worldview. I think you'll see a lot of Bloomberg-Spitzer alliances on things.

But if you ask Spitzer to make a list of the five things he's going to do first, illegal guns are not there – as opposed to Cuomo. Spitzer's interested in crime, but he recognizes that he doesn't have that much hands-on authority on crime as governor; that's what the district attorneys and police departments and localities do.

Economic Development

Brooke Masters: Economic development upstate is also an issue. Basically we've got depressed Ohio everyplace north of Albany. Until that part of the state stops being completely depressed, that will be one of his priorities because it puts a drag on the whole rest of the state.

He wants to fix workers compensation, which seems like a real technical issue. But it turns out that New York has an extraordinarily expensive workers compensation program – the eighth most expensive in the nation in terms of the premiums that employers pay. But it is 49th in terms of payouts. Somewhere between the high premiums and the low payouts, a lot of money is disappearing. Nobody knows exactly what's wrong, but something must be. Spitzer is trying to solve that problem because he will win points with business for cutting their costs, but not hurt workers. If you eliminate the administrative costs, you could get the workers more money. It could be a win-win for everybody.

THE GOVERNOR AND NATIONAL ISSUES

Book Club Member: You've laid out a pretty strong state agenda that Spitzer is going to pursue. Do you have any sense for whether he is going to pick any national issues where he might be able to make an impact? There is a rumor in Washington that he is going to take some dramatic action in New York State that will affect the national debate on climate change.

Brooke Masters: He is already part of a lawsuit. There is a lawsuit by a lot of states arguing that the the Environmental Protection Agency is falling down on its job, and ought to be regulating carbon dioxide to stop global warming. The EPA and the Bush administration say they do not have the authority; the states say that under the Clean Air Act they have the authority and the duty to regulate anything that may affect human health. Much of the legal theory in that case was developed by staff lawyers in the New York Attorney General's Office, because it has the biggest environmental unit of any of the attorneys general offices. While it is Massachusetts that is the lead attorney, number two is New York.

Gotham Gazette: When will that case be resolved?

Brooke Masters: If they all agree, it could come out as early as March. If it's a close five to four, it will be June.


Spitzer has to be careful not to do too many things at once. Taking on the international debate on climate change while trying to fix Albany may not be the smartest move.

Spitzer is clearly interested in global warming. On the other hand, he has to be careful not to do too many things at once. Taking on the international debate on climate change while trying to fix Albany may not be the smartest move politically. I would be surprised if it is in his first six months to a year.

I think the other issue where he can reshape the national debate and affect New York at the same time is on Medicaid. If he can figure out a way to reform or fix Medicaid in a way that can be applied to other states, then he becomes a leading national figure in that debate.

CHANGING POLITICS IN ALBANY

Philip Angel: Spitzer was clearly on a mission when he was attorney general, while Governor Pataki was in the background. Now you have an ambitious attorney general and an aggressive governor in Spitzer and Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. Do you have sense of how those new dynamics are going to play out?

Brooke Masters: Cuomo and Spitzer are not, to put it mildly, the best of buddies. They have bad blood from the gun campaign, where Spitzer felt that Cuomo sold him up the river. On the other hand, Cuomo is dying to keep Spitzer's staff on, because frankly Spitzer attracted people to that office who would not ordinarily work for the New York attorney general's office. If Cuomo really wants to hit the ground running, he really needs to keep Spitzer's people on. So right now they have an alliance of convenience.

Henry Stern: They have united against Hevesi.

Brooke Masters: Yes, they have. Also, politically, they come at things the same way. They want to root out corruption in Albany. So if Cuomo – who has Albany connections and might actually be able to get some informers – works on arresting the bad people, while Spitzer works on reform from the legislation point of view, they might actually accomplish something and not get in each other's way.


If Cuomo spends his whole term wishing he were governor and proposing governor-type things, then there will be a lot of conflict.


But you can see there are going to be collisions. How much conflict there were be depends on whether Cuomo can pivot, and do what an attorney general does. If he spends his whole term wishing he were governor and proposing governor-type things, then there will be a lot of conflict.

Bob Zane: Do you think that Spitzer will be able to secure the cooperation of the business people in New York after prosecuting them?

Brooke Masters: I think it's complicated. Spitzer was obviously seen as the prohibitive favorite in the governor's race, but not a single business group endorsed Faso; not a single one gave him any money.

Henry Stern: Fear.

Brooke Masters: Could be straight fear. But if you talk to business people and you tell them you're not going to quote them, a lot of them say he's an ambitious guy who wants to accomplish things... maybe it would be a good idea to have him on our side. At least his job isn't going to be to be the enforcer anymore. And Spitzer is pretty good at knowing what his job is.

Upstate, there's a lot of optimism that, unlike Pataki, he actually cares about trying to fix upstate. In March, Spitzer made that comment that upstate New York is like Appalachia. The Republicans seized on that, saying it was offensive. But the response from the business community upstate was, "He's right. It is like Appalachia here. Would somebody please come fix it?"

The Wall Street folks don't like him, obviously, because he's made their lives miserable. But one of their theories is that he'll have credibility if he comes out and say we need X reforms to help make the stock exchange strong, since he's clearly not a patsy for the industry.

A COMBATIVE PERSONALITY

Gotham Gazette: One of the themes of your book is that Spitzer, while he's effective and energetic, is very combative and alienating. Can you talk about how well his personality will transfer from attorney general to governor?

Brooke Masters: I think it will be really interesting. He's got to grow as a human being. He has been very much "My Way or the Highway." And that's not going to get him everywhere he needs to go.

On the one hand, everybody sort of believes that New York needs to change. All of the polls suggest that people voted for Spitzer because they thought he'd change things. In that way, his combative personality and his effort to shake things up could work in his favor. On the other hand, the big question is going to be when they get behind the scenes and get down to the negotiating, whether he can find a way to work with [Assembly Speaker Sheldon] Silver and [Senate Majority Leader Joseph] Bruno, or around them in a way to bring other legislators along. And I don't know that it works.

But the image that he gets angry and yells at people and gets out of control, I think it's overblown. He has more control over his temper than his critics would have you believe, but he uses it to scare the hell out of people.

That said, he is willing to tell people off, particularly people who don’t usually get told off. He doesn’t yell at secretaries, he doesn’t yell at waiters, he’s absolutely adored by the guys who drive him around. unlike many other politicians. He does yell at powerful people.

I think the big question is whether his head can control his natural instinct to be combative. That's going to be the big test for him – if he's going to be a great governor he's going to have to do that. I don't think you can really tell from his record whether he's going to pull it off. He's going to try. He knows that simply screaming at people isn't going to work. Whether he can avoid screaming at people, I don't know.

Bob Zane: Do you think that because he's wealthy, like Mayor Bloomberg, that he'll be more ethical, since you can't lobby him as much?

Brooke Masters: Maybe, because he's not going to be looking for a lobbying job at the end. On the other hand, some of the worst officials I have ever covered are wealthy people who think they are reformers, so they think the rules don't apply to them.

You could argue that Spitzer has that tendency. The campaign financing of his first two races in 1994 and 1998, the way he paid for it, it was not illegal, but it skirted every intention of the New York State ethics laws. Under these laws, you can put tons of money in your own campaign, but you can't fund your relatives' campaigns.

In Spitzer's family, the money is all with the dad. So Eliot Spitzer took out a private bank loan himself using some real estate he owned as collateral. That's legal; you can lend your own campaign money. But then his dad paid off the loan.

They were just going to get away with it until people starting asking questions about how he was paying off those loans on his salary. He finally had to say he would pay off his dad. It was not illegal because of the ways the laws were written. As for what the point of the law was – your dad can't buy you a seat – it was completely cheesy. That was one of these things where he was doing it for the good of America. You have to wonder if he's going to do it again. Hopefully he learned his lesson.

SPITZER AS GIULIANI, OR AS TEDDY ROOSEVELT?

Bob Zane: It sounds like he's a lot like Giuliani. Do you think that if he does a real good job, like Giuliani did, we'll eventually see him run for president?

Brooke Masters: Remember, Giuliani was washed up before 9/11. So let's not root for another terrorist attack, which is what made Giuliani famous.

But he's a lot like Giuliani, and in the last chapter of the book I say that Spitzer has two models he can follow as governor.

The first is Giuliani, which is sort of the "army of one." Giuliani accomplished a great deal, and pissed off a heck of a lot of people doing it, which limited his political future – at least until 9/11. But it is coming back to haunt him as he thinks about running for president.

Giuliani is a good comparison because the two men have similar flaws. But Giuliani’s path – the I'm Right, You're Wrong, Do It My Way route – may be what the state needs. Giuliani would say, I came in as mayor and I busted heads in the unions and I busted the squeegee guys, and we did stop and frisk and alienated lots of people because someone had to save New York. And New York is now thriving. That's the model that you can really be nasty, combative, unfriendly, completely convinced of your own self-righteousness, and get stuff done. Barring an event like 9/11, it doesn't lead to long-term political success as a presidential candidate. But it might be good for the state.

The other model is Tom Dewey, who also was a completely self-righteous prosecutor, who also went into Albany and was completely combative. He vetoed something like one out of every three bills his first year. But within a couple years he realized he wasn't getting anything done and really changed his mode of operations. That's what I say when someone has to grow on the job. Dewey is a lot like Spitzer – bright, well educated, very driven white-hat prosecutor with wild national ambitions. He ran for president when he was still a prosecutor in New York, before he was governor. Dewey was able to pivot and work with the Democratic Party, and share credit.

If Spitzer does things like that, he can get lots done.

Gotham Gazette: You compare Spitzer to a lot of historical figures in New York politics. Who do you think he'd like to be compared to?

Brooke Masters: Oh, he loves being compared to Teddy Roosevelt. Spitzer has such a Teddy Roosevelt hang-up. He’s got Teddy Roosevelt pictures in his office, he quotes him – if you look at the transition New York Web site now there’s a Teddy Roosevelt quote. I mean he’s got total Teddy Roosevelt envy.


Spitzer has such a Teddy Roosevelt hang-up. He’s got total Teddy Roosevelt envy.


Admittedly, everybody’s got Teddy Roosevelt envy, because if you’re a middle-of-the-country person – which Spitzer would say he is, as a moderate Democrat — Roosevelt was the ultimate guy. He was a moderate Republican who broke with his party when his party did what he didn’t believe in. Roosevelt created the national parks, he took on big business, he revived antitrust law. Nowadays, he’s a hero.

But he was very, very unpopular at times during his early career because he was so combative. He was considered a complete nut. And I think Spitzer takes some comfort in that, too – that Teddy Roosevelt wasn’t always considered the hero.

 

 

Advising Spitzer


With Eliot Spitzer sworn in as governor on the first day of 2007, New Yorkers have an array of expectations and demands for the state's new chief executive. Some want to see their taxes go down, while others want better services in the state. And still others think that, with a state senator under indictment, the state comptroller forced to resign and the Senate majority leader under investigation, nothing is more important than cleaning up the mess in Albany.

For his part, Spitzer has vowed changes from Day One. But how can he negotiate his way through the competing demands and the labyrinth of state government?

Last month the New School's Milano School sponsored a conference on "Governing Change: Policy, Politics and the Spitzer Administration." The following comments from five people in the know, including two former governors, are excerpted from the discussion.

Make Our Lives Better

By Norman Adler

There are basic and substantial policy problems facing New York State. If I were an adviser to the governor, I would say, solve some of the issues that the people in the state care about.

When you ask people what they care about, they care about taxes, they care about education, they care about making a living, they care about the economy of the state, they care about health care. They don't care about the procedural stuff. When Spitzer goes back to run for re-election, the electorate is going to say, "What about taxes, what about health care, what about education, what about the budget, what about the economy?" If you haven't produced on those, the fact that you told people who work for government that they can't lobby for two years after they leave government, is going to be greeted with either a scoff or a yawn.

Spitzer has a ruling from the State Court of Appeals that gives him a lot of freedom on the budget. The legislature can barely do anything about it except sit on its hands. He has an enormous victory from the electorate. He has a huge majority of Democrats in the Assembly and a bare majority of Republicans in the Senate. And I believe the Republicans are looking to work with him. So if Spitzer does not succeed in advancing some of these issues, he has really blown it and the electorate has a right to take it out on him the next time he runs.

I have a farmhouse in Connecticut, and it gets damp every time it rains. I hire a guy who comes and puts plastic around the outside, but when it rains I have water in the basement. So the guy caulks the inside. But when it rains, I still get water in the basement.

Political money is like water in the basement. You can do every single one of these reforms: You can limit the amount of money you ask for, you can prevent lobbyists from holding fund-raisers in Albany, and all of that, but resources are going to flow in the next election because that's the way it is.

If the governor is going to expend his resources, he should expend them on something where he can go back and say to the whole state, "There, I did something for you, and your life will be better because of it." Campaign finance reform is not it.

Norman Adler is a political consultant.


Restore Democracy

By Gerald Benjamin

This is the 15 minutes of fame for reform in New York. Reform has been put on the agenda. And we have a change in the executive branch. We have a governor-elect who has committed himself, both through his behavior and through his policies, to fundamental reform of our government.

So we're at a special moment. The fundamental question is, what should we pay attention to and focus upon? Since everything has the word "reform" added to it, the population of possibilities, already very large, expands.

First: New Yorkers need a functioning democracy, and they do not have one. There were more votes cast - 20 percent more - for governor in 1954 than in 2006. The drop off is palpable from the last relatively competitive election to this one, so there is something going on. One thing we can do is restore confidence in the system. We need campaign finance reform, legislative redistricting reform, and election administration reform. Our failure to meet federal expectations on the Help America Vote Act has raised visibility of the fact that we have a grievously abysmal election administration system embedded in our state constitution.

Second: Return financial balance and probity to state government and to local government. We hear discussions on how to make borrowing easier in a state that has an extraordinary level of debt. Bring fiscal balance to the state, real balance, not year-to-year balance. Address the property tax. Make the budget outcome transparent and understandable to citizens

Third: Improve our institutions and the relationship among our institutions. We have to attend more to the reform of the judiciary, which has been stymied despite the best efforts of the chief judge because it requires constitutional change. There are other opportunities for greater transparency, greater accountability

And I think we have a fundamental stake in the revitalization of the Republican Party. If we do not have competitive politics, we cannot have accountable government. If we have the principal Republican institution in the state [the State Senate] dependent upon malapportionment, and our failure to reform campaign finance, Republicans will persist in relying upon systemic pathologies to sustain the only bit of power that they still retain.

The governor has some choices to make. If I were making the choices, some of the most popular reforms would not move forward because they are the least likely to be achieved. I would take reforms like merit selection of judges out front. I would take reforms like getting a decent technology to reform voting out front. If the courts are making us do those things, the governor should embrace the opportunity.

But in the longer term, our governor-elect needs a constitutional reform agenda. Every area I have mentioned implicates the New York State constitution and barriers to change in it.

Gerald Benjamin is dean of liberal arts and sciences at the State University of New York at New Paltz and an expert on state and local government.

Close The Loopholes

By Blair Horner

The governor has to deliver on the things he said he is going to deliver on. He said he is going to deliver on a property tax cut, he said he is going to fix Medicaid, he said he's going to deal with Campaign for Fiscal Equity ruling on school funding.

The list is long, and there are only so many things one governor can do. So if I were counseling the governor, I would urge him to focus on using his executive power and on the areas where opportunities will present themselves this year.

For example, the law that creates the legislative redistricting commission expires in June. That law has to be extended if the legislature wants to continue to have a commission that, as far as I can tell, does nothing for eight years and a lot for two. This is a perfect opportunity to raise the issue of how district lines are drawn. Can the governor win on that issue in one year? Not if you want a constitutional amendment. But you won't get a constitutional amendment unless you begin the process.

The lobbying law expires next year. It is a perfect opportunity to raise the issue of lobbying and ethics. Next year is the 20th anniversary of the state's ethics law, which was not great when it was first passed and has withered away. The longer you have a reform, the more people think of how to get around it. New York's ethics law has more or less been frozen in time and space from 1987, and people have figured out how to game the system. So it's a good opportunity to go to that issue.

In February, the consumer price index for campaign contributions kicks in. To people who work on social issues, the index is a nice thing [it increases benefits to keep pace with inflation] but in campaign contributions it can be a bad thing. The legal limit for campaign contributions to a political party in New York is $84,000 a year. That gets adjusted for inflation in early February and goes up to close to $100,000.

Is it right that the party campaign contribution limit is about to go over $100,000? Is it right for elected officials, who virtually never face opponents, to spend the money on themselves, for leasing luxury cars, for taking trips abroad? Is it right that no one enforces the pathetic law we have in New York?

People are not writing huge campaign contributions because they are giving to charity. They want something in return. And when they talk they speak with a megaphone and the rest of us speak with a whisper. That's not right.

Spitzer does have to deliver on the big-ticket items. But he has to have a reform victory that people understand relatively quickly because it will get harder as time goes on. He should press ahead on some of these issues and see what shakes out.

If Spitzer is able to achieve reasonable campaign contribution limits, as low as possible, close up some of the ridiculous loopholes in the law and actually get it to be enforced, that would be a substantial achievement.

Blair Horner is legislative director for New York Public Interest Research Group


Keep the Tax Pledge

By William Weld

When I ran for governor of Massachusetts, I proposed cutting a billion dollars out of the budget. [Outgoing Governor] Michael Dukakis said, "Billy Weld doesn't understand the state budget. He doesn't understand that we've already cut through the fat and through the muscle and severed the nerves and we're now down to bone, he's asking us to scrape bone marrow."

But we found $2 billion out of a $14 billion budget in the first two months. I believe that there's no modern budget that doesn't have 10 percent in it that couldn't be cut. Government has a way of growing beyond what's absolutely necessary, so I would suggest to Governor-elect Spitzer that he solidify that no new taxes pledge, which he has come close to making, and stick by it. It creates the discipline you need.

There are creative things you can do. We are at a point, for example, where we can consider changing from a tax based system for transportation to a user based system that would take some pressure off the tax rolls and transfer it to the consumers of various services.

You've got to get 50 percent of your agenda accomplished in your first six to nine months or you're going to be a failure. The first year is critical. And you need at least one confrontation with the status quo to indicate that you're your own person. But beyond that, there's something to be said for getting along with the leadership of the legislature of both parties.

I think Spitzer is in a good position. This is a guy who clearly doesn't mind breaking a few eggs to make omelets.

William Weld is the former governor of Massachusetts and ran briefly for governor of New York in 2006.

Take Risks

By Jim Florio

A lot will depend upon events. For example, the Jersey shore is almost sacred in our state. And in the late '80s the Jersey shore was closed as much as it was it was open because of medical waste washed up on shores, sewage sludge and so on. A part of my campaign was that I was an environmental guy and that we were going to do something about the shore. And we actually did it. We got $1.5 billion for sewage facilities, we got laws on sewage sludge. And for the last 12 years, the Jersey shore has been virtually pristine.

Those kinds of things allow you to lead. The problem reaches crisis proportions and someone addresses them, then your locomotive has a caboose.

On the ostensibly tough issues you can start laying out what's involved and sometimes you can change public opinion. On gay marriage, if Spitzer is on the record as being in favor if it, he's going to have to sway the legislature, When I was governor, one of the things that I did was ban assault weapons. I took on the National Rifle Association. People said you can't do that. But we went out and educated the people on why it wasn't desirable to have access to Uzis and AK47s in our communities.

You have got to be comfortable with yourself. If there are things you have to do to get elected that are going to cause you sleepless nights, it's not worth the cost. So, I would suggest to the governor that he works from his own sense of values. I'm not saying he has to be suicidal but risk adversity seems to be the be all and the end all in politics in this day and age and that's really not what elections are supposed to be about. Making people unhappy is not the worst thing in the world.

Jim Florio is the former governor of New Jersey.

 

Governor Eliot Spitzer's Inaugural Address


Happy New Year and thanks to all of you — intrepid New Yorkers and friends — for joining us on this glorious, gray January day.

I want to thank Governor Pataki for joining in this time-honored tradition as the reins of state government pass from his careful stewardship. Thank you Governor and Mrs. Pataki for 12 years of service.

We are honored by the presence of former Governors Hugh Carey and Mario Cuomo and the great grandson of Governor Al Smith. They represent the august tradition of New York leadership.

We are honored by the presence of New York’s esteemed senior Senator Chuck Schumer and Congressman Charles Rangel and the entire Congressional delegation.

And of course, my colleagues in state government. Speaker Shelly Silver and Senator Joe Bruno and the members of their respective chambers.

A warm welcome to our great friend the esteemed Judge Kay and all the members of the Court of Appeals. A warm welcome to all those joining me in being sworn in today. Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and my partner, Lieutenant Governor David Paterson.

My deepest thanks are to my parents; my wife, Silda, and our three wonderful daughters.

History's Lesson

Today, we come together to mark a pivotal moment in our state’s history, a day that in the rhythm of democracy marks a transition and a new beginning.

It is with profound humility about the task that lies before us and filled with great hope for what I know we will achieve, that I stand before you to announce that Day One of our time for change has arrived.

As we step outside on this first January morning of 2007, the light of a new day shines down on the Empire State once again.

The opportunity at the heart of this day is unique to our times, but not new to our history. As the writer Russell Shorto has aptly noted, New York created the model for the kind of society that would be duplicated throughout the country and around the globe: Our state was born as an island at the center of the world.

What began as a babble of dialects and peoples struggling to find a way to live together, searching for balance between chaos and order, liberty and oppression, became a symphony of democracy.

Under the shadow of liberty’s torch, generations of weary travelers have sailed into New York harbor believing that of all the places on Earth, this was the land where people could come and find the chance to make their world anew.

That no matter how great the hardship, no matter how daunting the challenge, the promise of our democracy makes it possible to overcome the greatest odds so that we — individually and as a society — may arrive at a greater good.

And so it was for those first immigrants who came with little and worked long days to give their children a better life.

For the bold governor, Dewitt Clinton, who ignored the warnings of the skeptics and cynics and built an Erie Canal that so many had said was wasteful, impractical, and impossible.

For the reformers of Teddy Roosevelt’s day who dared to take on the political machine and inbred corruption in order to give government back to the people.

For the suffragists and union members and civil rights heroes who organized and marched on our streets to win their chance at the American dream.

For the inventors, artists and entrepreneurs who have turned our state into a beacon of hope, ideas and opportunity.

Choosing Pragmatism and Ethics

And so it must be for us. Like all who have come before, we have arrived at this moment on this day because we have demanded a different and more vibrant future for our children.

Because we know that New York is the state where the depth of our talent and the breadth of our skills and the reach of our culture have forever changed America and the entire world — and because we know we can do it once more.

This election was not about electing one person as governor. Rather it was about what we the people collectively elected for the future of our state.

We chose pragmatism and ethics over partisan politics and dysfunction, and we demanded an end to gridlock.

So I pledge to toil each and every day so as not to disappoint the hard working people of this state who have placed their trust in this future — a future which rekindles hope and restores growth.

Today we stand in the midst of a global revolution that has transformed the way we live and the way we work. Creativity and prosperity travel wherever the brightest minds and most innovative economies can be found.

New York Has Been Sleeping

Over the last decade, we have seen what can happen when our government stands still in the face of great challenge and inevitable change.

We’ve seen it in the burdensome property taxes and the health care we can’t afford; in the jobs that have disappeared from our upstate cities and the schools that keep failing our children; in a government that works for those who hold office — not those who put them there.

Like Rip Van Winkle, the legendary character created by the New York author Washington Irving, New York has slept through much of the past decade while the rest of the world has passed us by.

Today is the day when all of that changes — when we stop standing still and start moving forward once more.

And while I wish I could tell you that either a single election or a different party or even a new governor alone is enough to do this — I cannot. While I wish I could tell you that change will be easy — I don’t believe that you elected me to do what’s easy.

Easy is spending your tax dollars without consequence or sacrifice. Easy is saying yes to supporters and no to opponents. Easy is looking the other way while costs rise, debts mount and families lose ground. Easy is what we’ve had, but easy is not where we need to go.

The Lessons Of Two Roosevelts

Let us remember the lessons of two great governors, Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt. Teddy Roosevelt instructed, “It is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage that we move on to better things.”

And Franklin Roosevelt advised us to be, “bold,” and to recognize that people demand “action, and action now.”

I have no doubt that we can move on to better things in this state — that we will find ourselves on the winning side of history once more.

We Must Be One New York Again

But to be number one again, we must be one New York again.

And so in order to return to policies of opportunity and prosperity, we must change the ethics of Albany and end the politics of cynicism and division in our state.

If ever there was a time that called out for introspection by those in government, it is now. Lincoln spoke of listening to “the better angels of our nature.” Indeed, those of us who work in the great building behind me must hear and heed the serious responsibility that public service demands and rise to this moment and show the public in words and in deeds that we understand that our responsibility is to the people of New York.

The reform we seek is substantial in size and historic in scope.

It will require a new brand of politics — a break from the days when progress was measured by the partisan points scored or the opponents defeated. No longer can we afford merely to tinker at the margins of the status quo or play the politics of pitting one group against another. We must replace delay and diversion with energy and purpose in the halls of our capital.

What we needed now more than ever is a politics that binds us together, a politics that looks to the future, a politics that asks not what is in it for me, but always what is in it for us.

We must embrace a progressive vision of government once more — a vision that upholds the values of individuality and community; of entrepreneurship and opportunity; of responsibility and fairness. No one any longer believes in government as a heavy hand that can cure all our ills, but rather we see it as a lean and responsive force that can make possible the pursuit of prosperity and opportunity for all — by softening life’s blows, leveling its playing field and making possible the pursuit of happiness that is our God-given right.

It is both tempting and understandable for each of us to focus on the problems and concerns within our own neighborhoods, our own cities, our own regions and our own businesses. But for any one of us to succeed, we must succeed as One New York.

A state that is not urban or rural, upstate or downstate, Republican or Democratic, but first and foremost New Yorkers — striving together, reaching together, working together toward our common dream.

And so, together, we must strive to build One New York through a politics that operates on the principle that we rise or fall as one people and one state.

We will succeed not because we point fingers or refuse to budge, but because we compromise enough to find principled consensus, and because we listen enough to find wise solutions.

Not everyone will agree with this vision and some will not support these solutions. Indeed, we will make mistakes. But progress we will have — measured by our core values.

Our purpose is not reform merely for the sake of reform, but to restore fairness and create opportunity and redefine the very fabric of our community.

Innovation Economy, Accountable Schools, Patients First

Some may feel anxiety over changes that seek to make businesses more competitive, but all will benefit from an Innovation Economy that attracts young people and new businesses in every part of New York.

Some may express skepticism over a school system that demands more accountability from students, teachers and parents, but all will benefit from an education that rewards excellence and gives every child the best possible chance in life.

Some may feel threatened by health care reforms, but all will benefit from a system that finally puts patients first at a cost that all families can afford.

Some public officials may not want to face stricter ethics rules and more competitive elections, but all citizens will win when we finally get a government that puts the people’s interests, openness and integrity first.

With most of these reforms, there will be those who say we can’t, we shouldn’t and we won’t.

They will peddle the politics of cynicism that we must now make the politics of yesterday. Because if we band together and succeed in our efforts, our future will mean a New York that values the dignity of each person — and once more offers opportunity for all.

Transforming Government, Rebuilding The Economy

Every policy, every action every decision we make in this administration will further two overarching objectives: we must transform our government so that it is as ethical and wise as all of New York, and we must rebuild our economy so that it is ready to compete on the global stage in the next century. The simplicity of articulating these principles belies the complexity of the task. But victory will be ours, as it must be.

And so on this day of unbridled hope and possibility, I ask you to think not only of the challenges and aspirations that you hold in your own hearts, but of those that are held in the collective heart of New York.

This One New York includes Chris Kelder and his family, who have farmed their land in Ulster County for more than two centuries, passing their dreams on to each successive generation.

It includes today’s immigrants whose lips speak the languages of Spanish, Chinese, Korean, French and an infinite array of dialects from all over the world.

Today’s immigrants enrich our state with their vitality and their vision, in the same way as the immigrants of the last century. All these different tongues translate into the incomparable work ethic of New York.

And it includes the brave immigrants who came through Ellis Island over the last century in search of a better life, one of whose grandsons stands here in front of you today the embodiment of their dreams.

Each of us comes from a different place and from a different background. Each has faced their own tests and trials along life’s journey.

But throughout the history of New York, what has always united us as a people is the recognition that we are all on this journey together, and if we’re willing to catch each other during our stumbles and look out for one another during the tough times, we have it in our power to remove any obstacles in our path and walk toward that brighter day.

No matter how great the challenge — no matter how impossible the odds — our destiny will never be a path to follow, but always a trail to blaze.

And so on this new day of a new year, I ask not just for your support, but also for your cooperation, your patience and your participation in making our dream real once again.

As New York’s former Governor Theodore Roosevelt once remarked, there can be no great progress without first entering the arena.

My fellow New Yorkers: join me in that arena.

Lend your sweat, your toil and your passion to the effort of building One New York of which we can all be proud.

My fellow New Yorkers. Our moment is here.

Day One is now.

Together, let’s build that One New York. Let’s walk toward that better day.

Thank you, and God bless.

 

New York City Council Stated Meeting -- June 29, 2006


Every two weeks the New York City Council meets for its Stated Meeting to introduce and pass legislation. As a regular feature, Gotham Gazette covers these meetings and posts a summary of the bills passed.

MEETING SUMMARY:
2007 CITY BUDGET

The New York City Council unanimously approved a $52.9 billion budget for the coming fiscal year at 12:40 a.m. Friday-- the final day of the outgoing fiscal year.

Although the council and the mayor reached agreement (in pdf format) on the budget Tuesday, the council did not begin meeting on the deal until late Thursday night. Preparing documents with the final details -- complicated by mechanical problems - reportedly caused repeated delays, to the irritation of some council members.

In contrast to some recent years when lawmakers were forced to raise taxes and cut spending in order to balance the budget, this year the Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the City Council enjoyed a $3.5 billion surplus, one of the largest in city history.

The bulk of the surplus will be used to pay for health costs for city employees. The mayor and council agreed to create a $2 billion trust fund for long-term health care expenses, which are expected to increase in the future.

The city budget also provides a $400 tax rebate to homeowners, hires 1,200 more police officers, and contributes $120 million to help fund low-income housing.

In its budget response in April, City Council had proposed an additional $575 million more in spending than Mayor Bloomberg had proposed. The council ended up with about $230 million of that amount and members pointed out the items - or "budget restorations" - that they won in the negotiations.

Council initiatives include:
- 18,000 new bulletproof vests for police officers
- 2,000 universal full-day pre-k slots
- $20 million in funding for the New York City Housing Authority to enable 3,000 families to use Section 8 housing vouchers
- $4.2 million restored to the budgets of the five district attorneys
- And $2 million for child advocacy centers.

The council, of course, did not get all it had requested.

Some of the council initiatives NOT included the budget:
- A commitment to make all pre-kindergarten slots full day
- Funding for a 311 education hotline for parents and students
- An Office of Food Policy to help address hunger and nutrition issues in the city
- Money to hire child advocates to monitor foster care programs
- And tax credits for small businesses and manufacturing sector.

In addition, the council had requested that the mayor "baseline" certain programs, in an effort to ensure that they are not cut in the future. In past years, the mayor has cut programs of specific interest to the council and the council then spends five months seeking to have the money put back in the budget. This process is often referred to as the "budget dance", and Speaker Quinn vowed to end the practice.

The mayor did not commit to save all of programs, but he did agree not to cut $40 million for libraries, $10 million for 7,000 summer jobs for youth, and $3 million for trash collection in next years budget.

The budget also includes an estimated $45 million to $50 million in so-called "member items," specific projects that individual council members gained for their district. While council member say these groups provide iportant neighbrhood services, others say they are a political tool. "It's clear that elected officials use them to build up electoral support in their districts," Megan Quattlebaum of Common Cause/NY has said.

In addition to approving the city's operating budget, which covers the day-to-day expenses of running the city, the council also approved a capital plan, which funds construction projects over the next four years.

The capital budget calls for 66,000 additional classroom seats and new schools and investments in the extension of the number 7 train, $1.3 billion for street resurfacing, and $1.1 billion for a water filtration plant in the Bronx.

Mayor Bloomberg praised the budget agreement, saying it "will be a model for the future. Instead of squandering one-time resources, we are reserving funds for fiscal downturns, investing in our future and protecting our quality of life, public safety and New York's children."

But despite the emphasis on the good news in the budget, some members warned that problems still loom in the future.

Because of growing city debt and pension and health care costs for city workers, the mayor's office projects a deficit for $3.6 billion next year, and $4.2 billion the year after that.

Predicting The Big Stories in 2007


 

At the site of New York's two World's Fairs, Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently talked about the future. In a speech, the mayor laid out the possibility of a grim 2030 for New York City. Rush hour will be 12 hours long, there won't be enough electricity to go around, and monster storms, empowered by global warming, will regularly pummel the city.

But the mayor sees a way out, if New Yorkers can come up with ideas to change the future. He thinks they will.

"It’s here in Flushing Meadows ... that more than once, New Yorkers have looked beyond the present, to see the promise of the future," said Bloomberg.

Of course, the futures envisioned at the World's Fairs didn't necessarily come true. At the 1939 World's Fair – whose theme was "Building the World of Tomorrow" – an exhibit called "Futurama" predicted that the United States would construct an elaborate system of superhighways, enabling people to spread across the country in suburban luxury. This is kind of what happened, actually, except that in Futurama the vehicles that traveled on the superhighways didn't have drivers, and were controlled instead by magnet-wielding computers. The 1964 fair had Futurama II, which foresaw a "near future" where people populated the moon and vacationed in underwater hotels.

Gotham Gazette encourages such innovative and fanciful thinking, so each December we ask New Yorkers to predict what will happen in the year to come. This year, two dozen public officials, journalists, and advocates tell us what they think the big story in 2007 will be. There was little talk of cataclysmic new weather patterns or automated cars (well, a little talk about automated subway cars). But our predictors did see a 2007 with big fights in Brooklyn, big changes in Albany, the end of the black-and-white cookie -- and twelve months of speculation about November 2008.

DOUG MUZZIO – PROFESSOR, BARUCH COLLEGE

New Yorkers will confront the unthinkable.

Pataki gets off LSD, goes into private sector.

Everything does not change on Day One -- or Week One, Month One, Year One, or even first term. But a lot does. Albany is awakened from its long dysfunctional, often corrupting, sleep.

DICK GOTTFRIED – MEMBER OF THE STATE ASSEMBLY

The story will be the Spitzer Administration, of course.

BROOKE MASTERS – AUTHOR OF "SPOILING FOR A FIGHT: THE RISE OF ELIOT SPITZER"

Eliot Spitzer will charge into the governor's mansion and pick at least one high-volume, high profile fight with Sheldon Silver to demonstrate his independence. One likely point of contention: Spitzer's efforts to reform redistricting and campaign laws.

On other policy issues: Spitzer will give the NYC schools more than the $1.9 billion required by the Court of Appeals but considerably less than the $6 billion the CFE folks were hoping for. For business, he'll try to revamp the workers compensation insurance rules to cut premiums. Middle-class homeowners should see a small cut on their property taxes. There will be months and months of negotiation over efforts to revamp Medicaid and Spitzer will almost certainly lose his temper and tell someone powerful off in a way that makes headlines in the tabloids and the Wall Street Journal.

ERROL LOUIS – NEW YORK DAILY NEWS COLUMNIST

The debate in Albany on a host of issues – including parole reform, public support for subsidized housing, transparency in government and reducing the influence of lobbyists – is about to shift several paces to the left. Big story.

Locally, the conclusion of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit means the city will have a constitutionally mandated minimum of $2 billion in additional spending every year. This will spur a furious three-way battle between the Department of Education, the United Federation of Teachers, and long-suffering parents who have been waiting more than a decade for change.

BRIAN LEHRER – RADIO HOST, WNYC

Governor Spitzer will move quickly to stuff the legislature with big proposals for change, including less power for two of the three men in the room (guess which two.)

Spitzer will stage some "Sister Souljah moments" early, not aimed at black people specifically like Bill Clinton's was, but to show his independence from some Democratic constituencies (the teacher's union?) and establish his bipartisan credibility. Remember, he'll want to run against Obama in 2012.

Spitzer will be very popular in his first year, despite a tough love budget.

Giuliani, Pataki, and Hillary Clinton will all run for President, and all still be in the race at year's end. Bloomberg will still be teasing us with the idea at this time next year.

Congestion pricing will gain even more popularity among policy wonks, but union opposition will stop it from taking off in City Council or in Albany. Spitzer will have to answer the question: "Why does Albany get to decide these things for the city anyway?"

The trans-fats ban will take effect in restaurants, but New Yorkers' trans-fat blood levels will remain unchanged.

JONATHAN BOWLES -- CENTER FOR AN URBAN FUTURE

Continuing his recent public health kick, Mayor Bloomberg bans black-and-white cookies, pastrami sandwiches and Kennedy’s fried chicken. He also orders changes to the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest, capping the number of hot dogs allowed to be eaten at 10.

The Spitzer administration accomplishes more in its first six months than the Pataki administration did in 12 years.

In addition to advancing transit infrastructure projects like the Second Avenue Subway and the extension of the Number 7 train, state and city officials finally start to put pressure on the MTA to improve and expand existing subway and bus service.

GENE RUSSIANOFF, STRAPHANGERS CAMPAIGN

There will be a new MTA Chairman by late spring to replace current MTA Chairman Peter Kalikow - as well as a new president for the subway and bus system to replace NYC Transit President Larry Reuter, the longest serving head of the city transit system.

Transit and traffic officials will open the first two "Bus Rapid Transit" lines - and these "subways on the surface" as Mayor Bloomberg calls them will be very popular with riders.

In the fall of 2007, the MTA will have to face an estimated $900 million dollar deficit for the following year. Everything - from a fare and toll hike to new management savings to increased state aid - will be in play.

New York City Transit will end its loopy plans to run trains without conductors.

The Second Avenue Subway will start construction, but its long-term fate will remain uncertain.

Mayor Bloomberg will sign Council legislation that requires private employers of 50 or more to offer their workers TransitChek, a programs that gives both businesses and employees tax breaks for using subways, buses and commuter rail.

NICOLE GELINAS - SENIOR FELLOW, MANHATTAN INSTITUTE

1. The state-run Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) finally will learn that its customers loathe the unattended high-entry-exit-turnstiles it has installed all over Gotham’s subway stations in the past few years to save a few million dollars’ worth of token clerks’ hours. The MTA then will determine, once and for all, to deal with its real labor problem: not too many clerks, but overly generous pension and healthcare benefits for those workers relative to what’s available in the private sector. The MTA and the Transport Workers Union then will negotiate a new contract that calls for reasonable pension and benefit reductions in the future, allowing the authority to property staff its stations again while saving the riders and taxpayers money at the same time.

2. Mayor Bloomberg will announce that he won’t spend another taxpayer dime on city-subsidized “affordable housing.” In a speech, he’ll say he’s decided, after careful consideration of the issue, that the government shouldn’t be in the business of subsidizing housing for hundreds of thousands of working-class and middle-class New Yorkers, because the end result of that philosophy is government allocation of all housing, which certainly isn’t something the city should pursue. The mayor will say he’ll spend that money instead helping the MTA to build new express tracks to the outer boroughs, to allow those same working-class and middle-class New Yorkers get to work more quickly from their unsubsidized, private-market housing.

3. If it’s a boy, Donald Trump, Jr. and his wife, Vanessa, will name their new baby Donald Trump III.

SUDHIR VENKATESH – DIRECTOR OF THE CENTER FOR URBAN RESEARCH AND POLICY AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

The big story will be the rise of hate crimes against minorities. There will also be a new wave of grassroots organizing; I think you're going to see minority communities challenging their own leadership.

ESMERALDA SIMMONS – EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR CENTER FOR LAW AND SOCIAL JUSTICE, MEDGAR EVERS COLLEGE

There will be continued advocacy against the New York Police Department's use of excessive force. I don't think it's going to die down. There will also be a push for immigration reform and for more affordable housing.

JILL NELSON – JOURNALIST, AUTHOR AND ACTIVIST LIVING IN HARLEM

I think the big story will be the continued loss of affordable housing and the disappearance of the working and middle class from the city as it is transformed into a place for the very rich, those who serve them, and the few others who still cling to housing.

I also think we'll see increased instances of police violence against young Black and Latino males and perhaps an organized and violent response to these police actions as people arm to protect themselves from the robbers and the cops.

Overall, we'll see an increased division based on race and class as the wealthy continue to eat up housing stock, wages stagnate, hospitals close and health care disappears, public schools continue to fail most students, unemployment remains almost 50 percent among Black males, people feel economically disenfranchised and trapped, and the developers, chain stores and gentrifiers, like arrogant and studiously oblivious locusts, continue to gobble up the resources necessary to maintain the economic, racial, and cultural diversity that once made New York City such an amazing place for dreamers and pragmatists alike.

GALE BREWER – CITY COUNCILMEMBER

The big story in 2007 will be the issue raised by the shooting of Sean Bell, and the relationship between police and residents – all kinds of residents. There have been a lot of discussions. This is a diverse city, and we have a wonderful police force. This is a historical, ongoing challenge. We're a safe city, but we also have to be a compatible and compassionate city.

MARTY MARKOWITZ – BROOKLYN BOROUGH PRESIDENT

The Atlantic Yards project will bring thousands of new union jobs to Brooklyn as we eagerly anticipate the arrival of the Brooklyn Nets and thousands of units of affordable housing in our enhanced and vibrant downtown.

Our new Democratic Governor and Congress will play a role in bringing the parties responsible for the oil spill in Greenpoint and the pollution of Newtown Creek to justice.

Coney Island will reclaim its status as "America's Favorite Playground," as plans for a new amphitheater are set in motion and the glorious Parachute Jump, a.k.a. "Brooklyn's Eiffel Tower," lights the way.

SAMUEL FREEDMAN – NEW YORK TIMES COLUMNIST, AUTHOR OF SMALL VICTORIES

1) The Atlantic Yards plan will be either defeated by racial politics or terminally bogged down in court challenges.

2) Confrontations will develop at many schools between teachers and the principals installed by Chancellor Joel Klein straight out of the Leadership Academy.

3) The cast of prospective mayoral candidates for 2009 will have people cursing the law that does not allow Michael Bloomberg a third term.

ELAINE RIVERA – STATE POLITICS REPORTER FOR WNYC

The big stories of 2007 will be:

1. Eliot Spitzer's first 100 days. He's got to make his mark quickly.

2. What happens with Atlantic Yards. If Sheldon Silver nixes the project, it will be the third development project he has nixed -- first here was the West Side Stadium, then the Moynihan Station.

3. New Yorkers running for president. Hillary will announce. Mike will not. Rudy might. Nobody cares if George does or not.

DAVID RABIN – OWNER OF LOTUS, CO-PRESIDENT OF NEW YORK NIGHTLIFE ASSOCIATION

Someone in City Hall will finally wake up and realize that nightlife is a $10 billion economic engine for NY, and is just as crucial a factor as Broadway, sports teams, or museums when people decide to travel here as tourists or move here. The Mayor will set up an Office of Nightlife just like the Mayor's Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting.

DAVID KALLICK – FISCAL POLICY INSTITUTE

Eliot Spitzer will quietly realize that it doesn’t make sense to spend hundreds of millions in public dollars to build the Freedom Tower as a home for government workers who don’t even want to go there.

Taking the Freedom Tower out of the equation, Spitzer will restore public confidence in the rebuilding process by making the rebuilding at Ground Zero go faster, work better, cost less, and have the memorial - - not a political symbol - - as its central element.

RICHARD PEREZ-PENA – REPORTER, NY TIMES

I'm a health care reporter, so I always think health care is going to be the big story in the upcoming year.

One of the most interesting things is going to see how Spitzer tries to keep his promise of universal health insurance. I really don't know what he has in mind.

I think the [Berger Commission's recommendations] will take effect. It may not all happen on schedule, but I think it will happen. But I also think that in a few years we're going to be doing this again. The hospital closures aren't going to stop because you managed your way through a part of the process. All those same forces are still at work.

JENNIFER CUNNINGHAM – EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, 1199 SEIU

2007 will be a year in which the debate over healthcare costs rekindles the desire of Empire State policy makers to address the crisis of the uninsured. NY's congressional delegation, with its newfound clout, will push for a federal solution, sharpening the debate over the issue during the 2008 presidential election cycle.

JOHN SEXTON – PRESIDENT OF NYU

With Mayor Bloomberg's announcement of a major sustainability initiative for New York City and with the issue of climate change very much on everyone's mind, more and more major New York City institutions are going to scrutinize their operations to determine how they can contribute to sustainability.

The reason New York City is so great is that it has been, almost since its beginnings in the 17th century, the birthplace of important ideas. Sustainability is one of those crucial ideas, and I expect to see an accelerating embrace of it in 2007.

MAJORA CARTER – SUSTAINABLE SOUTH BRONX

The City of New York will coordinate its agencies in a way that allows for our environmental problems to be mitigated in many different ways with multiple benefits instead of relying on single-use, expensive, and ugly "end of pipe" solutions like sewage treatment plants, more power plants, emergency room asthma treatments, and jails.

JAMES ODDO, CITY COUNCIL REPUBLICAN LEADER

1) I think that in 2007 any talk of tinkering around with term limits dies. I think that comes to a stop. I think it's a mistake. It's impossible. After watching what the media did with the pay raise issue, people will come to realization that it's a fight you can't win.

2) This year, particularly during the budget process obviously, there will be more talk of property tax rollback than ever before. As the surplus continues to grow, the pressure on the council and individual members to bang that drum will grow. I'm not saying we'll get it, but I think you'll hear a lot of us talking about that.

3) In a case of instant karma, New York Yankee pitcher Mike Mussina will have an inordinate number of line drives hit back at his head this year. And I will cheer as each near miss happens, and hope that he has an epiphany. That's my third prediction. It might be as much wishful thinking as my prediction last year: " 2006 in a word: Suozzi!" But whatever.

 

Top 10 Stories of 2006


The biggest news story in New York, as in the rest of the country in 2006, was really the war in Iraq. The war had specific effects here, as New Yorkers died in battle; those at home debated what the United States should do; and New York politicians saw their influence increase on Capitol Hill as Democrats gained control of Congress, partly because of voters’ opposition to Bush administration policies in Iraq.

A furor arose nationally over Dubai Ports World’s plan to run port facilities in New York and other ports in the country. This takeover of port facilities was one of the big stories that did not happen in 2006. (For others, see The Big Stories That Did Not Happen in 2006.)

But 2006 was not just the year of national and international news. In New York, it was the year of Eliot Spitzer. His election as governor rarely seemed in doubt, despite two qualified and articulate opponents. Democrats and Republicans alike seemed to believe that the man who once took on Wall Street could manage to clean up the “mess in Albany.”

Here are the top 10 New York stories of 2006 – and the big stories that did not happen.

1. Democrats Sweep State Elections

Led by gubernatorial candidate Eliot Spitzer, Democrats captured the four statewide offices on Election Day, giving them control of all the positions for the first time since 1942.

Election Day brought the state its first black lieutenant governor, David Paterson of Manhattan. In the contest for Spitzer’s old job of state attorney general, Andrew Cuomo, son of the former governor, won a convincing victory against former Westchester District Attorney Jeanine Pirro following a campaign marked more by revelations about Pirro’s marriage than any policy debates.

But one winning Democrat was not invited to the ticket’s election night parties: State Comptroller Alan Hevesi. Long considered a shoo-in for reelection, Hevesi seemed in jeopardy after it became known that he had used a state employee as a chauffeur and companion for his ailing wife. The news provided a boost for the little known Republican candidate, former Saratoga County Treasurer Chris Callaghan. But despite the charges – bolstered by Hevesi’s apology, reimbursement payments to the state and a scathing report by a state ethics panel – the comptroller held on to win, getting 57 percent of the vote. Hevesi’s future remains in doubt, though, as the Albany district attorney is investigating the case and Spitzer seems likely to seek his removal from office early in 2007.

On other matters, Spitzer vowed to bring change to Albany from “day 1.” During the transition he implemented new ethics rules for himself and those advising him and said he would limit the size of campaign contributions that he would accept. He had also set forth an ambitious agenda, particularly in health care and education.

2. New Yorkers Gain Clout on Capitol Hill

The Democratic victories across the country on Election Day boosted the power and prestige of New York City and State’s overwhelmingly Democratic congressional delegation. With the Democrats assuming control of the House of Representatives for the first time since 1994, Charles Rangel, the longtime Democratic representative from Harlem, was named chairman of the House Ways and Means committee, which handles tax writing and other financial matters. Joe Crowley of Queens also got a seat on the key committee. And Anthony Weiner, who represents parts of Brooklyn and Queens, won a seat on another important committee: Energy and Commerce. Nydia Velázquez will head up the small business committee. And the representative from the Rochester area, Louise Slaughter, will chair the rules committee, giving New Yorkers two of the most powerful committees on Capitol Hill.

While neither of New York’s senators will head committees, they were big winners on Election Day as well. Senator Hillary Clinton trounced her Republican opponent for the Senate, former Yonkers Mayor John Spencer, bolstering her position for a presidential bid. And by masterminding the successful Democratic Senate campaign, the state senior Senator Charles Schumer, increased his power.

3. Health Problems At Ground Zero

Days before New Yorkers marked the fifth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, researchers confirmed what many had long assumed: that the collapse of the Twin Towers led to serious health problems. Mt. Sinai Medical Center published the first major clinical study (in pdf format) of the 40,000 men and women who worked at Ground Zero in the days immediately following 9/11. Seventy percent of those tested reported respiratory problems, and 60 percent of them continue to be sick.

Studies have also shown reduced lung capacity among firefighters, increased respiratory problems among downtown residents (in pdf format), low birth weight for babies born in lower Manhattan soon after the attacks, and declining health for nearby residents with asthma. The collapse of the Twin Towers even led to the coining of a new medical term: " World Trade Center Cough." The death of James Zadroga in January, 2006, was the first death to be linked officially to a problem caused by work at Ground Zero -- though he does not seem to be the only one to have died from working on the smoldering rubble that rescue workers referred to as "the pile." Medical experts also predict that people who are healthy now may develop conditions related to 9/11 in the years to come.

Many blame these health problems partly on government neglect and, in some cases, outright deception. Until recently, many officials had been unwilling even to acknowledge a direct link between health problems and 9/11, likely because of the fear of a wave of lawsuits.

There are signs that change is coming. Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced a new plan for tracking and treating 9/11-related cases, including giving millions of dollars to the city Health and Hospitals Corporation to expand its 9/11 related services. There are also several bills pending in Congress that would provide care and compensation to those whose health is suffering as a result of 9/11.

4. The $5.4 Billion Apartment Sale

In what BusinessWeek billed as “the world’s biggest real estate deal,” Jerry Speyer bought Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village for $5.4 billion. The complex, with 110 buildings on 80 acres on Manhattan’s East Side, has provided housing for ten of thousands of middle income New Yorkers. With the new owners likely to upgrade the apartments in order to get the biggest return on their investment, the sale prompted increased concern about the loss of affordable housing in Manhattan and throughout the city. Tishman Speyer, Speyer’s firm, said residents of rent-stabilized apartments would continue to be protected, but the company has not said what it plans to do with its new purchase.

Almost as soon as the Stuyvesant deal was announced, another moderate-income development, Starrett City in Brooklyn, went on the auction block. Sixty percent of the tenants in the 140-acre development on Jamaica Bay receive federal rent subsidies. Although real estate experts predicted that the complex far from Manhattan could go for more than $1 billion, they also noted it was unclear how much a new owner could change the character of Starrett City. Both sales, along with continued construction of luxury buildings and high prices, indicated that the New York City real estate boom, while perhaps flagging a bit, continues

5. Health Board Bans Trans Fats

In a move that some praised as a path-breaking public health measure and others denounced as Big Brotherism run amok, the city health board banned almost all uses of artificial trans fats in city restaurants. This made New York the first city in the nation to ban the artificial fats that medical experts say increase the chances of heart disease and other serious health conditions.

Restaurants would have to start sharply curtailing the amount of trans fat, found in oils and shortening, by July 1 from recipes that contain more than a half-gram of trans fat per serving. By July 1, 2008, they would have to remove all items with more than a half gram of trans fat, including deep fried foods, from their menus.

In another effort to encourage New Yorkers to eat more healthily – and to lower high rates of obesity and diabetes in the city – the health board will also require restaurants with standardized menus –McDonald’s and Starbucks, to name two – to post the calories content of their offerings.

6. Legal Battle Over School Funding Ends

The 15-year court fight to win more state money for New York City public schools ended in November when the state’s highest court ruled that city schools need an additional $1.9 billion a year to provide all their students with a sound basic education.

The decision in the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit represented a partial victory for the education advocates who launched the suit in the early 1990s. They cheered the fact the court for recognizing that there is a right to a sound education and a link between funding for schools and the schools' ability to provide that education.

But the court’s dollar amount – while not “chump change” as several observed – represents far less than the $4 billion to $6 billion set out in decisions by lower courts.

Noting that Governor-elect Spitzer had said during his campaign that state schools could get an additional $8 billion, the Campaign for Fiscal Equity and others vowed to take the fight for more funds to the new governor and the state legislature.

And no matter how much money the city schools do get, fights seem certain over how the money will be spent and whether the Department of Education will have to account for how it uses the money.

7. Commission Recommends Closing Hospitals

New York's health care system is under immense pressure. The state's hospitals are in worse shape than hospitals almost anywhere else in the country; its Medicaid program is the most expensive in the country; and millions of New Yorkers lack health insurance.

Eighteen months ago, Governor George Pataki appointed a commission to recommend a course of action. In a report released in November, it concluded that there are too many hospital beds in New York, leading to a financially unsustainable health care system. The panel recommended closing nine hospitals statewide and forcing 48 others to change the services they provide. Five of the hospitals slated to close and 10 set to restructure are in New York City.

The recommendations were widely seen as one of the biggest things to ever happen to the New York health care system. Some protested the closings, saying they would only aggravate existing inequities, and a poll found that over 70 percent of New Yorkers opposed the recommendations. Others said the closings wouldn't save money. Still, there never seemed to be much doubt that Albany's lawmakers would allow the plan to go through. Both the state's major health care workers union and its hospital trade association -- political juggernauts who have made hospital closings politically unfeasible in the past – did not oppose the report. Pataki and incoming governor Eliot Spitzer said they supported it. And indeed, the legislature passed on its chance to block it.

8. Christine Quinn Becomes New York City Council Speaker

Members of the City Council chose Christine Quinn from Chelsea as their new speaker, making her only the third person – and the first woman and the first gay person – to hold the powerful post. Quinn replaced Gifford Miller who had to leave office because of term limits.

Although Quinn won out over several rivals, thanks to skilled backroom maneuvering and the support of powerful city political organizations, she pledged to make the council more open and democratic. As her first year as speaker neared its end, observers gave her mixed grades on her reform agenda, saying she had implemented some needed changes, on such matters as enacting the budget and restricting access to the council by lobbyists, but faltered on eliminating special stipends for committee chairpeople and restricting council members’ outside incomes.

9. Police Kill Unarmed Man on His Wedding Day

In an event that rekindled long-standing tension over police conduct in black communities, 23-year-old Sean Bell died in a barrage of 50 police bullets on his wedding day. Bell, who was unarmed, was leaving his bachelor party at a Jamaica strip club when plainclothes police began shooting at his car, killing him, wounding two of his friends and even sending a bullet into a nearby air train station.

The number of shots fired, the victim’s race and the shooting by members of a special undercover unit prompted comparisons with the fatal police shooting of Amadou Diallo in 1999. But, in sharp contrast with the conduct of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani following the death of Diallo, Mayor Bloomberg met with black leaders shortly after the Queens shooting and called the number of rounds fired “inexplicable” and excessive.

Several weeks after the shooting witnesses and police disputed what happened that night. As the year ended, the case was still under investigation by Queens District Attorney Richard Brown.

10. Summer Heat Kills Dozens, Causes Long Blackout in Queens

One of the worst heat waves on record in New York killed about 140 people. After five straight days of above 90 temperatures in late July, temperatures in early August edged above 100 in some parts of the city for three more days. Heat stroke caused about 40 of the deaths, with the others arising from conditions, such as heart problems, exacerbated by the heat.

An earlier – and less severe heat wave – had caused power outages of as long as 10 days in some parts of Queens, raising concerns about the city’s aging infrastructure. The power failure was blamed on the distribution system, which relies on aging and outmoded equipment. As food spoiled and people sweltered, ire grew at Con Ed for both the failure and for seriously underestimating the number of people affected as well as for not being able to get the lights back on more quickly. But Con Ed has refused to take the blame, going so far as to issue a report in October praising its handling of the blackout. In that report, Con Ed said a series of unrelated events, including an underground cable fire, caused the power to fail.

 

The Big Stories That Did Not Happen in 2006


1. Dubai Will Not Take Over the Port

A nationwide furor erupted last winter when Dubai Ports World, owned by the United Arab Emirates, took over a lease to operate port facilities in the United States, including a cruise ship terminal in New York. Although the emirates are considered a U.S. ally, critics of the deal said the country harbored terrorists. New York's senators, Governor George Pataki and other officials said the plan raised security concerns. Despite assurances from the Bush administration that the move did not pose a threat, normally quiescent Republicans in Congress vowed to try to block the administration on the deal.

Faced with such opposition, the company announced that it was dropping the port deal and would "transfer" the lease to an American company. Earlier this month, the huge Dubai company ended its efforts in the U.S, saying it had sold its U.S. operations, including those in New York and New Jersey, to American International Group for an undisclosed price.

2. Hevesi Did Not Leave Office

Amid a chorus of calls for him to resign or be removed from office, Alan Hevesi remained state comptroller as the year ended and, by all accounts, planned to begin a second term in January. Critics charge that Hevesi's admission that he had a state employee serve essentially as a personal servant for his ailing wife undermines his ability to serve as the state's fiscal watchdog. Hevesi counters that he has apologized and was exonerated by voters who overwhelmingly re-elected him in November.

So, he did not resign. And Governor George Pataki decided not to try to remove him from office. That leaves Hevesi's future up to incoming Governor Eliot Spitzer who could seek his removal or somehow convince Hevesi to resign.

Update: This is now a story that did happen. Hevesi resigned on December 22.

 

3. No Major Building at Ground Zero

Designs for three towers to be built at Ground Zero were released to the public in September, clearly timed to be the big story about the fifth anniversary of 9/11. But to many obsevers, Ground Zero looked pretty much the same as it had a year before.

Tangible progress has been lacking among the numerous marking of milestones and pronouncements of success at Ground Zero. In 2006, Governor George Pataki was blamed for lack of leadership, Mayor Michael Bloomberg was blamed for lack of interest, and developer Larry Silverstein was blamed for lack of cash. Estimates on the cost of the memorial swelled to close to $1 billion, but fundraising stagnated. And the discovery of more human remains drew some to question the competency of the original cleanup and others to call for a halt to development.

It is true that there was some rebuilding-related news in 2006. Silverstein agreed to give some of his development rights to the Port Authority. The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, the agency that ran the design contests that produced the plans for the site, said its job was done, and that it would soon disband. In mid-December, the debate over how to order the names at the memorial was resolved.

But questions remain. Is there money for the memorial? Will the office buildings be financially viable? Should their construction be delayed? What will change when Eliot Spitzer becomes governor?

One thing is clear, however: the tenure of George Pataki as the official head of rebuilding Ground Zero will not be remembered positively.

More than any other aspect of the project, the Freedom Tower -- Pataki's key project -- has been plagued by maddening starts and stops. It has been redesigned four times. Its cornerstone was put in place in a public ceremony, then discreetly removed from the site. Construction has still not moved far enough along to convince everyone that it is even going to happen -- especially with an incoming governor who has publicly questioned the wisdom of the project.

4. No Talladega Nights on Staten Island

The largest proposed New York stadium of them all -- a NASCAR track on Staten Island -- will not be built after all. Citing overwhelming political opposition, International Speedway Corp. said it was abandoning plans for the 80,000-seat stadium. Many Staten Islanders had worried the track would bring even more congestion to the already traffic snarled borough.

5. Daniel Doctoroff Does Not Save Governors Island

Plans to develop Governors Island faltered once again as the city and state body that controls it rejected all proposals it had received for the island off Lower Manhattan, saying they would require substantial public subsidies. Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff said this means there will not be any master plan for the island for "quite a while."

The federal government gave the 172 acres to the city in 2003 but despite flurries of ideas and the appointment of Doctoroff as head of the city-state body in charge of development, little progress has been made.

6. Bernard Kerik Does Not Go to Jail.

But he does make lots of headlines.

Former police commissioner Bernard Kerik managed to stay out of jail and avoid a trial on felony charges as he pleaded guilty in June to misdemeanors for accepting tens of thousands of dollars of illegal gifts and a loan while he was a city official in the late 1990s. The plea, which carried fines of about $220,000, signaled yet another step in Kerik's fall from police commission and nominee for homeland security secretary to disgrace. And Mayor Michael Bloomberg topped that off, when within days of Kerik's plea, he ordered the former commissioner's name removed from the lower Manhattan jail once named on his honor.

Kerik did not fade from the limelight though. Later in the summer, he turned up in another scandal as Jeanine Pirro, the Republican candidate for governor, asked her to bug her husband's boat to determine whether he was having an affair.

7. New York Does Not Follow London's Example

Despite increasing demands from business groups as well as environmentalists and alternative transportation advocates to implement congestion pricing in New York, Mayor Michael Bloomberg remained resistant to the idea, calling it a "nonstarter" that would probably never win approval.

But the pressure on the mayor continues to build. At an event to announce his new push to have New York improve its infrastructure and environment to accommodate a million more residents in the next 25 years, many people indicated their support for congestion pricing.

8. No Major New York Sports Team Wins a Championship

The city continued its losing streak in major league sports, with the NBA Knicks distinguishing themselves by the depth of their failure. They won 23 games and lost 59 for the second worst season in their history.

In what has become a pattern of late, the Yankees faltered in October, losing in the playoffs, the first round of post-season play.

The Mets made it to the postseason too but lost to the St., Louis Cardinals in the league championship series. But while Yankee fans reacted angrily to their teams' demise, calling variously for the heads of manager Joe Torre and highly paid star Alex Rodriguez, Met fans remained cheerful. This year, they reasoned, was far better than recent previous seasons. Wait until next year!

9. No New Yorker Enters the Presidential Race

But Hillary Clinton, Rudolph Giuliani, George Pataki, and sometimes even Michael Bloomberg all looked a lot like candidates. Giuliani and Clinton formed exploratory committees, Giuliani devoted much of the year to trying (usually in vain) to bolster campaigns of extreme conservatives, cynics thought Pataki spent more time in Iowa and New Hampshire than New York -- and the pundits anointed Clinton the front runner for her party's nomination (at least until the junior senator from her real home state of Illinois began talking about running). While denying his candidacy, Bloomberg seemed to revel in the buzz, performing a take off on Born to Run at Gracie Mansion party.

But no official declarations yet. As Met fans would say, just wait until next year.

 

Long Term Planning in New York City -- Challenges and Goals


Mayor Michael Bloomberg outlined the major challenges facing New York City as it tries to develop a 25-year sustainability plan, and its goals in forming such a plan, in a speech at the Queens Museum of Art on December 12, 2006. The speech was followed by a video presentation and panel discussion about these challenges. The text of the speech is below; you can also watch a video of the entire event by clicking here

...Thank you to the League of Conservation Voters for hosting us today as we look ahead to the year 2030, and to the immense challenges facing our city. Some might think that whatever happens by then won’t be our problem.

But, speaking for myself, I’m going to be 88 years old, and the kind of city we have will certainly matter to me. (What’s more, my mother will be 121, and she might come for a visit some time.) And that’s why we’ve come together today at the Queens Museum, which plays such a vital role in the cultural and civic life of Queens, and which I also want to thank for their hospitality.

Because it’s here in Flushing Meadows, in the heart of Helen Marshall’s borough, that more than once, New Yorkers have looked beyond the present, to see the promise of the future. Whether it was at the 1939 World’s Fair, when men and women still feeling the effects of the Great Depression dared to imagine a dazzling “World of Tomorrow,” or at the 1964 World’s Fair, whose glorious panorama you just walked through, and which featured the futuristic wonders of what people were starting to call ‘the global village.’

LONG TERM PLANNING: WHAT'S BEEN DONE IN THE LAST FIVE YEARS

Only five years ago, looking 25 years into the future might have seemed unimaginable. After 9/11, we weren’t sure what even the next day would hold. Instead of looking ahead, many people were looking back, fearful of seeing a return to the days when New York’s dangerous streets, graffitied subways, and abandoned housing were national symbols of urban decay.

 

We recalled seeing our city’s population plummet by nearly one million people in just ten year’s time. Many of us remember that era all too well. And many of us have worked hard over the years to bring New York – and new New Yorkers – back – and then some.

The past five years have truly rewarded our efforts. Building on the successes of our predecessors, we’ve driven crime down to levels last seen when the ‘64 World’s Fair opened. Our welfare rolls are lower than they were in 1964, as well. Today, our streets are cleaner than they’ve been in 30 years. We’ve increased high school graduation rates to a 20-year high. Our bond rating is the best ever. Unemployment is at an all-time record low. New Yorkers are living longer than the average American for the first time since World War II. And the most visible symbol – and source – of New York City’s comeback is that we’re growing again – our population is at an all-time high.

A generation of dedicated New Yorkers – including many in this room – have all played a role in making this happen. I want to especially acknowledge the strong leadership provided by my predecessors: Mayors Koch, Dinkins, and Giuliani. As a city, we stand on their shoulders – and because we do, we are standing taller and stronger than ever. We should be proud of what we’ve achieved together, not just over the past five years – but over the past twenty-five.

It would be easy to sit back now and enjoy what we’ve done. To let our successors worry about the future. But we must not become complacent. That’s not how New York became great. And it’s not how I plan to spend the last 1,115 days of my term as mayor!

Over the first eighteen hundred days, we’ve already begun making the investments that will ensure the city’s long-term future: A $4 billion commitment to finishing the Third Water Tunnel – double what's been spent by the last five administrations combined; $1.6 billion to build the vital Croton water filtration plant; and $13 billion for the largest school capital plan in the city's history.

We’re turning Fresh Kills, once the world's largest landfill, into the biggest new city park in more than a century. And a few days ago, we sold bonds for the Number 7 line, the first major extension of the subway system in decades, and the first in modern memory paid for by the city. But we also know that much more work needs to be done.

THE NEXT 25 YEARS: LOOKING FORWARD

Last January, I asked Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff to develop a long-term land use plan for the city. At the time, we both thought it was a project that would take just a few months. But as we worked, we discovered the sheer scale of what was ahead – the intricacy, urgency, and interdependency of the challenges we face. We realized that unless we considered the full range of challenges to our city’s physical environment, the progress we’d worked so long and so hard for might be at risk. And it became clear that to secure a stronger, cleaner, and healthier city for our children and grandchildren, we had to start acting now. In short, we realized that New York needed – not a long-term plan for land use, but a long-term plan for sustainability.

 

‘Sustainability’ is a word that’s used a lot these days. But at its heart, it simply means striving to make our city greater, not just for ourselves, but for those generations to come. Today, we have a rare opportunity to achieve that goal. Because with the city’s immediate prospects as healthy as they are, and with our Administration not beholden to special interests or big campaign contributors, we now have the freedom to take on the obstacles looming in the city’s future, and to begin clearing them away before they become rooted in place.

To help us meet that challenge, we created a new Office of Long Term Planning and Sustainability. They’re supported by a team from more than 15 City agencies. Joining them have been some of the best and the brightest: independent scientists, think tank scholars, respected academics and city planners, and innovative green builders. And because our focus has been on community-based strategic planning, not central planning, our team has also included neighborhood activists, public interest advocates, labor leaders, and others from the private and non-profit sectors. Some of our partners serve on our Sustainability Advisory Board, while others have played a more informal role. With help from all of them, we’ve studied every part of the city.

We’ve looked at every playground – all 1,310 of them, and identified which neighborhoods will need more of them going forward. We’ve rated the age and efficiency of all 25 of the power plants serving the city – through 2030. We’ve estimated which of our nearly 250 miles of subway routes will be congested on an average day in 2030. We have, in short, tried to anticipate every physical barrier our communities will experience to maintaining – and building on – the quality of life we enjoy today. And the process has given us a new, deeper, and sobering appreciation of the magnitude of the challenges New Yorkers face.

THREE MAJOR CHALLENGES

Through our work, we’ve identified three major challenges our city will face over the next 25 years: First, we will be getting bigger. By 2030, projections show that our city will add nearly one million more people, along with millions of additional tourists and three-quarters of a million new jobs. Second, our infrastructure will be getting older – more than a century old in many places. And it will be under increasing pressure. And third, as our population grows and our infrastructure ages, our environment – our air, water, and land – will be pushed to new and possibly precarious limits.

 

Today, we’ll share what we've learned over the past 11 months. We’ll also present 10 aggressive but achievable goals that we’ve developed – with the help of our extraordinary team of policymakers and advisors. They’re our goals for making New York a sustainable city by 2030.

We’ll also launch the next stage of this process: Developing, with extensive public input, a detailed action plan to create a sustainable future for our city. A process that we are calling ‘Plan-Y-C.’ Informed by that process, three months from now we’ll present New Yorkers with specific proposals for reaching each of our goals, explaining in full the regulation, legislation, financing mechanisms, or other measures they will require. And then we’ll reach out to our partners in every branch and at every level of government to begin turning those goals into realities.

1. A Rising Population

 

The engine driving New York’s future is growth – growth that’s evident all around us. It seems wherever you walk in our city these days, whether it’s Kingsbridge Heights or Lower Manhattan, Queens West or East New York, Fort Greene or here in Flushing, there's new housing being built. Over the last two years, more permits for housing construction have been issued than at any time since the early 1970s, and we will need all of those new units, and more. Because the Department of City Planning projects that by 2010, New York will grow by another 200,000 people. And by 2030, our population will reach more than 9 million – the equivalent of adding the populations of Boston and Miami to the five boroughs. The result is a surge that is taking our population to new heights, and our city into uncharted waters.

This growth could bring incredible benefits: Billions of dollars in new economic activity will be generated by new jobs, residents, and visitors. But growth also presents challenges: It can undermine neighborhood quality of life, which is why over the past five years we’ve rezoned more than 4,000 city blocks in dozens of neighborhoods, to allow for growth where there’s capacity, and preserve community character when appropriate. Growth can also bid up housing prices. And with more than a third of New York City renters already paying more than half their income on rent, we can’t let that pressure on family budgets grow any worse. In response, we’ve undertaken the largest affordable housing plan of any city in the nation, one that will create and preserve affordable housing for 500,000 New Yorkers by 2013 – that’s more people than live in Atlanta, Georgia. But we know even it won’t be enough.

Population growth also increases the need for more of the parks and playgrounds that families depend on, even as the competition for land becomes more intense. We have added 300 acres of parkland over the past five years, yet more than 100 neighborhoods still do not have enough playgrounds for the children who live there.

Our growing population also presents transportation challenges. Strong leadership and major investments over the past 25 years have made our subways cleaner and safer today than they’ve been in decades. But, as a result, ridership has soared – making some commutes more of an ‘up close and personal’ experience than we’d like.

In short, growth is a challenge that can produce great benefits, but only if we prepare for it and guide it – so that our city stays as open and welcoming as ever. Our population is expected to reach undreamed-of levels. This poses enormous new challenges, and to meet them, we’ve set these three goals:

• Creating enough housing for almost a million more people, and finding even more creative ways to make housing more affordable for more New Yorkers.
• Ensuring that even as land becomes more scarce, every New Yorker lives within a 10-minute walk of a park, so that every child has the chance to play and be active.
• And – so congestion doesn’t bring our economy grinding to a halt, adding to the capacity of our regional mass transit system, so that travel times stay the same – or get better.

2. Aging Infrastructure

Our growing New York will always be the most diverse city on earth. It will remain a magnet for artists, entrepreneurs, and ambitious immigrants from every corner of the globe. But despite our dramatically varying backgrounds and ambitions, we’ll share so many common experiences as New Yorkers. For starters, we will all go about our days confident in and, in most cases, taking for granted, the systems that underpin this exceptional city.

 

For example, think about what you did to get here this morning. Maybe your alarm went off; you turned on the lamp; you ran some water to brush your teeth; picked up the paper, which had been delivered by truck; for breakfast you made some toast; took a phone call (from a Deputy Mayor, telling you not to mess up a big speech you were going to give in Queens); made yourself some hot coffee; then hopped on the subway to get here.

In other words, you relied on the City’s infrastructure – without ever giving it a single thought. Its millions of components must work seamlessly, every second, day after day, year after year, for all of us to survive. And, for the most part, they do.

That’s a testament to the genius of visionaries like Thomas Edison, to the skill and muscle of sandhogs who blasted subway and water tunnels through 400 million-year-old bedrock, and to all those who engineered and built our brilliant city. But even their amazing achievements can't outlast the ravages of time. We’re a city that runs on electricity, yet some of our power grid dates from the 1920s, and our power plants rely heavily on outmoded, heavily-polluting technology.

Our subway system and highway networks are extensive, and heavily-used, yet nearly 3,000 miles of our roads, bridges, and tunnels, and the majority of our subway stations are in need of repair. And even though we have invested hundreds of millions of dollars to improve our sewer infrastructure over the past 15 years, at the current pace a full upgrade will take another 500 years. (And hopeful as I am for a long and happy life, even I don’t expect to see that day!)

By 2030, virtually every major infrastructure system in our city will be more than a century old, and pushed to its limits. It doesn’t have to come to that if we act. Once, infrastructure solutions were pioneered in New York. Now, it's time for us to rise to the challenge again, with a new commitment to upgrading and maintaining New York’s infrastructure.

Achieving sustainability for our growing city means protecting its foundation – our infrastructure. And to do that, we’ve set these three goals:

• Developing critical back-up systems for our water network, so every New Yorker is assured of a dependable source of water even into the next century.
• Reaching a full state of good repair for New York City’s roads, subways, and rails for the first time in history.
• And providing cleaner, more reliable power for every New Yorker by upgrading our energy infrastructure.

3. Strain on the Environment

In addition to a surging population and a straining infrastructure, we also face the challenge of preserving and ‘greening’ an increasingly embattled urban environment. The good news is: We’ve already taken major steps in the right direction.

 

Exhibit A is our Solid Waste Management Plan, which – thanks to the active support of the League of Conservation Voters – Speaker Quinn and the City Council passed earlier this year. It was the most dramatic environmental victory New Yorkers have achieved in decades, one that will increase recycling, and also completely end our Sanitation Department’s use of heavily polluting, diesel-burning long-haul trucks.

“Nor is that an isolated achievement. In the past five years, City agencies have cut their greenhouse gas emissions by more than 350,000 tons a year. We’ve made far-sighted investments that will protect the purity of the water we drink. And not far from here, we’re turning the site of the old Elmhurst gas tanks into a beautiful new park – just one example of how we’re reclaiming former industrial sites for open space and housing.

“But the demands of our growing population require us to do far more to protect our environment. Despite the gains we have made over the past two decades our aging sewer network still discharges two billion gallons of sewage into our waterways every year. Even though we have cleaned hundreds of acres of brownfields across the city, there is still much more contaminated land waiting to be reclaimed for new jobs, housing, and parks.

Our air is cleaner now than it was for much of the 20th Century, yet we have one of the highest asthma hospitalization rates in the country, and its effects are most severe for young children in neighborhoods with high poverty rates. Meanwhile, we've all noticed that the weather seems to be getting more unpredictable, and summers seem to be getting hotter. And longer. Well, that’s not just a perception; it’s a reality.

It’s called global warming but the impact can be local. We’re a coastal city, and the increase of greenhouse gases in our air is not only lifting temperatures, it may also be contributing to our rising sea level. That means that when major storms hit in the future, the resulting flooding could be worse than anything we’ve seen.

We know the cost of failing to prepare. It can devastate a great city in just hours, which is why we have created a comprehensive Coastal Storm Plan. But to reduce the threat of dangerous storms, it’s also essential that we do our part to dramatically cut greenhouse gases. To ensure the health of future generations, and to establish New York as a leader in meeting some of the greatest challenges of our time, we must do more to green our city.

If anyone can innovate when it comes to the environment (or anything else), New York can. And in that spirit, we’ve set these four environmental goals:

• Reducing our city’s global warming emissions by more than 30% by 2030, a target we know is achievable even just using technology that exists today.
• Achieving the cleanest air quality of any big city in America.
• Cleaning up all of our contaminated land.
• And, finally, opening 90% of our rivers, harbors, and bays for recreation by reducing water pollution and preserving our natural areas.

A CALL FOR IDEAS

Clearly, we have a lot of hard work ahead of us. I’m not going to pretend that fulfilling these goals will be easy. We know that some of the solutions will be difficult, and some will cost money. But in a very real sense, the predicament of our future is also our hope. The very same population growth that intensifies the challenges we face also offers us the resources for meeting them, and the means needed to help achieve sustainability.

 

Doing nothing has its costs, too – economic and environmental costs that will only escalate with the passing years. Refusing to saddle our children with those high costs is what fiscal responsibility is all about. It's why the discipline we’ve shown and the investments we've made for the past five years have given us a strong foundation to face our future. To address the challenges before us, we’ll seek the cooperation of policymakers at every level of government including the Governor-elect and our regional partners. And the really creative solutions to our problems are especially likely to come from the private sector, or from non-profit organizations, or from community leaders who are determined to make a difference. We want to hear all of those voices. And we need to.

That’s why we are going to conduct a major public outreach effort over the next few months, to solicit ideas, get feedback, and build toward consensus. Today, we are launching that citywide conversation. In fact, the first discussion will take place right here on this stage. We have assembled an impressive panel of experts representing a broad spectrum of disciplines and opinions. And now it's my pleasure to introduce the moderator for this discussion, a long-time resident of our City who loves it as much as his native South Dakota and who believes in its power to innovate and inspire. Please welcome a great New Yorker – and a good friend – Tom Brokaw.

To help us generate those ideas, we’re now going to go to the real experts – you. New Yorkers in all five boroughs. We’ll also encourage our neighbors in the region to participate, too. Go to our website, look for meetings we'll be holding in every borough, and bring us your ideas. Next week, the city’s daily newspapers will include a brochure that summarizes the challenges we’ve considered today. I want to thank them for helping us start what I hope will be many conversations, on subway platforms, at neighborhood gatherings, and at dinner tables all over town.

We’re only at the beginning of this process. And if it looks today like we have a steep hill to climb, we do. But the willingness to dream big – and then act on those dreams – is how New Yorkers created the greatest city in the world. Whether it was designing a street grid for one million people at a time when our population was only 100,000 … or unveiling plans for a central park, even though the heart of the city was still a mile to the south … or building one of the world’s largest subway systems, when much of our city was still farmland and fields.

Previous generations imagined how New York would change, and they delivered. Now it's our turn. It was exactly 44 years ago this week that President John F. Kennedy stood just a few steps from where we are today and helped launch construction of the U.S. Pavilion for the 1964 World’s Fair. That Pavilion was called "Challenge to Greatness,” and asked Americans not to remain content with victories from the past, but to face the hazards and embrace the hopes of the future.

Today, our future presents us with new challenges. And meeting them requires greatness from all of us, too: greatness of spirit, of purpose, and of vision. Now it is up to us to look ahead, as earlier generations did, and to begin planning for a better, stronger, and more sustainable future for our children, and for theirs.

It is our city. It is our future. It is our choice. Thank you. 

New Bills -- Fake IDs, Commuter Vans, Rescue Workers


At each of the City Council's stated meetings, council members introduce bills, most of which will never become laws (for the process by which bills become laws, click here). As a regular feature, Gotham Gazette discusses some of the legislation proposed at each meeting.

At its most recent stated meeting on November 29, the members of the City Council introduced bills related to commuter vans, underage drinking and nightlife, and communication among the city’s protection services.

FAKE IDS AND NIGHTLIFE

Council members Peter Vallone Jr., and Melinda Katz each introduced bills in the council's continued campaign to stop underage drinking and make nightlife safer.

Vallone, the chair of the Public Safety Committee, proposed Intro 484, which would enable the city to shut down businesses that produce or sell fake IDs. The violations would fall under the a section of city law that would allow officials to condemn those places, including locations that have the equipment to make fake IDs.

Earlier this year, Katz introduced a resolution that would have urged the state to ban “bottle service” -- a practice in which club patrons must buy expensive bottles of hard liquor to gain access. The resolution was never passed. Katz introduced Resolution 626 on November 29, which calls on the New York State Legislature to require that bottle service be handled by a waiter or waitress, instead of simply leaving a bottle of liquor on a table where underage clubgoers would have easy access to it.

COMMUTER VANS

Through its commuter van system, the city licenses more than 200 vans to 65 different private operators, according to the Taxi and Limousine Commission. The vans first started appearing during the 1980 transit strike and the city has since continued to use them alongside other forms of public transportation.

City law prohibits these vans, which carry up 20 passengers, from picking up passengers off the street. Instead, operators must pre-arrange service on the telephone and drivers must keep records of their passengers.

However, Councilmember Yvette Clarke's office points out this is not actually the case -- in practice, commuter vans regularly take “street hails” much like taxis. Clarke proposed Intro 481 to lift the requirements and eliminate the impractical standards.

COMMUNICATION AMONG RESCUE WORKERS

During the Giuliani administration, Emergency Medical Service personnel were kept from listening in on the police department's radio frequency. On 9/11, when communication problems between rescue workers was said to hinder rescue attempts – and may have cost lives. Councilmember Councilmember Alan Gerson proposed Intro 482 to reestablish radio communication between police department and the emergency medical service.  

Congestion Pricing: An Incomplete Solution


New Yorkers who read more than one newspaper might have been confused at the beginning of this month by reports of a new surge of interest in congestion pricing – the practice of charging drivers a fee for entering the most traffic-clogged parts of the city.

The Partnership for New York City, a group of business leaders, released a report that treats the possibility of congestion pricing seriously, Growth or Gridlock: The Economic Case For Traffic Relief and Transit Improvement For Greater New York. They were adding their voice to a swelling chorus. “Congestion pricing," William Neuman had written in the Times a week earlier "has become a kind of holy grail for transportation advocates and urban planners in New York.” The Natural Resources Defense Council is launching a campaign in support of congestion pricing in the city. And officials at City Hall working on a long-range plan for the city acknowledge that traffic reduction is a key issue. Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff was quoted as seeing “the level of congestion as an inhibitor to growth.”

This sounds as if Mayor Michael Bloomberg may be coming around to support for the strategy. And indeed a story in the New York Post on December 5th lead with: “Mayor Bloomberg said for the first time yesterday he's open to charging a fee for driving in Manhattan below 60th Street - but only if city residents are exempt.”

However, on the same day, the headline on a New York Times article proclaimed: “Mayor Says Fee on Peak Traffic Is Not Likely.”

“The politics of a commuter tax in Albany are probably such that we would never get it passed,” Bloomberg was quoted as saying. “And what I want to do is focus on those things that we can get passed to help our city.”

Whether or not congestion pricing is off the table for now, it is unlikely the public debate over it in New York City will disappear -– and that is likely to cause even more confusion. Because, however well-meaning the advocates of congestion pricing, a focus on it could well detour meaningful change in traffic policy.

Make It City-Wide

Congestion pricing would charge drivers for entering such crowded parts of the city as Midtown and lower Manhattan. Proposals to put tolls on the East River bridges, which have been around for decades, could be folded into new approaches made possible by EZPass technology that will allow the city to charge for driving just about anywhere planners want to discourage traffic. As Bruce Schaller pointed out in his March, 2006 Gotham Gazette article, there are many creative ways in which drivers could be charged variable prices for traveling at the most congested times and on the most congested roads. London’s successful use of congestion pricing to reduce downtown traffic is a powerful model that’s hard to ignore. A new report by Schaller, Battling Traffic: What New Yorkers Think, found that the public would accept congestion pricing, or more generally road pricing, “as one feature of a broad plan to improve transportation.”

But there are two big problems with the debate in New York.

The first is that the issue tends to get defined only in terms of reducing traffic in Manhattan below 96th Street.

This guarantees that political opposition from the rest of the city will continue to stop congestion pricing from happening. Congestion pricing is seen as a benefit for Manhattan for which the outer boroughs pay. The debate is but the latest re-play of the decades-long battle to put tolls on the East River bridges. Planners have long recognized the potential for reducing congestion in Manhattan by charging drivers to cross the free bridges, especially during rush hours. But elected officials in Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island have been able to stop every such effort, including a recent one by Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The Queens Chamber of Commerce recently released a report that claims congestion pricing will bring about economic ruin and hurt drivers with modest incomes (ignoring evidence to the contrary, according to Schaller).

The only way around this impasse is to take a hard look city-wide at traffic congestion. Once you get out of Midtown Manhattan you begin to realize that there are congestion nightmares all over. The Brooklyn Queens Expressway, Belt Parkway, Long Island Expressway, Cross Bronx Expressway, Major Deegan, Staten Island Expressway – these head the long list of roadways with chronic congestion, and people who live and work in the outer boroughs are aware of the consequent impacts on health and the environment. Let’s figure out how to reduce traffic on these roadways as part of a comprehensive solution for the city as a whole. A recent study by the Tri-State Transportation Campaign (www.tstc.org) found that 45 percent of New Yorkers want stronger measures to reduce traffic. It would be great if Manhattan’s workers and tourists could have a better, walkable environment, free from pollution, noise and traffic hazards. But it would be even better if every neighborhood in the city could have it.

Don’t Depend On Congestion Pricing Alone

The second problem is the way congestion pricing is being sold as the silver bullet to solve all congestion problems. This ignores, for example, the many other methods used in London to reduce traffic, including

  • expanded sidewalk space
  • strict parking and truck loading rules
  • and better surface transit
  • .

In London, it’s not so easy to find a parking space on a downtown street, a factor that discourages many would-be drivers. And trucks can’t just park on the street any time of day for as long as they like. Congestion pricing works if it is part of a bundle of policies and practices for reducing traffic.

The fixation on congestion pricing also ignores the dramatic reduction in traffic in other cities that was accomplished without congestion pricing. For example, over a period of 25 years Copenhagen cut traffic congestion by aggressively promoting walking and biking. The city installed a first-class system of bikeways, part of it on pavement that was once used by cars. Selected streets and public plazas in the center of the city were closed to traffic and turned into attractive pedestrian ways. Many other cities in Europe that were once flooded with traffic gradually took back their streets from private vehicles and restored them to the public, producing lively environments and a boom for businesses. Project for Public Spaces has shown some of the methods used in U.S. cities.

The cities that have successfully retreated from life-throttling congestion had strong public authorities that carried out a set of consistent transportation policies over a long period of time. This allowed them to accomplish their goals gradually, by linking them to every capital project and new development, and by changing the way they operate on a daily basis. Many of the cities that have been successful continue to build new mass transit lines, strictly enforce regulations, and incorporate traffic reduction measures in neighborhood renewal projects.

None of this is likely to happen in New York City because there is no policy commitment to reduce traffic in the first place. The Department of Transportation’s main goal is to move traffic, not reduce it. There is no clear city policy for improving the pedestrian infrastructure – the thousands of miles of sidewalks. Instead a dozen city agencies apply their own, often conflicting, policies, often making the pedestrian experience a trying one. Improvements in the city’s surface transit system are stymied because buses get caught in traffic. And even with new commitments to expand the city’s bicycle infrastructure, there’s a long way to go before over a third of all commuters use bikes, as they do in Copenhagen. The Citywide Coalition for Traffic Relief, spearheaded by Transportation Alternatives and other advocacy groups, rallied November 14 at City Hall to call for a change in city policy.

In sum, it looks more and more like what’s missing in New York City isn’t just congestion pricing but long-term planning for traffic reduction. Without taking that first step, individual measures like putting tolls on the East River bridges will collapse before the howls by that small group of drivers who appear to be satisfied with the current state of chaos.

Tom Angotti is Professor of Urban Affairs and Planning at Hunter College, City University of NY, editor of Progressive Planning Magazine, and a member of the Task Force on Community-based Planning. 

 



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