photo, including three of the authors, via the Progressive Caucus

We’ve seen it in our districts. A new landlord takes ownership of a building and starts a construction project that never finishes in order to evict long-term residents. They may turn off the cooking gas indefinitely; they may even knock out the boiler with no explanation.

For too many New Yorkers, this nightmare is their reality. The stories are plentiful: heat and gas shutoffs in the middle of winter, jackhammering causing cracks in apartment walls, loss of power, and lead dust in the air lasting for months on end. For years, city and borough officials and community advocates have encountered a critical mass of stories like these, detailing the unscrupulous conduct of landlords as well as the insufficient response from the City of New York.

We, as members of the City Council members and its Progressive Caucus, see the writing on the walls: our city needs more protections in place for tenants facing construction harassment.

Understanding the need to strengthen the ability of the Department of Buildings (DOB) to protect tenants from construction as harassment, the grassroots Stand for Tenant Safety Coalition (STS) has partnered with the Progressive Caucus to put forth a package of legislation aimed at achieving just that.

These 12 STS bills, most of which are sponsored by members of the Progressive Caucus, with strong support in the Council, will put in place much tougher penalties against abusive landlords for illegal construction practices and enact preventative measures to help tenants protect their homes.  

The goal is to change the way DOB handles construction harassment so that the agency is empowered to become more proactive with regard to issuing construction permits and facilitating communication among tenants, landlords, and city agencies. Such renewed tenant protections are intended to quicken and fortify the City’s response to construction harassment so vulnerable residents in rapidly changing neighborhoods are able to stay in their homes and communities.

As policymakers, we know that construction harassment by unscrupulous landlords only exacerbates the affordable housing crisis already facing residents of New York City. In recent years, the average rents in some city neighborhoods have risen by 20%; in such neighborhoods especially, unethical landlords can use construction as a way of cashing in on rising rents instead of protecting the existing tenants. Calls the City has been receiving from New Yorkers reflect this; construction-related complaints number in the thousands each year.

Even as preserving and creating affordable housing has remained a focus of both the City Council and Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration, the myriad loopholes landlords use in existing laws allow the number of rent-regulated apartments to dwindle. With both the cost of living in the city and rent continuing to rise, protecting the health and safety of tenants through legislation is the minimum of what can be done, the least of how this city can maintain a fair and just society. With the city losing affordable housing every year, we cannot afford to ignore any way in which tenants are threatened by eviction from their homes.

As the clock ticks toward the end of the current City Council session, we need the Council to pass this Stand for Tenant Safety package of legislation as soon as possible. The New York City Council just made history by passing the city’s first ever Right to Counsel legislation, which will provide legal assistance to tenants facing eviction in housing court. We urgently need to continue making progress on tenant rights in New York City by strengthening preventative measures that will help keep tenants from facing eviction in the first place.

It is time that the City renew its commitment, through strengthening the enforcement power of the Department of Buildings, to standing up for residents living under adverse conditions and protect our communities from abusive, unethical landlords. As long as economic inequality and hazardous building conditions threaten health and safety, the City must continue to strengthen every person’s opportunity for a livable and affordable place to call home. As progressive City Council members, we hope our colleagues and the de Blasio administration will work together with us to ensure that our city’s most vulnerable tenants are protected.

***
Antonio Reynoso, Donovan Richards, Helen Rosenthal & Ben Kallos are all members of the City Council and leaders of its Progressive Caucus. On Twitter @CMReynoso34 & @DRichards13 & @HelenRosenthal & @BenKallos, & @NYCProgressives.

Gov. Cuomo rallying to flip NY House seats (photo: NY Democratic Party)

If the national Women’s March was any indication, we are in for a Democratic tidal wave come 2018. We’re only seven months into 2017, of course. But if such a wave does occur, then the Republican Party in Congress will only revert back to ideological extremes and obstructionism.

Why? Because the seats up for grabs are largely the 50 seats held by moderate Tuesday Group caucus members. As their influence wanes, the influence of the Freedom Caucus and other extreme conservatives will only grow.

While governing is about compromise, politics is about winning, and having worked on several campaigns in New York, I certainly cannot begrudge Democrats for trying to unseat some of our more moderate Congressional members, as they are the campaign equivalent of low-hanging fruit.

However, in order to govern, the center must hold.

America needs the Tuesday Group. America needs Democratic blue dogs. Congressional Republicans need moderate leaders like Paul Ryan, Kevin McCarthy, Charlie Dent, and Cathy McMorris Rodgers.

Without them, the party in Congress will see a return to turmoil, the likes of which we only briefly glimpsed after John Boehner announced his resignation in September 2015.

Ward Baker, former executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, wrote a lengthy memo last year to GOP Senate campaigns after it became clear Donald Trump was on track to win the Republican nomination for President. The message of the memo: run your own race.

Tuesday Group members, I cannot stress this enough.

Do not feel beholden to a toxic and unpopular and unpredictable White House. Support the Speaker, cast your vote, but vote your constituents, vote your conscience – not the Saturday morning Twitter spasms of an irrational and unstable Commander-in-Chief.

Reince Priebus and Howard Dean both proved that big tent strategy beats strict ideological adherence every time.

Dean built a 50-state infrastructure that helped Democrats navigate their way to the majority in 2006. Meanwhile, Priebus wrangled FreedomWorks, Americans for Prosperity, Club for Growth, Ending Spending, and other conservative groups to do the same for Republicans in 2010 and 2014.

That’s the reason why my party is now gifted with talented pols like Joni Ernst, Rob Portman, Cory Gardner, Elise Stefanik, John Katko, and Marco Rubio.

In New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo has already declared “war” on Republican House members throughout the state, but based on his track record his bark is worse than his bite. Congressional Reps. John Faso and Claudia Tenney may face strong Democratic challenges, but Cuomo will be too busy padding his own reelection effort to take notice.

Democrats, if they’re interested in winning, need to ditch – and quit praying at the altar of – a Vermont demagogue and remnant of the Old World communist left, who still refuses to even identify as a Democrat, and instead embrace such 21st Century party pragmatists as Cory Booker, Patty Murray, Tom Perez, and John Hickenlooper.

If not, Democrats will only continue to flounder, and suffer more “close but no cigar” moments like Katie McGinty in Pennsylvania, Jason Kander in Missouri, Jon Ossoff in Georgia, and, quite obviously, that glass ceiling-shattering candidate who was supposed to win the White House in 2008 and 2016.

Democrats, I may not be your friend, but I’m certainly not your enemy – Putin and ISIS are the enemy. Your party is in turmoil, you need to figure out what you stand for, and then bring your A-game.

Show Americans you’ve got what it takes to provide jobs, provide roads and bridges, provide health care, education and equal justice, provide prosperity, liberty, safety, security, and the freedom of choice for all.

However, if you can’t do that, if you can’t organize for something other than marching, if you can’t resolve your own petty internecine warfare between intransigent Bernie believers and mainstream party practicables then you deserve to live in the minority until you do.

***
John William Schiffbauer was the Deputy Communications Director for the New York Republican State Committee 2014-16. Last fall, he served as campaign manager for Republican Melinda Crump’s State Senate campaign in New York’s 31st District. On Twitter @jwschiffgop.

(photo: Edwin J. Torres/Mayor's Office)

Is the number of people homeless on New York City streets skyrocketing?

There were 3,892 unsheltered homeless people on the streets or outside in public places on the cold night this past February when New York City conducted its annual street homelessness count, according to the City’s own statistics released this month. That’s a jolting 39-plus percent increase in one year over the 2016 street homelessness count of 2,794.

The good news is that many advocates and academics don’t really think there was a 39-plus percent increase in street homelessness in one year. The bad news is that’s because most of them never thought the decreases in street homelessness reported in 2014, 2015 and 2016 were accurate either.

New York City’s HOPE Count (Homeless Outreach Population Estimate) is an annual one-night count of unsheltered people experiencing homelessness on New York City streets, or in public places. The City readily notes it’s really an estimate. It is the point-in-time (PIT) census type count required by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development from all communities in order to qualify for certain federal funding for homelessness service programs.

These PIT canvasses count both people who are sheltered and unsheltered. In most communities the great majority of people experiencing homelessness are unsheltered. In New York City, though not in any other major city, there is a an enforceable legal “right to shelter” for most people in need, so that the great majority of homeless people in New York City -- more than in any other U.S. community -- are sheltered. The city can provide a completely accurate “daily census” of people in the Department of Homeless Services shelters each and every day. Counting people who are living rough on the streets or in other public places is a very difficult proposition.

Any large scale “count” in a city like New York is a massive undertaking. New York City annually mobilizes between 3,000 and 3,500 volunteers to work with city staff in counting in over 1,500 defined areas, all over one night. They even have a “decoy” program, employing people to be on the streets in the role of unsheltered homeless people over the time of the HOPE count to see how many of the decoys (call them a sort of control group) do or don’t get counted, and use the ratio of counted to uncounted decoys to assist in making the estimate.

These kinds of counts were invented in New York City. Experts have called the New York City effort “the gold standard” of the point-in-time count. This, of course, is not to say the HOPE Count is actually accurate.

There are both unavoidable inherent reasons the accuracy of the count is problematic and problems with the way the count is conducted. To understand the inherent problems, just recognize that this is an effort to count many people who are hiding from view, and many people who do not want to be included in the count.

One of several major problems in the way the count is conducted is that it intentionally limits itself only to counting those on the streets or in public places. But every New Yorker knows many unstably housed people often spend very cold nights in what might be called semi-public enclosed spaces. Think people who hang out overnight in a 24-hour McDonald’s or Dunkin Donuts. And remember, the point in time count is typically scheduled on a January night which tends to be extremely cold. In fact, at least twice in recent years the point in time count was pushed back to the first week in February due to snow storm predictions, but still was held on bitterly cold nights.

For the last several years the Bronx Health and Housing Consortium has conducted their own fascinating count on the very same night as the city’s HOPE Count -- but counted inside in some of the emergency rooms in the Bronx. Consortium President Henie Lustgarten, an organizer of the project that began in 2014, spoke about how the project works.

This volunteer project operating just in a few emergency rooms of hospitals that agreed to participate has developed an ingenuous methodology. In each emergency room they survey they count two groups of people as “homeless.”

First, anyone who registers for emergency treatment indicating they have no address or that they live in a shelter (but wouldn’t be in the DHS census for that night because they aren’t in shelter that night) is counted as homeless.

Second, people who spend the night in the emergency room area but never register to receive medical care are counted as homeless. Lustgarten indicated most of the time this unregistered cohort are sleeping in the waiting room or the emergency room hallways. In recent Consortium emergency room counts those not registered at all account for about half or more than half of their entire emergency room count.

In 2015, for example, surveying just five Bronx emergency rooms, the Bronx Health and Housing Consortium count was 120. The complete HOPE count for the Bronx that year was 69. The numbers and percentages vary, but consistently the Consortium emergency room count has been greater than the HOPE Count of street homeless people in the Bronx.

So the population of unsheltered people experiencing homelessness in New York City probably didn’t increase by 39-plus percent this year. Unfortunately, the real number is almost certainly more than the 3,892 people estimated in the 2017 HOPE Count.

***
Jeff Foreman, who resides in Queens, is Policy and Advocacy Director for nonprofit Care for the Homeless. On Twitter @JeffForeman2 and @CFHNYC.

Mayor de Blasio (photo: Ed Reed/Mayor's Office)

In 2013 I met then-Mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio at a campaign event in midtown. I talked with him about my housing situation, that I had been laid off at work and the rent for my apartment had become too expensive. He said if he was elected, he would do what he could to help people like me. I voted for him.

Soon after our conversation, I lost my apartment. Three years later, I am still homeless. The promises de Blasio made to me seem far away, and now, I’m not sure he is still on our side.  Recently he openly criticized panhandlers and questioned whether we are poor enough to ask for money. He’s even said that panhandling “contributes to a decline in quality of life of New Yorkers.” I am a New Yorker - what about my quality of life?

While some things have changed since Mayor de Blasio took office, many others have remained largely the same.  Just last week the Mayor published an op-ed about his affordable housing plan. He announced that under his leadership, city government has constructed or preserved nearly 78,000 units of affordable housing, but our homeless population is still hovering around record highs of 60,000-plus.

New buildings are popping up in neighborhoods all over the city and our mayor is celebrating a successful affordable housing plan. So my question for him is, affordable for whom? Most of the units in his plan are for people whose income is much higher than mine, and not enough of it is set aside for homeless people. For me — and the tens of thousands of people like me — the numbers just don’t add up.

Clearly there is not enough housing being prioritized for homeless New Yorkers. And, even the systems that are supposed to help us get housed are full of problems. For the last six months I’ve had the Living in Communities (LINC) rental assistance program – a de Blasio program. If I found a place to live, I could potentially pay the rent with this voucher.

So why am I still homeless? Because landlords across the city are discriminating based on source of income. Landlords and brokers blatantly respond with “no programs,” or “no LINC,” when asked about potential apartments. This is flat-out illegal! While homeless people are getting arrested for jumping turnstiles, landlords are getting away with discrimination against poor people and they’re leaving us out on the street. What good is my LINC voucher if no landlord accepts it?

Everyone -- from city officials to service providers to homeless people -- knows that the subsidies are not keeping up with skyrocketing rents around the city, and the few places that are affordable are often found far away from people’s communities and support networks.

On top of broken rental assistance programs, the city continues to give away public resources that could house more homeless people. Over and over again, we hear about vacant lots, parking lots, or armories being given away to for-profit developers who get city subsidies to build luxury condos and market rate apartments that are often too expensive for the very community members who live there. Public land should be used for public good.

Mayor de Blasio may call me a “skeptic” or a “naysayer,” but before I applaud his housing plan that he says is for everyone, I need to see that homeless New Yorkers are truly included in it.

For the homeless, the solutions are simple: we need the city to make more housing available to us, we need systems in place to help us easily access this housing, we need the city to target bad actors who refuse to rent to homeless people, and we need the city to stop giving away valuable resources to developers who are more concerned about their profits than they are about our communities.

I am homeless not because it is “fun,” but because real estate profits have been put before my needs over and over again.

***
Ruby Carrasquillo is a member of VOCAL-NY, a grassroots organization that builds power among low-income people impacted by homelessness, HIV/AIDS, drug use, and mass incarceration. On Twitter @VOCALNewYork.

Gov. Cuomo announcing Excelsior (Kevin P. Coughlin/Governor's Office)

In January 2014, Kellyn C. was 49 and had been recently laid off from a human resources position. “You need a college degree to remain competitive,” she said. She enrolled as a first-time freshman at CUNY Medgar Evers College (MEC) in Brooklyn. Three and a half years later, she reports, “I’m doing well. I’m applying myself and forging ahead.” She has 96 credits, a GPA above 3.0, and is on track to graduate in December 2017 or January 2018—all significant accomplishments at MEC, a comprehensive institution offering both associate and bachelor’s degrees.  

The Excelsior Scholarship, Governor Andrew Cuomo’s new free college tuition program, was of immediate interest to Kellyn given her upcoming $3,265 tuition bill for Fall 2017 and an income that is just above the thresholds to qualify for federal Pell grants or New York State’s Tuition Assistance Program (TAP).  “I’m trying to pursue my degree and there should be something for me,” she said. Yet despite being a highly capable student, Kellyn will not be eligible for Excelsior because of the scholarship’s credit accumulation requirements, which are set at elite levels that she just misses.   

Governor Cuomo announced the Excelsior Scholarship with much fanfare in January 2017 at LaGuardia Community College. Bernie Sanders, standing at his side, touted it as “a revolutionary idea for higher education.” When the bill was signed into law, Cuomo returned to LaGuardia with Hillary Clinton heralding the program as a “beacon of hope” to New Yorkers.    

The Scholarship makes CUNY and SUNY tuition-free for students with adjusted gross family incomes of less than $100,000, with the maximum income increasing to $110,000 in 2018 and to $125,000 in 2019.  The program is a last-dollar scholarship, which means that the award fills tuition gaps after other federal and state aid have been drawn down. Excelsior offers no additional support to low-income students who already receive enough Pell and TAP aid to cover tuition and fees but often struggle with transportation, rent, and books. Cuomo’s administration has acknowledged as much, describing Excelsior at public events and in television commercials as for “middle-class families.”

Kellyn, while financially eligible for Excelsior with an adjusted gross income of well below the $100,000 threshold, is not academically eligible for the scholarship because she doesn’t meet the requirement of having earned 30 or more credits per year—or 90 or more credits total—by January 2017, the end of her third year in college, even though she’s been picking up credits this summer so that she can graduate in the winter, four years from when she started. “I don’t know where they come up with the 90 credits,” she said, having earned a few credits short of the 90 in her first three years. She is rightfully proud that she’s on track to graduate in four years. If she had been eligible for Excelsior—and she’s still planning to petition for eligibility—getting it “would mean the world to me,” she said.   

Of New York State’s 605,000 CUNY and SUNY students, SUNY estimates that only 31,300 students will be eligible for Excelsior, representing 5.2% of all CUNY and SUNY students. The application deadline is Friday, July 21, and if more students apply and are eligible than funds are available in the $87 million earmark, a lottery will be conducted to award the scholarship.  

A key reason for the limited projected eligibility estimate is that few CUNY and SUNY students meet the academic criteria of completing 30 credits a year. The percentages of full-time students at three CUNY colleges—Brooklyn College, City College of New York, and York College—who earned 30 or more credits during the 2014-2015 academic year are 31.6% at Brooklyn, 27.4% at CCNY, and 22.8%. at York. The percentages of students meeting the 30 or more credits threshold at CUNY’s community colleges are lower. At Bronx Community College, 11.5% of students met the threshold, and at LaGuardia, 20.2% of students, to cite just two.

At LaGuardia, where Governor Cuomo twice announced the Excelsior Scholarship, only 195 of the 2,480 students who started as full-time students in Fall 2013 graduated within two years and would have met the academic requirements to receive Excelsior during a junior year at another CUNY or SUNY institution. As students get to the sophomore, junior, and senior years and fall off meeting Excelsior’s credit accumulation requirements, Excelsior will become at many campuses an honors scholarship for the academically elite students.

To the extent that there will be students benefitting from Excelsior, they are likely to disproportionately be ones who attend the institutions with the highest four-year graduation rates, like SUNY Binghamton (66.1%) and SUNY Albany (53.0%), rather than ones who attend the institutions with the lowest rates and the rates that arguably most need public policies to support their advancement.  

The regulations adopted by New York State’s Higher Education Services Corporation (HESC) in late May outline a number of exceptions to the credit accumulation requirements, allowing interruptions of study “due to circumstances as determined by the corporation, including but not limited to, death of a family member, medical leave, military service, service in the Peace Corps or parental leave.” The “including but not limited to” phrasing allows HESC and colleges to account for unusual circumstances but does not explicitly create exceptions for the primary reasons that students fall behind or take semesters off: academic under-preparation for college-level work; work and life circumstances; and institutional factors, like poor advising, limited course offerings, and subpar faculty.   

The regulations further state that students who fall off track and become ineligible for future Excelsior awards will owe one semester of their Excelsior Scholarships back to their colleges. The HESC website reads: “If you fail to complete 30 credits over a 365-day period, the Excelsior Scholarship will cover your first term; however, you will be responsible for the tuition liability for your second term.”

The financial reality of having to pay for a prior completed semester previously thought to have been free and having to pay for future semesters after having gone to college tuition-free may influence initial Excelsior beneficiaries to dropout. Students who miss the credit accumulation cutoffs may start seeing themselves as not made out for college. Falling off the Excelsior cliff is likely to be financially and emotionally devastating to the college success of a significant number of initial Excelsior recipients.

Excelsior’s payback requirement is the most harmful aspect of the program, and it is what is most wrong with the program. The students who self-finance Excelsior repayments and future tuition charges in a valiant effort to earn degrees may find themselves working too many hours to meet their financial obligations to be academically successful.  

As Excelsior plays itself out, the scholarship is likely to impact four-year graduation rates positively as students who can stay on track will be more motivated to cross the finish line in four years. Achieving higher four-year graduation rates, however, may be at the cost of decreases rather than increases in the retention of students from freshman to sophomore year, as students who lose Excelsior eligibility drop out. This is not what anyone intended of the revolutionary initiative proclaimed by Senator Sanders.  Chano LaBoy, a Senior Trainer and College Access Counselor at the Options program at Goddard Riverside Community Center in New York City, said about Excelsior’s credit accumulation terms, “I’m a little wary as to how it’s going to play out with students who come up short on credits. I’m anxious.”  

To address the problems of Excelsior, the Governor and Legislature should eliminate the payback requirement and adjust the credit accumulation requirement to 25 credits per year, acknowledging that a four-year graduation timeline and yearly completion of 30 credits is way too ambitious at many SUNY and CUNY colleges. The requirement that recipients live and work in New York State for the same number of years that they received the scholarship also should be eliminated, as many critics have argued.  

In announcing Excelsior, Governor Cuomo got the big idea right. “Today, college is what high school was—it should always be an option even if you can’t afford it,” he proclaimed, and indeed universal college should be the new universal high school, but until the Governor, the State Legislature, and HESC come together to correct the weaknesses of Excelsior, New York State’s free college program is a bait into a trap for students who attend campuses where students hardly ever earn 30 credits a year.   Righting Excelsior and making free college freer will require more funding so policy changes may take some time, but for now, New York Excelsior Scholarship is a program for freshmen and academically elite students rather than a revolutionary free college program.

***
Eric Neutuch is a new doctoral student at Northeastern University and an education evaluation consultant.

Governor Cuomo at Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora (photo: Governor's Office Flickr)

In much the same way that the movement to end stop-and-frisk policing eventually became a rallying cry for political hopefuls, so, too, has the appeal to close the Rikers Island jail complex now become de rigueur among New York City elected officials. Where though is the corresponding clarion call to close Attica, Sing Sing, or any number of New York State’s brutal and obsolete prisons?

The #CLOSErikers campaign highlighted some ugly and undeniable truths about Rikers Island: intractable violence and corruption, heavy financial cost to the taxpayer, an antiquated and dangerous physical plant, and an overwhelming and disproportionate percentage of black and brown prisoners. The movement also emphasized the impact of money; nearly three-quarters of Rikers inmates are there because they can’t afford bail, often in amounts of $2,000 or less. All told, the 2017 New York City Department of Corrections budget was $1.4 billion.

Most of those same truths apply with even greater force to New York’s patchwork of state prisons that hold five times the number of people at Rikers.

There is abundant evidence of violence and corruption in New York’s prisons. In just the past few years, there has been documented abuse, including homicides at the hands of prison guards, at numerous prisons across the state. The prevalence of brutality compelled the United States Attorney’s office last year to charge five former corrections officers with federal civil rights violations, with then US Attorney Preet Bharara stating that “[E]xcessive use of force in prisons . . . has reached crisis proportions in New York State.”

The state prison budget is astronomical. From 1999-2015, the budget expanded to almost $3 billion even as the number of incarcerated people dropped. For fiscal year 2017-18, the Department of Corrections budget request was $3,276,000,000, a figure that does not include the nearly $10 million in settlements doled out by the state for excessive force and abuse lawsuits in the past few years.

And while Rikers Island is an aging facility, it is almost luxurious in comparison to some New York state prisons that date back to the 19th century. These archaic institutions struggle to provide adequate heat in the winter and to cool down in the summer. One can only guess about the layers of asbestos and other environmental hazards that afflict prisoners, guards and civilian employees alike.

The racial disparities so evident at Rikers Island are reflected as well in the state prisons as blacks and Latinos make up 73 percent of the prison population, nearly double their numbers in the state general population. And with 84 percent of the guards being white and from upstate communities, state prisons readily conjure up images of the plantation with white overseers. In contrast, blacks and Latinos comprise 84 percent of the uniformed corrections officers at Rikers Island.

Visits to Rikers Island in the East River across from LaGuardia airport are notoriously hard, time-consuming and humiliating, but visits to state prisons add another layer of torment -- New York’s state prisons house about 52,000 people in a labyrinth of 54 prisons ensconced primarily in remote corners of the state. The majority of state prisoners are New York City residents and yet they are scattered in prisons as far away as the Canadian border. The impact on the individual prisoner is devastating as visits are almost necessarily infrequent and families and communities are destroyed in the process.

Unlike so many at Rikers, state prisoners are not incarcerated because they are too poor to post bail. Nevertheless, a countless number also need not be incarcerated. Although the prison population has decreased from 72,000 almost twenty years ago to 52,000 today, the question still remains whether all those many people should be behind bars. It certainly bears noting that New York State, with such progressive social policies in many areas, remains out of step with regard to national trends in incarceration. According to The Sentencing Project, New York is one of only eight states where the proportion of prisoners serving life or “virtual life” (fifty years or more) sentences is at least one in five. Almost 10,000 people in New York prisons are serving life sentences or its functional equivalent, a number topped only in Texas, Louisiana, Florida and California. This vast number of potential death-in-prison sentences is astonishing, unjustifiable and unnecessary.

Thousands of New York prisoners have served their time, often several decades, remarkably. Many are elderly and in failing health. There are countless stories of transformation, redemption, and profound change. Yet these men and women languish in prison for no reason other than to satisfy a seemingly unquenchable thirst for interminable punishment.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio maintains that the population at Rikers must be reduced before it can be closed within ten years. Should New York Governor Andrew Cuomo feel a corresponding need to shrink the prison population before shuttering some of New York’s most notorious penitentiaries, he already has at his disposal the means to do so – reform the parole process and meaningfully administer clemency.

Last December, the New York Times exposed a dysfunctional and punitive New York State Parole Board: “Commissioners — as board members are called — often read through files to prepare for the next interview as the inmate speaks. The whole process is run like an assembly line. They hear cases just two days a week and see as many as 80 inmates in that time.” Governor Cuomo recently appointed six new commissioners to the Board but vacancies remain. The governor should fill those seats expeditiously with people who more closely reflect the identities and experiences of those in prison and who bring diverse professional backgrounds to bear. These new board members can transform the board by taking a forward looking approach that examines evidence-based risk assessment scores and the individual’s institutional record, as opposed to looking backward and focusing exclusively on the crime of conviction, the one factor the individual can never change.

The discretionary power of the executive to grant clemency is longstanding and deep-rooted. The Constitution expressly vests the President with the “power to grant reprieves and pardons” and most states grant similar power to the governor. In October 2015, Governor Cuomo announced a bold and unprecedented pro bono clemency project in an apparent response to criticism about the few clemency applications he had granted in all his years in office. While the creation of the project is laudable, to date, the number of people granted clemency remains infinitesimal even as there are many prime candidates by every measure.

The Independent Commission on New York City Criminal Justice and Incarceration Reform referred to Rikers Island as a “stain on our great city.” Attica, Southport, Mid-State, Clinton, Fishkill and other state prisons are similar blights on New York State. Perhaps former Governor Mario Cuomo’s ugliest legacy is the growth of New York’s prison industrial complex, as more prisons were built during his tenure than that of all other New York governors combined. His son, Andrew, pledged to church congregants in Harlem to “go down in the history books as the Governor who closed the most prisons in the history of the State of New York.” Godspeed.

***
Steven Zeidman is a professor of law at CUNY School of Law. He is on Twitter @SteveZeidman.

Council Member Ferreras-Copeland tours Inwood library (photo: William Alatriste/New York City Council)

Last month, City Council Member Julissa Ferreras-Copeland announced that she would not seek re-election. Much ink has been, and will continue to be, spilled on the political implications of her decision. But when such an important leader decides to depart, we owe it to her and our city to consider the legacy she leaves behind.

Our city owes Council Member Ferreras-Copeland our sincere appreciation. In her years in the City Council, and leading the finance committee, she has consistently delivered for working-class New Yorkers, immigrants, and the communities across this city in greatest need.

Time and again, she has played a leadership role in the battles that matter most for our communities. She has fought to ensure that marginalized and under-resourced communities get the attention they need in the budget, and she has helped ensure the passage of progressive legislation to ensure equal opportunities and protections for all.

We have worked closely with the council member on dozens of issues over the years, but several bear mention.

In her native Queens, immigrant communities have faced overwhelming school overcrowding for years, with some children forced to study in closets or eat lunch at 10 a.m. because of insufficient facilities. She worked closely with community members and advocates and made this issue a top priority for the budget, ultimately securing billions of dollars in new capital funds for school construction.

She demonstrated a similarly strong commitment to Queens through her leadership in creating the Flushing Meadows-Corona Park Alliance, which has helped protect the beloved park and ensure a bright future for the borough’s most important green lung.

Council Member Ferreras-Copeland was also one of the first elected officials to lead the charge for paid sick days for all New Yorkers. Her support throughout the campaign helped make this path-breaking legislation a reality.

She also demonstrated a clear and consistent understanding of the need for resources for adult literacy. She worked closely with Council Member Carlos Menchaca and fought hard to ensure that these programs, which serve the dual goals of immigrant integration and workforce development, be expanded. Their work together yielded millions of dollars in additional funding.

Always a strong champion for opportunities for young people, she also recognized the importance of confronting the school-to-prison pipeline by investing in alternatives to the criminalization of young people of color. Under her leadership in the finance committee, the Council created a new restorative justice initiative to implement alternatives to punitive discipline that promote healing, understanding, and accountability.

On issue after issue, she has stood with us and amplified the voices and needs of her communities.

Council Member Ferreras-Copeland has achieved all of this as a strong woman of color facing a political landscape that remains dominated by white men. She has faced down obstacles on a daily basis, and she has overcome them with the poise, wisdom and wit that have endeared her to so many of her colleagues across the five boroughs.

Julissa Ferreras-Copeland has been a pioneer and a tremendous leader for her district and our City. We thank her deeply for her service to our communities, and we know that her work will serve as a powerful example for the next generation of progressive leaders across New York.

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Javier H. Valdés and Deborah Axt are the Co-Executive Directors of Make the Road New York, the largest grassroots community organization in New York offering services and organizing the immigrant community. On Twitter @maketheroadny @javierhvaldes @daxt.

(photo: JvL via Flickr)

My union member father recently asked me how New Yorkers on the left can possibly want a state constitutional convention, for which a referendum will be on the ballot this November. After all, the roster of opponents includes organized labor, environmental groups, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, and the vast majority of New York’s elected Democrats.

These progressives have reasonable arguments against a constitutional convention, or “con con,” which will only happen if a majority of voters votes for the referendum in November. They worry about constitutional pension protections and the “forever wild” language that safeguards New York’s forest preserves from development. They cite the obstacles the left would face during delegate elections in November 2018, which would determine who drafts constitutional amendments: first, dark money from wealthy interests could crush good candidates, and second, delegates would be elected by state Senate districts, which are gerrymandered to favor Republicans. A skeptical policy wonk friend of mine has also pointed out that the most recent state con con that produced a progressive victory was Montana’s -- in 1972.

These concerns are valid, yet now is the moment to take this risk. If voters across the state favor a con con this November, then delegate elections would be on the same ballot as the federal congressional midterm elections in 2018. We cannot pass up this serendipitous timing.

The left’s first lucky draw is that 36 of the past 39 midterm elections have resulted in losses for the party that holds the White House, currently the Republican Party. Second, while we’re still a long way from November 2018, I wouldn’t bet on this likely Democratic win being small. Donald Trump is uniquely unpopular for a President at this point in his term, Republicans – independently of the president – are rallying around a health care bill that, in the last version scored by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, will result in 15 million fewer people having health insurance, and the left’s grassroots are ready to storm the figurative Bastille.

To reinforce this point, con con delegates would be elected on the very same ballot people will use for the November 2018 congressional midterms. The left is going to swamp the polls. When Long Islanders just swung a state Assembly seat nearly 20 points away from November’s Republican vote, we can have some faith that progressives will show up in force for federal elections.

Heightened voter turnout can overcome many of the fears progressive con con opponents have, but there are other reasons to be optimistic regarding the structural disadvantages the left will face. True, if the con con referendum passes this November, three delegates would be elected per gerrymandered state Senate district. But Hillary Clinton managed to win 40 of 63 of these districts and there will be 15 more at-large delegates elected by statewide vote. This slate would likely have a leftward tilt from the aforementioned Democratic surge.

Albany is broken. It would be wonderful to have progressive policies enacted through normal legislative channels, but New Yorkers know that won’t happen. Even when corruption scandals aren’t rocking our Legislature, decisions are made by three – or four, thanks to the Independent Democratic Conference – men in a room who refuse to advance many progressive priorities.

The amendments con con advocates are pushing vary. Some supporters want “good government” changes that will make it easier to vote and improve campaign financing and redistricting rules. After enacting these reforms, progressive change could happen organically through a more representative and better functioning Legislature. The theory goes that constitutional amendments in this vein would be nonpartisan and Republicans who care about small-d democracy will get behind them.

Other con con proponents want to embed policies in the state constitution itself, whether on reproductive rights, enhanced civil rights for nonwhite and LGBTQ people, marijuana legalization, or an environmental bill of rights that will prevent a future disaster like what befell Hoosick Falls. They note that those pension and state forest protections opponents fret over were themselves enshrined in a constitutional convention. There are solid arguments in favor of either strategy.

I have heard con con believers describe this as a once-in-a-generation chance to systematically change the way state government works, but they’re wrong. They’re actually overstating the odds that we’ll see another opportunity like this in two or four decades when the next con con referendums roll around. We have a historically unpopular Republican government in Washington and an extraordinarily animated grassroots. Take advantage of this rare convergence. This November 7th, vote “yes” for the constitutional convention.

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Daniel Edelman is a government consultant and a member of the New Kings Democrats and Citizens Union, two civic groups in favor of the Constitutional Convention. The views expressed are his own.

SBS Commissioner Bishop, the author, right (photo: @NYCCouncil)

Earlier this week, an op-ed appeared in Gotham Gazette entitled "How the City Hurts Small Businesses." This column reminded me of a great saying by New York’s late U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan: “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.” The truth is that Mayor Bill de Blasio and the New York City Department of Small Business Services are working every day to support small, neighborhood businesses across the five boroughs. A few facts:

• Our Small Business Support Center has provided more than 12,000 services to small businesses since its launch last year.
• Small business fines are down 40% since the mayor took office.
• Since 2014, we’ve helped small business owners access $169 million in capital to grow their businesses.
• Restaurants that take advantage of our services open three months faster.
• We’ve served more than 12,000 foreign-born entrepreneurs.
• Over the last year alone, we’ve provided nearly 1,500 free, on-site consultations to help small business owners avoid costly fines and penalties.

The City offers these, and many other services because we recognize that part of what makes New York City special is the diverse mix of small businesses that give our neighborhoods character. We care about the local hardware stores, beauty salons, and pizza shops where the owners know your name and are invested in their communities. We are moving government out of the way of small business owners, cutting red tape, providing new legal protections, and leveling the playing field for minority, women, and foreign-born business owners.

Every year, our team at SBS reaches thousands of small businesses through an array of free, accessible services. We help small businesses in every phase of their development as they start, operate, and grow. This support helps small business owners cut costs and boost their bottom lines, offsetting some of the competitive pressures that exist in New York.  

We help small businesses to write business plans as they are starting up, learn how to negotiate a commercial lease, and understand City rules and regulations. We keep them running with free educational resources, legal consultations, and compliance services to avoid costly fines and penalties. And we help small businesses to grow through programs to help them secure financing, sell to the government, and other tailored services for minority, women, and immigrant-owned businesses.

This year SBS also launched a citywide program called Love Your Local, which encourages New Yorkers to share their favorite independent small business through social media and on an interactive map on SBS’ website. So far, over 2,000 businesses were shared for other New Yorkers to discover. In addition to this free publicity, these businesses are eligible to apply for grant funding to help them better compete.

The author of the op-ed also questions the value of the City’s work with Business Improvement Districts (BIDs). At SBS, we provide technical assistance to communities that wish to form a BID. We help make sure that BIDs are accountable and formed through ground-up community engagement. There are BIDs across New York City that are both big and small, providing supplemental sanitation services, merchant organizing, and neighborhood beautification to strengthen existing small businesses. The 74 BIDs that operate across the city include 35 low-to-moderate income neighborhoods and each of them is governed by a locally-controlled nonprofit board of directors.

The daily work of BIDs makes a difference for small businesses and local residents alike. If you drill down and look at the nuts and bolts of what BIDs are doing, it is work that benefits everyone. On an average day, BIDs across the city:

• Collect 10,800 bags of trash.
• Remove 233 incidents of graffiti.
• Distribute 10,036 marketing materials promoting small businesses.
• Interact with 5,752 visitors who keep shops bustling with activity.

We are proud of the work we are doing each and every day to support stronger businesses and build stronger neighborhoods across the five boroughs. I encourage all small business owners to take advantage of the free services that SBS offers. We can help your business start, operate, and grow, and we are also here to provide assistance to communities that choose to form a BID. More information on our services can be found by visiting our website or by calling 311.

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Gregg Bishop is the Commissioner of the NYC Department of Small Business Services. On Twitter at @NYC_SBS and @GreggBishopNYC.

Governor Cuomo (left) and Comptroller DiNapoli (center) (photo: Governor's Office/Flickr)

State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli and Governor Andrew Cuomo have been airing public disagreement in the news media over the past several months. It is the latest chapter in a long story here in New York -- the Governor and the Comptroller sometimes agreeing but often challenging each other.

Calling out Cuomo's fiscal policies
DiNapoli's analysis of the recently-enacted State 2017-2018 budget (crafted by Cuomo and enacted through his negotiations with the Legislature) warns of fiscal risks ahead with uncertainty about the federal budget and $10.5 billion in new state bonded indebtedness. The budget, which also included a number of public policy changes, was enacted with little time for public review, DiNapoli’s report says. It also raised additional concerns about "transparency, accountability and oversight."

Early in May, the Comptroller issued an audit of the State Economic Development Corporation, the governor's economic development agency, citing it for lax reporting on key projects, particularly those that create tax-free economic development zones to encourage business development. “Too often Empire State Development Corporation is either late or not reporting on the results of economic development programs,” DiNapoli said. “We need better reporting to ensure transparency in economic development spending and to promote an informed analysis on the return of the investments state taxpayers make in these programs.” A spokesperson for the Economic Development Corporation said the Comptroller's audit "cherry-picks information" and "profoundly misrepresents our efforts."

Cuomo has called the Comptroller’s audits “opinion” and sought to undermine DiNapoli’s oversight at several turns.

DiNapoli's office signed off on the state Senate Republican majority's list of stipend payments for committee chairs, where in some cases vice chairs have received payments that typically only go to chairs. Democrats and the media have questioned some of these payments. Cuomo used the issue as an opportunity to criticize DiNapoli. "If it was not legal, the Comptroller shouldn't have done it," Cuomo said. "If it's not legal, the Comptroller should call up and say, 'Whoops, I made a mistake, I need the money back.'" A spokesperson for the Comptroller's office responded that "the comptroller's office is not a court of law" and the issue "needs to be decided by the Senate itself, or the legal system."

DiNapoli has often been critical of the Governor's spending plans. Four years ago, in 2013, he issued a report that New York's debt, counting bonds issued by public benefit corporations, amounted to $63.3 billion — about $3,253 per state resident. "We spend billions each year to repay existing debt, so fewer resources are available for more pressing needs," he said. Much of the debt has been developed by public authorities. "Taxpayers have little or no say in how much the state borrows, but they're the ones who have to foot the bill," DiNapoli continued.

The Comptroller responded to an alleged bid-rigging scandal within Cuomo’s economic development programs -- for which nine Cuomo associates and donors have been charged by federal authorities, with a trial set for October -- by proposing more oversight through his office. Cuomo has made his own proposal in response to the scandal, which does not include restoring contract approval by the Comptroller for certain types of programs.

A history of tension and balance
Established in 1797 as an appointed position, the Comptroller's position has been constitutionally based and elective since 1846. The state constitutional convention that year, recognizing the need for an independent Comptroller, made it an independent position, elected by the voters. Until the early 20th century, the position rivaled the Governor's in power, including compiling the state budget, receiving taxes, monitoring banks, and preparing financial reports. That power diminished with the reorganization and consolidation of state government, including the creation of the Division of the Budget, carried out by Governor Al Smith in the 1920s.

But the Comptroller remains the state's chief financial officer, controls payment of state funds, borrows and invests for the state, manages the state retirement fund, reports on the state's fiscal conditions, and audits both state agencies and local governments. The Comptroller's website notes that the Comptroller "is the State’s chief fiscal officer who ensures that State and local governments use taxpayer money effectively and efficiently to promote the common good."

Governors and Comptrollers usually have good working relationships. But there is a potential inherent tension in a relationship between the state's chief executive, who uses public tax dollars to initiate and administer state programs, and the state's chief fiscal watchdog, who makes sure that the state stays fiscally solvent and strong and that those tax dollars are used well.

Comptrollers have challenged Governors many times during the course of state history.

For instance, Arthur Levitt (1955-1978), the longest serving Comptroller in the state's history, criticized borrowing practices that bypassed state constitutional referendum requirements for incurring state debt. Levitt, a Democrat, was a frequent critic of Republican Governor Nelson Rockefeller (1959-1973), whose administration expanded state government and constructed the Empire State Plaza governmental complex in Albany, often relying on bonds.

In a February 1964 speech, Levitt assailed Rockefeller as a "pseudo pay-as-you-go governor" who through the "subterfuge" of selling authority bonds had imposed on the people of the state "a staggering burden of debt without their consent." Rockefeller responded that Levitt "is a partisan, organization Democrat, not an independent, nonpartisan, nonpolitical watchdog of the public treasury, as he likes to be projected." Levitt's motive was "to discredit the fiscal integrity and soundly solvent fiscal policies of this administration."

Levitt had a number of run-ins with Rockefeller, including lawsuits to require more detailed budget information and to open up the books of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Summarizing his years of working with Rockefeller, Levitt concluded, "I haven't been soft on him at all."

"As the people's auditor, I have reported factually to the people in accordance with my constitutional mandate," Levitt said. He made the office a high-profile watchdog and force for fiscal restraint and probity.

Many years earlier, in the 1830s, the state was spending money lavishly on enlarging the Erie Canal, building additional canals and providing loans and other aid to railroads, mostly by issuing state bonds.

Democratic Comptroller Azariah Flagg (1833-1839 and 1842-1847) published an alarming report in 1838, warning that the state had reached "the utmost verge of prudence" and should curtail borrowing.

But Governor William Seward, a Whig (the Whig Party was then one of New York's two most important parties, along with the Democrats), told the Legislature in 1839 that "history furnishes no parallel to the financial achievements of this state." He added that "taxation for the purposes of internal improvement is happily unnecessary," since future canal user fees would provide funds to pay off the bonds.

Seward in 1840 called for spending $4 million more each year for 10 years for canals and railroads. The Whig majority in the state Legislature kept pushing up the debt.

Comptroller Flagg's warning turned out to be warranted.

The state entered a downward fiscal spiral. Recession sparked by the Panic of 1837 cut into state revenues. Canal construction costs rose. Even Seward admitted "severe shock" at learning that canal expansion would cost twice what he had estimated. The Erie Railroad fell behind on its repayment of state loans. Selling state bonds became more difficult as nervous creditors began to worry about New York's solvency. State debt rose to $27 million in 1842, a huge sum in those days.
Comptroller Flagg warned that New York was at "the very brink of dishonor and bankruptcy" and "it is a question of solvency or insolvency."

The voters heeded Flagg's warning. They gave fiscally conservative Democrats a majority in the next Legislature. They curtailed or suspended canal work and railroad aid. With Seward's reluctant concurrence, they enacted a special tax to keep the state solvent. The debt began to decline. Creditors' confidence returned, and state securities regained the status of good investments.

The lure of higher office
Some Comptrollers have had political ambitions and used the position as a stepping-stone to higher office, occasionally another source of tension with Governors.
William L. Marcy, Comptroller 1823-1829, went on to serve as Governor, 1833-1838. Silas Wright served as Comptroller from 1829 to 1833 and Governor, 1845-1856 (in those days, governors were elected every two years). Washington Hunt, Comptroller 1849-1850, went on to become governor, 1851-1852. Lucius Robinson, Comptroller 1862 to 1865, went on to become Governor, 1877-1879.

Martin Glynn, Comptroller 1907-1908, was nominated and elected Lieutenant Governor in 1910 and became Governor when William Sulzer was impeached and removed from office in 1913. But Glynn was defeated when he ran for Governor in his own right in 1914.

Nathan L. Miller, Comptroller 1901-1903, defeated Al Smith in his campaign for reelection as Governor in 1920, running on a platform of fiscal restraint and criticizing Smith's administration for overspending. But Smith returned to oust Miller in 1922.

Millard Fillmore served in the House of Representatives before being elected Comptroller in 1847 (the first person elected rather than appointed to the office). He was nominated for Vice President in 1848, elected along with presidential nominee Zachary Taylor, and became President upon Taylor's death in 1850. He ran for President in 1852 but was defeated.

Cuomo and DiNapoli both playing appropriate roles
Comptroller DiNapoli is playing an appropriate role, in line with many of his most impressive and judicious predecessors such as Arthur Levitt and Azariah Flagg. His reports are clear and readable, his warnings measured and documented, and his custody of the state retirement fund reassuring.

On the other hand, Governor Cuomo, like Nelson Rockefeller, Al Smith, William Seward and other bold, expansionist-minded Governors before him, is inclined to use public funds for innovative programs that he sees as investments in New York's future.

The conscientious Comptroller and the proactive Governor are well-suited to their respective positions. Their views, while sometimes at odds with each other, complement each other and offer the public contrasting visions for New York's future. That is useful for public debate and, hopefully, for creation of sound state fiscal policies.

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Dr. Bruce W. Dearstyne's latest book is The Spirit of New York: Defining Events in the Empire State's History, published in 2015 by SUNY Press.