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As Cuomo and Heastie Trade Comments on Anti-Poverty Efforts, a Closer Look at What They've Done


albany gov cuomo carl heastie

Speaker Heastie & Governor Cuomo (photo: the governor's office)


Despite previously lauding the 2019 state legislative session as the “most productive session in modern political history,” Governor Andrew Cuomo went on to call the session “not progressive enough,” citing a need “to do more on poverty.”

At his celebratory, mostly upbeat end-of-session press conference on June 21, Cuomo was asked about what did not get done, and cited three issues he said he would work on next year: legalizing adult-use marijuana and paid gestational surrogacy, and expanding prevailing wage requirements on construction projects that receive state incentives. He did not mention poverty.

But just three days later during a radio appearance, Cuomo questioned whether the legislative session was “progresive enough,” and rhetorically asked WAMC’s The Roundtable host Alan Chartock, “what happened, doctor, to discussion of poverty and civil rights and the minority community?”

It was an apparently off-hand comment that seemed to catch many people by surprise, especially Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, a Democrat whose district is in the Bronx, which is home to some of the highest poverty rates in the country.

While Cuomo has made significant strides with anti-poverty policies in the past, most notably the minimum wage hike he ushered through a split Legislature in 2016, the third-term Democratic governor did not push any landmark anti-poverty legislation or initiatives this session, which featured a long list of other progressive accomplishments with Democrats in control of both legislative houses for the first time in many years.

Soon after Cuomo’s comment about the session lacking a focus on poverty, Heastie was asked about it.

“If we’re talking about things like poverty, that necessitates putting more money in the budget,” Heastie said on June 25, appearing on WCNY’s The Capitol Pressroom with host Susan Arbetter. “If that’s the governor’s sentiment, next year we should see a robust poverty agenda in the executive budget,” he said.

When asked about the Assembly’s anti-poverty efforts, Heastie mentioned boosting community college enrollment and said such schooling can serve as a key stepping stone to the workforce.

“Every place has a different type of industry, and community colleges can put together training linked with local businesses,” Heastie said on Capitol Pressroom.

In New York, 2,908,471 people live in poverty, according to the New York State Community Action Association in its 2019 annual poverty report. That’s about 15% of the state’s 19.8 million residents; a rate just above the U.S. poverty rate of 14.6%. For white New Yorkers, the poverty rate is 11%, while it jumps to 22.5% for black New Yorkers and 24.4% for Hispanic New Yorkers. Of the 1.8 million adult New Yorkers with no high school diploma, 29% live in poverty.

Though they give both Cuomo and Heastie’s Assembly majority credit for significant steps toward fighting poverty in New York, advocates and other experts believe both have indeed been lacking in moving a number of anti-poverty measures.

Several proposed anti-poverty bills have stalled in the Assembly, and those that have passed the Assembly have not been signed into law by Cuomo, in part due to a lack of support by the governor, who was friendly with the Republican Senate majority that ruled the upper legislative chamber for all of the governor’s first two terms.

As Heastie indicated, some see the need for more state spending on anti-poverty measures, which may only be possible through tax increases, which Cuomo generally opposes. Some say a significant roadblock to many anti-poverty programs is the 2 percent cap on annual state spending increases that Cuomo has insisted on, though he has repeatedly broken that pledge. Still, Cuomo has largely kept state agency operational spending flat year over year and is loathe to add new expensive programs to the budget, especially those that don’t fit his carefully crafted agenda.

But while he has not supported key policies that advocates say would help fight poverty in New York, Cuomo has moved several significant anti-poverty measures, from the minimum wage hike to the Empire State Poverty Reduction Initiative (ESPRI), which provides state grants to localities to fund anti-poverty efforts, to the creation of the Child Care Availability Task Force, which is currently studying how to make childcare more affordable in New York.

Heastie said on Capitol Pressroom that the Assembly focuses on high poverty communities and tries to find ways to revitalize them, including through working with Cuomo to add localities to the ESPRI. Most parties point to the state’s high levels of local education funding as evidence of efforts to fight poverty through educational investments, but that focus has been criticized, even by Assembly Democrats, who believe the state owes billions in funding to poor schools, and Cuomo, who recently started saying he wants more state funding to go to poorer schools without corresponding increases to wealthier schools.

During Heastie’s four years as speaker thus far, the Assembly has pushed anti-poverty efforts, including as a key force behind the minimum wage increase and the paid family leave program that also passed the same year. But there are also some question marks.

In January 2016, Heastie announced an “Anti-Poverty Work Group,” with the goal of finding “ways to break the vicious cycle that forces people to focus on getting by and never allows them to focus on getting ahead,” he said in the press release. The work group consisted of 13 Assembly members, and was specifically tasked with coming up with ideas to improve nutrition, literacy, supportive housing, shelters, rental assistance, fair labor practices, and job training, and increase access to quality child care and health care.

However, little came of the work group -- there’s no other record of its existence in Assembly press release archives or on the Assembly website more broadly.

The work group was organized with the goal of breaking “down the silos we deal with in the Assembly,” Queens Assemblymember Andrew Hevesi, who served on the work group and has chaired the chamber’s social services committee, said in an interview with Gotham Gazette.

According to Hevesi, when former Assembly Majority Leader Joe Morelle left the Assembly at the end of 2018, the work group “fell off the top of everybody’s radar.” But even that would have been nearly three years after the group’s creation, and Morelle did not serve as its chair. Hevesi said the group had only a “couple of meetings.”

Anti-Poverty Initiatives Left on the Table
There are a variety of anti-poverty measures that could be considered by the Legislature and Cuomo. For example, a proposed bill aimed at reducing homelessness would have created a homeless housing task force by each social services district in the state to “develop a ten-year homeless housing plan addressing short-term and long-term housing for homeless persons,” according to the bill. The bill has not moved in the Assembly social services committee.

Anti-poverty measures can be bipartisan. Republican Assembly Minority Leader Brian Kolb is the lead sponsor on a bill to raise the state earned income tax credit (EITC) from 30 percent to 45 percent of the federal level. Currently, a family with three or more children can earn a maximum of $8,682 in their EITC, and a filer without children can earn a maximum of $701 in their EITC, including state, city, and federal credits, according to the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance. Another Assembly bill would expand the EITC to include workers who are 18-24 years old, a demographic that is currently not eligible for the EITC. The state EITC was last raised by Republican Governor George Pataki in 2003.

Neither the Assembly nor the Senate took up state EITC expansion this year.

That Assembly Republicans are leading the fight to raise the EITC is “both ironic and shameful,” said Ron Deutsch, executive director of the Fiscal Policy Institute, a think tank, in an interview with Gotham Gazette. “For the Assembly minority to be to the left of the governor on an issue like this really speaks to the fact that the governor is far more fiscally conservative than he paints himself,” he said.

According to data from the Fiscal Policy Institute, 85,345 young adult workers in the state that would be eligible for the childless EITC are currently excluded because they cannot be claimed as a dependent. These workers earn less than $15,270 as single filers or less than $20,900 as married filers.

Another proposed anti-poverty bill, championed by Hevesi, is known as Home Stability Support (HSS) and would increase rent supplements to families at risk of eviction, homelessness, or loss of housing due to domestic violence or hazardous living conditions. While the Assembly has pushed HSS for several years, it has not made it into the state budget, apparently due to Cuomo’s opposition.

HSS is widely seen as a way to prevent homelessness, and has many backers in both city and state government, as well as the advocacy community. According to data from the Assembly Committee on Social Services’ annual report, each year about 250,000 New Yorkers experience homelessness, and three of five homeless New Yorkers are school-aged children. In 2018, 23,000 more people became homeless, the report says. The number of homeless school-aged children has grown by 69% since 2011 (Cuomo’s first year as governor).

According to data from city Comptroller Scott Stringer’s office, over 10 years HSS could reduce the shelter population in New York City by 80 percent among families with children, 60 percent among adult families, and 40 percent among single adults. As Hevesi and others regularly point out, the cost of HSS subsidies are projected to be recouped in savings where governments spend less on shelters and other aspects of the social safety net.

HSS is projected to cost $9,865 per year for an individual in New York City, $7,320 per year for an individual in Westchester County, and $2,784 per year for an individual in Monroe County, according to data from the proposed plan. HSS advocates argue that the legislation would save the state money, as it would keep individuals and families out of shelters, which cost significantly more per individual per year to maintain. Providing an individual with temporary housing, or shelters, costs $25,925 per year in New York City,  $36,000 per year in Westchester County, and $10,950 in Monroe County, according to data from the plan.

The legislation has had support in both houses, but not enough to move it through both and to the governor. Neither majority appeared to make it a priority this year as the Legislature moved a long agenda of progressive bills.

“Home Stability Support will be a lifeline for thousands of New Yorkers to avoid falling into the cycle of homelessness, and it will also save millions of dollars for towns, counties and cities throughout the state,” State Senator Liz Krueger said in a press release supporting HSS.

Hevesi said that the reason the bill has never been passed is that Cuomo is against it. However, Hevesi said he is confident that the bill will get passed eventually, either legislatively or in the budget.

“It was in the Assembly one-house budget, Senate one-house budget, and the governor unilaterally stopped it,” Hevesi told Gotham Gazette.

HSS has been supported by a number of advocacy groups fighting poverty and homelessness in the state. Still, there was no clear, concerted effort by the Assembly and Senate majorities to push HSS over the finish line and into the state budget before it was voted through on April 1.

“Unfortunately over the past several years, in our advocacy to pass HSS, the governor has been one of the primary roadblocks,” said Helen Strom, a benefits unit supervisor at Urban Justice Center (UJC), an advocacy organization and think tank focused on bringing people out of poverty.

Hevesi accused Cuomo of profiting off of homeless shelters via Help USA, a nonprofit providing shelter that Cuomo founded many years ago and is now led by the governor’s sister.

“I don’t think he’s fighting homelessness,” Hevesi said. “I think he’s making money off of homelessness. Every policymaker in the state is for stopping the growth of the crisis except for him,” he said.

Via a spokesperson, Cuomo’s office pushed back against Hevesi’s accusation, calling it an “irresponsible lie” in a statement to Gotham Gazette, and saying the governor makes no money from Help USA.

Another issue some advocates and lawmakers raise around fighting poverty is health care, and while the state has very high rates of health care insurance coverage -- roughly 95% of New Yorkers are enrolled, in part due to robust government programming -- costs are still high for many. The Assembly majority had for several years passed the New York Health Act, which would create a universal, single-payer health care system in New York, but did not push the policy, which is opposed by Cuomo, this year, when it actually had a chance of passage in the newly-Democratic Senate. While most of the senators in the new majority had either co-sponsored the New York Health Act last year or expressed support for it during last year's campaigns, the legislation did not move in either house this year. Cuomo has said he believes single-payer health care is the best goal, but that it should be done nationally, that to do it in New York would be unrealistic given how much it upheaval it would require, including raising taxes on many New Yorkers and roughly doubling the state budget.

While advocacy groups agree in their criticism of Cuomo, “no one,” including Cuomo and the Assembly, has made anti-poverty measures “a real priority,” Deutsch said. “We can’t continue down this path any longer.”

Assembly Accomplishments
According to the Assembly majority, in March 2016, it successfully added municipalities to the governor’s Empire State Poverty Reduction Initiative (ESPRI), though it does not appear this was a direct result of the anti-poverty work group given it had just been assembled and seems to have done little overall.

ESPRI invests money directly into 16 communities with high poverty rates. Among communities introduced by the Assembly to the initiative are Troy, Hempstead, Buffalo, Oneonta, Albany, Rochester, and Broome County. Upon being added, these communities became eligible to receive ESPRI funding, which began with a $25 million investment in 2015 and received $4.5 million in the 2020 budget.

ESPRI funding supports programs including financial literacy, job training, mental health and substance abuse counseling, and more.

While advocacy groups agreed that no substantial, explicit anti-poverty measures passed this legislative session, some programs that did move are likely to help fight poverty.

“Despite the state’s fiscal constraints, the Assembly ensured this year’s state budget invested in services for families struggling with the costs of housing, child care and after-school programs while restoring critical cuts to Medicaid and education,” Speaker Heastie said in a statement to Gotham Gazette. “The Assembly Majority remains focused on advancing our Families First Agenda, which includes identifying ways to lift New Yorkers out of poverty,” he said.

The state approved a program to end cash bail in most instances, allowing most people accused of a non-violent crime to remain out of jail while awaiting a court date. In pushing for major limits on cash bail, one central argument was that the use of it criminalized poverty, essentially making it that poor people who can’t afford a few hundred dollars in bail would sit in jail, and risk losing their jobs and other community ties.

In Schenectady County, those arrested spend an average of 40 days in jail before they are charged, with some let go without being charged at all, according to Citizen Action State Organizing and Training Director Jamaica Miles.

“The people most likely to be sitting in jail are those that cannot afford to pay the bail or bond to get out,” Miles said in an interview with Gotham Gazette. “You’ve made their lives more difficult before convicting them of a crime,” she said, if they are ever convicted at all.

Additionally, the state’s newly approved rent regulations, highly favorable to rent-regulated tenants, are expected to be beneficial to many low-income families.

“The hope is they won’t be evicted as easily as they are being evicted now,” Deutsch said.

Looking ahead, the Assembly will be re-introducing a package of bills that “overhauls” the public assistance system, Hevesi said.

With the current public assistance system, many low-wage workers can earn enough to work themselves out of the benefit and lose their vouchers, but when they lose public assistance they can no longer afford to live where they’re living, Strom said.

To remedy the system, the state can raise the eligibility income levels for public assistance or create a different income level for housing vouchers, so those receiving public assistance can retain their vouchers while they transition to being off of benefits and on an employment income, Strom said.

“As it’s currently structured it’s a trap. Once people are on public assistance they are trapped in perpetuity. We have an opportunity to break that system up and give people the incentives they need to get off public assistance,” Hevesi said.

The Assembly had a hearing on the overhaul set for the end of the previous legislative session, but it didn’t come together in time, Hevesi said. The bills have veto proof support in the Assembly, including backing of Minority Leader Brian Kolb, and are over the 32 vote threshold to have a majority in the Senate, but still do not have the support of the governor, Hevesi said. 

The Assembly also pushed the governor for the creation of 20,000 units of supportive housing for the chronically homeless, Hevesi said.

“After a several-year battle [Cuomo] agreed, but then stalled again when we had to force him two years ago to release $1 billion to get the first 6,000 units,” Hevesi said.

Cuomo’s Efforts
Until his June comments on WAMC radio, just after the end of the budget and legislative session in Albany, Cuomo had said very little directly about poverty in 2019.

He did not explicitly discuss “poverty” in any of his three major speeches (a December “First 100 Days” address, his January 1 inaugural remarks, and his State of the State speech later in January) that set the stage for this year in Albany, the first under full and functional Democratic control of both the governor’s office and Legislature in several decades.

Cuomo did mention several programs, both already passed and on his 2019 agenda, that relate to poverty, though, including the minimum wage hike, which has seen the wage hit $15 per hour in New York City, with other increases around the state.

In his December 2018 speech outlining his agenda for the “first 100 days” of his third term, Cuomo called the lack of affordable housing “a crisis,” and promoted what he says is the state’s largest ever investment in affordable housing, which appears to have meant continuation of an ongoing $20 billion program that requires new budget investments each year.

He also called for renewed rent regulations that would improve certain tenants’ rights, which ultimately passed in the Legislature and were signed by the governor to much acclaim by activists, advocates, and lawmakers.

In his inaugural address, Cuomo again avoided the issue of poverty directly, but touted the state’s accomplishments and agenda related to fighting climate change, ending cash bail, legalizing marijuana (which failed to pass during the legislative session), and investment in affordable housing.

In his State of the State address, Cuomo again did not explicitly discuss poverty, but he put forth budgetary and legislative proposals to alleviate burdens for those in or near poverty. Cuomo’s executive budget plan proposed providing more state aid to poorer schools and school districts, while moving ahead with planned funding for affordable housing and to fight homelessness, among other measures that stand to help people living in or near poverty, like cash bail reform and green economics.

In his State of the State policy book, Cuomo did include a short section on “Combating Poverty,” with two planks: one, further supporting the Empire State Poverty Reduction Initiative (ESPRI) and establishing ESPRI representation on Regional Economic Development Council workforce development committees; and two, “reduce hunger and food insecurity.” Cuomo would “establish a goal to reduce household food insecurity in New York State by 10 percent by 2024,” the policy book reads, and will do so by “directing the following actions: create a food and anti-hunger policy coordinator; simplify access to SNAP for older and disabled adults; enhanced resources and referrals in clinical settings; participate in SNAP online purchasing pilot; and expand food access in Central Brooklyn.”

Asked about the governor’s anti-poverty record in light of his comments and Heastie’s response, the governor’s office highlighted a number of programs.

“New York State is leading the fight against poverty through a holistic approach, including raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, and a $20 billion plan to combat homelessness and create or preserve more than 100,000 affordable homes and 6,000 providing supportive services,” Cuomo Press Secretary Caitlin Girouard said in a statement to Gotham Gazette.

According to the Governor’s office, Cuomo’s poverty reduction programs include 2013’s anti-hunger task force, 2015’s $25 million ESPRI to address regional pockets of poverty across the state, and the $15 per hour minimum wage program that he ushered through in 2016, which is phased in over several years and sets different wages in different regions of the state.

According to data from the “Unheard Third,” a regular opinion poll of low-income households conducted by the nonprofit Community Service Society, half of low-income hourly workers in New York City say that the recent increases in the state minimum wage is making them better off.

The percentage of New Yorkers in poverty decreased every year from 2013 to 2017, from 16 percent of New Yorkers living below the poverty line in 2013 to 14.1 percent in 2017, according to data from Talk Poverty, an organization that tracks poverty levels in every state. Since the minimum wage has passed, 247,775 fewer New Yorkers are living below the poverty line, according according to data from Talk Poverty. (The aforementioned New York State Community Action Association in its 2019 annual poverty report estimates 15% of New Yorkers living in poverty, using recent Census data from 2013-2017.)

Moving ahead, Cuomo has said he wants to continue to invest in education, but with aid directed disproportionately toward poorer K-12 schools. When the new state budget passed in April, education funding increased to $27.9 billion, with over 70% of the increased funding going to schools in poorer districts, according to the budget.

The state has increased funding for higher education, too, which has a distinct budget of $7.6 billion, by $1.6 billion, or 27 percent, since 2012 (Cuomo took office in 2011), according to data from the Governor’s office. Still, Cuomo has faced criticism related to funding for CUNY and SUNY public higher education institutions, and how his signature Excelsior Scholarship program is working.

In December of last year, Cuomo announced the Child Care Availability Task Force, a group of experts assembled to develop solutions that will improve access to affordable child care. The task force examined “access to affordable child care, the availability of child care for parents with non-traditional work hours, statutory and regulatory changes that could promote or enhance access to child care, business incentives to increase child care access, and the impact on tax credits and deductions relating to child care,” according to a press release announcing its creation.

"We want to ensure that working families are provided with the resources for safe, accessible and affordable child care. By promoting and investing in child care, we know it can improve women's participation in the workforce and narrow the gender wage gap,” said Lieutenant Governor Kathy Hochul, who is a co-chair of the Child Care Availability Task Force, in the press release. Hochul has said she expects its initial recommendations to help inform the Cuomo administration’s 2020 agenda.

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by Noah Berman, Gotham Gazette

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Report Shows Nation-Leading Extent of New York's Nonprofit Sector


council member eric ulrich food

(photo: William Alatriste/New York City Council)


New York has the largest nonprofit sector in the country, according to a new report from state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.

In 2017, New York nonprofits boasted over 1.4 million jobs and $78 billion in employee wages, both top marks across the United States, according to DiNapoli’s report released Tuesday. Between 2007 and 2017, the state added 175,000 jobs in the nonprofit sector, an increase of 14 percent. Nonprofit employment consisted of 17.8 percent of all of New York’s private sector employment in 2017. Nonprofit employment sits at about 10 percent nationwide.

“Nonprofits play an important role in every region of New York, delivering vital services to New Yorkers, from hospital care and education to legal services and environmental protection,” DiNapoli said in a statement.

In New York City, there were 662,025 nonprofit employees in 2017, also 17.8 percent of the private sector. Nonprofit employees in the city earned an average of $63,056, the highest in the state, compared to $55,572 statewide.

Yet New York City has the greatest disparity in average annual pay between nonprofit employees and the rest of the private sector, with nonprofit wages more than $36,000 below the average for other private employers. Though New York City’s high-wage finance and insurance sectors inflate the average private sector wages, nonprofit wages still fell behind by an average of $11,200 when those sectors are excluded, DiNapoli’s report says.

Since 2013, nonprofit employment has grown at a faster pace than broader private sector employment in every one of the state’s 10 regions except New York City, the report shows.

Problems with Nonprofit Contracting in New York City
This trend could be due to the rapid employment growth in New York CIty’s other sectors over the last several, but there are also problems in the city’s nonprofit sector as it deals with a dysfunctional city government procurement process. Many nonprofits fill vital city services and are paid largely through contracts with city government, but there are significant challenges in how those contracts are awarded and paid.

After a nonprofit is awarded a city contract, it is often expected to begin delivering services before the contract reaches the city comptroller’s office for approval. While the comptroller must act to approve or disapprove a contract within 30 days of receiving it, there are no such time constraints on other parts of the process, whereby city agencies often delay moving the contract toward payment.

As a result of the commonplace lack of urgency in nonprofit contracting, in Fiscal Year (FY) 2018, 80 percent of all new and renewal contracts arrived at the Comptroller’s Office after their start day had passed, according to data from Comptroller Scott Stringer’s office. 89 percent of all human services contracts, many of which are given to nonprofits, arrived late in the same period.

According to the same data, 13 percent of contracts, and nearly 20% of human services contracts, arrived at the comptroller’s office over a year after their start date.

Of the 6,440 new or renewal contracts the city comptroller’s office registered in FY2018, 80 percent were retroactive; with 40 percent more than 180 days retroactive. Some agencies, including the Department of Homeless Services and the Department of Education, submitted over 99 percent of their contracts late.

One study assessed the cost of lateness to New York City nonprofits at $774 million in 2018, up from $675 million in 2017. The financial strain of delayed payments to nonprofit workers can disproportionately affect women, who make up 85 percent of human service workers, and people of color, who make up 75 percent. The numbers are additionally troubling when combined with the state comptroller’s report showing just how large the city’s nonprofit sector is.

City Council Members Helen Rosenthal and Ben Kallos recently introduced legislation that would set time limits within which agencies would be required to complete each step of the procurement process, meant to expedite the process by which the city pays out its nonprofit contracts.

Comptroller Stringer has suggested that agencies with an oversight role in New York City’s contract review process “should be assigned a strict timeframe to complete their work, similar to the Comptroller’s 30-day time limit for contract registration.” Stringer encouraged the creation of “a public-facing tracking system that allows vendors to monitor the progress of the contract through each stage of the review process.”

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by Noah Berman, Gotham Gazette

Read more by this writer.

Charter Commission Decisions; Council Hearing on Foreclosure Program; MTA Board Meeting; & More: The Week Ahead in New York Politics, July 22


New York City Hall

New York City Hall


What to watch for this week in New York politics:

This week starts with New Yorkers recovering from an intense heat wave, during which MTA subways faltered on Friday night and there were broader power outages in neighborhoods throughout the city over the course of several days. Mayor Bill de Blasio stayed in the city this weekend due to the heat wave, instead of heading to Iowa as planned for presidential campaigning, and he spent Saturday out and about throughout the city, visiting a public pool, a beach, a senior center, and more -- the types of appearances that have been fairly rare for de Blasio throughout his 5.5 years as mayor.

The week also begins amid increased attention on de Blasio's handling of NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo, whose chokehold led to Eric Garner's death on a Staten Island street five years ago this past Wednesday. With federal authorities finally saying this past Tuesday that no civil rights charges would be brought against Pantaleo, a new round of rallies, protests, and criticism set off, much of it aimed at de Blasio for not pursuing Pantaleo's dismissal from the police force soon after Garner's July 2014 death. Both de Blasio and then-NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton quickly criticized Pantaleo's actions and noted he appeared to use a chokehold banned by the department, but they delayed any city action to await the results of a Staten Island grand jury, which returned no indictment in December 2014, and federal investigation, which stalled for years until this past week. The mayor said this past week that it was a mistake to wait.

An NYPD administrative trial of Pantaleo took place earlier this year after the Department of Justice had given the city the go-ahead, and NYPD Commissioner James O'Neill is waiting for the NYPD judge's recommendations, which will lead to a decision by O'Neill about any punishment for Pantaleo. In recent days de Blasio has guaranteed that a decision will be made in August.

As he's facing intense criticism on the Garner/Pantaleo matter, de Blasio received news this past week that he'll be on stage July 31 for the second Democratic primary debate in the presidential race. This time he's on the second of the two-night event and he'll share the stage with former Vice President Joe Biden, Senators Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, and others.

Speaking of the MTA: amid a proposed reorganization plan recently submitted by consultants as mandated under state law, the Friday night outage, Governor Andrew Cuomo's attention on fare evasion and homelessness in the subways and buses, and more, the MTA Board will have its monthly meeting this week.

It's also a busy week for the City Council, with several interesting committee hearings and a full-body stated meeting, where the Council passes bills that have moved through committee and Council members introduce new legislation. And, the 2019 New York City Charter Revision Commission appears set to this week make its final decisions on what proposals for changes to city elections and governance will go before voters in November and how they will be worded and grouped on the ballot.

There are a variety of events to be aware of this week -- see our day-by-day rundown below.

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The run of the week in detail:

Monday
At the City Council on Monday:
-At 11:30 a.m., the Committee on Small Business will meet to discuss five bills. Among them are one bill to define “microbusinesses” as businesses with between one and nine employees; another to require the Department of Small Business to assess the state of small businesses every three years; and a third “to provide small businesses with training and education related to business operations, marketing, and regulatory compliance.”
-At 12 p.m., the Committee on General Welfare will meet to discuss a resolution concerning the Administration for Children’s Services “finding that a person’s mere possession or use of marijuana does not by itself create an imminent risk of harm to a child, warranting the child’s removal.”
-At 12:30 p.m., the Committee on Transportation will meet to discuss four bills relating to school parking during the summer, illegible street signs, a new pilot program allowing pet harbors outside of commercial establishments, and pedestrian crossing signals for cyclists.
-At 1 p.m., the Committee on Oversight and Investigations and the Committee on Housing and Buildings will hold an oversight hearing on “the third party transfer system in modern day New York.” At noon at City Hall, Council Member Robert Cornegy Jr., who chairs the housing and buildings committee, “will lead a rally to address advocates, stakeholders, and the press.”
-At 3 p.m., the Committee on Civil Service and Labor will meet to discuss the resolution “Never Forget the Heroes: Permanent Authorization of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund Act,” currently in the United States Congress.

Mayor de Blasio will give a briefing on Brooklyn power outages on Monday morning.

Between 8:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. Monday, the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) will hold a series of committee meetings on buses, the Long Island Railroad, and other topics.

At 9:30 a.m. Monday, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams will attend a housing court case with Flatbush Tenant Coalition and displaced tenants from a fire-damaged apartment building. At 1 p.m., Williams will attend the City Council hearing on the Third Party Transfer Program. At 5 p.m., Williams will attend the 'Paro Nacional' Solidarity Rally in Columbus Circle. And at 7:15 p.m., Williams will speak at the Public Power Town Hall being hosted by Council Member Costa Constantinides on the proposed Con Edison rate hikes and the future of renewable energy in NYC.

At 10:30 a.m. Monday, Governor Cuomo will appear on WAMC radio's Roundtable with Alan Chartock.

At 11 a.m. Monday, Lieutenant Governor Kathy Hochul will announce the completion of restoration effort at Darwin Martin House, Frank Lloyd Wright's Martin House Complex, Buffalo.

At 3 p.m. Monday, Congressional Rep. Adriano Espaillat will host a grand opening of his new Washington Heights district office at 720 W. 181st Street. 

At 5 p.m. on Monday, City Council Member Stephen Levin will hold a press conference “to fight to preserve 227 Duffield St., also known as Abolitionist Place. Advocates are calling on the Landmarks Preservation Commission to immediately review 227 Duffield Street for landmark status and stay the demolition order.”

Mayor de Blasio will appear on NY1's Inside City Hall in the 7 and 11 p.m. hours on Monday.

Tuesday, July 23
At the City Council on Tuesday:
-At 10 a.m., the Committee on Finance will meet to discuss a resolution “approving the new designation and changes in the designation of certain organizations to receive funding in the Expense Budget.”
-At 10:30 a.m., the Committee on Parks and Recreation will meet to discuss a bill co-naming 86 thoroughfares and public places.
-At 1:30 p.m. in the Council Chambers, the City Council will hold a stated meeting at which bills that have been voted through committee are passed by the full Council and new bills are introduced. It will be preceded, as usual, by a pre-stated press conference led by Council Speaker Corey Johnson.

At 10 a.m. Tuesday, the New York City Board of Standards and Appeals will hold a public hearing on cases in all five boroughs.

At 10:30 a.m. Tuesday in Albany, the Joint Commission on Public Ethics will hold a commission meeting, discussing the search for an executive director and other business.

At 3:30 p.m. Tuesday at City Hall, Borough President Gale Brewer will host a meeting of the Manhattan Borough Board.

At 6:45 p.m. Tuesday, Riders Alliance will hold a meeting on the Bronx Bus Network Redesign. The meeting will discuss “what is in the plan, what's not in the plan, and how to keep up the momentum to win #betterbuses for the Bronx Bus Riders.”

At 7 p.m. Tuesday, the Episcopal Diocese of New York’s Task Force Against Human Trafficking will host a conversation about Bill A.8230/S.6419, which is aimed at decriminalizing sex work in New York State. The panel conversation will be followed by “a response panel of state and city legislators.”  

Wednesday, July 24
At 9 a.m. Wednesday, the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) will hold its monthly board meeting, preceded at 8:30 a.m. by a safety meeting.

At 1 p.m. Wednesday at Riverside Church, 32BJ SEIU will hold a memorial service for late leader Héctor Figueroa, who died unexpectedly on July 11. “All are welcome to mourn and celebrate Héctor's life as we move forward.”

From 5-6 p.m. Wednesday on WBAI radio, this week's Max & Murphy show will air; 99.5FM or wbai.org.

At 6 p.m. Wednesday in the City Council Chambers, the 2019 Charter Revision Commission will hold a public meeting to “consider proposals for revisions to the New York City Charter for presentation to the voters.” [Read: 2019 Charter Revision Commission Moves 20 Proposals Toward November Ballot]

Also at 6 p.m. Wednesday in Queens Borough Hall, Queens Borough President Melinda Katz will host a Jamaican Independence Day Celebration.

Thursday, July 25
At 12 p.m. Thursday in Albany, the New York State Board of Elections will hold a commissioners meeting.

At 6:30 p.m. Thursday, several politicians representing lower Manhattan will hold a housing forum on rent regulation, tenant stability, and the passing of affordable housing protections at NYU Dental. In attendance will be Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer; Congressional Rep. Carolyn Maloney; State Senators Brad Hoylman, Brian Kavanagh, and Liz Krueger; City Council Members Ben Kallos, Keith Powers, and Carlina Rivera; and Assembly Members Harvey Epstein, Deborah Glick, Dick Gottfried, Yuh-Line Niou, and Dan Quart. 

Also at 6:30 p.m. Thursday at the Gold Bar in Albany, City & State NY will host its 2019 Albany 40 Under 40 Rising Stars honoring “40 of New York's most prominent and accomplished leaders in government, business and media under the age of 40 who continue to make a positive impact on New York through their achievements, leadership abilities, philanthropic efforts and dedication to the betterment of the state.” Speakers will include State Senator Julia Salazar and advisor to Governor Cuomo Richard Azzopardi.

Friday, July 26
Mayor de Blasio may make his weekly appearance on WNYC’s The Brian Lehrer Show on Friday at 10 a.m.

***
Have events or topics for us to include in an upcoming Week Ahead in New York Politics? E-mail Gotham Gazette executive editor Ben Max any time: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (please use "For Week Ahead" as email subject).

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by Joey Fox and Ben Max
@GothamGazette

Max & Murphy Podcast: Transit Organizing & the Future of the MTA


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(photo: John McCarten/City Council)


July 17, 2019 - Max & Murphy Podcast: Transit Organizing & the Future of the MTA

john raskin wbaiJohn Raskin, founder and executive director of Riders Alliance, a transit advocacy group, joined the show to discuss his organizing work over the past seven years and the future of the MTA as he plans to depart the nonprofit after several major wins, including Fair Fares, congestion pricing, and the broader era of renewed attention on saving the subways and buses.

Listen to the conversation and let us know what you think -- we're on Twitter @TweetBenMax and @JarrettMurphy. You can listen to the show through the embedded audio below or download the episode wherever you get your podcasts, under "Max & Murphy," and listen to Max & Murphy live on Wednesdays at 5 p.m. on WBAI radio, 99.5FM or wbai.org

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by Ben Max, Gotham Gazette
     

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Campaigning for Congress, Torres Touts City Funding Secured for Development Outside Council District


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Council Member Ritchie Torres (photo: Jeff Reed/City Council)


Bronx City Council Member Ritchie Torres is touting $3 million in city funding he secured for a residential complex that falls outside the Council district he represents, but within the Congressional district where he’s seeking votes.

The money will go to Concourse Village, Inc., a nearly 1,900-unit housing cooperative located in the south Bronx, over a mile away from the border of Torres’ district. The second-term Democratic Council member is running for Congress in the primary that will be held in June of next year.

Torres sent a campaign text message announcing the “great news,” using the funding allocation he secured as a member of the City Council to advance his congressional campaign, apparently targeting voters in Concourse Village.

"This is Council Member Ritchie Torres, running to be your next Congressman,” read a text message shared with Gotham Gazette. “GREAT NEWS: In the latest NYC budget, I secured $3 MILLION for Concourse Village.” The message went on to tell the recipient not to hesitate to reach out to Torres, providing a phone number, and concluded, “You can always count on me to fight for the Bronx. - Ritchie".

The youngest member of the City Council and the first openly gay elected official from the Bronx, Torres officially announced his candidacy for Congress on Monday, though he has been exploring a run for months. He joins several other Democrats vying for the seat opened by incumbent Representative José E. Serrano, who announced in March he would not seek reelection because of health concerns related to Parkinson’s disease. Representing the district in Congress since 1990, Serrano’s current term will end at the end of next year. Torres, who has been representing the 15th Council District since 2014, is not eligible to run for reelection in 2021 because of two-term limits. (Serrano’s Congressional district also happens to be the 15th.)

Others in the race include City Council Member Ruben Diaz, Sr. and Assemblymember Michael Blake.

Taking advantage of the authority and influence of elected office to secure popular measures that can later be used as campaign fodder is commonplace in New York, where local politics is often a stepping stone to higher office. But the grey area around promoting public interest and political aspirations becomes less ambiguous when the sway of an elected office goes to benefit another district entirely, with electoral goals at play.

"How do you rationalize using campaign funds to communicate with people outside your district to tell them that you got them money blatantly for the purpose of trying to curry political favor?" said Blake, whose district includes Concourse Village.

Torres says the budget allocation for what he calls the largest concentration of cooperative housing in the South Bronx is consistent with his focus on affordable housing, especially for African-Americans. So is the political campaigning that followed.

“I have been an advocate for affordable housing not only in my district but throughout the city,” Torres told Gotham Gazette. Concourse Village “has an outsized presence in the housing stock of the South Bronx, which is keeping with my record and reputation for advocating for affordable housing.”

“I think of cooperative housing like Concourse Village as the bedrock of the African-American middle class, you know, whether it’s Co-op City in the East Bronx or Concourse Village in the South Bronx,” Torres, who is black and Latino, said. Black voters in the 15th Congressional District are expected to be an important part of the primary vote. Blake is African-American and Torres is African-American and Latino.

Concourse Village, Inc. is subsidized under the Mitchell-Lama housing program, which offers income-restricted rentals and below-market value buy-in for co-ops, a boon for affordable housing.

The neighborhoods comprising the South Bronx are home to some of the worst poverty in the country and also have some of the highest rates of rent burden in the city. In the community district that includes Concourse Village, more than half of households are rent burdened, meaning they spend more than 35 percent of income on rent, according to the Department of City Planning.

Torres, who grew up in NYCHA public housing and chaired the Committee on Public Housing during his first term, has made the living conditions of the city’s most underserved residents a signature priority.

He notes the $3 million allocation did not come from the capital funding dedicated to his Council district, but from the city-wide pool controlled by Speaker Corey Johnson. Torres told Gotham Gazette, “if it had come from the Council District 15 pot then there is cause for controversy, but there is nothing unusual about funding for Concourse Village from a city-wide pot.”

“And since I had a role in securing the funds, it’s natural for me to take credit,” he added.

Each fiscal year the City Council is given a capital budget from which Council members may apply to allocate funds, according to Jonathan Rosenberg of the Independent Budget Office. Individual members can apply for district-specific projects, and borough delegations can sponsor projects that span multiple districts. The Council speaker ultimately decides how that money is disbursed and can also allocate it to city-wide projects.

In recent years, speakers have designated an equal amount of capital funding, $5 million, to each of the 51 Council members with the remainder of the now $655 million capital budget going to a city fund. City-wide allocations are controlled by the speaker and might go toward large or expansive projects like street reconstruction, according to Rosenberg, and members are able to put in requests.

“This money was funded by the City Council Speaker at the request of Council Member Torres,” said a Council spokesperson. The spokesperson said it’s not unprecedented for members to seek funding for a project outside their district, adding that the money is from the city capital funding, not the money set aside for Torres’ Council District 15.

Torres has also secured funding for cooperative housing in his district using the money designated specifically for that purpose by the Council leadership. This year, he put roughly $1 million of the $5 million towards renovationing a Mitchell-Lama co-op, known as Dennis Lane Apartments, in the heart of District 15.

Concourse Village is located south of Torres’ district off of Morris Ave. within the borders of Council District 16, represented by Vanessa Gibson. Gibson, a Democrat, is not listed among the sponsors of the $3 million Concourse Village, Inc. allocation, despite the project falling into her district. “I actually was not even made aware of this allocation until the day of adoption,” she said in a phone interview.

“I did not have the opportunity to work with the speaker nor Ritchie on this. It was something that Ritchie had done on his own, but I am grateful for the attention Concourse Village is getting in the budget,” she said.

“I get the strategic way that Ritchie is obviously looking at the future. This was a development that came up among the priorities within the district, and I truly believe that that was the logic behind it,” she added.

But Blake called foul on that strategic approach. “It is difficult to say that you want to be a fresh voice in Congress when you are directly trying to communicate to people that you want to pay for their vote," he said.

“I’m proud of the role that I played in securing the funds. Concourse Village is one of the most important housing developments in the Bronx and in the city,” Torres said. “And it’s been a stabilizing force for communities of color, for middle-class communities of color. That’s why I felt so strongly about it.”

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by Ethan Geringer-Sameth, reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

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Queens DA Recount Begins; MTA Reorganization Report Evaluation; & More: The Week Ahead in New York Politics, July 15


New York City Hall

New York City Hall


What to watch for this week in New York politics:

This week begins with New York's labor and political communities mourning the unexpected death of 32BJ SEIU President Héctor Figueroa, who passed suddently on Thursday night at 57 years old. Figueroa was widely respected as a champion for workers' rights and his compassion, honesty, transparency, and more.

The counting in the Queens District Attorney Democratic primary recount is set to begin on Monday. Based on the counting done to this point, Queens Borough President Melinda Katz was up by 16 votes on public defender Tiffany Cabán, who has been pushing to have many affidavit ballots counted. The recount will include more than 90,000 ballots, including some that voters filled out but were not read by machine scanners for whatever reason. There remains the question of more than 100 affidavit ballots that the Board of Elections initially threw out, but the Cabán campaign has sued to reinstate. A judge decided to hold off on ruling in the matter until later in the recount process given that the manual recount was about to begin. The recount is expected to take between one and three weeks.

Also as the week begins, it is unclear if there will be much, if any, additional fallout from the blackout that hit parts of Manhattan for several hours on Saturday and how it spotlighted Mayor Bill de Blasio's out of town travel for his presidential campaign. Con Edison restored the power relatively quickly, though many peope were without air conditioning for hours on a hot summer day, some were trapped in elevators, and other hardships were endured. The mayor cut short his campaign swing through Iowa (after he spoke in Wisconsin on Friday he had a full day of events in Iowa on Saturday, with more planned for Sunday), returning home on Sunday to further examine what had gone wrong and brief the public during a press conference on Sunday afternoon.

De Blasio was also facing scrutiny for leaving town amid announced raids by federal immigration officials (ICE) that, at least through Sunday evening, appeared far less sweeping than expected. The mayor's immigrant affairs commissioner and other city officials held a press conference on Saturday to help warn New Yorkers about the raids and publicize "know your rights" materials and advice for how immigrant families should handle interactions with ICE. In both the blackout reaction and ICE preparation, City Council Speaker Corey Johnson took far more public leadership than de Blasio, provoking additional comments that Johnson is the city's de facto leader as de Blasio runs for president. Governor Andrew Cuomo also jumped into action, and raised questions about de Blasio's absence from the city.

Speaking of de Blasio's presidential bid, the mayor's first fundraising numbers for the effort are expected to be posted by law this week. It will be the first insight into how de Blasio's fundraising is going since entering the campaign a couple of months ago. Beyond the raw numbers, many will be watching for how much of de Blasio's funding is coming from those with interest in city business, and who exactly is giving to the mayor's national campaign. The fundraising numbers will in part dictate whether de Blasio makes the second primary debate, which is scheduled over two nights on July 30 and 31 in Detroit.

In the background of that campaign is also the issue of police reform, a topic de Blasio has again thrust to the forefront of his electoral efforts, but where questions remain. The NYPD administrative trial for Officer Daniel Pantaleo in the 2014 death of Eric Garner ended a couple of weeks ago, and many are waiting to see the outcome of the case -- what the judge has ruled and recommended for punishment (if anything), and how Commissioner James O'Neill, who holds final say over discipline matters in such trials, will handle the situation. The outcome will have significant implications for de Blasio's mayoralty and possibly for his presidential campaign. Wednesday is the fifth anniversary of Garner's July 17, 2014 death.

Also this week, we're watching for further discussion and developments related to the MTA, NYCHA, and the plan to close Rikers Island jails and replace some of its jail capacity with new or rehabbed facilities in the four boroughs other than Staten Island. The land-use review process for the city's plan is well underway, with the City Planning Commission holding a public hearing last week. As for the MTA: late in the day on Friday, the transit authority released "a preliminary report of its transformation plan as part of widespread reforms passed in the State Budget in April. The recommendations for this historic reorganization – the first in the MTA’s 51-year history – were made following an extensive evaluation process conducted by AlixPartners, and will prepare the agency to dramatically improve service, end project delays and cost overruns, and finally establish the modern system customers deserve." Evaluations of that plan from advocates and elected officials are expected this week.

There are a variety of events to be aware of this week -- see our day-by-day rundown below.

***Do you have events or topics for us to include in an upcoming Week Ahead in New York Politics?
e-mail Gotham Gazette editor Ben Max: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.***

The run of the week in detail:

Monday
Mayor de Blasio's lone public event scheduled for Monday is his weekly appearance on NY1's Inside City Hall with host Errol Louis, in the 7 and 11 p.m. hours.

Beginning at 9 a.m. Monday in Albany, the New York State Board of Regents will hold a meeting.

The Queens District Attorney Democratic primary recount will begin in earnest on Monday, and is expected to take at least a week, probably closer to two or more. Queens Borough President Melinda Katz holds a 16 vote lead over public defender Tiffany Cabán as ballots are set to be recounted, with some newly-counted ballots added to the mix.

On Monday at 9:30 a.m. outside the ballot review site in Middle Village, Queens, “elected officials will host a press conference prior to the start of the ballot count in the county District Attorney race. Joined by Cabán campaign attorney Jerry Goldfeder, elected officials will explain the recount process and highlight the need to count every ballot cast by eligible and legitimate Queens Democratic voters.” Along with Goldfeder, expected or possible speakers include Cabán supporters Comptroller Scott Stringer; Senators James Sanders, Jessica Ramos, and Mike Gianaris; Assemblymember Ron Kim; City Council Members Antonio Reynoso and Jimmy Van Bramer.

On Monday at 9:30 a.m. at Ground Zero in Manhattan, “Congresswoman Carolyn B. Maloney (D-NY) will join with New York Senator Chuck Schumer, Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), and 9/11 first responders and health and compensation advocates to celebrate overwhelming House passage of H.R. 1327: Never Forget the Heroes: James Zadroga, Ray Pfeifer, and Luis Alvarez Permanent Authorization of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund Act and call on the Senate and Leader McConnell to pass this bill as quickly as possible. The final vote on the bill was 402-12.”

At noon Monday, “Amazon Prime Day, a large coalition of community, immigration, and labor groups will go to Jeff Bezos’ new $80 million dollar Manhattan home at 212 Fifth Avenue to deliver more than 250,000 petitions calling on Amazon to cut ties with ICE and end abusive working conditions in its warehouses. The New York City petition delivery and protest are part of a national day of action against Amazon on Prime Day, with protests over Amazon’s ties to ICE and mistreatment of workers happening around the country Monday. These events come amid growing outrage over Amazon’s role in providing essential technological infrastructure to ICE as the Trump administration continues to threaten mass deportations and put children in cages and concentration camps. Amazon also faces mounting public pressure to improve how it treats its warehouse workers. The online retail giant is set to testify before the U.S. House Anti-Trust Committee on Tuesday.” A long list of activist groups are leading the protest.

At 5 p.m. Monday, City Council Member Chaim Deutsch and NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill will hold a street co-naming ceremony for slain police officer Leon Fox, killed on duty in 1941.

At 6:30 p.m. on Monday, Queens Borough President Melinda Katz will host a Dominican Heritage celebration at Queens Borough Hall.

Tuesday, July 16
At the City Council on Tuesday:
-At 9:30 a.m., the Subcommittee on Zoning and Franchises will meet to discuss four land use applications from Queens, Brooklyn, and Manhattan.
-At 1 p.m., the Subcommittee on Landmarks, Public Siting and Maritime Uses will meet to discuss two land use applications on landmarks in the Bronx and Manhattan.

At 8 a.m. Tuesday, the New York State Board of Regents will meet for an executive session.

At 9 a.m. Tuesday, the New York City Industrial Development Agency will hold a Board of Directors meeting. 

At 10 a.m. Tuesday, the New York City Board of Standards and Appeals will hold a public hearing relating to developments in all five boroughs.

At 6:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, City & State NY will host its 2019 Manhattan Power 100 celebrating Manhattan power players, “gathering top brass from government relations, media, business and beyond for a networking opportunity you do not want to miss.” Speakers will include Borough President Gale Brewer; former City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, now CEO of WIN; and Sheena Wright, President and CEO of United Way of New York City. 

Wednesday, July 17
At 11 a.m. Wednesday outside of Grand Central Terminal, Riders Alliance and state legislators will hold a rally to demand that the next MTA five-year capital plan include funding for subway signals, train cars, and station elevators. 

At 12 p.m. Wednesday, the New York Building Congress will host a committee meeting on energy and sustainability, featuring state Senator Kevin Parker (event is invite-only). 

At 5 p.m. Wednesday, this week’s Max & Murphy show will air on WBAI radio, 99.5FM and wbai.org, featuring Riders Alliance founder and executive director John Raskin on key transit issues facing New Yorkers and a separate discussion of how the de Blasio administration is handling manufacturing and industrial space in the city.

At 6 p.m. Wednesday, Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer is hosting a public hearing on the East Side Coastal Resiliency Project aimed at “fortifying Manhattan’s coastline between Montgomery and 25th Streets from coastal flooding while making the waterfront more accessible to the public.” The plan will be presented by the NYC Department of Design and Construction, and will be followed by an opportunity for public testimony. The event will take place at Mt. Sinai Beth Israel. 

Also at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, Reboot Democracy will host a discussion on the “development of tools that will strengthen our democratic system.”

Thursday, July 18
At the City Council on Thursday:
-At 10:30 a.m., the Subcommittee on Zoning and Franchises will meet to discuss the Kissena Center Rezoning in Queens.
-At 11 a.m., the Committee on Land Use will meet.
-At 1 p.m., the Committee on Rules, Privileges and Elections will hold an appointment hearing on Jeffrey Roth, the newly-nominated head of the Taxi & Limousine Commission.

At 10 a.m.,, the NYC Campaign Finance Board will hold a board meeting.

Friday, July 19
At 10 a.m. on Friday, Mayor Bill de Blasio may make his weekly appearance on WNYC’s The Brian Lehrer Show.

***
Have events or topics for us to include in an upcoming Week Ahead in New York Politics? E-mail Gotham Gazette executive editor Ben Max any time: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (please use "For Week Ahead" as email subject).

***
by Joey Fox and Ben Max
@GothamGazette

Max & Murphy Podcast: Queens District Attorney Primary Heads to Recount


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l-r: Tiffany Cabán (photo: @CabanForQueens); Melinda Katz (photo: Kevin P. Coughlin/Governor's Office)


July 10, 2019 - Max & Murphy Podcast: the Queens District Attorney Primary Heads to Recount

juan manuel benitezThe Queens District Attorney Democratic primary is heading into a recount, and Juan Manuel Benitez of NY1 & NY1 Noticias, who has been covering the process closely, joined the show it all down, from the absentee ballots that moved Tiffany Cabán from the primary night lead to second place behind Melinda Katz by 16 votes, to controversy over contested affidavit ballots, the potential for hundreds of new votes that ballot scanners didn't read, and political implications of how it all turns out.

Listen to the conversation and let us know what you think -- we're on Twitter @TweetBenMax and @JarrettMurphy. You can listen to the show through the embedded audio below or download the episode wherever you get your podcasts, under "Max & Murphy," and listen to Max & Murphy live on Wednesdays at 5 p.m. on WBAI radio, 99.5FM or wbai.org

***
by Ben Max, Gotham Gazette
     

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Senators Krueger & Myrie on Historic Albany Session, Senate's Relationship with Cuomo, & More


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l-r: Liz Krueger (photo: @LizKrueger) & Zellnor Myrie (photo: @zellnor4ny)


The New York State Legislature, under full Democratic control for the first time in a decade, had an exceptionally productive 2019 legislative session in Albany. Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie ushered through a broad agenda of progressive legislation, long forestalled by Republicans who had controlled the state Senate, most of which has already been signed into law by Governor Andrew Cuomo, a third-term Democrat.

Landmark rent regulations were approved, voting and elections reforms were passed, stronger reproductive health rights were codified, and environmental protections were expanded, among a far longer list of accomplishments.

But several proposals did fall by the wayside amid opposition – or at least a lack of support – from the governor and a dearth of consensus in the state Senate where progressive members mostly from New York City found their priorities at odds with more moderate, suburban members more concerned about their seats in the 2020 elections.

In a recent interview on the Max & Murphy WBAI radio show, Senator Liz Krueger, a Manhattan veteran, and Senator Zellnor Myrie, a Brooklyn freshman, assessed the legislative victories, and failures, and the role that Governor Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio played in this historic Albany year. They also looked ahead to next year’s session, which will take place in an election year when every member of the Legislature will be on the ballot and their Senate Democratic majority will look to extend its newfound dominance and partnership with the long-time Assembly Democratic majority.

“I’m actually still kvelling about how much we were able to get done this year, things that I had been telling my district I was trying to accomplish for the entire 17 years,” said Krueger, who represents Manhattan’s East Side.

Krueger, now the chair of the Senate’s finance committee, highlighted the expansion of voter rights and election reforms, the passage of the Reproductive Health Act, the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, and legislation related to public transportation and consumer rights.

“[W]hen you’re hitting grand slams every week, you forget about the singles and the doubles that loaded the bases,” said Myrie, after first echoing that there were a vast number of major Democratic accomplishments that moved in January and thereafter, “and so there are things that we did that didn’t get as much play, but really are important for people in our districts.”

He cited $20 million in funding restored for home foreclosure prevention, $500 million in proposed Medicaid cuts that were avoided, and a $618 million increase in funding for public schools.

But both legislators pointed to agenda items, some prominent and some less so, that they couldn’t get across the finish line.

Most notable among them was the legalization, regulation, and taxation of adult-use marijuana, a thorny issue that Krueger has pursued for years but divided the Senate Democratic conference and tested Cuomo’s commitment to a policy he recently came around to express support for but did not appear especially eager to risk political capital on.

“Well, marijuana, even though people talk about as if it’s one issue, is actually a whole series of complicated issues,” she said, noting the difficulty in getting a majority of votes in the Senate. After failing to push the proposal through in the state budget as Cuomo had sought, some Democrats looked to move it in the post-budget session. Cuomo had insisted it was one of his top priorities but refused to put weight behind it when push came to shove and without his involvement in negotiations, Krueger said, the proposal was doomed to fail.

“We really wanted the governor back at the table with us, because big, complicated issues really do make sense to be three-way, and he was not there...and messaging very strangely as to whether he supported or didn’t support it, so we just couldn’t bring it over the line at the end,” she said. Krueger acknowledged what Cuomo had said publicly -- that she did not have the votes in the Senate, but she said she needed the governor to help get those final votes.

Among the issues, she insisted, was that state agencies essential to implementing the new law needed to explain to skeptical legislators how they would execute portions and in order for that to happen, Cuomo needed to be more present. “You can’t simply legislate and believe that all of the agencies are immediately going to change course to do what the law says unless you have an executive behind it,” she said.

In the end, the Legislature compromised to decriminalize possession of small quantities of marijuana and expunge records for hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers convicted on low-level marijuana offenses.

Myrie noted additionally that marijuana legalization is far from universally popular, even in New York City districts like his, and though he expressed confidence the Legislature would pass it next year, there’s work to be done to get constituents on board.

“Now, I am willing to make the case to my community why this is important for us, not just the decriminalization, but the economic opportunity that it would provide for folks,” he said. “I think that we do have a lot of support there, but the assumption that even in the districts where their representatives were fully in support, that the support in the district was monolithic, I think is a presumption that we need to fight back against. And so, I’m ready to double down and do the work on education; I’ve been talking to the folks in my community about why this is important and good for us.”

Controlling both legislative chambers, Democrats were able this year to deal with Cuomo on stronger footing, rather than begrudgingly participate in the triangulation that he employed with Republicans and the Senate Independent Democratic Conference, a breakaway faction of Senate Democrats, in past legislative sessions. And the governor was not shy about making his displeasure known at having lost some degree of power in Albany, while constantly taunting or questioning the new Senate Democratic majority, which he blamed for the demise of the deal he helped broker to bring a massive Amazon campus to Queens and which appeared to make him uncomfortable in dealing with an all-Demcoratic Legislature.

During and after the session, the governor variously described a successful partnership with the legislative leaders while at other times attacking them for failing to achieve promises they had made over the years. Kreuger and Myrie were careful when asked about the tense relationship between Cuomo and the Senate majority. “I decided long ago that I was never going to try to explain Andrew Cuomo or his behavior on any given day,” Krueger said of the reasons behind Cuomo’s harsh attitude towards the Senate.

“I suppose I could define it as, he was testing us, and he was playing bad cop, and our job was to show, ‘Hey, bad cop, we’re ready to govern, and we have our act together. We’re going to be there, and you’re going to come along because you know that we are in the right place, and in a place you want to be,’” she continued. “Now, why he doesn’t take the approach of ‘Oh, you’re a new majority, you’re trying to do a number of things that are my agenda issues, let’s work together and get to that place together,’ I sincerely don’t know. I think you’d have to ask him.”

Myrie is among the newly-elected crop of young progressives who deposed members of the IDC. “If you have spent the entirety of your governorship in main control, in trying to get some progressive wins in a Republican-controlled Senate, I think you’re going to have to adjust to the new dynamic of now, you have a very powerful leader in Andrea Stewart-Cousins, with a conference full of people who ran in sort of an unorthodox way,” he said of Cuomo, after also saying he is hesitant to try to explain Cuomo’s motives and behavior.

Mayor de Blasio, meanwhile, was not a significant factor in legislative negotiations this year, perhaps to everyone’s benefit, Krueger indicated. “He wasn’t that present,” Krueger said when asked if de Blasio, who is now running for president, had been active, and active enough, in Albany. “Whether he should have been is a separate question because, not as a disrespect to him so please don’t misunderstand, but the general sense in Albany is, if the mayor really wanted something, that would cause a problem.”

She acknowledged that that owes both to the governor’s long-standing dislike for the mayor as well as perhaps some similar sentiments among lawmakers. “So it would be better if people made clear what the hopes of the city were, without the mayor being the banner front-pusher on whatever those issues are,” she added. De Blasio did do well with his state agenda this year overall.

The marijuana legalization fight highlighted one of the central conflicts for the state Senate majority – balancing the priorities of Democrats in safely blue districts with those of their colleagues who replaced Republicans in more moderate parts of the state where they may be vulnerable in next year’s election.

Myrie commended Stewart-Cousins for doing “a really good job of trying to balance these two bases.” And he recognized that some members from suburban districts faced difficult votes “that they’re going to have to explain going back to 2020.” That includes, for instance, the Senate approving driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants, which is far more popular in Central Brooklyn than in Long Island -- on which Democrats from the Island voted no.

“I think that we are going to have to balance our approach here, because we’re going to have such a high turnout in 2020, I think that the bases are going to be motivated,” he said. “I think the same folks that allowed for these senators to take these seats, they’re going to be coming out, and I think there are going to be more people coming out, excited about challenging the man in the White House right now.”

Krueger added of the Democrats who control 40 of 63 Senate seats: “We recognize it’s a big state, really different areas, really different issues. We want to make sure we grow our majority in 2020, we don’t want to put anyone at risk, and frankly, the more we grow our majority the more diversified our needs will be, but also the more opportunity we’ll have to allow people to not take votes that they think aren’t the right answers for their constituents while still being able to move the people’s business for the entire state forward.”

And there’s indeed much business left to accomplish. Myrie wants to codify the restoration of voting rights for parolees, which Cuomo did through an executive order; and he wants to pass a “good cause” eviction bill that was excluded from the rent regulations this year.

There are also lingering issues around a prevailing wage bill for construction projects receiving public funds and a push to ban solitary confinement in state prisons, among others that have varying level of support from legislators and Cuomo.

“I think that we have an opportunity to further discuss what didn’t get done, take it up at the beginning of the next session,” Myrie said, “and by the time that we get to January of 2020, there will be 50 more things that people have come up with that we have not gotten done, that we have not paid enough attention to, and I look forward to taking that on in full.”

Krueger wants to push the state on releasing more than half-a-billion dollars in pledged funds for the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) and for a thorough reevaluation of the state’s economic development strategy to ensure taxpayer funds are spent responsibly. “So those are some of the places I’ll be starting again the minute we get back up to Albany, or before,” she said.

[LISTEN: Max & Murphy Podcast: Senators Krueger & Myrie on the Year in Albany]

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by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

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Cyan Hunte contributed to this story.

Decades of Voter Registration Data Shows Tall Task for New York GOP's New Chair


party registr

(photo: @NewYorkGOP)


The number of registered Republican voters in New York has been in decline, but that’s not news to the New York Republican State Committee, or its new leader. Neither is the fact that Republicans haven’t won a statewide election in New York since 2002, and in 2018 the party lost its last stronghold of state-level power when the state Senate was flipped by Democrats.

As the New York GOP held its annual convention in Albany on July 1 and ushered in a new state party chair, Nicholas Langworthy of Erie County, Langworthy and other Republican leaders pledged “the comeback starts now.”

One plank of Langworthy’s plan, which he outlined as he sought to win the state chair position from Ed Cox over the past several months, was to increase Republican voter registration across the state, in part by redeveloping a party infrastructure in all 62 counties.

But the task in front of Langworthy is especially large, brought into stark relief not only by the statewide drought and the fact that Democrats didn’t simply take the state Senate, but control 40 of the chamber’s 63 seats, but also by the realities of the voter registration numbers in New York.

As of February 1, among total registered voters in New York, the state Board of Elections shows that there were 6,396,223 registered Democrats and 2,826,284 registered Republicans, along with 738,747 voters registered with any of the other parties in the state (Green, Working Families, Conservative, Independence, etc.), plus 2,734,508 “unaffiliated” voters who are registered to vote, but not with a political party. (All numbers reflect both active and inactive registered voters.)

A look at how the state got to this point, starting about 20 years ago when Republican Governor George Pataki was beginning his second of three terms, shows the task in front of Langworthy and other New York Republican leaders. Pataki is the last Republican to win statewide in New York, winning his third term in 2002 -- but even then, Republicans were well behind Democrats in terms of voter enrollment in New York.

2 republicans vs democratsSince 1999, the percentage of Republicans among New York’s registered voters has declined from 29 percent to 22 percent. Meanwhile, the percentage of registered Democrats has increased from 47 percent to 50 percent.

According to state Board of Elections numbers from April 1999, Democrats outnumbered Republicans 4,999,541 to 3,078,574.

At that point, Republicans outnumbered unaffiliated voters by nearly 1 million; 3,078,574 to 2,138,100.

Twenty years later, as of February 1 of this year, nearly as many voters are registered as unaffiliated as there are Republicans; with 2,734,508 unaffiliateds and 2,826,284 Republicans.

And if combined with the 485,037 voters registered with the Independence Party – a fringe party often mistaken by those registering to vote who want to be “independent” or unaffiliated with a party – unaffiliated voters outnumbered Republicans in New York as of February.

Over the last two decades, New York state’s voter rolls have increased by over 2 million, even as the state’s population has only increased by around 600,000. But despite this influx of new voters, the Republican Party has lost a net 250,000 members, while Democrats have gained 1,396,682 voters and there are 596,408 more unaffiliateds.

1 partisan share

Langworthy, the committee’s incoming chair, said enrollment is the party’s greatest challenge. Stopping the decline and shrinking the gap with Democrats is one of his top goals as chair.

“We are going to go across this country and find the best practices on voter registration and bring them to this state of New York,” he said during a GOP news conference in Albany on May 21, when it was formally announced he would be the next chair of the party. “It has to be done. We're going to close this gap. It's something that's going to take everyone's help to do.”

Langworthy didn’t specify what practices the party would use to close the gap, but he did mention the importance of reaching out to different groups of voters, especially communities of color, as a means for increasing membership.

“I will personally along with members of our party, staff, and membership will go out there and recruit,” Langworthy told Gotham Gazette following a June 18 news conference calling on the resignation of Mayor Bill de Blasio due to his focus on his presidential campaign. “We're going to do heavy outreach in Latino organizations and Asian-American organizations and African-American organizations, bringing all of our coalition groups to let them know that they are welcome in the doors of the Republican Party.”

3 republicans vs independents

He added that his larger mission is for Republicans to start winning again, namely through the 2022 gubernatorial election, when Governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, plans to seek a fourth term. 

“My mission and goal is to get us to the point where a Republican occupies the second floor of the state Capitol,” Langworthy said at the May news conference, referring to the location of the gubernatorial offices. “And that will be our mission critical to put the infrastructure in place across this state in order to win a statewide election and put the Republican Party back in the win column there for the first time since 2002.”

Langworthy’s predecessor, Cox, announced in a press release on May 20 that he would join President Donald Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign as part of the finance team, and congratulated Langworthy on becoming the next chair after the two had a hard-fought battle for county leader votes.

Cox echoed Langworthy’s vision for Republicans to become the winning party and said Trump can make that happen.

“I think this president can bring in those Democratic voters and realign the party system where the Republican Party will be the majority party in the United States,” Cox said at the May press conference.

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by Caitlyn Rosen & Joey Fox

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by Joey Fox, Gotham Gazette

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by Caitlyn Rosen, Gotham Gazette
     

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Cautious Optimism Among Reformers After State Public Campaign Financing Commission Named


fairelectionsny

(photo: @FairElectionsNY)


As New Yorkers geared up for the holiday weekend last week, state government leaders announced appointments to a new commission with the lofty task of establishing a statewide public campaign financing system.

The body is seen by many as an opportunity to reduce the influence of wealthy donors on state politics by creating a small-dollar matching program that would amplify the impact of contributions made by average residents, in the vein of what exists in New York City.

Established during budget negotiations earlier this year, the Public Campaign Finance Commission is mandated to create a voluntary system for statewide and state legislative candidates to receive public matching funds in exchange for meeting certain fundraising and spending criteria.

The commission is responsible for issuing a report with recommendations by December 1 and holding a public hearing on its findings. The recommendations become binding if lawmakers, who will be out of session, don’t act to modify them within 20 days of their release.

On July 3, the governor and legislative leaders revealed their appointees to the nine-member commission, which set off fanfare and a measure of caution from advocates, three months after it was created by law.

“The law charges the commissioners named today with a historic task: design a public financing system that incentivizes candidates to seek more small donations. If they do it right, their system they create will give New Yorkers a stronger voice in Albany,” wrote Larry Norden, director of the Election Reform Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, in a statement after the announcement. “If the commissioners do it wrong, their system will fail, and Albany’s status quo will remain.”

Doing it “right,” according to Norden and the Brennan Center, as well as many other advocates, means having a large public match in both primary and general elections, low qualifying thresholds, and low contribution limits for individuals, all of which they believe encourages candidates to rely on many small contributions rather than a few large ones.

A Brennan Center analysis released in December found that 100 individual donors contributed more to state candidates than all of the roughly 137,000 small donors combined in the 2018 election cycle. Reformers view this outsized impact as a threat to democratic processes.

“New York’s electoral system is in desperate need of reform. Dark money routinely pours in to control public opinion, misinform voters, and benefit special interests,” Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, a Democrat, wrote in a statement accompanying appointments to the commission, which also cited related accomplishments from earlier this year, like “closing the LLC loophole” and confidence that the commission will design a system to make New York elections “fairer.”

The creation of a commission to study and establish public campaign financing in New York State is part of a concerted effort by reformers, both inside and outside government, to limit the role of money in politics. That push took on new meaning after the U.S. Supreme Court authorized virtually unlimited political spending under the First Amendment in the 2010 Citizens United decision, which unleashed the Super PAC era.

The effort gained new steam this year when Democrats took control of the state Senate and thus both houses of the state Legislature under a Democratic governor who has publicly supported state-level campaign financing for years.

When the commission was first announced in April, advocates called for appointments to be independent of the powers that choose them and representative of the state’s diverse constituencies, upstate and downstate.

A majority of the commission’s appointments come from Albany’s Democratic leadership with Governor Andrew Cuomo, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, and Stewart-Cousins each choosing two commissioners, with another appointed jointly by all three. The remaining two commissioners are appointed by minority leaders of the legislative houses.

Last Wednesday, Cuomo appointed Mylan Denerstein, his former counsel who is now a partner at Gibson, Dunn and Cutcher, and state Democratic Party Chair Jay Jacobs of Long Island; Heastie appointed Rosanna Vargas, a former elections commissioner in the city Board of Elections, and Crystal Rodriguez, former chief diversity officer for the City of Buffalo, who is now chief of staff in the Buffalo State College president’s office; and Stewart-Cousins appointed DeNora Getachew, executive director of Generation Citizen in New York City and former legislative counsel to Brennan Center’s Democracy Program, and Westchester County Attorney John Nonna. The at-large, joint appointment by the three Democratic leaders went to veteran election lawyer Henry Berger. 

Senate Minority Leader John Flanagan chose David Previtte, former chief counsel to the previous Republican state Senate majority, to serve on the commission; and Assembly Minority Leader Brian Kolb appointed Kimberly Galvin, his former chief of staff and current co-director of the state Board of Elections’ Campaign Finance Compliance Unit.

In a statement and at a press conference Monday, newly-elected state Republican Party Chair Nick Langworthy of Erie County criticized the governor for using one of two direct appointments to place Jacobs on the commission. “This is an egregious conflict of interest that is another attempt to legalize rigged elections and elect Democrats, not root out corruption,” Langworthy said. Neither Republican minority leader selected Langworthy to join the commission, though Langworthy reportedly said that if asked he would not have accepted.

The legislation establishing the commission authorizes the state to disperse up to $100 million annually in public funds. Public matching funds programs encourage candidates to seek small contributions by matching each contribution below a certain amount. In order to receive public funds, candidates must voluntarily adhere to limits on political fundraising and campaign spending, and are generally subject to stricter reporting requirements and auditing.

Municipalities around the country have implemented public matching programs with varying matches and limits. New York City has one of the oldest and most generous programs in the country, with the city matching small contributions at eight to one (in November, voters chose to expand the city’s program via ballot referendum). In March, the Democratic-led U.S. House of Representatives passed the For the People Act, an omnibus election reform bill that included a federal small-dollar public financing system. The bill has been introduced in the Republican-controlled Senate, but has not advanced.

All eyes are now on New York’s commission, which advocates hope will take advantage of the opportunity to implement real, long-sought reforms.

“If the Commission listens to the experts who have looked at this issue over the decades, they will implement a robust matching system that offers at least six dollars in matching funds for every small dollar raised in primaries and general elections, lowers contribution limits and restores New Yorkers faith in democracy,” the Fair Elections for New York coalition, made up of dozens of advocacy groups and labor unions, wrote in a statement after last week’s announcement. “If the Commission does not listen to these experts, the Legislature must step in and use its power to ‘amend or abrogate’ the Commission’s recommendations.”

Eleven states have some form of public financing, according to the National Conference of State Legislators website, but none as big as New York. In a blog post published on its website on July 3, the Brennan Center wrote that creating a small donor public financing system in New York “would mark the most significant campaign finance reform in the United States since the 2010 Citizens United ruling.”

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by Ethan Geringer-Sameth, reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

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