Gotham Gazette

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Open Government

New York City Council STATED MEETING - May 5, 2004


New York City Council Stated Meeting Report

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.

STATED MEETING - May 5, 2004

Quote of the Day:

"This sends a message to taxpayers that when we use their money, that we use it with a goal of equality and full recognition of all under the law." -
Councilmember Christine Quinn, author of a bill that requires companies that contract with city government to provide domestic partner benefits to their employees.

Meeting Summary:

The New York City Council passed the "Equal Benefits Bill," (Intro 137-B) legislation that requires companies that contract with New York City for $100,000 or more to provide benefits to the domestic partners of their employees.

Municipal employees were given domestic partner benefits beginning in 1998, but currently companies or organizations that contract with the city are not required to abide by the same rules.

"Today the city of New York will very clearly say that we will not do business with companies that do not provide equal benefits for all of their employees," said Speaker Gifford Miller. "We should not sanction discrimination with our dollars, and we will not."

The bill had strong support from other city officials including the city comptroller and public advocate, as well as groups like the Central Labor Council and the Empire State Pride Agenda.

However, some City Council members opposed the bill because it also applies to religious organizations and institutions, some of which oppose gay and lesbian relationships.

"[It] forces religious institutions to violate their beliefs," said Councilmember Peter Vallone, Jr. "These religious institutions provide food for the hungry and clothes to the poor, and they are not making any profit. I think religious institutions should have been exempted."

Officials for the New York Archdiocese have said the organization may stop providing benefits to employees altogether or sue the city if required to provide domestic partnership benefits.

But supporters argued that bill took religious organizations into consideration by providing a provision that allows them to provide benefits - not by virtue of domestic partnership - but because family members live in the same household.

The bill passed by a vote of 43 in favor, 5 against, and 2 abstentions. Voting "no" were Democratic council members Simcha Felder, James Gennaro, Peter Vallone, Jr., and Republicans Dennis Gallagher and James Oddo. Allan Jennings and Michael Nelson abstained.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg has said he would veto the bill, arguing that the city should not use its purchasing power to promote social causes. The council has more than 35 votes needed to override the veto.

Over the next few weeks the City Council will focus almost exclusively on the $46 billion city budget, which must be adopted in June. (Click here for a full list of public hearings on the budget.)


The next Stated Meeting is scheduled for May 19, 2004.

For an archive of past meetings and council votes, visit Gotham Gazette's Searchlight.

 

New York Republicans vs National Republicans




Related: New York's Republican Values by Frank Padavan

Several years before the Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade gave women a right to legal abortions, New York State passed a model pro-choice law extending those protections to New Yorkers. Given the fact that Democrats outnumber Republicans in the city and the state, and that the national image of the Democrats is pro-choice and Republicans pro-life, this would seem logical.

However, New York's right-to-choose law did not come from a Democratic administration. When it passed in 1970, the Republican Party controlled both the State Assembly and Senate. Republican State Senator Roy Goodman from the East Side sponsored the bill, and Republican Governor Nelson Rockefeller signed it into law.

New York Republicans - in both the state and city - have long been different from their national colleagues.

While many Democrats in the South opposed the civil rights movement of the 1960s, Republicans from the northeast gave President Lyndon Johnson the votes he needed to pass his Civil Rights and Voting Rights legislation. In 1964, the national party selected conservative Barry Goldwater as its presidential nominee over New York Republican Governor Nelson Rockefeller. Today, on many social issues, New York Republicans can be considered progressive, even liberal. New York's most recent prominent Republican officials - Governor George Pataki, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former Mayor Rudy Giuliani - are all pro-choice, pro-gay, anti-gun, and more pro-environment than the national party.

And although local Republicans often claim to be fiscal conservatives, in reality they have resorted to budget gimmicks, tax increases, excessive borrowing using state authorities, and just plain old-fashioned lavish spending. During the 1960s, Governor Rockefeller strayed so far from the small government ideology that his policies helped give birth to the Conservative Party.

Since taking office in 2002, Mayor Bloomberg has further blurred the definition of what it means to be a Republican in New York. A Democrat turned Republican, he governs at odds with both parties - taxing heavily, fighting unions, expanding government, and promoting large-scale development. On important social issues, he has the practical approach of a cranky bean counter leaving the impression with voters that he does not care about people like them.

As the national party becomes increasingly conservative, the gap between local and federal officials becomes wider and wider, and threatens the New York Republican Party.

THE LIABILITY OF THE RIGHT

The difference between New York and national Republicans is at least in part a result of the old adage "all politics are local."

New York is known as a liberal place with liberal voters. Republican here make Democrats in other parts of the country look conservative. Only one Republican presidential candidate since McGovern — Ronald Reagan — has won New York.

In a recent Battleground Poll, 18 percent of voters say they are "very conservative" and 42 percent answered somewhat "conservative." In New York State, only about a quarter of voters describe themselves as conservatives. In New York City, the number of city voters who describe themselves as "conservative" has dropped an average of 9-points over the last four mayoral races.

Polling homogenizes politics as politicians follow voters. And so, over time, it has moved local Republicans to the left. For partly practical reasons, but also because of deeply held beliefs, New York Republicans are less conservative than their counterparts in other parts of the country. Local Republicans can see that being perceived as too conservative has been costly for some in the past.

Senator Alfonse D'Amato, who from the start was to the right of the electorate, did not keep up with the population change in the state, and former Attorney General Dennis Vacco served only one term for the same reason - too conservative. Both men were more like national Republicans than most of their colleagues in the state.

In fact, when the national Republican Party moved far to the right during the Newt Gingrich era of the 1990s local Republicans lost races. This was especially true in the city where that party failed to make gains in open seats and lost incumbents.

In 1992, on the East Side of Manhattan, which once had five local Republicans, Democrat Carolyn Maloney beat out incumbent Bill Green in a race for Congress. Since then, four East Side Republicans - Roy Goodman, Andrew Eristoff, John Ravitz and Charles Millard - who once held office, have not returned. The City Council Republican minority has similarly shrunk.

BRINGING THE GOP TO NYC

The divide between local Republicans and the national party can make it difficult for local officials to get federal aid for New York from a Republican president and a Republican controlled Congress.

However, in early 2003, local Republican leaders - especially Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Pataki - convinced their national party to locate this year's national convention here in New York City. The pitch was that it would be good for New York City's economy, which was devastated after the terrorist attack of September 11, and that it would help build support for their ticket and improve the national party's image.

Now some in the party regret the choice.

President Bush, whose best issue was thought to be his resolve in fighting terrorism, has come under scrutiny by the 9/11 commission hearings. This summer, the president will also have to make his case that he did the right thing in going to war with Iraq in a city that hosted the largest anti-war demonstrations in the nation and that promises to be the scene of more protests during the convention.

Mayor Bloomberg, attentive to Democratic city voters, has distanced himself from the convention. He has not planned to host an event for the leadership and delegates, and he plans to spend more time outside the convention with the police than inside stumping for the candidates and their issues.

If local Republicans continue to move to the left to get votes, local candidates could reach a tipping point where they will no longer be in line with their base reducing turnout among "true believers," costing them additional losses in an increasing number of elections. Incumbency is protecting local Republicans against the mismatch between themselves and their base; and the fact that New York Republicans export very large amounts of campaign money to support more conservative party candidates nationally gives them leeway with their national party leaders.

But nothing can hide the fact that New York Republicans are increasingly different ideologically and in the way they govern from their national party counterparts. The more New York's electorate moves to the left the more this gap will increase - and at some point this disconnect will be too great to go unpunished by both national Republicans and local voters.

Joseph Mercurio has worked as a political consultant for more than 25 years.

New York's Republican Values




Related: New York Republicans VS. National Republicans by Joseph Mercurio

In a democracy, healthy competition and opposing viewpoints cannot be underestimated. Political parties serve to foster increased participation in both the selection and election of candidates and office holders. More than any other reason, that's why a strong Republican Party is good for New York City, and good for the United States.

Here in New York, there are far more registered Democrats than Republicans, but without viable candidates competing for office from both major parties, and trying to win support from minor parties, we are left with one party rule. This can stifle opinion and essentially lead to a form of tyranny. One party rule has been tried elsewhere in the world. It has been a failure and anyone unfortunate enough to have lived under it would tell you that it's not what we want here.

It is important that our political parties offer voters and political participants clear choices. I belong to the Republican Party because I believe in strong family values, the rights of property owners, lower taxes and fiscal conservatism, and tough policies to protect our neighborhoods from crime.

That being said, there are differences between a New York Republican and Republicans from other parts of the country. This summer in New York, we'll see Republicans from all over our nation and from different parts of the political spectrum coming together to re-nominate President George W. Bush. Although I differ with them on some issues - I support rent control regulations and have been an advocate for tougher gun control laws - I will join Republicans together with those with whom I disagree because we are all unified by a general belief in smaller government, a strong national defense and increased national security.

FAMILIES, EDUCATION, LOWER TAXES

I believe strongly that parents must be given the tools to raise children according to their beliefs and wishes, and that parents should have to be notified about choices that their children make. Recently, I introduced a bill that would require parental notification before a minor child could have any part of his or her body pierced. The Senate has passed this bill four times, but the Democratic controlled Assembly has yet to pass it.

Parental involvement in education is essential to the success of our school system. I have worked closely with Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein, and I sponsored legislation to create community education councils in our schools, that will take the place of the former Community School Boards, and offer parents a direct voice in the education of our children.

The rights of property owners are another critical issue, whether it’s monitoring changes in development and planning or working to prevent illegal conversions of single-family homes to multifamily dwellings. Lowering property values as a result of increased traffic in a neighborhood, or decreasing the quality of life in an area because of illegally converted apartment houses, are issues that concern many hard working families. I have worked for years to keep property taxes down and to increase economic development in our neighborhoods. By bringing in business and industry to all parts of the city, we increase the tax base and lower the burden on individual homeowners.

FIGHTING CRIME

I also believe that Republicans are generally tougher on crime than many of our Democratic counterparts.

Routinely, bills to increase penalties for drunk drivers and eliminate parole for violent offenders are passed by the Republican controlled State Senate, but not passed by the Democrats in the Assembly.

Further, for years the Democrats have been working to undermine the Rockefeller Era Drug Laws, which keep many convicted drugs dealers behind bars. They argue that these are not violent felons, but I have talked to the mothers of children who have died of overdoses and they beg to differ. Releasing repeat offenders for violent crime and drug dealers into our neighborhoods doesn't make sense to me. For years I have advocated for increased resources for drug treatment. Addicts need treatment. Dealers need to be put away.

DIFFERENCE MAKES US STRONGER

In New York, Republicans and Democrats operate on a lot of common ground, and I generally believe my colleagues in both parties are decent women and men trying to effect positive changes for their communities and the people they represent. However, in some areas we just have profoundly different ideas of how to do this.

Our differences are a testament to the fact that in America, and even here in New York City, the party system is alive and well. It makes for a stronger city and citizenry; we are all better for it.

Frank Padavan has represented the 11th District of Queens in the New York State Senate since 1972.

Voting Technology


Despite all the promises, New York City has the same old broken down voting machines. But that, as it turns out, might be a good thing. Susan Reefer explains.

New York City Council STATED MEETING - March 24, 2004



New York City Council Stated Meeting Report

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.

STATED MEETING - March 24, 2004

Quote of the Day:

"Single-family homeowners should be angry about this. It doesn't make sense. It isn't right." - City Council Speaker Gifford Miller on the delay in the absentee landlord tax.

Meeting Summary:

The New York City Council agreed to delay for two years the collection of a $44 million property tax surcharge on absentee landlords in return for the Bloomberg administration's agreement to restore proposed budget cuts.

Last July, Mayor Bloomberg and the New York City Council agreed to an "absentee landlord" tax as part of the annual budget agreement. The 25 percent tax applies to landlords who own one-, two-, or three-family houses and use the rent for income. At the time, both sides agreed it would make the city's real estate tax code fairer and generate a much-needed $44 million in revenue.

Since then, the tax plan has fallen apart.

The city's Department of Finance argued that it is too complicated to administer and blames the City Council for implementing it. The mayor said the absentee landlord tax should be repealed. And the City Council said that the finance department is billing the wrong people and failing to provide tax rebates to hundreds of thousands of homeowners who qualify for exemptions.

In exchange for delaying the tax, the mayor agreed to restore $100 million in budget cuts that the council had sought. With the measure, the city funded:

  • $75 million for the private bus lines that operate mainly outside Manhattan.
  • $8 million for meals for elderly New Yorkers.
  • $5.4 million for instruction at the City University of New York.
  • $607,000 for mental health services.
  • $200,000 for health clinics for children.

 

The council unanimously approved the budget changes by a vote of 49 to 0, but some council members complained that more cuts should have been avoided.

Brooklyn Councilmembers Letitia James and David Yassky complained that the Brooklyn Borough President's budget was cut while other borough presidents' budgets were not.

Councilmember Lew Fidler and Peter Vallone, Jr. criticized the 17 percent cut to the operating budgets for District Attorneys, arguing that prosecutors are forced to plea bargain cases and to make decisions based on money rather than the law.

And Staten Island Councilmember James Oddo said that a fire company in his district was not getting a new engine because so much money was going to pay the city's portion of Medicaid. Unlike most states, New York requires local governments to pay a major portion of the Medicaid bill. New York City's costs have risen dramatically in recent years, nearly 32 percent from 1999 to 2002. By 2004, Medicaid spending is expected to cost the city over $4 billion a year, or about 13 percent of the total budget.

"In New York State we spend $1,200 for every person on Medicaid," said Oddo. "That's double the national average. In New York, we essentially spend more than California and Texas combined. We have three percent of the nation's population, and we spend around 10 percent of the Medicaid dollars. It is a monster."

Council Speaker Gifford Miller said that while he delayed a vote on the bill, he would continue to fight to have the tax implemented in the future.

The next stated meeting is scheduled for April 1, 2004

For an archive of past meetings and council votes, visit Gotham Gazette's Searchlight.

 

Inside Tweed



Susana Torruella Leval

For 19 months after its creation, the Panel for Educational Policy worked in relative obscurity. The state legislature established the unpaid 13-member group in 2002 when it gave the New York City mayor control of the school system and abolished the Board of Education. In contrast with its more powerful predecessor, the new panel, the law said, "shall exercise no executive power and perform no executive or administrative functions." And Mayor Michael Bloomberg said of his appointees, "Their job is to give advice to the chancellor, not advice to the press. I do not expect to see their names, ever, in the press, answering a question either on the record or off the record."

But the panel garnered attention last week as it prepared to vote on Bloomberg's plan to leave back third graders who score poorly on a standardized test. Fearing he would lose the vote, Bloomberg requested the resignation of two members who had indicated they would vote against the policy.

The ousters came after a week of turmoil at the Department of Education. Only days before, Deputy Chancellor Diana Lam, the department's top educator, had to resign in the wake of nepotism charges. The department's top lawyer also stepped down.

Susana Torruella Leval, a former director of the Museo del Barrio, was one of the Bloomberg appointees dismissed from the Panel for Educational Policy. In an interview with Gotham Gazette, Leval describes what led up to the ouster of the panel members and spoke about the role of the group and the state of educational reform in New York City:

Advisors, Not Rubberstampers

It was a great honor to be on the panel. When the mayor appointed me I remember saying, "You know Mr. Mayor, I'm not an education expert so are you sure that I should be taking the place of an educator on this panel?" He said, "Oh certainly, because what we want are people from other worlds, other perspectives. What we want is a different point of view."

I'm a private citizen. I have no agenda. I'm a person from the art world, and I'm an ex museum director. Perhaps because I was not from the world of education, I took great pains to educate myself on all the issues that were coming up before us.

We were not hired to rubberstamp the mayor. Who would go on a panel if that were the purpose? The panel's role was advisory, and perhaps it was naĂŻve that we took this to be real. We worked very closely for a year and half with the chancellor sometimes but mostly with the staff that does the day-to-day work.

I was privileged to be on the inside looking at this extraordinary team of people, a team that in my mind included the work of former Deputy Chancellor Diana Lam, which was excellent work no matter what happened later. It was a privilege to observe the team and to have an interaction with them as advisors. They took us very seriously. We were refining and tinkering with proposals that came up and in some cases even challenging them, but we always got to the other side. I am very sad to not be able to continue to serve with the wonderful colleagues on the panel and with the great staff.

Whether the panel can continue to do good work if what the mayor wants is simply approval and not advice, I don't know. The members of the panel all felt that they were on a real advisory panel. No one would have signed on to be on a rubber stamp panel. If you look at the people on the panel, they are people of weight, intelligence and experience. And there was immense passion and belief in this reform.

Confusion and Complaints

It's extraordinarily courageous of the mayor to take on educational reform as a test of his mayoralty. I thought that, in the past, the system has been in such shambles that, of course this is going to be good.

Change is very painful, and change makes people unhappy, and change takes time. We have not seen any statistics yet because the school year isn't even finished. But most of the comments that the panel has gotten from parents and teachers have not been very positive. On the administrative side, there seems to be great confusion and on the curriculum side there's a lot of complaining too.

The reform could still turn out to be very good news in the end. It's just how can you expect to turn a whole system upside down and get immediate good results? You can't. Maybe you can do that in a corporation. In the real world, it doesn't work that way.

Objections To The Third-Grade Promotion Policy

Promotion was one of the first issues that people on the panel were seriously and intellectually divided on.

Absolutely no one in the panel is for social promotion. So, I'm puzzled and actually sad that there are descriptions of the members who were going to vote against this as "foes of the mayor" or people who are against reforms. I wasn't voting in defiance of the mayor. I was voting because my brain of 60 years has taught me to look at things and analyze both sides.

What most of us were listening to and reading about were the very serious objections from the expert professional educational and scholarly community. Those objections were mainly twofold. They were against high-stakes testing. There seems to be immense proof that high-stakes testing is a very bad practice, and even the test makers have said that they don't agree that it should be used as a sole measure. No one is against tests, and no one is against standards. What we are against is using one test -- and exclusively that test -- as the marker of what should retain a child.

The second issue that expert opinion seemed to not be divided on is on retention. They do not see retention as a solution. That does not mean that social promotion is the answer. Neither retention nor promotion are solutions.

There are a lot of very serious and good educators on the panel. Led by them, we had proposed a whole host of interventions and programs for reading remediation -- including smaller classes, of course -- that would prevent the problem of having a third grader not knowing how to read.

There was a mayoral mandate in January for immediate implementation. The test is in April. We were all arguing for more time. We felt that if we had one year more -- in other words if whatever initiative to end social promotion was implemented in 2005 -- that we would have the next year to work with the chancellor's staff. What we were arguing for was a well-thought-through educational plan that could take a year to put in place; maybe it would have taken less than a year.

The resolution looked totally different on March 15 than it had even one week before. Thinking how much the resolution had changed in one week, I really feel that if we had had another year, even another month, we would have ended up in a better place. We have a new vice chancellor, Carmen Fariña. It would have been very interesting to see if she could have helped come up with new aspects that would have made most of the panel comfortable with the resolution.

Slowing Down; Leaving

Over the last year and a half, the haste of some reforms have caused a lot of criticism. If you slow down, you can think things through.

I am sad to say that Diana Lam's leaving contributed to the atmosphere of chaos. She was in favor of the promotion policy, but she had expressed the ability to listen to taking more time, to slowing down. Despite her public persona, I always found her to be thoughtful and willing to listen.

I had been in conversation with the mayor and people close to him. We had been having what I thought was a real debate. That debate continued until noon on Monday. Then I got home at two on Monday and had a call from a mayor's representative who said, "If you cannot vote for this resolution, then the mayor would like your resignation." And that was it.

 

Selling Hotdogs, Getting Ticketed



Anwar Hussein, 34, has been vending in New York for 13 years

Also, by another street vendor in New York City:
• Selling Jewelry, Spending the Night in Jail
by Aeisha

Related:
• Pushcart Wars
by Joshua Brustein

Community Gazettes, a look at street vendors in:
Banning Street Vendors from Ground Zero
(Lower Manhattan,
Dist. 1)
From Street Vendor To Small Business
(Flatbush, Dist. 40)
Moving Off 125th Street
(Harlem, Dist. 9)
 

I'm from Bangladesh, and I have an accounting degree. I worked for the telephone company there, but I can’t get the same job here because I don’t have a diploma from this country. Vending is the best for me, because there is no education requirement, and with my family, I don't have time to take courses.

In 1991, I got a food vending license from the Health Department. If somebody has legal documentation, it’s not that hard, they can get a license. I don't make much money selling hotdogs, $350 to $400 a week. I live with my mom, my wife, my four daughters and my son. I'm able to take care of my family, but I work long hours.

But my license doesn't give me a right to a spot. Every person, when they get a license, finds themselves a spot. Once I got the license, I went to the hot dog company, I rented the pushcart, and I looked at the area around Canal Street. I saw this guy on one block, this guy on another block, and I saw a spot with nobody there.

I set up my cart and started working -– one day, two days, one week. If somebody would have come, and said, "This is my spot, my friend, you have to move," I would have moved. But nobody came, and I've been working this spot for over 10 years. Not only me, but my mom also used to work there, my wife, my uncle. It’s a family business. Now, I have two different spots, and my uncle has another, all near each other.

Every day at nine or ten, I pick up my pushcart from the garage downtown, buy merchandise from another garage, and push my cart to my spot on Broadway and Canal Street. I work from 10 to 7 -- longer hours in the summer -- every day of the week.

Maybe 60 percent of my customers are regulars. They come, they talk. They know me, they know my mom, my wife, because I’ve been working here so many years. Everybody knows me. For the first eight years, everything was good, until the 11 of September.

Since then, business has been going down, and we’ve also been having a lot of problems with the police.

When police come to us, they don't give us respect, they don't ask us nothing. They just come to us, maybe they stay inside the van and say "hey food guy, bring your license." They write the ticket without even getting out of the car. Sometimes they are even smoking while writing tickets.

Last year I got 27 tickets, from $300 to $2,000. They are usually for being less than 20 feet from a store entrance, but I’m 26 feet from the door. I have a tape measure but the police don't want to measure it; they just take the license and give the ticket.

Me, my wife, my mom, everybody, we all did a lot of complaining to the police department because we were all getting tickets. Sean Basinski from the Urban Justice Center helped me take pictures of my spot. When I go to the judge, with a lot of pictures, he sees that I am set up legally. He said I can work here, police should not bother me, and dismissed the fines.

A vendor's job is not easy –- rainy days, snowy days, sunny days, we're outside. Why? Only to make money to take care of our families. But still the police are bothering us. Even if we give them respect, they don't want to take it. They don’t want to think about our life, our situation.

 

New York City Council STATED MEETING - March 10, 2004


New York City Council Stated Meeting Report

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.

STATED MEETING - March 10, 2004

Quote of the Day:

"Councilman James Davis died in these chambers as a result of gun violence... I am asking that we stand together in his memory... and vote to repudiate the statements of the NRA... I'm doing this in the spirit of Councilman James Davis who speaks through me today." - Brooklyn Councilmember Letitia James urging support of a City Council resolution denouncing the National Rifle Association.

Meeting Summary:

The main item of business at the March 10th City Council meeting was the approval the council's $45 million operating budget.

This money pays for council member salaries of $90,000 a year, bonuses, and operating costs for the legislative branch. It also funds the 279 employees who work for the City Council.

Speaker Gifford Miller said that the budget reflects the "serious fiscal situation the city finds itself in" and cuts $207,000 or about a half of 1 percent from the previous year's budget.

While the council's total operating budget did decrease, the amount of money for council member salaries and bonuses actually increased by $70,000 because more stipends were added for those who chair committees. (See a list of each council member's salary and bonus.)

The council passed no new laws on March 10, in part because much of its time is currently consumed by budget hearings. The council holds public sessions on each area of the city's $45 billion budget and then makes recommendations to the mayor. (See a schedule of budget hearings.)

The council did pass three resolutions, which hold no legal weight, but reflect the official opinion of the City Council.

One (Res 123-A) joins local governments of Chicago and Los Angeles in calling for more federal homeland security funds for cities.

Another (Res 177) seeks justice for Hungarian holocaust survivors who had works of art and money stolen from them in World War II.

And the third (Res 11-A) calls on the Republican National Committee to "repudiate the irresponsible and dangerous policies of the National Rifle Association."

Several Democrats and the three Republicans voted against the resolution, arguing that while it would be appropriate to protest on the steps of City Hall, the legislative process should not be used for such an issue.

"This is inappropriate, a slap in the face to our Republican colleagues, and partisan politics in the worst way," said Democrat Tony Avella.

The majority of council members supported and passed the resolution.

"This is not a condemnation of Republicans or the Republican Party," said Speaker Miller. "The NRA supports policies that cause death and violence in our country and our city."

The council also honored the life of Harriet Tubman, a slave who escaped from the south in 1849 and helped thousands of others do the same as part of the "underground railroad." Fulton Street in Brooklyn will soon be renamed in her honor.

The next stated meeting is scheduled for March 24, 2004

For an archive of past meetings and council votes, visit Gotham Gazette's Searchlight.

 

New York And Gay Marriage


Related Article:
Bloomberg Must Speak Up on Gay Marriages by Christine Quinn

For one day in New York, heterosexual marriages were banned in the City Clerk's Office. That is because dozens of gay people took over the office in the Municipal Building, across from City Hall, to protest the ban on gay marriage.

This demonstration, in which I participated, took place in 1971 -- two years after Stonewall, and four years after the United States Supreme Court overturned all state bans on interracial marriage. I doubt anybody involved in the protest expected it to get results. This was just another one of the famous zaps by the Gay Activists Alliance, the leading gay rights group of the day. We came with two cakes--one with two grooms on top, the other with two brides- and told callers, "there will be no heterosexual marriages today. It's Gay Day at the Marriage Bureau."

It seems like Gay Day once again. Last week, more than three decades later, we were back at the clerk's office, dozens of same-sex couples lining up for marriage licenses, which were denied them. A few days earlier, demonstrators stood on the steps of City Hall, demanding that Mayor Michael Bloomberg follow the lead of the mayors of San Francisco and New Paltz, New York -- as well as officials in Portland, Oregon and Nyack, New York -- and order the City Clerk to start issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. This time, though, the demonstrators included City Council Speaker Gifford Miller, State Senators Tom Duane and Liz Kruger, Assemblymember Dick Gottfried and openly gay New York City Councilmembers Phil Reed and Christine Quinn. (See "Bloomberg Must Speak Up On Gay Marriage" by Quinn)

Gay marriage, which was revived as an issue in the last few years, has suddenly become a serious movement in the past few weeks, gaining momentum every day.

So far, Mayor Bloomberg has refused to open marriage to gay couples, his corporation counsel issuing an opinion last week saying that only man-woman couples may wed under New York State law. New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer also issued an opinion that New York State law does not allow for the performing of same-sex marriages.

That New York City lags behind Nyack and New Paltz, never mind San Francisco, should not be surprising to people who know history. Even though the modern gay rights movement began in New York, the city can be oddly backward when it comes to lesbian and gay rights. We did not add "sexual orientation" to the human rights law until 1986, 17 years after Stonewall and long after most major cities. (The state did not pass a gay rights law until 2002!) Domestic partner benefits were not given to lesbian and gay city employees until Mayor David Dinkins settled a lawsuit with gay and lesbian teachers in 1993.

Still, the city with undoubtedly the largest gay population in the nation is, in its own way, making the case for gay marriage. The New York Bar Association has read the state marriage law differently from the recent interpretations, finding it gender neutral. And, as the Gay City News has reported, "Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau told at least one elected official on Thursday that he disagreed with the conclusions of the state attorney general and the city corporation counsel about the legality of same-sex marriage and would not bring criminal proceedings related to such unions." Even Spitzer says he supports same-sex marriage, and, at the same time that he delivered his interpretation of the state law, also said that he believes our state is obliged to recognize legal same-sex marriages performed elsewhere, such as the two provinces of Canada, the Netherlands and Belgium where same-sex marriage is legal. Indeed, we now have a local law recognizing such marriages and civil unions performed elsewhere, which Bloomberg signed in 2002 (though he said he will not apply it to the weddings of same-sex couples in San Francisco and New Paltz.)

The federal government passed the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, banning federal recognition of same-sex marriage, and allowing the states to decide on their own whether or not to recognize such marriages performed in other jurisdictions. New York is one of just 12 states that has not passed a state version of the Defense of Marriage Act.

Most New York elected officials have come out in opposition to an amendment to the U.S. Constitution limiting marriage to a man and a woman, which President George W. Bush recently endorsed. Governor George Pataki and Senators Schumer and Clinton, who all oppose same-sex marriage, nevertheless have come out against the amendment, as have 11 of the 14 members of the House delegation so far, including Staten Island Republican Vito Fossella. Mayor Bloomberg and the City Council also oppose the amendment.

There is some evidence, in other words, that New Yorkers are open to the reality of gay marriage, and the arguments for the simple justice of it.

Marriage carries 1,138 rights and responsibilities with it according to the General Accounting Office. Lesbian and gay couples need that support as much as non-gay couples. That's why thousands of same-sex couples stood for hours in the rain in San Francisco to obtain their licenses. New Yorkers Rosie O'Donnell and Kelli Carpenter went to San Francisco to get married, Rosie telling the press that they decided to do this after Kelli was forced to testify in Rosie's case against her former publisher last year, having been denied the right of not having to testity that would be given to a legal spouse: "As a result, everything that I said to Kelly, every letter that I wrote her, every e-mail, every correspondence and conversation was entered into the record of this case," O'Donnell said. "After the trial, I am now, and will forever be, a total proponent of gay marriage." It is not all about economic benefits; it is also about dignity, respect, and equality.

Most of the objection to gay marriage is on religious grounds. But what we are fighting for is civil marriage. If the state finally recognizes our civil marriage rights, nothing will change for churches, synagogues, and mosques. The Catholic Church does not marry people who have been divorced, despite civil marriage laws that have allowed it for centuries.

The other common objection is that allowing gay people to marry will undermine the "sanctity of marriage." But, as Nicholas Kristoff wrote last week in the Times, "it seems to me that the best way to preserve the sanctity of American marriage is for us all to spend less time fretting about other people's marriages - and more time improving our own."

Allen Roskoff, who works for the New York State Senate, is a member of the New York Right to Marry Coalition. The views expressed are his own.

 



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