Every two weeks the New York City Council meets for its Stated Meeting to introduce and pass legislation. As a regular feature, Searchlight covers these meetings and posts a summary of the bills passed.
Quote of the Day:
“[The city is] warehousing people in rooms infested with rats and roaches, with holes in the wall, leaks in the ceilings, and doors with no locks.... These miserable little rooms cost taxpayers up to $2,100 per month.” - Councilmember Eric Gioia on a bill to require the city to provide better housing for homeless people with AIDS.
Meeting Summary:
In 1997, the city enacted Local Law 49, which created the HIV/AIDS Services Administration (HASA) and outlined the kinds of services and benefits that government must provide to low-income individuals with AIDS. Since the passage of the law, the city has faced a series of lawsuits challenging the quality of those services, particularly housing.
Because homeless people with AIDS have compromised immune systems, they cannot stay in the usual shelters. The city routinely places clients in single room occupancy hotels and pays a high price – up to $2,100 a month – for these rooms, where conditions often do not meet the “medically appropriate” standards that the law requires.
A City Council report (in .pdf format) on transitional housing for people with AIDS, found that 73 percent of facilities surveyed had building code violations; 50 percent did not provide basic amenities such as mattresses or toilet paper.
In an effort to address the situation, the City Council passed a bill (Intro 541-A) which requires that the city issue quarterly reports on the services and housing it provides to people with AIDS/HIV. It is named the “Keith Cylar Act,” after the AIDS activist and co-founder of Housing Works who died a year ago.
The bill aims to strengthen Local Law 49 and create clearer standards that the city must meet for its 41,000 clients.
“Over the years, one thing that became clear is if you left any wiggle room, the agency would find it,” said Councilmember Christine Quinn. “We will eliminate that.”
Collective Bargaining
With the council chambers packed full of cheering corrections and sanitation workers, the City Council passed a bill (Intro 380-A) to give certain uniformed workers stronger collective bargaining powers.
New York City Collective Bargaining Law gives certain uniformed employees – police, firefighters, sanitation, and corrections officers - unique bargaining rights, however these do not apply to related positions like sanitation enforcement agents, fire protection inspectors, and school safety workers. This measure would extend the same bargaining rights to those city employees.
The mayor, not the City Council, has the power to negotiate contracts with city workers; the council said the bill does not overstep its powers.
“This legislation doesn’t guarantee anybody anything except the right to bargain for fair treatment from their employer,” said Speaker Gifford Miller.
Bay Side Rezoning
In recent months, the City Council has passed a series of rezonings meant to protect neighborhoods made up of single-family homes in Staten Island and Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. Now a 380-block area of Bay Side, Queens has been rezoned to make it more difficult for developers to build multi-unit apartment buildings that are taller than surrounding houses.
“It eliminates the loopholes in the building and zoning code that allow for the `McMansions’ to be built in many one-family home districts across the city,” said Councilmember Tony Avella.
Outdoor Advertising
The council also passed a measure (Intro 423-A) that gives the city’s buildings department more power to enforce regulations on the size and scale of outdoor advertising. In the past, the law allowed the billboard industry to police itself, but lawmakers say the policy cost the city hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue.
All of the bills passed unanimously with exception of the outdoor advertising measure; Republican Councilmember Dennis Gallagher voted against it.
Allan Jennings Sexual Misconduct Ruling
After months of investigating sexual harassment charges filed against Queens Councilmember Allan Jennings, the City Council’s Committee on Standards and Ethics has recommended disciplinary actions. The committee wants Jennings to:
- pay a $5,000 fine
- undergo court-certified anger management and gender, racial and harassment sensitivity training
- receive a public censure
- and be stripped of all of his committee assignments.
The full council must vote on the penalties at the next Stated Meeting scheduled for April 20, 2005.
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This is an exciting time to be in city government. City government is where the rubber meets the road in terms of providing services. There's no ducking, or very little opportunity to duck, and if you try ducking you quickly get caught up in the press's relentless questioning until you definitively give an answer. I talk to the press roughly five times a week, and we take roughly twenty questions or so. They can ask about anything, and I don't know any other level of government that is as accessible to the press as the level of government that I am lucky enough to work at.
I work with 300,000 fellow city employees. Together, I think we probably do deliver a reasonably decent service to the public. I hope they are happy. We're actually doing a test of that, and I'll give you an answer on November 8th.
New York is stressing productivity and prevention and accountability, and we're trying to find answers to problems that have for too long been impossible to solve. You have to come into this with the fundamental understanding that there are no simple solutions to complex problems. If there were, somebody would have found them long ago. There is no right and wrong, and whatever you do is going to please some people and not please everybody.
I've always thought that efficiency and honesty have to start right at the top, because the public's willingness to pay taxes and see those taxes go to provide services depends on a basic belief that they are getting their money's worth. They may not agree every time that every service should be provided, and they clearly would like to see somebody else pay the bill. But if they think that the government is efficient and honest, then they are certainly more willing to do what I think is right and be compassionate and build for the future and do the kind of things that we should be doing if we are going to keep our cities the place where people want to come and have opportunities and are safe.
In New York City, the economic crisis actually started five quarters before 9/11 with the end of the Internet bubble. We're very dependent on one industry and that's Wall Street, and when the Internet bubble ended, the city's tax revenue declined precipitously. And we've had to do more with less.
When I first came into office, smoke was still coming out of the World Trade Center. Conventional wisdom was that every company was going to move out of the city or at least move half their employees out of the city for diversification reasons, and that nobody would ever want to live in this city every again. That hasn't proved to be the case, the commercial vacancy rate in this city is as low as it is in any city in the country, lower than most, and residential real estate prices have almost doubled in all five boroughs in three years and those are real measures of whether or not people want to be here.
But it has been a real challenge to continue to keep the streets safe and spend the monies that we need to help those people who need help and to ensure that the public is safe, the streets are clean, and the quality of life is better.
When I first came into office, we had a $5 billion deficit. The next year we had a $6.5 billion deficit. The numbers are staggering; this city has a budget of roughly $50 billion, 300,000 employees, and 8.1 million citizens. We provide a service to people who contribute an enormous amount to the city, but in some cases the cost of providing those services is just greater than it would be elsewhere.
We've always been the immigrant port of entry for people who wanted a better life for themselves and their families. They come and they contribute an enormous amount to the city, but it also raises some of your expenses, for example, we have to provide services in many different languages.
Our children in our public school system and their parents speak roughly 170 different languages, and while you can't provide total service in every single language, if you call 311 we will get someone on the phone that can speak your language.
We've had to do more with less. Raising taxes - that is a character building experience I would suggest for any mayor. But we made the mistake back in the 1970s of reducing services. We stopped arresting the bad guys, we stopped putting out the fires, we closed hospitals, we fired 20 percent of every group of city employees, and the city fell apart and the tax base left. We did not make that mistake this time.
Basically we have cut almost $4 billion out of tax levy expenditures in this city; we've reduced the size of the work force by 16,000 people; and I think it is fair to say that by any measure, the quality of life in this city is better than it was four years ago.
I can give you some easy numbers; one is crime. We had to reduce the size of our police force by 3,000 police officers. We currently have 37,000 police officers of which a thousand are devoted to counter terrorism and intelligence. Before 9/11 nobody ever thought about either of those two things, but yet with 40,000 cops on the street going after the run of the mill criminals we've brought crime to a level that nobody expected. We've brought crime down another 20 to 35 percent in the past three years. The murder rate is as low as it's been since roughly 1963 and this year we're on track to do even better.
It's partly very hard work and very good leadership in the police department; it is partly getting the courts to have special parts where you have a judge that treats a certain kind of felony every single time, so that you're penalties are consistent and the judge knows who can be rehabilitated and who really needs incarceration. So we have a special part for example, for firearms, for chronic criminals, for drug dealers. The turnstile justice we used to have before, where somebody would come in, the police would arrest them, they'd come in, and they'd be right back out on the streets continuing to commit crimes has ended in this city. And that I think is why we've been able to make this the safest large city in the nation.
If you take the 210 cities with a 100,000 population or more in this country in all fifty states and you rank them highest crime to lowest crime, New York ranks somewhere 18 or 19 from the bottom of the list. The cities that are safer than New York per capita are cities for the most part, that most people have never heard of. They are very nice cities, but they are very small.
We've also instituted 311, which we call the citizens service hotline; it is just celebrated its second anniversary. I can tell you that we are currently averaging more than 51,000 calls a day. During a snowstorm recently, we got more than 100,000 calls in one day. New York has clearly loved 311, and it's great for the public who can never find ways to interact with government. If you look in the phone book there is something like 11 pages with listings for New York government. And I defy anyone to guess which agency they should go to.
But if you call 311 with service in 170 languages, we can probably get you a reasonably accurate answer or access or tell you where to go. And we have a lot of questions about things that the city does not do - private things, state and fed government programs, and we can at least tell people where to go. It is also a great management tool for the mayor and for the administration because we can tell when we're doing a good job and we can tell what the public cares about.
Noise, for example, is the number one complaint on 311 and you know where it is. When somebody calls in with a serious emergency we call 911 or ship them there by pushing a button. But if it is a quality of life complaint the operator types in the complaint into a computer and the computer figures out which police precinct is responsible and it buzzes on the desk of the sergeant at the police precinct. Now there is a record and that sergeant, he may have everybody out you know chasing a serial ax murderer, but when they get time, there is now excuse for not following up. So from a management point of view, you make everybody accountable, and I can look and see how long it takes to go and make sure we provide services.
Our streets are cleaner partially because of 311. When I drive down the streets and see some trash on the side, I call 311. (I don't give them my name, I give them somebody else's name) and next time I drive by it is cleaned up. You try it and you will find that they don't just respond to the mayor. I once called 311 and used my own name and they asked me to spell my name. No matter how big your ego is, they can bring right down to reality.
Our streets are cleaner than they've been in 30 years. We have an independent part of city government that goes out and in 59 sanitation districts across all five boroughs we look at a street and a vacant lot and a sidewalk to see if we're doing a good job. We fix potholes, 311 is invaluable there, this city has 6,300 miles of roads, so you could have a road to L.A. and back and still have some left over. Needless to say, with the constant change in temperatures and plowing, we have a lot of potholes.
Today we fill 97 percent of our potholes in thirty days. That might not sound to you like doing a good job, but five years ago only 65 percent of the potholes were filled within thirty days. And what we've got to do now is to shorten the time frame and set a more ambitious target and keep improving city services.
In the past, there was no way to know what the public wanted and whether or not we were doing a good job and if you don't have any measures, than nobody can be held accountable. And if nobody can be held accountable, than nobody pays any attention, and I think it is pretty clear what happens when nobody pays any attention.
The city, because crime is down, because quality of life is better, because our cultural institutions and parks are doing better, because we're doing a lot of things to make the city more business friendly and economically diverse. Unemployment has been falling; it is now down to a level last seen before 9/11. It is 5.9 percent, it is still much too high, but we're going in the right direction. What we've got to do is make this a place where people want to live so that companies who need the best employees in the world will bring their business here. Also we have to make it friendly for businesses to know that they can deal with the bureaucracy - not get any special favors, businesses don't want special favors - what they want is a set of rules that are clear and enforced and that they can understand and then they will deal with that. And that is why for example, an equal opportunity human rights outreach so that employees if they have complaints know where to go is in business's interest because they can adjudicate any problems right away and people will know where they stand.
People said that we couldn't stop crime - that we couldn't go any lower. They also used to say that the city government couldn't influence the economics of a city, when in fact the city government has a lot to say. What we are trying to do is to make sure that our economy is more diverse. We are much too dependent on Wall Street, We love Wall Street; we want it to make a lot of money and pay a lot of taxes, but we want to make sure that if Wall Street has a downturn, there are other industries on different economic cycles that will continue to employ the people that live here and give us a future and a consistency in our tax revenues.
Last year, we created 37,000 new private sector jobs. This year, we're on track for over 50,000, and if we continue to work on the big projects, construction jobs will provide enormous opportunities in this city, particularly for people where the school system has failed them in the past or immigrant groups that come here and don't have either language skills or college degrees or some of the things that other kinds of businesses would require.
But we're very lucky to have a constant flow of immigrants into the city who are hardworking. To think about the sacrifice and the courage of somebody coming from elsewhere in the world, giving up friends and in some cases families and everything they know and language, to come here and build a new life - that's exactly the kind of people you want coming into your city.
But we got to make sure that we have the jobs that match their skills, so service industry jobs, for example, which is why we're focusing on making sure that we have a year-round convention business. The construction industry is another one of those. We have had problems that have been here for many years, one of which is human services. What we've tried to do is to focus on prevention rather than after-the-fact coming in and trying to help people who are already hurt.
The smoking ban was controversial in the beginning. I think it's fair to say today that it is generally accepted. The industries that people worry about being hurt, namely restaurants and food and beverage industries, have managed to come through it and are stronger than ever. That was the same experience that California had when they put in the smoking ban.
People here, when we were going to put in the smoking ban, kept saying to me, "Well, the Irish are never going to come here for vacation anymore." For those of you who don't know, Ireland put a smoking ban in for the entire country about six months ago, and I gather that it is actually working. People also said the Italians would never come here for vacation. Well, Italy put in a smoking ban, and it is working. The surrounding states, Connecticut and Massachusetts have done that, and New Jersey is talking about it. The state of New York, after the city's smoking ban, went and passed a smoking ban. These things really do make a difference.
Life expectancy in New York City today is higher than it is in the country as a whole. Think about that; it's an amazing number. People think of cities as being dangerous, quality of air issues, and all of the big city problems, and yet by doing a lot of things - our Health Department has been very pro-active, going out and encouraging people to try to get early examinations and to be cognizant what things can prolong their life and what things can hurt their lives, and the smoking ban - all these things put together, as well as improving our private hospitals. We have 11 public hospitals, which are ranked by the National Accreditation Board as good as or better than our teaching hospitals. They are the jewels in the crown of New York City if there ever was one. And we have eleven public hospitals for nursing homes and 150 clinics, and as a group they run it almost break even, which is just amazing if you know anything about the economics of delivering healthcare services today. But all of that adds up and goes into that number of life expectancy going up.
We do have a problem with homeless, like every big city does, but we are trying to address the homeless problem. It's a problem that we've grappled with for more than 20 years in this city. It's caused us to create the largest and most expensive shelter system in the nation. And to a great extend, we are the victims of our own good intentions because what's happened in many cases, the only solution for homelessness was to go into the shelter system. So last June, our commissioner for homeless services, Linda Gibbs, and Shawn Donovan, who runs the agency that builds public housing, together we decided to see if we couldn't do something to take the homeless problem on a different path and prevent homelessness. We made a commitment to dramatically reduce the numbers of homeless that we have to shelter by working with people and making sure that they get the services before they become homeless or try to adjudicate problems within families and help them get the medical care that would let them continue to stay as a family and stay in private housing.
We've worked hard with the courts. This is a city where the courts have an enormous influence in running every agency in the city. And in many cases, we've been able to convince the courts that we're doing a good job, and that they should turn the services back over to the elected officials, which I think is where they should be. People have said there is nothing you can do about the homeless problems and about children who don't have family structure. They're wrong. In the same way we can do something about crime, we can do something about homelessness.
And we can do something about improving our school system. We have a school system with 1.1 million children. That is bigger than the population of Detroit. We serve 850,000 meals a day in the school system. We turn out Rhodes Scholars, who eventually go on to become Nobel Prize winners. We also turn out tens of thousands of kids who don't learn how to read. It's one of the disgraces of society that we've allowed our public school system - and it's true worldwide, and it's certainly true nationwide - to fail too many students.
Shame on us. We have an obligation to go out there and to make sure that every child gets an education; it is the first basic civil right because if you don't have an education, you are never going to participate in the great American dream. I can't guarantee that if you get a great education, that everything is going to work out for you. But the likelihood of it working out for you if you don't have an education is small; we know what is going to happen to children that we fail. We've got to make sure that we have the courage to go against conventional wisdom and go against all of those people that say, "Oh we'll just do more of the same."
More of the same just isn't working and it is time to try new things. In our city we've ended social promotion in the third grade and the fifth grade. We were promoting kids to the next grade up who didn't have the skill sets that they would need to learn anything in the next grade up. So they were going from a situation where they weren't learning to a situation, where there is no chance of them learning. This has allowed us to identify which children need extra help and we're trying everything we can to give them that extra help. We have a summer program, we have a Saturday's program; we have 8,000 fifth graders who for 26 weeks attend a Saturday extra class at the school system. I can't tell you this is going solve every one of these children's problems or every one of society's problems but at least we are trying.
Let me just talk about one other thing and that is Homeland Security, Homeland Security is of particular interest to New York City. Some woman when I walked in gave me a book written in 1950, by E.B. White about planes that could go into buildings in New York City. Well we didn't learn our lesson then, and we had a bombing attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, and we failed to learn our lesson then. But the cost of not learning those lessons has been unconscionably high and what we have to do is to make sure that we understand that this is a different world - those oceans aren't as big as we thought, and it may be sad that it's a different world - but never the less we have to approach our safety in a different way.
That is why I'm devoting 1,000 of our police officers to intelligence and counter terrorism, New York City has it's own police officers in half a dozen cities around the world so we can get intelligence from other intelligence agencies directly. We've worked very hard to make sure that our relationships with the CIA and the FBI and other agencies, Homeland Security in Washington, are as good as we can make them. We have a full time police officer in Washington. We've got to make sure that we get the information we need; we've also got to make sure that the federal government distributes Homeland Security funds, not on the basis of pork, but on the basis of need.
And the truth of the matter is that New York City - because it is such a great city to live in and because it is the symbol of freedom, because it provides people with opportunities they can't get elsewhere - is also a target for people overseas. And that requires us to have a level of security and awareness that costs a lot of money. The good new is that the 9/11 commission clearly said that Homeland Security monies should be distributed on the basis of risk, the president's budget asks for monies to be distributed on the basis of risk and not on the per capita basis that has been traditionally done where every state gets some of the Homeland Security funds whether there is a great risk there or not. And now it is up to us to make sure that Congress follows through and that their distribution formula takes into account where the risk is and where the threat is and where the vulnerability is.
And any of you if you want to do something for your city, do something for New York City, just try to make sure this federal program doesn't become a give away program. We're not asking for special treatment, but for equality/ We're asking that where there are centers of learning and culture and commerce, those cities on a hill, those are the places that we've go to focus a lot of resources and as our cities go, will go the entire country, even people who live outside of the cities, even people in the cities that don't avail themselves of all the services that the cities provide, have to understand that they and their children will live in a world where the people who are getting those services also live.
So we all have an interest in public education. We all have an interest in helping the less fortunate who don't have a place to live, who didn't get a good education are struggling to get a job, and don't know anything but a life of despair. We're all in this together, and the cities are where it all comes together. Cities are you have to make decisions and provide the services; the cities are where an enormous number of the people live. New York City is a place in particular where people flock from around the world and will continue to flock from around the world, but it's incumbent on all of us to make sure that they are welcome and that they get equal opportunity and then they in turn will go out and populate the rest of the country and bring an enormous benefit to every state and every locale in this country.
Transcript of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's address at the conference "Urban Conversations: U.S. Mayors and Innovative Leadership," at The New School University's Milano Graduate School, March 30, 2005Â
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When Mayor Michael Bloomberg appointed a charter revision commission in 2003 to study the issue of non-partisan elections, it was the fifth such commission in five years.
The mayor's request to eliminate party primaries was defeated by a landslide, and we heard nothing about charter commissions or ballot proposals last year.
But now they are back. A new commission is being asked to consider three new proposals.
This year's Charter Revision Commission is a prestigious group, from the president of Hunter College to a former borough president of the Bronx, as well as a former deputy mayor, a former state budget director, a former state attorney general (in full disclosure former Attorney General Robert Abrams is the President of Citizens Union Foundation, the parent of Gothamgazette.com). It is led by Ester Fuchs, special advisor to the Mayor for Governance and Strategic Planning and professor at Columbia University.
While the issues that are being examined will certainly not be the most thrilling to voters, and most likely could be handled legislatively, they appear to be prudent, well-intentioned and most likely of benefit to the city. But the devil is always in the details and the commission has yet to propose what the details will be. As it stands the commission will be examining charter amendments (in pdf format) to address the following:
1- Fiscal Stability
When the city was faced with bankruptcy in the 1970's, it was bailed out in part by the New York State Financial Emergency Act for the City of New York. The object of the law (called FEA for short) was to ensure a greater level of fiscal responsibility and to restore confidence in the city's finances, specifically in the city's ability to repay its debt, and it did this through the creation of what was at first called the Emergency Financial Control Board, but whose name was changed to simply the Financial Control Board.
Since 1986, the majority of requirements of the law have been in a "sunset" period as the city's finances are sufficiently healthy. Should the city have an operating deficit of more than $100 million, or lose access to public credit markets, the law would be required to begin a "sunrise" of the Financial Control Board.
The law and the Financial Control Board are set to expire in 2008. The new charter revision commission is considering what if any fiscal controls should be incorporated into the City Charter to replace or supplement certain expiring provisions of this law.
Key elements that are not in the New York City Charter but are required in the "sunset" phase are:
1-a detailed four-year financial planning process
2-an ongoing balanced budget requirement
3-restrictions on short term debt and
4-protections for city bondholders through a general debt service fund.
The commission is currently seeking comment on what provisions from the Financial Emergency Act should be included in the City's Charter.
2- Administrative Tribunal Operations
The mayor has also asked the commission once again to study administrative judicial reform, specifically focusing on ways to improve management of the city's administrative justice system, including administrative tribunals and executive branch courts. This issue appeared on the 2003 ballot as well, where it was defeated.
New York City's administrative tribunals and executive branch courts serve to resolve citizen complaints and disputes and are often the only interaction that citizens have with their local government. These tribunals and courts handle noise complaints, parking fines and other "quality of life" issues of the average New Yorker.
The commission is examining methods, and soliciting public comment on how to coordinate operational policies and management practices of these bodies, as well as whether the creation of a uniform code of conduct to govern the actions of administrative law judges and hearing officers should be established.
3- Governmental Efficiency and Accountability
Finally, the commission has been charged with investigating the use of innovative technology to improve government efficiency and accountability. Building on the mayor's creation of the 311 Citizen Service Center, the mayor believes that technology can be leveraged to help the government better assess how to utilize its resources, improve service delivery, streamline government, promote greater inter-agency coordination, and make government more accessible to citizens.
The mayor has asked the commission to examine how performance-based data and reporting, such as is contained in the Mayor's Management Report, can be collected and used more widely to measure results, set goals and objectives, and be more useful for assessing the delivery of services to the public.
The mayor has also asked the Commission to evaluate how the charter might be revised to allow for greater agency flexibility to meet their mandated objectives.
Come One, Come All
A series of public hearings related to the three proposals has begun -- on Staten Island on Wednesday, March 30th at 6 pm at the Richmond County Juror Assembly Center; on Monday, April 4th at 6 PM at Hunter College in Manhattan.
This will be one of many opportunities for citizens to address the issues under consideration, as well as any other issues they believe the Commission should address. All citizens are invited to testify at the hearings; provide written comment through the Commission’s website; or in writing to the Commission’s office at 2 Lafayette Street, 14th Floor, New York, NY 10007. Â
Every two weeks the New York City Council meets for its Stated Meeting to introduce and pass legislation. As a regular feature, Searchlight covers these meetings and posts a summary of the bills passed.
Meeting Summary:
Education Capital Budget
When Mayor Michael Bloomberg presented his city budget at the end of January, the New York City Council’s biggest criticism was a proposed $1.3 billion cut to the school construction budget over the next five years.
The loss of funds, the City Council warned, meant new classrooms would not be built, broken toilets would not be fixed, and outdated fire alarm systems would not be upgraded. Council Speaker Gifford Miller even threatened to block a budget agreement between the two sides if the money was cut.
Often such stark differences between the mayor and council are not resolved until the final hours before the budget is due on July 1. But last week, the mayor eliminated further debate on the issue when he agreed to double the school construction budget in the next fiscal year to a total of $2.6 billion.
Mayor Bloomberg, who faces reelection in November, will now not have to face months of criticism that he is shortchanging schools. And when the City Council met to approve the budget change on March 23, members took credit for “restoring” the money.
“We have done an outstanding job in making sure we defend the education of our children,” said Bronx Councilmember Joel Rivera, who then encouraged his collegues to give themselves a round of applause.
However, the total amount of money to be spent on school construction over the five-year period - $13 billion - did not change; the mayor and the council’s action simply shifts $1.3 billion that would have been spent in coming years into the present year. And the city is still counting on $6.5 billion of that $13 billion to come from the governor and State Legislature in Albany, which so far has shown little indication that it will deliver the increase in school funding.
Bay Ridge Rezoning
In addition to the budget modification, the City Council approved a major rezoning (L.U. 417 -418 and Res 907-908) for Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, which will limit the height and size of the homes that can be built in the neighborhood.
For years, Bay Ridge residents have complained that developers purchase historic single-family homes, tear them down, and then build tall multi-unit apartment buildings in their place. The rezoning will limit the density of the housing in the area and preserve 101 blocks for one- or two-family houses.
“Residents will be able to enjoy their homes without the fear of a monstrosity coming in down the street,” said Bay Ridge Councilmember Vincent Gentile. “This is probably the biggest thing to happen to the area in a quarter century.”
Cell Phone Towers
The council also passed a bill (Intro 149-A) that requires the city to maintain a list of where cellular phone antennae are erected. Councilmember Peter Vallone, Jr., who authored the bill, is concerned about the possible health effects of the towers and sees the measure as a first step in finding out more about the issue. (Read a related story about cell phone towers).
ParkNet and CityStat
In addition, the council passed a bill (Intro 462-A) that requires the city to post signs at city beaches to alert visitors about cleanliness and the results recent inspections. The measure also requires the Parks Department to post all inspection reports of playgrounds, parks, and open space on its Web site. The Parks Department already gathers such information for internal use, but it is not easily available to the public.
The bill’s author, Councilmember Eric Gioia, now wants to expand the idea and create a citywide online database, called CityStat, to measure how each agency is performing. Baltimore has already implemented such a system and claims it has saved the city $43 million over three years. (Read a related article).
“If this works, it will be replicated in cities across the country,” said Gioia.
All of the measures passed the council unanimously, by a vote of 49 to 0. The next Stated Meeting is scheduled for April 12, 2005.
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Many prominent New Yorkers saw it as the coming of the apocalypse:
“Disastrous!” -- City Council Speaker Peter Vallone, Sr.
“Shambles!” -- Councilmember Stanley Michels.
“Deadly and dastardly!” -- Councilmember Julia Harrison.
“Chaos in government!” -- an editorial in the New York Times.
For years, the message was repeated in television commercials, newspaper articles, courtrooms, and on the steps of City Hall. But it was not an economic recession, a Wall Street crash, or even the possibility of a terrorist attack that caused such alarm.
It was term limits.
Despite the dire warnings, New Yorkers voted twice - in 1993 and 1996 - to restrict local elected officials to just two terms in office.
Of course, not everyone shared in the doom and gloom.
In a City Council with some members who had been in office since the Nixon administration, many predicted a civic renaissance of new people and ideas in government.
“New York City cast a historic vote,” said Ronald Lauder, the billionaire who financially backed the term limits movement. “And government here will never be the same.”
On December 31, 2001, New York experienced the greatest turnover in government in the city’s history. The mayor, comptroller, public advocate, four of the five borough presidents, and two-thirds of the members of the City Council were kicked out of office.
This year, term limits will once again play a role in the political season. (See Gotham Gazette's Campaign 2005) Seven more legislators - the Manhattan Borough President, the Speaker of the City Council, and five veteran council members - will be forced to leave office. (See a chart of who is term limited in 2005)
But more than three years after term limits went into effect, how much has changed in government and in New York City?
The debate over term limits is as old as democracy in America.
George Washington voluntarily stepped down after two terms as president, a tradition that continued until Franklin D. Roosevelt, the only president to serve longer; the 22nd amendment passed in 1951 made sure that never happened again. Since the subject was debated at the first Constitutional Convention, the arguments for and against term limits have remained generally the same.
Proponents argue term limits can:
“The more secure an office holder, the more his interests would diverge from those of his constituents,” Andrew Jackson once said.
Those opposed to term limits argue that they:
If voters want to kick someone out of office, opponents of term limits say, they can always do so in the next election.
“Much safer is it, and much more does it tend to promote the welfare and happiness of society to fill up the offices of government after the mode prescribed in the American Constitution, by frequent elections of the people,” argued Samuel Adams.
Term limits came to New York City in 1993, thanks to wealthy businessman Ronald Lauder, who after an unsuccessful run for mayor decided to financially back the movement. The group New Yorkers for Term Limits gathered nearly 130,000 signatures, took the city to court, and won a State Supreme Court ruling to put the issue on the ballot.
In November 1993, New Yorkers voted to “limit all elected officials in New York City to two consecutive terms in office” by a vote of 59 to 41 percent.
Term limits has never had support from the traditional sources of power in New York. Most politicians, newspaper editorial pages, and good government groups opposed the measure. (Read a Citizens Union report on term limits in pdf format)
Lawmakers have tried to overturn it at various points in recent years.
In 1996, the City Council tried to amend the term limits law, placing an initiative on the ballot to extend terms from 8 to 12 years and creating “staggered terms.” Voters rejected the idea.
After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, outgoing Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said that given the dire state of the city, he should be allowed to remain in office at least for a few months to help ease the transition in government. The effort stalled in Albany, where Democrats were eager to see the mayor out of office.
In 2002, term limits again became an issue when City Council Speaker Gifford Miller proposed an amendment, arguing that a quirk in the law would force him and five other members out of office after serving less than eight years. Michael Bloomberg opposed the measure, but the council overrode his veto. A court upheld the new law, allowing Miller, who is now running for mayor, to stay in office until the end of 2005.
In the first few months of 2002, the dire predictions that term limits would lead to chaos in government were proved wrong.
Mayor Bloomberg hired new staff and the City Council elected Gifford Miller as the new speaker. Both branches of government quickly began the tasks of managing the city and trying to address a serious budget deficit.
It is impossible to predict what a Giuliani third term would have looked like and how he and the former council might have handled situations like the rebuilding of lower Manhattan, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s financial problems, and the fiscal crisis.
But there are a few tangible things that probably would not have occurred without term limits.
Michael Bloomberg was successful in gaining control of the city schools, something Giuliani and other mayors sought, but Albany refused to give. (Many New Yorkers do not agree that reforms have had tangible results.)
But one can argue that some of Bloomberg’s ideas -- such as the 2012 Olympics, the 311 non-emergency line, a plan to build 100,000 units of housing, or new efforts to address homelessness -- would not have happened if Giuliani had been reelected.
In the City council, lead paint legislation is one of the clear distinctions from the past. The courts eventually struck down the version of the law passed by the previous council. The current more stringent regulations, which former Speaker Peter Vallone Sr. opposed, would probably never have come up for a vote.
Other bills like “living wage” legislation, domestic partnership benefits for employees of city contractors, and bans on predatory lending were discussed in the past, but never voted on.
Today, many of those who once opposed term limits as an anti-democratic measure that limited the choice of voters have been pleasantly surprised by the result.
“My initial reaction to the term limits was negative, but the experience of how they have worked has changed my mind,” said John Mollenkopf, professor at the City University of New York. “On balance, I think this feature of government does create openings for fresh thinking and new leadership.”
“The days of ridiculing the council as 'less than a rubber stamp’ are long gone,” said Neil Rosenstein of the New York Public Interest Research Group, which opposed term limits. “And the days when the council spent most of its time naming streets are also over.”
Predictions that term limits would spark a radical change in government have not materialized either.
Critics of the City Council point out that the lawmakers still debate resolutions about international relations, draft meaningless legislation, and hold hearings on matters over which they have no authority.
Many of the old political traditions continue. Committee assignments are still doled out in return for political favors, and nearly every vote in the City Council is unanimous because the speaker controls the legislative agenda. And the City Council does still change street names.
There have also been a fair share of scandals and embarrassments at City Hall in recent years, including indictments, charges of sexual harassment, and corruption in city agencies.
“At best I’d call it a wash,” said Republican Councilmember James Oddo, who was a proponent of the term limits legislation. “In the previous council, a bunch of dead wood was forced out, but a lot of good people were pushed out as well.”
Part of the reason for the continuation of the status quo is that those elected since term limits went into effect are remarkably similar to their predecessors.
The majority of the new officials came through the traditional pathways to power, working on the staffs of elected officials or in city government, earning the backing of the county parties, and seeking the endorsements from the outgoing official. Ten of the 51 current council members are relatives of New York politicians; four are former state legislators.
When it comes to gender and race, little has changed. Of the 59 people holding local elected office today, there are the same number of women (19), one more Latino (11), and three more African-Americans (15) than in 2001.
The most notable exception is Flushing Councilmember John Liu, who is the first Asian American elected to city government, having replaced Julia Harrison, a council member who served for 16 years and once referred to immigration in her district as “an invasion.”
In a city where Democratic voters outnumber Republicans five-to-one, term limits has not radically altered the political landscape. Including Mayor Michael Bloomberg, there are only four Republicans in local office, two fewer than in 2001.
However, one of the biggest beneficiaries of term limits may be the Working Families Party, a political party formed by labor and community organizers in 1998.
In the 2001 elections, many candidates, looking for additional support outside of the Democratic Party, sought out the Working Families endorsement. Once in office, these officials have advocated for changes in welfare-to-work regulations, worked closely with labor unions, and lobbied against budget cuts to social programs.
“Term limits has been deliciously ironic,” said Dan Cantor of the Working Families Party. “It was instigated by the right and has done nothing but help the left. Ronald Lauder’s millions helped community organizations and labor become better represented in the council.”
In the past, incumbent City Council members were basically assured of reelection. Proponents of term limits have long argued that the only way to create competitive races is to bar the incumbent from running.
In 2001, term limits, coupled with the city’s campaign finance program, which offered as much as $4 in public money for every $1 a candidate raised, produced a record number of new candidates, sometimes with half a dozen candidates or more running for one seat.
But many less experienced candidates found that while the incumbent was out of office, there were other significant obstacles to overcome.
District lines are drawn with specific political goals in mind. Hundreds of candidates were knocked off the ballot for minor irregularities when the local Democratic organizations took them to court. And others dropped out under the strain of mounting legal bills.
"Using these type of shenanigans to deny the voters the right to choose is shameful," said Inderjit Singh, a candidate who has been repeatedly knocked off the ballot in Queens.
In 2003, the power of incumbency was once again evident; all incumbent council members - two thirds of which had only served two years - were reelected, most by a wide margin.
Again this year, the vacant seats are generating the most interest. The race for Manhattan Borough President, for example, already has ten candidates, most of whom currently hold political office.
Another concern about term limits was that when a new class of less experienced lawmakers came into office, the government staff and lobbyists who work behind the scenes would gain more power.
Most experts argue that staff and lobbyists already have more influence than politicians want to admit, and that they haven’t seen a great shift in the power structures of City Hall.
“A staff member has always whispered into the ear of the council member to tell them what question to ask or how to vote,” said Neil Rosenstein of NYPIRG. “And they still do.”
But some advocates say term limits has changed their strategies.
Rather than working for years on the same issue with the same group of politicians, advocates are already looking ahead to the next election to influence candidates and build a relationship with the next speaker.
“You don’t have to wait for 20 years, until someone dies or their kid takes over or they are indicted,” said Joshua Klainberg of the New York League of Conservation Voters. “With term limits you lose friends, but you also lose enemies.”
One significant change from the past is an escalating battle over legislation between the mayor and the City Council.
In his first three years in office, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has vetoed 27 bills passed by the City Council, four more than Rudolph Giuliani vetoed in eight years in office. And the City Council, with its overwhelmingly Democratic caucus, has overridden every veto.
Some argue that the constant back and forth of vetoes and overrides is healthy, an essential part of the system of checks and balances.
But some say term limits have created unnecessary conflict between lawmakers who are looking to establish a record to distinguish themselves for their next run for office.
“Vetoes paralyze government,” said former Speaker Peter Vallone, Sr., who remains an adamant opponent of term limits. “A veto should be the exception and not the rule. There is not time to analyze and consider and reach compromises as in the past.”
Gifford Miller, for example, is 35 years old with nine years of experience in the council; he has only been speaker since January 2002. If he is unsuccessful in his bid for mayor, he will have to wait for another opening in government if he wants to remain an elected representative. Three current council members are running for Manhattan Borough President.
On one side, politicians are eager to make a record for themselves and to win over voters.
“People realize they have a shelf life and have to make a name for themselves quickly,” said Oddo.
On the other side, some believe this lack of job security may actually be bad for citizens.
“You have bright people with experience focusing on their career rather than the job they are doing,” said Councilmember Phil Reed, who will be forced out of office at the end of the year.
Many experts say that it is still too early to tell the lasting impact of term limits particularly in the City Council, which was expanded and given more powers in 1991 and is still learning how to exercise all of its authority.
“It seems to me the next turnover and what happens in its wake - for example who gets the speakership after Miller leaves office - will be particularly instructive as to how the council as an institution works with term limits,” said Mollenkopf.
Many say that it takes a legislator one or two years to really get a sense of the job. And it is likely that the next Speaker of the City Council will only serve for four years, which means shortly after gaining the position he or she will be considered a “lame duck.”
New York already has a strong mayoral system of government and the legislative branch is at a disadvantage. A weak speaker, many believe, also means a weak council. And with a revolving door of officials constantly leaving and arriving, it may be difficult for the council to establish an identity and agenda.
“The longer term limits continue the weaker the legislature will become,” said Peter Vallone, Sr.
But term limits is not likely to change anytime soon. For the measure to be appealed or amended it would take an act of the state government in Albany, a place where government has become so entrenched with incumbents and political interests that some wonder if the only way to bring change is to institute term limits on the state level as well.
Gotham Gazette’s Campaign 2005
Who Is Term Limited Out of Office in 2005?
Brief History of Election Law in NYC
1999 Citizens Union Report “The Big Turnover: Term Limits in New York City (.pdf)
The Speech that Saved Term Limits - Stephen Fiala, 2001
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Every two weeks the New York City Council meets for its Stated Meeting to introduce and pass legislation. As a regular feature, Searchlight covers these meetings and posts a summary of the bills passed.
Meeting Summary:
On March 9, 2005, the New York City Council passed three measures aimed at protecting children and their parents.
The council overrode a veto from Mayor Michael Bloomberg and approved a bill (Intro 522-A) that requires child care centers to post signs alerting parents how to find inspection reports on city and state Web sites. The legislation also requires that child care facilities provide parents with the most recent reports of safety violations.
“I send my two year old to daycare,” said Council Speaker Gifford Miller. “And if the city of New York visits that facility and finds that there is a serious violation… or there is some kind of condition that threatens the life of my child, then I have a right to know.”
Councilmember Melinda Katz drafted the bill after a 7-month old child named Matthew Perilli died in a Forest Hills day care facility, which had previous safety violations. Mayor Bloomberg vetoed the bill arguing that it was unnecessary. In recent months, the city has already closed 26 daycare centers for safety violations.
The council also passed legislation (Intro 408-A) that requires the Department of Homeless Services to post signs describing the kinds of behaviors that constitute child abuse and neglect. It also calls for signs describing proper infant sleeping positions to prevent suffocation. Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum - who last year issued a report that found that one in three child deaths investigated by the city could have been prevented - authored the bill.
A third piece of legislation (Intro 266-A) mandates that the city change the practice of using the name of a child’s mother to track cases of abuse filed with the Administration for Children’s Services. The aim is to prevent prejudice or stigma directed at mothers who may even not be accused of abuse. Background checks for employment, housing, and other social services can often produce the names of women with protect service cases. The city said it would begin tracking cases by the name of the person accused of abuse.
In other matters, the council passed a bill (Intro 185-A) requiring that the city consider environmental, economic, and access issues when a street is closed for longer than 180 days for repair or other reasons.
The legislative body also approved a rezoning of the Port Morris section of the Bronx. The rezoning (L.U. 331 & Res. 880) allows for an 11-block industrial area in the South Bronx to be converted for retail and residential use. Officials hope to create 400 new apartments as part of the plan, but some housing activists had requested that a specific number of affordable apartments be guaranteed before the rezoning was approved.
Bronx Councilmember Maria del Carmen Arroyo, who took office less than a month ago after winning a Special Election to fill the vacant seat, helped negotiate the details of the plan.
All of the measures passed by a vote of 49 to 0, with the exception of the Port Morris rezoning; Brooklyn Councilmember David Yassky voted against it.
“When we do a major rezoning, we have to guarantee affordable housing,” said Yassky. “If we don’t, we risk building for only the very wealthy.”
The next Stated Meeting is scheduled for March 23, 2005.
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