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 - June 25, 2003
Quote of the Day:
"It was like a hit team came down and shot up small businesses without a warning." - Councilmember Michael Nelson on a rash of tickets to business owners who put illegal information on their awnings.
Meeting Summary:
Responding to complaints that the city is issuing too many tickets, the New York City Council approved a six-month moratorium on citations to store and restaurant owners who violate the law with illegal awnings.
Under a law passed in 1961, store awnings can only include the name and address - no phone number, logos, or descriptions allowed - and the letters cannot be more than 12 inches tall.
The council estimates that 90 percent of the city's storeowners are in violation and wants time to update the law.
Business owners who violate the law can be fined up to $2,500 and complain they are being targeted in a ticket blitz to help balance the city's budget. (For more read the Summer of Summonses.) In the first three months of the year, 1,211 violations were filed, according to the city's Department of Buildings. In 2002, 1,736 violations were issued during the entire year.
The council passed the moratorium (Intro 305-A) by a vote of 47 to 1. Only Queens Councilmember Helen Sears voted against it.
On June 24, the council approved an increase in the personal income tax for the wealthiest New Yorkers. Individuals earning more than $100,000 a year and couples making more than $150,000 a year will see their income tax increase to 3.65 to 4.25 percent. Those making more than $500,000 a year will pay 4.45 percent.
The tax hike is part of a budget negotiated by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the State Legislature in May. As part of a $2.7 billion aid package from Albany, the city agreed to raise sales taxes, personal income taxes, and institute a surcharge on absentee landlords.
The vote was 46 to 3, with the council's three Republicans - James Oddo, Andrew Lanza, and Dennis Gallagher - voting "no."
The next Stated Meeting is scheduled for June 27 when the council is expected to approve a new city budget. For an archive of past meetings and council votes, visit Gotham Gazette's Searchlight.
Jesse Tavaras got a ticket for sitting on a milk crate in front of the Bronx hair salon where he works. The charge? "Unauthorized use of a milk crate."
Israeli tourist Yoav Kashdia fell asleep on the F train, slumped over into the next seat, and awoke to a $50 fine for taking up two seats on a subway train.
On his 86th birthday, Pedro Nazario was slapped with a $50 fine for feeding pigeons in a Morningside Heights park.
"Welcome to nit pick city," wrote the Daily News in an editorial, part of the newspaper's campaign against City Hall's "ticketing blitz" - including a feature nearly every day of a New Yorker complaining about an unfair or wacky ticket. "Forget quality-of-life crimes. Simply living can get you a summons."
If the Daily News got it started, newspapers from around the world -- from the Los Angeles Times to the Jerusalem Post to the London Independent - picked up the story with glee. "Will this year be the summer of citations?" asked the New York Times.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg answered that it would not; it has all been a misunderstanding. There is no blitz. But then why, some New Yorkers ask, did pregnant teenager Crystal Rivera get a $50 summons when she sat down to rest on a subway stairwell? Why are these stories cropping up just as the city needs to raise a lot of revenue? These are not the only questions: What do these fines actually accomplish? Are they even raising any revenue? Are they targeting people who can least afford it? Is this another sign of a billionaire mayor who is out of touch? And why are sitting on a milk crate -- or putting on a puppet show, or climbing a tree (other activities that can garner fines) -- illegal in the first place?
SUMMER OF CITATIONS?
Word of increased ticketing began in mid-May, when the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association kicked off a $100,000 advertising campaign, and president Patrick Lynch told the press that police officers were under pressure to hand out more tickets than usual in order to help close the city's budget gap. "Don't blame the cop," proclaimed ads showing a woman angrily holding up a $105 parking ticket.
The phrase "ticket blitz" soon cropped up in a Daily News story about the association's claims, and the story snowballed. As the stories of summons after summons stacked up, Mayor Bloomberg said that City Hall had not ordered agencies to hand out more tickets than usual; indeed, he said, the city has actually issued fewer tickets overall this year compared to last. The fuss over tickets was part of police union president Lynch's drive for re-election, the mayor said. Mayoral spokesman Edward Skyler called the ticket blitz a "manufactured controversy."
At a Crain's New York Business breakfast forum, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly gave some of the stories behind the summonses, saying that they were justified. The milk-crate sitter, Jesse Tavaras, lived in a neighborhood that was the target of a police crackdown on quality of life crimes; cops have been told to keep people from gathering outside. The pregnant subway-sitter Crystal Rivera was part of a group of teenagers blocking the stairs.
The city soon got some editorial support. In Newsday, columnist Dennis Duggan told those complaining about tickets to "shaddup," and said that there should be a fine against whining. Of Rivera's ticket for sitting on the subway steps, he wrote, "this willful teenager was making it hard for subway riders to get to their destinations."
The city needs more tickets, not less, wrote Clyde Haberman in the New York Times. What about "all the men who spit with impunity on the street? Or about the drivers who barrel into intersections and scatter pedestrians who have the right of way? Or the dopes who lean on their car horns, as if that will get the traffic moving?"
But while Bloomberg predicted that the furor over tickets would settle down after the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association election, Lynch's landslide June 7 victory came and went, and New Yorkers continue to talk about tickets. Unhappy business owners and residents slapped with summonses tried to make sense of what one can and cannot be fined for in New York City.
FINES AND THE CITY
Hidden within the city's thousands of pages of administrative code are many violations that most New Yorkers aren't aware of. "The city has a dense and Byzantine civil code filled with dozens of obscure rules that are impossible to follow to the letter," wrote Steve Malanga in City Journal. "If some street-corner bureaucrat wants to ticket you, he can pretty much find some New York law that you've violated."
Putting on a puppet show in a window overlooking the street is barred by city code 10-114. If you are a civilian New Yorker, it is against the law to own handcuffs (toy handcuffs are exempt). Taxi cab drivers who wear shorts face a $25 fine.
In 1999, a New York dad was fined $1,000 when his daughters were caught climbing a Central Park tree by a park ranger, and accidentally broke a branch on their way down. The girls violated city code 10-148, the cutting of trees on city property.
It is against the law to "paste, post, paint, print or nail" a handbill or flyer onto a telephone pole, pay phone, bus shelter and many other common spots. However, if a city agency puts up a notice in any such spot, it is illegal for someone to tear it down.
Under a 1961 law, businesses are only allowed to include the store name and address in storefront awnings, and print cannot be larger than 12 inches. Violations can set owners back as much as $2,500. From January 1 to April 10 of this year, 1,211 such awning violations were handed out, causing merchants to complain and the City Council to suggest a moratorium on the law.
And it isn't just the city code, said City Council Speaker Gifford Miller, taking offense at the suggestion that the council is responsible for all of the nitpicky laws now in the news. "Sitting on a milk crate is a state law put in place by the state's agricultural division. Taking up two seats on a subway is part of the MTA's internal rules that apply to subway cars," said Miller. "We certainly would welcome legislative ideas from the mayor to ensure that his enforcement agents don't violate every rule of common sense - and ticket pregnant, tired women who are sitting down."
TICKET QUOTAS?
While city agencies like the Buildings Department have said that they have no orders to hand out more fines this year, according to the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association and a recent Daily News survey of police officers, many police officers are feeling a push from above to hand out more summonses than usual. "Police officers feel great pressure to write a certain number of summonses, and if they don't meet that number, they are retaliated against. They don't get days off that they want, and things like that," said association spokesman Joseph Mancini.
The Daily News conducted an informal survey of 230 police officers, and found that 65 percent said they feel "a lot" or "some" pressure to hand out tickets. Thirty-three out of 95 police officers said that they had written summonses that they knew would be thrown out of court.
The mayor and the police department have denied the quota charge. "Truth of the matter is... we don't have quotas, but we do have performance measurements," the mayor said on his weekly WABC-AM radio show.
City officials have stressed that overall, summonses are down two percent since last year, and parking violations have dropped 17 percent. But the Daily News pointed out that other types of summonses are up. For example, the Buildings Department issued 3,400 violations for signs from July 1, 2001 to April 1, 2003, compared to just 109 violations in the same time period before that.
It is hard for some to believe that, as the mayor claims, tickets for things as silly as sitting on a milk crate have always happened in the city. But in January 1999, a Daily News story called "Summons Blitz Sweeps Millions into City Coffers" reported that a Brooklyn woman was fined $25 because her blue recycling pail was missing a decal, and a 90 year-old Chelsea man (much like the 86-year-old Nazario now in the news) received a ticket for feeding pigeons. The story reported that quality of life violations had gone up 38 percent in the first four years after Rudolph Giuliani had become mayor.
QUALITY OF LIFE
During the 1990s, the Giuliani administration's increased attention to handing out fines for relatively small violations like horn honking, littering, turnstile jumping or urinating in public was hailed by some for making streets and parks cleaner and city life more pleasant. Giuliani followed the "broken windows theory," that clamping down on small problems and eyesores would lead to a safer, more respectful city.
But others have argued that vigorously enforcing quality of life violations is invasive, and overly polices people's everyday behavior. Often, these types of fines target the people who are least able to pay them, some say. After the Daily News story about the summons given to pregnant teen Rivera for sitting on the subway stairs, members of the city council held a press conference, accusing the billionaire mayor of targeting poor people to balance the budget, and being severely out of touch with his constituents. Councilmember Helen Foster said, "I'm sure if his mother, sister or daughter were pregnant, he wouldn't want them to get a summons for sitting down on the subway. But then again, they'd probably be in a car service and wouldn't have to be on the train. And that shows two worlds."
FINES AND THE BUDGET
The Bloomberg administration has projected that the amount of money New Yorkers pay for violations will go up from $457.4 million in 2002 to $661.9 million in 2004. However, much of the extra money will be due to hikes in the amount of money charged in each summons. The cost of parking tickets climbed from $55 to $105 over the past year, while the fine for improperly disposing household trash jumped from $50 to $100 on June 1.
Hikes in fees have not been met without a fight. The New York State Restaurant Association filed a lawsuit against the city on June 11, saying that recent changes in Health Department regulations - raising the minimum fine from $100 to $200 and doling out a separate fine for each individual violation - were arbitrary and enacted without any public hearings. "The priority is protecting the public's health by food safety, not revenue generation," said Health Department spokesperson Andrew Tucker.
However, experts say that even with the recent hikes, ticketing citizens, for the most part, is a lousy way for the city to make money. In a recent study (in pdf format), the Independent Budget Office found that it actually costs the city more to issue many types of summonses, like housing or environmental violations, than it collects in fines. The study found that if lucrative parking violations -- which bring in a dollar for every 22 cents the city spends -- are set aside, city agencies spend an average of $2.09 for every dollar they collect from summonses.
"You really don't issue tickets in order to make money," said Independent Budget Office spokesman Doug Turetsky. "What it is all about is starting with the notion of protecting public health and safety. The ability to write tickets or levy fines is both a way to prevent violations or often a way to help leverage correcting those violations quickly." The threat of a fine may prevent car accidents, pressure restaurants into keeping a clean kitchen, or make sure that a chemical spill is cleaned up as quickly as possible.
The Independent Budget Office found that in some cases, the city is not being effective in the way that it collects fines, and could create a more streamlined system. The city also has unevenly assigned fine amounts. For example, the fine for a food vendor who refuses to be inspected is just $25, the same amount that a taxi driver caught wearing shorts could be charged.
Whether the ticketing blitz is myth or reality, many agree that it has further damaged New Yorkers' perception of their mayor, who garnered just a 24 percent approval rating in a recent New York Times poll. And much of that has to do with a combination of rising costs and a sorry economy. "The higher property tax, the unemployment rate, which is at an all-time high, the higher subway fare, the fact that now with the smoking ban, the smokers can't even go to the bar, have a few beers, smoke their cigarettes and complain about life," Daily News reporter Fernanda Santos, who wrote the first blitz story, said on NPR. "People were up to their throats with frustrations, and then came the summonses."
The NYC Council has published a comprehensive telecommunications report, "Network NYC" (in pdf format) which, if implemented, could increase Internet access in poor and underserved communities and upgrade the telecom infrastructure while saving the city money.
However, building political support for the plan could take months and will require the city to evaluate its longstanding relationship with Verizon, which provides 75 percent of the city's telecommunications services. Though the city's telecom infrastructure is a "public good" (like a park) that all New Yorkers should share, it is now in the hands of private companies with little incentive to upgrade costly infrastructure.
New York spends over $130 million on telecommunications, more than any other city in the country. But, despite this, the city has never taken a careful look at how their buying power can be used to best advantage. (For background on this issue, spelling out the case against Verizon, please see a previous tech column.)
The Problems
The main problem with the city's current telecom system, according to the report, is the lack of competition between carriers. The New York City Comptroller long has complained about the $96 million contract that the city's Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications has with Verizon, and the City Council report recommends that the contracts be opened up to greater competition.
"More competition in telecommunications services is usually a good thing for the customer [in this case,the city], as carriers tend to compete on both price and reliability. The report lays out a way for the city to do business in a manner that would promote such competition among carriers," said Jordan Silbert, director of Rebuilding Initiatives for the Alliance for Downtown New York.
The Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications, or DoITT, is already taking steps to open up the city's telecom contracts to greater competition by aggressively seeking the best prices from a more diverse group of carriers. Verizon stands to lose some of its business with the city if other companies can provide better and less expensive service. (A Verizon spokesman did not provide the company's response to the report by press time).
Other telecom companies are hoping to bid on contracts in order to work with the city in a greater capacity. According to Federica Dussi, regional operations manager at AT&T, "there are pricing advantages and technology advantages of increased competition in the city." For example, the government could tap into newer telecom networks owned by a more diverse group of companies.
Currently, Verizon and its competitors are not paying any franchise fees to the city as a result of a recent court case. Previously, the competitors were paying the city but Verizon was not, due to exemption under a New York State law. This is another source of lost revenue for the city.
Another problem is the lack of telecom planning across different city agencies, which is costing the government too much money. Better use of wireless and other new communication technologies could aid in decreasing costs.
The Recommendations
The report focuses on two goals: saving the city money on its telecom bill and promoting economic development in the five boroughs of New York.
Specifically, the report advocates for regular five-year telecom plans to be drafted by DoITT, with input from experts and community members.
One of the report's recommendations is for the establishment of free wireless Internet access zones in parks and other public spaces. To this end, last month, the Downtown Alliance launched the Lower Manhattan Wireless Network, the country's first wireless business district, in partnership with officials from DoITT and the City Parks Department.
The goal of the initiative is to have a wireless access point or "hot spot" within five minutes walk everywhere below Chambers Street or seven hot spotstotal in lower Manhattan. The network will operate throughout the year except in the cold winter months. As part of the project, Bowling Green Park-the city's oldest public space-is now wireless.
Lower Manhattan residents, workers and visitors can get on the Internet for free on laptops and personal digital assistants (PDAs) and access information on events, restaurants and shopping through the network's Website.
Moving Forward
In order to move forward on the best recommendations in the council's report, greater political support,awareness among the general public and research on the demand for these services in underserved areas is key."What is needed is awareness of the problem of broadband redlining in the city's poor neighborhoods,"said Anthony Townsend of NYCwireless. "Community organizations need to start thinking about how to help themselves. NYCwireless has the ability to help non-profit and community-based organizations that want to get [wireless high-speed Internet] access help themselves."
Over the next few months, the city will gather input from the public in order to refine and build support for the proposed strategy. The city is looking into innovative sources of funding to jump-start their efforts. Officials hope to apply for federal funding from the Department of Commerce's Economic Development Administration as part of a new $228.12 million budget for state and local efforts to create wealth and reduce poverty. Upgrading the city's telecom infrastructure-especially in underserved neighborhoods--is an important step towards increased economic growth.
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 - June 12, 2003
Quote of the Day:
"Imagine for a moment that they were going to build a $1.5 billion project four times larger than the World Trade Center in the middle of Central Park: Do you think for a moment that anybody in Manhattan would accept that?" - Bronx Councilmember Oliver Koppell voting against a water filtration plant in the Bronx.
Meeting Summary:
The New York City Council gave its support to a controversial water filtration plant in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx. The council's action allows the State Legislature and Governor George Pataki in Albany to approve the plan.
The massive underground plant will be built under the Mosholu golf course and will filter water from the Croton Reservoir, which provides about 10 percent of the drinking water in the city.
The plant was first proposed by Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in the late 1990's and generated heated political debate. Some environmentalists argue that the water does not need to be filtered; parks advocates say it should not be built in limited green space; and residents of the north Bronx fear years of construction, noise, and dust. The plan was abandoned in 2001 because it lacked support of elected officials and the state Court of Appeals ruled that state legislation was needed to use parkland.
Recently, Mayor Michael Bloomberg revived the plan by offering two concessions. The city committed $240 million for building and improving parkland in the Bronx and the city's Department of Environmental Protection agreed to do an environmental impact study. The mayor was thus successful in winning support from some Bronx officials such as Borough President Adolfo Carrion and State Assemblyman Jose Rivera.
However, Bronx Councilmember Oliver Koppell, who represents the neighborhoods surrounding the park, said the plant should not go forward, arguing that of the three potential sites for the plant, only one is located inside a city park. (The other proposed sites are along the Harlem River and in Westchester). Koppell said the community had not been properly consulted and warned other council members that it set a precedent for future development projects.
"I tell you, members, in every one of your districts the city can come in here now and take parkland for whatever they want claiming it is the cheapest way to build and you won't be able to stop it," said Koppell.
Council Speaker Gifford Miller, who supports the plan, said the city was under a court order from the federal Environmental Protection Agency to proceed and that it was the most cost-effective location.
The council approved the project by a vote of 44 in favor, 4 against, and 2 abstentions. (Council members Oliver Koppell, Pedro Espada, Jr., Charles Barron, and Al Vann voted "no." Allan Jennings and Gale Brewer abstained from the vote.)
The major vote of June 12 was supposed to be the city budget. But with negotiations between the mayor and council ongoing, the vote was delayed another week.
As part of its budget negotiations, the council approved a resolution calling for two weeks free of sales tax - one in the week of Labor Day and one the week of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. The council also wants to bring back the exemption for clothing under $110 by June 1, 2004. The tax-free clothing exemption was rescinded as part of the recent budget agreement reached with lawmakers in Albany.
The next Stated Meeting is scheduled for June 17.
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The Voting Rights Act of 1965 has in the past altered elections in New York City, and it will continue to do so. Most immediately, the act will ultimately determine whether New York City has nonpartisan elections for all city officials as called for by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and as almost certainly to be recommended by his charter commission and placed before the voters.
The law was a culmination of the black civil rights movement and a cornerstone of Lyndon Johnson’s great society. With it, the federal government would finally fulfill the promise of the Fifteenth Amendment, enabling blacks to exercise the franchise unhindered by exclusionary devices such as literacy tests, white primaries, poll taxes and grandfather clauses. The law prevented states from enforcing discriminatory tactics aimed at preventing blacks fair opportunities to participate in the voting process.
The Voting Rights Act has been amended several times. Legislation established the rights of language minorities, mandating bilingual ballot and oral assistance to those speaking Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Native American languages and Eskimo languages. Later amendments established that the existence of a discriminatory result was sufficient to challenge an electoral arrangement. Proof of discriminatory purpose or intent was not required.
Currently, the law covers all of Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia, as well as parts of California, Florida, Michigan, New Hampshire, North Carolina, South Dakota – and Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx.
APPLICATION TO NEW YORK
Why the three New York City counties?
As a result of a suit brought under the Voting Rights Act in 1967, a longstanding concentration of blacks, previously divided among several, mostly white districts, was consolidated into one district. It sent Shirley Chisholm to Congress in 1968.
In 1970, the act was amended to include jurisdictions that had literacy tests as of November 1, 1968 and where less than 50 percent of the voting age population was registered on that date or voted in the 1968 presidential election. In July 1970, the Attorney General filed a determination that New York State maintained a test or a device – a literacy test enacted in 1922 –that adversely affected minority voting participation. In March 1971, U.S. Bureau of the Census found that fewer than 50 percent of voting age residents were registered in Bronx, Kings, and New York counties. Together these determinations required the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Manhattan to become “covered” jurisdictions subject to pre-clearance.
The three boroughs have been required to provide all registration and voting material in Spanish as well as English since the 1975 amendments. In 1992, coverage for Spanish was extended to Queens and coverage of Chinese was applied for the first time in all three boroughs
In 1991, the redistricting plan was thrown out of court, the judge charging that Latino voters were “consistently disfavored” in the proposed Williamsburg-Bushwick and Harlem-East Bronx districts in the law.
In the 1996 presidential election, federal election observers monitored polling places in the Chinatown area to make sure the city was making Chinese-language materials and oral assistance available. The Sept. 25, 2001 Democratic mayoral primary was monitored by the Justice Department for violations of the Voting Rights Act.
On May 29 of this year, the U.S. Justice Department ruled that the City Council district lines drawn by the Districting Commission did not violate the Voting Rights Act
HOW IT WORKS
Section 5 of the law requires state and local governments “covered” by formulas specified in the act to obtain approval from the Attorney General or a judicial panel before implementing any change in a “standard, practice or procedure with respect to voting.” This “pre-clearance” covers everything from polling place locations and methods of election (e.g. at-large or district) to boundaries for legislative districts. A proposed change will be denied if it would make members of minority groups “worse off” with respect “to their opportunity to exercise the electoral franchise effectively.”
The Supreme Court in Thornburg vs. Gingles held that a challenge to a reapportionment plan could be based on “vote dilution effect...” The Court held that “the essence of a claim” under the Voting Rights Act was that “a certain electoral law, practice, or structure interacts with social and societal conditions to cause an inequality in the opportunities enjoyed by black and white voters to elect their preferred representatives.”
The Court established the criteria on which a claim of vote dilution in an apportionment scheme could be made: 1) structural obstacles to the election of minority candidates, such as at-large elections, 2) behavioral patterns that interact with the structural obstacles to exaggerate the political power of the majority such as racially polarized voting, and 3) a resulting under-representation of the minority community relative to its proportion of the population. There is no constitutionally guaranteed right of proportionality in representation. Section 2b of the Voting Rights Act states that “nothing in this section establishes a right to have members of a protected class elected in numbers equal to their proportion in the population.” The Supreme Court has refused to accept “the proposition that members of a minority group have federal right to be represented in legislative bodies in proportion to their members in the general population”
The voting power of a “protected class” can be said to be diluted in a simple sense when its share of the total vote cast declines vis-à-vis others (i.e. white voters) even if the total votes cast may have increased (or decreased) overall and for minority and white voters.
Voting Rights Act and Nonpartisan Elections
The 1998, 1999, and 2002 New York City charter revision commissions retained the services of voting rights expert Prof. Allan Lichtman to determine the voting rights implications of a change to nonpartisan elections in New York City. (The 2001 commission relied on his previous work). Prof. Allan Lichtman concluded, in testimony before the 2002 commission, that nonpartisan elections would not violate the Voting Rights Act. He had reached similar conclusions for the earlier commissions.
Critics have argued that the analysis was incomplete and, in some measures, flawed. They also point to studies which have found that voter turnout overall tends to be lower in nonpartisan elections and voter participation is skewed against residents of lower socioeconomic status (while candidates tend to have higher socioeconomic status)
If in New York City turnout declines (and even if it doesn’t) and minority voters’ share declines disproportionately as the evidence indicates it may, then minority votes will be “diluted” -- and perhaps violate the Voting Rights Act.
For More Information:
Berger, J. (1994). “Pre-clearance and the Voting Rights Act” New York Law Journal, Dec. 15. Pierre-Louis, S. (1995). “The Politics of Influence: Recognizing Influence Dilution Claims Under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act” University of Chicago Law Review 62, 1215.
Doug Muzzio is a professor in the School of Public Affairs at Baruch College and a political analyst for WABC.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 has in the past altered elections in New York City, and it will continue to do so. Most immediately, the act will ultimately determine whether New York City has nonpartisan elections for all city officials as called for by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and as almost certainly to be recommended by his charter commission and placed before the voters.
The law was a culmination of the black civil rights movement and a cornerstone of Lyndon Johnson’s great society. With it, the federal government would finally fulfill the promise of the Fifteenth Amendment, enabling blacks to exercise the franchise unhindered by exclusionary devices such as literacy tests, white primaries, poll taxes and grandfather clauses. The law prevented states from enforcing discriminatory tactics aimed at preventing blacks fair opportunities to participate in the voting process.
The Voting Rights Act has been amended several times. Legislation established the rights of language minorities, mandating bilingual ballot and oral assistance to those speaking Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Native American languages and Eskimo languages. Later amendments established that the existence of a discriminatory result was sufficient to challenge an electoral arrangement. Proof of discriminatory purpose or intent was not required.
Currently, the law covers all of Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia, as well as parts of California, Florida, Michigan, New Hampshire, North Carolina, South Dakota – and Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx.
APPLICATION TO NEW YORK
Why the three New York City counties?
As a result of a suit brought under the Voting Rights Act in 1967, a longstanding concentration of blacks, previously divided among several, mostly white districts, was consolidated into one district. It sent Shirley Chisholm to Congress in 1968.
In 1970, the act was amended to include jurisdictions that had literacy tests as of November 1, 1968 and where less than 50 percent of the voting age population was registered on that date or voted in the 1968 presidential election. In July 1970, the Attorney General filed a determination that New York State maintained a test or a device – a literacy test enacted in 1922 –that adversely affected minority voting participation. In March 1971, U.S. Bureau of the Census found that fewer than 50 percent of voting age residents were registered in Bronx, Kings, and New York counties. Together these determinations required the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Manhattan to become “covered” jurisdictions subject to pre-clearance.
The three boroughs have been required to provide all registration and voting material in Spanish as well as English since the 1975 amendments. In 1992, coverage for Spanish was extended to Queens and coverage of Chinese was applied for the first time in all three boroughs
In 1991, the redistricting plan was thrown out of court, the judge charging that Latino voters were “consistently disfavored” in the proposed Williamsburg-Bushwick and Harlem-East Bronx districts in the law.
In the 1996 presidential election, federal election observers monitored polling places in the Chinatown area to make sure the city was making Chinese-language materials and oral assistance available. The Sept. 25, 2001 Democratic mayoral primary was monitored by the Justice Department for violations of the Voting Rights Act.
On May 29 of this year, the U.S. Justice Department ruled that the City Council district lines drawn by the Districting Commission did not violate the Voting Rights Act
HOW IT WORKS
Section 5 of the law requires state and local governments “covered” by formulas specified in the act to obtain approval from the Attorney General or a judicial panel before implementing any change in a “standard, practice or procedure with respect to voting.” This “pre-clearance” covers everything from polling place locations and methods of election (e.g. at-large or district) to boundaries for legislative districts. A proposed change will be denied if it would make members of minority groups “worse off” with respect “to their opportunity to exercise the electoral franchise effectively.”
The Supreme Court in Thornburg vs. Gingles held that a challenge to a reapportionment plan could be based on “vote dilution effect...” The Court held that “the essence of a claim” under the Voting Rights Act was that “a certain electoral law, practice, or structure interacts with social and societal conditions to cause an inequality in the opportunities enjoyed by black and white voters to elect their preferred representatives.”
The Court established the criteria on which a claim of vote dilution in an apportionment scheme could be made: 1) structural obstacles to the election of minority candidates, such as at-large elections, 2) behavioral patterns that interact with the structural obstacles to exaggerate the political power of the majority such as racially polarized voting, and 3) a resulting under-representation of the minority community relative to its proportion of the population. There is no constitutionally guaranteed right of proportionality in representation. Section 2b of the Voting Rights Act states that “nothing in this section establishes a right to have members of a protected class elected in numbers equal to their proportion in the population.” The Supreme Court has refused to accept “the proposition that members of a minority group have federal right to be represented in legislative bodies in proportion to their members in the general population”
The voting power of a “protected class” can be said to be diluted in a simple sense when its share of the total vote cast declines vis-à-vis others (i.e. white voters) even if the total votes cast may have increased (or decreased) overall and for minority and white voters.
Voting Rights Act and Nonpartisan Elections
The 1998, 1999, and 2002 New York City charter revision commissions retained the services of voting rights expert Prof. Allan Lichtman to determine the voting rights implications of a change to nonpartisan elections in New York City. (The 2001 commission relied on his previous work). Prof. Allan Lichtman concluded, in testimony before the 2002 commission, that nonpartisan elections would not violate the Voting Rights Act. He had reached similar conclusions for the earlier commissions.
Critics have argued that the analysis was incomplete and, in some measures, flawed. They also point to studies which have found that voter turnout overall tends to be lower in nonpartisan elections and voter participation is skewed against residents of lower socioeconomic status (while candidates tend to have higher socioeconomic status)
If in New York City turnout declines (and even if it doesn’t) and minority voters’ share declines disproportionately as the evidence indicates it may, then minority votes will be “diluted” -- and perhaps violate the Voting Rights Act.
For More Information:
Berger, J. (1994). “Pre-clearance and the Voting Rights Act” New York Law Journal, Dec. 15. Pierre-Louis, S. (1995). “The Politics of Influence: Recognizing Influence Dilution Claims Under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act” University of Chicago Law Review 62, 1215.
Doug Muzzio is a professor in the School of Public Affairs at Baruch College and a political analyst for WABC.
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It took New Yorkers to come up with an idea as big as the East Coast Greenway, a trail that would extend from Maine to Florida. And, though it is now almost a reality, it could take just a few minor, shortsighted decisions by the City of New York to short-circuit the route in the city, sending it instead over the George Washington Bridge to New Jersey.
Unlike the Appalachian Trail, the East Coast Greenway would go right through the central business district of every big city on the coast. Thousands of visitors would use it for recreation, for exercise, to see the sites - ecotourism - but perhaps its more important purpose would be as practical transportation by pedestrians and bicyclists who reside in places like New York City. Indeed, local activists and government officials developed the idea of the East Coast Greenway as part of the effort to sell an equally ambitious effort within city limits, the 350-mile New York City Greenways System.
Your string section may be playing "impossible dream" in the background at this point, but the East Coast Greenway Alliance, founded by practical professionals from up and down the coast, knew what they were doing. The fact is, the East Coast Greenway is mostly in place within New York City, and all remaining links . are on the Department of City Planning's Greenways Plan for NYC. There is no long-term obstacle to bringing the East Coast Greenway to lower Manhattan, which is remarkable considering that we are talking about what may be the most densely developed property on the planet.
When New Yorkers began all this talk of bicycle/pedestrian trails they were building on the legacy of Fredrick Law Olmsted, the 19th century designer of Central and Prospect Parks, and Robert Moses, the 20th century's master builder of bridges, highways and parks. Both laced the city with "parkways" containing bicycling paths. At the beginning of this new round of the planning process, just 15 years ago, lack of funding was considered the biggest impediment to the construction of a linked bicycle network. But the federal government has so far given $150 million to develop the Hudson River Park's greenway, which is the most successful in the nation, connections have been completed to the George Washington Bridge, and New York's elected officials are jumping aboard: In his first State of the City speech, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced plans to complete "a multi-use recreation path around the entire edge of Manhattan. The success of Hudson River Park demonstrates the need to make our entire waterfront accessible to walkers and cyclists." At the future site of the Brooklyn Bridge Park, which will include a greenway link through its site, Governor George Pataki recently held a bicycle aloft and proclaimed: "I can't wait until I can ride the entire Brooklyn waterfront on this bike!"
But in New York City no good idea is easy to achieve and there are several wrenches in these works. A planned street reconstruction that would place water mains below the Columbia Street neighborhood south of the Brooklyn Bridge could leave the an early segment of the greenway in place without additional construction cost, but the city Department of Transportation desires to widen a lightly used truck route through the working class district to accommodate more traffic. The street widening would cut an existing 15-foot sidewalk along the Red Hook Containerport to just six feet wide, effectively killing the landscaped greenway and making it dangerous to walk two abreast.
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MTA Bridges and Tunnels, the agency that manages the Verrazano Bridge, has no desire to transport pedestrians over the Narrows and has repeatedly claimed winds are dangerous on the bridge. But the Golden Gate Bridge, in the windier city of San Francisco, handles thousands of pedestrians with grace and style.
On Staten Island, greenway development moves forward on the northwest shore, but thus far, an interim trail on the abandoned Staten Island Railroad has been elusive at best. And the Port Authority has closed down the Goethals Bridge pedestrian path for repairs, a project that has taken more than 10 years so far without an announced re-opening.
Over the years, New York City has earned two conflicting reputations. We are considered pioneers in public space development even though we have fewer acres of parkland per capita than other places. But New York is also considered dysfunctional; a place where things just can't get done. It would be sad for a few broken links on a national recreational trail that will eclipse the Appalachian Trail to foil the East Coast Greenway Alliance's vision of passing through the major central business districts along the coast. It will take intervention by citizens groups and elected officials to see that that does not happen.
Dave Lutz is executive director of Neighborhood Open Space Coalition and a board member of East Coast Greenway Alliance.
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Last year, the New York City Council grappled with an issue whose advocates said went to the heart of religious and ethnic equality - the right to park a car.
Overriding a veto from Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the council voted to suspend alternate side of the street parking regulations on Asian Lunar New Year, Purim and Ash Wednesday, adding them to a list of two dozen other holidays when New Yorkers are not required to move their cars.
"It's about recognizing that Asian-Americans have contributed to the city," said Councilmember John Liu, chair of the transportation committee. "We should get the same level of respect and attention that everybody else gets."
In New York, transportation ranks among the top concerns of residents, after education and public safety, according to a survey by the New York City Council. And since taking office in 2002, the council has responded to voters concerns with a slew of transportation legislation.
To appease senior citizens who complained about reckless food deliverymen on bikes, the council made it illegal for anyone over the age of 14 to ride a bike on a New York City sidewalk.
When taxi cab drivers griped about excessive fines for burned-out hazard lights, the council passed a law allowing drivers to replace the bulb before police ticket them.
The council has even tried to increase the amount of space each person gets when walking down the street by giving communities more power in regulating sidewalk cafes and limiting the number of news racks on street corners.
In addition to these new laws, the City Council has also drafted, but has not yet passed, over a dozen other transportation related bills. Many of these bills are "quality of life" measures aimed at improving safety, making transportation more convenient, or reducing noise and pollution.
Here is an overview of some of the lesser-known pieces of transportation legislation still in committee.
TRANSPORTATION BILLS PENDING IN COMMITTEE
Pre-Tax Transit Benefits (Intro 481)
This legislation would require companies with more than 50 employees to offer pre-tax mass transit benefits. The council estimates that if the law passes, a commuter who buys monthly MetroCards could save $288 a year.
Truck Routes (Intro 344)
This bill would require truck drivers to carry a map of designated routes in an effort to prevent them from cutting through neighborhoods where they are not allowed to drive. Council members hope it will reduce noise, street damage and pollution, particularly in high traffic neighborhoods like the South Bronx.
Advisory Board of Drivers (Intro 195)
This legislation would create a 15-member advisory board for the Taxi and Limousine Commission, consisting of drivers, members of the public, owners, organizations advocating for drivers and agencies enforcing commission rules. The mayor and council members would appoint the members and supporters hope that the board would be a constructive way to address taxi issues in the city.
On Demand Taxis (Intro 267)
This bill would establish for-hire taxi stands in each borough. Local council members would suggest and approve the locations based on the proximity to mass transit, local taxi availability, traffic flow and public demand. This legislation aims to improve taxi service in the outer boroughs and diminish the need for illegal livery cabs.
Radios or Cell Phones on School Buses (Intro 16)
This measure would require all drivers who transport children to carry a two-way radio or cell phone at all times. Any person who does not comply will be fined no less than $1,000. Supporters say the bill would ensure that drivers could call for assistance and create safer transportation for children.
Traffic Signals and Schools (Intro 324)
This bill would require the Department of Transportation to install a stop sign or traffic signal at all intersections immediately adjacent to any New York City school.
Prohibiting Mobile Billboards (Intro 157)
This legislation would ban mobile billboards - the trucks or vans that troll city streets advertising movies, soft drinks or music CDs. Supporters argue that mobile billboards add congestion to the city streets, take up parking spaces, and block driver and pedestrians lines of sight.
Staten Island Ferry Service (Intro 56)
This bill would increase the Staten Island Ferry service by mandating a minimum operating schedule. The Staten Island council members who drafted the bill say it would ensure that commuters who are going home late from work still get adequate service. It would also protect ferry service from budget cuts.
Handicap Accessible Ferries (Intro 261)
This legislation would require all piers, ramps and water ferries to comply with American with Disabilities Act regulations. Currently, the majority of the ferryboats are handicap accessible, but many ramps and piers are not.
Sidewalk Damage (Intro 193)
This legislation would make property owners liable for any injury to property or personal injury, including death, caused by the failure of owners to maintain sidewalks in reasonably safe conditions. The purpose of the bill is to place liability for damage and injuries on the owner, not the city. In 2002, the city paid out $53 million in accident claims.
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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 - June 05, 2003
Quote of the Day:
"Today is the date that we were to have adopted a budget for the next fiscal year. We will not meet that goal today... there is still work to be done." - Council Speaker Gifford Miller on missing the deadline for a new city budget.
Meeting Summary:
According to the City Charter, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the New York City Council were supposed to pass the 2004 budget by June 5. But with negotiations over the final details of the city's $44.5 billion plan still underway, the City Council voted to extend the budget deadline by one week until June 12.
The city's fiscal year begins on July 1 and for the last few months Mayor Bloomberg and the City Council have been trying to close a $3.8 billion budget gap - the largest since the 1970s.
The day before the June 5 deadline, Mayor Bloomberg announced that he would abandon $90.2 million in proposed budget cuts. He said that government aid from Albany and Washington and permission to raise sales and income taxes made it possible to avoid the cuts.
The mayor promised to restore funding for:
The timing of the mayor's announcement was unusual since the City Council traditionally takes credit for such restorations at the end of the budget process when a final agreement is reached between the mayor and the council.
With little else on the Stated Meeting agenda, council members took the opportunity to praise the mayor for his decision, but also to push for more restorations. Some $500 million in budget cuts have already gone into effect or are still being negotiated.
Council Speaker Gifford Miller vowed to continue to fight for funding for foster care, City University scholarships, and programs on health and infant mortality. And some council members continued to protest the closure of six firehouses.
"I think it's fair say that if it is possible to do $90 million in restorations, then it is possible to come up with $6 million to reopen the firehouses that have been shut," said Brooklyn Councilmember Bill deBlasio.
The next Stated Meeting is scheduled for June 12.
When Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently issued an executive order that permitted city employees to report undocumented immigrants to law enforcement authorities, he was reversing a long-standing ban on such a practice by his three predecessors as mayor, Ed Koch, David Dinkins, and Rudy Giuliani. The ban on disclosure had been intended to encourage undocumented immigrants to make use of such city services as health care, social services, and police and fire protection without fear of being detained or deported.
It would be easy to conclude from his lifting of the ban that the nationwide and federal fear of immigrants has made its way to New York. But earlier last month, on his weekly radio show, Bloomberg expressed the view that all undocumented immigrants should be made American citizens.
His lifting of the ban was to put him in compliance with a court order. But his view on legalizing the undocumented is more in keeping with the local attitude, one that has resulted in a push for protection of immigrants in several areas.
Access Without Fear
While the mayor reversed the ban on disclosure of immigration status, more than 30 members of the New York City Council sponsored an "Access Without Fear" bill (Intro 326) that would turn such a ban into law.
Many believe that the need for such a law is greater in the post-9/11 New York as incidents of detention and deportation, as well as "special registration" of males from Muslim countries, have concerned tens of thousands of New York residents and have greatly intensified the climate of fear in the Muslim and South Asian communities.
"Effective law enforcement and public health protection are impossible without the cooperation of New York's immigrant communities," said Margie McHugh, executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition in a public hearing at the City Council on May 5. "But in order to have cooperation, the city must first establish trust with those communities."
Language Assistance in Hospitals
According to the 2000 Census, over 1.1 million New York State residents do not speak English well or at all, and nearly half of New York City residents speak a language other than English at home. Among them, many are undocumented immigrants who receive health care services.
In an attempt to better serve hospital visitors with limited English proficiency, more than 20 members of the New York State Legislature proposed a bill to require hospitals to provide language assistance services to patients who need them. The bill would also require that frequently used forms essential to a patient's care and treatment be available in all of the primary languages spoken by a hospital's patient population.
"Ensuring appropriate language access will reduce the number of repeat visits, emergency room visits, misdiagnosis, and uncollectible debts at hospitals," the New York Immigration Coalition has argued.
Dream Act
To many illegal immigrants and their children, the best way to realize the American dream is through education. However, many of the 50,000 or so undocumented immigrants who graduate from high school in the United States every year face a common dilemma: They cannot apply for college without a green card, or they simply cannot afford the tuition.
Public officials and immigrant advocates are pushing for a law to help those students.
"Children don't make decisions about how they come to this country," Rep. Robert Mendendez, D-Union City, New Jersey, told the Bergen County Record. "When good students who want to continue their education and contribute to this country are prevented from reaching their full potential?€?we're all deprived."
"The situation for theses students is really, really difficult," Claudia Gomez, an advocate with the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights in Oakland, told the San Jose Mercury News. "They can't legalize their status on their own because there's no mechanism for it."
A bill called the DREAM Act - which stands for Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act - would legalize the status of those students who are under 21 years of age, have earned a high school diploma or equivalent, be of "good moral character", and have lived in the United States for at least five years.
Another proposal, which is called the Student Adjustment Act and is sponsored by many members of the House, offers a similar solution.
The Dream Act died in the Senate last year but is expected to be reintroduced soon.
Meanwhile, New York is one of four states to have passed laws to allow undocumented students to pay resident tuition rates. In the City University of New York, undocumented students who have spent a minimum of two years attending high school in the state
pay the lower in-state tuition.
These laws were not universally welcomed. "Allowing illegal immigrants to study at CUNY was a national security issue and an insult to every citizen and legal immigrant seeking a higher education," said State Senator Frank Padavan, a Republican from Queens.
"This is a slap in the face to everyone who believes in the rule of law," Jim Ludwick, President of Oregonians for Immigration Reform, told the Associated Press. "No matter what you do for these people, it's not enough. The sky is the limit."
But officials at City University itself seem relieved that a law passed a year ago in the New York State Legislature reversed an earlier policy that the educators had said they were forced to implement, hiking tuition for the undocumented in order to comply with federal law.
"I take great pride in CUNY's historic role as a ladder of upward mobility for many generations of immigrants," Chancellor Matthew Goldstein has said. "Our city, state, and nation have greatly benefited as a result."
A native of Taipei, Taiwan, Larry Tung is a Brooklyn-based freelance writer and video artist. He also teaches English as a Second Language in Flushing and has been covering the Chinese community in New York City for The Citizen.