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“We are not the enemy” An open letter to Gov. Cuomo from 7 NYS Teachers of the Year
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noble profession. We have pursued intellectual ings and wept at student funerals. Education is our life. rigor. We have fed students who were hungry. We have celebrated at student wedd For this, you have made us the enemy. This is personal. and the tax cap, which have caused layoffs and draconian Under your leadership, schools have endured the Gap Elimination Adjustment particularly for our neediest students. budget cuts across the state. Classes are larger and support services are fewer, able implementation would have started the new standards We have also endured a difficult rollout of the Common Core Standards. A reason new standards were rushed into all grades at once, without any in kindergarten and advanced those standards one grade at a time. Instead, the time to see if they were developmentally appropriate or useful. they had a chance to develop the skills necessary to be Then our students were given new tests — of questionable validity — before ls — and therefore all teachers — are in drastic need of reform. successful. These flawed tests reinforced the false narrative that all public schoo strategy for improvement. In our many years of teaching, we’ve never found that denigrating others is a useful The state has focused on test scores for years and this approach Now you are doubling down on test scores as a proxy for teacher effectiveness. ioned the validity of tests were given gag orders. Parents in has proven to be fraught with peril. Testing scandals erupted. Teachers who quest gap between rich and poor. wealthier districts hired test-prep tutors, which exacerbated the achievement will want to teach our neediest students? Will you assume Beyond those concerns, if the state places this much emphasis on test scores who r districts are ineffective, simply based on test scores? that the teachers in wealthier districts are highly effective and the teachers in poore we conclude that our teachers were ineffective? We understand Most of us have failed an exam or two along life’s path. From those results, can as 50 percent of a teacher’s evaluation does not meet this criterion. the value of collecting data, but it must be interpreted wisely. Using test scores increased scrutiny of teachers won’t work because they Your other proposals are also unlikely to succeed. Merit pay, charter schools and le. Rather, the problem is that students with an achievement fundamentally misdiagnose the problem. It’s not that teachers or schools are horrib a safety gap, to name a few. If we truly want to improve gap also have an income gap, a health-care gap, a housing gap, a family gap and educational outcomes, these are the issues that must be addressed. see for yourself. Most teachers, administrators and school Much is right in public education today. We invite you to visit our classrooms and plished great things. Let’s stop the narrative of systemic failure. board members are doing quality work. Our students and alumni have accom addressing the concentration of poverty in our cities. Let’s talk Instead, let’s talk about ways to help the kids who are struggling. Let’s talk about connected to their schools. Let’s talk about fostering collaboration about creating a culture of family so that our weakest students feel emotionally er, not competing for test scores, that we will advance our cause. togeth ng worki by is it ls; officia d electe and rs istrato admin rs, teache en betwe they would work. None of these suggestions are easily measured with a number two pencil, but
ear Governor Cuomo: We are teachers. We have given our hearts and souls to this
On behalf of teachers across the state we say, these are our kids, we love
them, and this is personal.
; Katie Ferguson, 2012; Steve Bongiovi, 2006; Liz Day, 2005; Ashley Dreher, 2014 n, 2011 Marguerite Izzo, 2007; Rich Ognibene, 2008; Jeff Penesto
nysut.org/AllKidsNeed
FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK
CONTENTS March 23, 2015
Michael Gareth Johnson Executive Editor
A
CITY
22.......
NYCLASS in the classroom By Sarina Trangle
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Key projects…assessing design-build… financing Sunnyside Yards…Q&As with Patrick Foye, Ydanis Rodriguez, Richard Hanna, Jerrold Nadler, Joseph Robach and Joan McDonald…and Nicole Gelinas on the inevitability of congestion pricing
Cross with Christie over the N.J.-Exxon deal By Bob Hennelly
14.......
The WFP pushes back on a special prosecutor’s findings By Seth Barron
16.......
18.......
38.......
STATE
BUFFALO
Kill those zombies!
@CIT YANDSTATENY
cit yandstateny.com
Mapping Bronx affordable housing
40.......
SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT: NYC TOP LOBBYISTS
54.......
BACK & FORTH
By Bruce Fisher
CIT YANDSTATENY.COM
BUILDING BRONX By Kate Pastor
Cuomo’s Cuba By Jon Lentz
SPOTLIGHT: TRANSPORTATION INFRASTRUCTURE
Cover: Illustration by Guillaume Federighi
A Q&A with author Nelson A. Denis
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city & state — March 23, 2015
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sk any New Yorker about his or her commute and you will get a novel. I could have ripped off 2,000 words about my daily fight through the packed No. 7 train to the crowded 4, 5 and 6 platform at Grand Central, followed by the painfully slow slog to the Wall Street stop. I am relatively new to New York City, though. I spent most of my adult life commuting in a car, sitting in traffic jams and dealing with bad drivers and the never-ending searches for parking. No matter where you live, the ability to get around is vitally important. But all those roads, bridges, subways, trains—they all cost money, which is something government increasingly has less of. So, it has become a monumental task to pay for just the renovations and basic improvements to keep the system going, let alone preparing for the future. In this issue we look at some of the biggest transportation infrastructure projects across New York, scrutinize some of the major bills and development proposals being debated and confront the elephant in the room—how to pay for it all. Columnist Nicole Gelinas articulates in detail the inevitability of congestion pricing for New York City as politicians continue to dance around the issue. Albany Reporter Ashley Hupfl explores whether the lapsed design-build law saves money—such as on the new Tappan Zee Bridge project, which supporters cite as a prime example. And chances are you haven’t heard the term “value capture financing,” but it may be a major part of future planning for transportation projects. Staff Reporter Sarina Trangle has an in-depth explainer on the financing scheme in her piece exploring the precedent a Sunnyside Yards development could set for infrastructure developments. This issue also features some great reporting on the politics surrounding Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s upcoming trip to Cuba. Senior Correspondent Jon Lentz reports from the island nation, asking Cubans what they are looking for in new trade deals with the U.S. Back in New York, Editor-at-Large Gerson Borrero tracks a resolution some Assembly members were seeking to get passed opening the state’s ports to Cuban trade, which has hit a snag. Our issue also features some strong reporting from contributor Bob Hennelly on how the Exxon deal that New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie recently struck is playing with New York City lawmakers— which is definitely worth a read.
Letters to the
Editor
In the March 9 magazine’s cover story, City & State’s Jon Lentz reported on the inconsistencies in New York City’s property tax system, including the widely varying effective property tax rates from one neighborhood to the next.
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City & State highlights a most glaring inequity in New York City’s real property tax system. The most glaring issues involves property tax assessments. Something remains really wrong when a system perpetuates inequities such as a co-ops along the perimeter of Central Park paying less—based on effective tax rates—than a typical homeowner. And as City & State highlighted, the inequity extends to certain properties in other neighborhoods, including a home in Park Slope. For more than three decades I have followed, commented and proposed reforms to New York City’s real property tax system. I have been published many times on this topic dating back to law school. New York City implemented its current system of real property taxation to prevent an unfair increase on middle class, modest- and low-income homeowners threatened by the Hellerstein decision a generation ago. The same formula that protected those folks of more modest means evolved to provide an unintended enormous windfall to the wealthiest, serving up tens of thousands of dollars saved annually for those at the very top. When I first proposed a classified system in a 1979 article published in Hofstra Law School’s Conscience, I anticipated exemptions and circuit breakers to keep down taxes for those in modest circumstances. As I wrote then, these “devices would allow the City to increase its tax rate to
better capture value appreciations on owners of high-values residences.” Over the years, I shared solutions to fund the needed tax reforms for homeowners, co-op and condo owners and renters. The STAR program’s data supports my calculus. Readers can view many of my reports, statements and op-eds on this topics at StrategicPublicPolicy.com. My reform proposal identifies where to impose equity based on a property’s use and occupancy; it identifies substantial revenue ($5 billion); and it identifies how to employ this revenue to address inequities. Most agree we need to keep housing affordable in this city. Property tax reform goes a long way to ensuring modest housing that predominates in Classes 1 and 2 remains or returns to affordability. Property tax reform helps give New York City small businesses a break. —Corey Bearak, government and public affairs counselor While real estate tax reform is an important issue and must be addressed, it is a very complicated matter. What seems fair mathematically may bring about significant hardships for long-term residents, who have declining or fixed incomes but are asset rich based on home values. What seems to be fair can cause great hardship and dislocation. This is a subject that should be approached with great sensitivity and thoughtfulness. The mayor and speaker should be applauded for slowing down the process. —Howard Hecht (via cityandstateny.com) In a special section on education, City & State’s Sarina Trangle reported on the public’s lack of access into the meetings of education planning groups called School Leadership Teams in New York City. The city is wrong on at least three levels: School Leadership Teams have more than advisory powers, as re-affirmed by commissioner decisions and state law; they are also public bodies, according to the legal definition of that term, and thus subject to open meetings law; and any meeting in a school must be open to the public, according to state law. —Leonie Haimson, founder and executive director, Class Size Matters (via cityandstateny.com)
61 Broadway, Suite 2235 New York, NY 10006 Editorial (212) 894-5417 General (646) 517-2740 Advertising (212) 894-5422 info@cityandstateny.com CITY AND STATE, LLC Chairman Steve Farbman President/CEO Tom Allon tallon@cityandstateny.com
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EDITORIAL Executive Editor Michael Johnson mjohnson@cityandstateny.com Senior Correspondent Jon Lentz jlentz@cityandstateny.com Web Editor/Reporter Wilder Fleming wfleming@cityandstateny.com Albany Reporter Ashley Hupfl ahupfl@cityandstateny.com Staff Reporter Sarina Trangle strangle@cityandstateny.com Editor-at-Large Gerson Borrero gborrero@cityandstateny.com Columnists Alexis Grenell, Nicole Gelinas, Michael Benjamin, Seth Barron, Susan Arbetter
PRODUCTION Art Director Guillaume Federighi gfederighi@cityandstateny.com Graphic Designer Michelle Yang myang@cityandstateny.com Marketing Graphic Designer Charles Flores, cflores@cityandstateny.com Web Manager Lydia Eck, leck@cityandstateny.com
To have your letter to the editor considered for publication, leave a comment at www.cityandstateny.com, tweet us @CityAndStateNY, email editor@cityandstateny.com or write to 61 Broadway, Suite 2235, New York, NY 10006. Letters may be edited for clarity or length.
Illustrator Danilo Agutoli City & State is published twice monthly. Copyright ©2015, City and State NY, LLC
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BREAKFAST WITH BILL DE BLASIO On March 5 at the Pierre Hotel in Manhattan, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio addressed members of the Association for a Better New York and distinguished guests. The mayor outlined his vision for future growth and development in the city, focusing on making it more affordable to live and to raise the income of all workers.
Former Mayor David Dinkins (right)
“That’s why—now that I’ve talked about how the City of New York will do our part to tackle our inequality crisis —I want to call on you, the business leaders gathered in this room, to do your part. I need you to take responsibility for providing the great people of this city with the opportunities, the wages and the chances for advancement that they need and deserve.” – Bill de Blasio
PHOTOS COURTESY OF ABNY
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“ABNY understands—as do I— that rising inequality isn’t just a problem for those of modest means, not just a threat to those barely hanging on to their place in the middle class. You and I understand that inequality is a crisis that impacts all of us—including those who have enjoyed great personal success.” – Bill de Blasio
NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton speaking with former Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott. cit yandstateny.com
NYSNA: Caring for ALL New Yorkers
Here in New York City and throughout our state, nurses are uniting to improve care for our patients. We’re working together to end healthcare inequality and to raise standards so that every New Yorker has access to quality care. Through our union, the New York State Nurses Association, we’re creating a better future for nurses and our patients:
Æ Safe RN Staffing. Having enough nurses at the bedside is key to safe patient care.
In our union contracts and in the legislature, we’re working to ensure that every patient has access to the care of a nurse whenever they need it.
Æ Community Voices. We believe that our communities should have a voice in decisions that
impact their access to care. Healthcare decisions should be based on community needs, not on the bottom line. That’s why we’re advocating to strengthen community voices in care.
Æ Quality Care for ALL. Every patient deserves equal access to quality care regardless of
income, borough, or insurance coverage. We’re working with fellow healthcare unions, patients, community leaders, and elected allies to stop the devastating tide of hospital cuts and closures in underserved communities.
www.nysna.org
nynurses
@nynurses
BY THE NUMBERS METROPOLITAN TRANSPORTATION AUTHORITY
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he most daunting number for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is 15 billion—or the number of dollars that are needed to close the gap of its next five-year capital plan. Check out some other key numbers at the MTA. (And be sure to read Nicole Gelinas’ story on the city’s transportation and transit needs on page 36.) MTA REVENUE (2015)
8%
Farebox Revenue REVENUES AND EXPENSES The MTA’s 2015 adopted budget accounts for $14.62 billion in revenues, with farebox revenue ($5.94 billion) and dedicated taxes ($5.15 billion) making up the largest shares. The MTA’s funds cover a variety of expenses (payroll the highest, at $4.74 billion) across a number of agencies (with the most going to New York City Transit, at $7.44 billion).
Dedicated Taxes Toll Revenue
35%
40%
State & Local Subsidies Other
5%
12%
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Invest in CUNY. Invest in New York. The CITy UnIversITy of new york (CUny) is facing a crisis. Years of disinvestment are threatening the quality of a CUNY education, and tuition keeps going up. The State has a $5 billion settlement windfall and a projected surplus, but Albany’s budget plan for next year does little to support CUNY.
A record number of students are turning to CUNY for a chance at a better life.
CUNY’s faculty and professional staff are struggling
to make ends meet, after almost five years without a contract.
city & state — March 23, 2015
CUNY needs increased support from Albany this year.
Tell Your State Legislators:
Now Is the Time to Invest In CUNY. Paid for by the Professional Staff Congress, the union of CUNY faculty and professional staff. www.psc-cuny.org
cit yandstateny.com
MTA EXPENSES (2015)
MTA EXPENSES, BY AGENCY (2015)
0% 17%
17% 33%
1%
4% 4%
51%
4%
23% 5% 2%
9%
8% 10%
11%
Payroll
Other Labor
New York City Transit/SIR
MTA General Reserve
Pensions
Adjustments
MTA Bus Company
Metro-North Railroad
Debt Service
Health and Welfare
Debt Service
MTA Bridges and Tunnels
Overtime
Non-Labor
Long Island Rail Road
Adjustments
HQ/FMTAC
New Yorkers say Cuomo’s education plan is wrong
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A recent poll finds that New Yorkers, by overwhelming percentages, believe Gov. Cuomo is failing the state’s students and their schools. By a 63-28 margin, New Yorkers disapprove of the way Cuomo is handling public education, according to the respected Quinnipiac University poll. By a 55-28 margin, respondents said they trusted teachers’ unions more than the governor to improve public education. And, by 71-25, New Yorkers soundly condemn using state test scores for making high-stakes decisions about teachers.
www.nysut.org CIT YANDSTATENY.COM
CITY & STATE — March 23, 2015
Governor Cuomo: Listen to teachers. Listen to New Yorkers.
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Charters Open Doors! New York City’s public charter schools are open to all children, regardless of special learning needs or English proficiency. Spread the word: Charters open doors for success in college and career! At CharterNYC.org, parents can learn more about charter schools in English, Spanish, Mandarin, Arabic, French and Creole. Apply by April 1!
NYCLASS IN THE CLASSROOM IS NYC HORSING AROUND WITH HUMANE EDUCATION? By SARINA TRANGLE
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¡Las Charter Abren Puertas! A mi hija le va muy bien en su escuela pública charter. Ella ahora habla inglés con fluidez y me explica todos los días lo que escribe en clase. Nuestra escuela charter le ha abierto las puertas a un futuro muy brillante. Visite
city & state — March 23, 2015
www.lascharterabrenpuertas.org para aprender más y presentar su solicitud antes del 1 de abril.
he animal rights lobby has turned its attention away from horse carriages and begun targeting those higher up on the food chain. New Yorkers for Clean Livable and Safe Streets (NYCLASS), which inserted itself into the 2013 mayoral primary and has been lobbying heavily for a horse carriage ban ever since, has launched a campaign to ensure humane education is taught in city schools, as required under a state law that the group contends is unenforced. New York City Councilman Daniel Dromm, who chairs the Education Committee, and 32 of his colleagues, along with NYCLASS’s executive director and fellow animal advocacy leaders, sent a letter to schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña this month requesting to meet with her to discuss the city’s compliance with the law. The Department of Education does enable principals to weave humane education components into lessons, agency spokesman Harry Hartfield told City & State. “It’s critical that we teach our students to be stewards of their community,” Hartfield said in a statement. “We empower principals to integrate lessons into their curriculum that remind students to be conscious and respectful of world around them.” But Dromm, who was a public school teacher for 25 years, said educators often overlook the requirement because they have other demands on their time and few are even aware of it. According to the state law, instruction must be provided in statecontrolled or state-supported
elementary schools “in the humane treatment and protection of animals and the importance of the part they play in the economy of nature as well as the necessity of controlling the proliferation of animals which are subsequently abandoned and caused to suffer extreme cruelty.” The law also states that school districts shall not be entitled to public school money if the requirement is not met, and funding could technically be withdrawn for non-compliance, according to the New York City Bar Committee on Animal Law. However, enforcement of the measure would be unlikely to impact any upstate or rural agricultural programs that teach hunting, according to Kimberly Spanjol, who is involved with a social-emotional service learning and violence prevention program called Youth Animal Protectors. Dromm said he would ask about the department’s current financial commitment and training practices for humane animal treatment education at upcoming budget hearings and then assess whether more resources are needed. “There is definitely a need for a focusing on or re-emphasis on the requirements,” he said. “Children form their attitudes toward animals early on in life and I think that educating them about the correct and humane treatment of animals is really important.” Passed in 1947, the law was amended in the 1970s to mandate instruction on the importance of spaying and neutering animals to prevent the proliferation and suffering of cit yandstateny.com
with HEART, the United Federation of Teacher’s Humane Education Committee or others to help train teachers at little to no cost. A spokesperson for NYCLASS said the group has lobbied every single member of the City Council on this topic. Records show NYCLASS spent $3,204 on lobbying in January and February for the implementation of the humane education law, as well as on legislation requiring an animal shelter in every borough, a bill banning horse carriages, a resolution to establish meatless Mondays and a tax credit for those who adopt pets from shelters. Feldman said humane education is a priority for NYCLASS moving forward. “Getting two thirds of the City Council just took a couple of weeks. That wasn’t hard at all,” Feldman said. “Over the past 10 years you’ve seen a huge shift in the way that people are looking at animals.”
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unwanted pets, according to Meena Alagappan, executive director of Humane Education Advocates Reaching Teachers (HEART), which offers related education programs and professional development. Alagappan and other animal rights advocates argue that education is needed in order to foster empathy toward creatures, the environment and one another—and they note that research has linked childhood animal abuse to interpersonal violence later in life. “If you are teaching students about ‘Old Yeller,’ the book about the dog, it’s an opportunity to talk about the proper care of homeless dogs and cats,” said NYCLASS Executive Director Allie Feldman. “Or if you’re teaching about proper nutrition, you can talk about factory farms and why they are inhumane.” Animal advocates say the Education Department could use free humane education resource guides and partner
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ROMAN SAMOKHIN / SHUTTERSTOCK
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CROSS WITH CHRISTIE NYC LAWMAKERS, ENVIRONMENTALISTS BLAST CONTROVERSIAL NEW JERSEY-EXXON DEAL By BOB HENNELLY
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ANDREW F. KAZMIERSKI / SHUTTERSTOCK.COM
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ew Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s controversial deal with Exxon Mobil to settle an $8.9 billion natural resources damage claim for less than 3 cents on the dollar is now coming under additional scrutiny from New York City elected officials. “I am absolutely concerned,” Mayor Bill de Blasio told reporters. “The Bayonne and Linden sites where Exxon operated are situated on the Newark Bay estuary complex, which both New York City and New Jersey share.” Officials in both states worry the settlement is not nearly enough to clean up contamination to wetlands caused by toxic runoff from the energy giant’s facilities. “I don’t know the details of this settlement, but if the dollar figure is so low that the work can’t be done I am very concerned about what that means for the people of New York,” de Blasio said. “We will certainly look into it further and decide what course of action we want to take.” Officials are also concerned about the precedent set by the Christie administration, which last year diverted proceeds from these kinds of damage claims into the state’s general fund and away from environmental restoration projects. “Any diversion of the settlement money to any other purpose other than ecological restoration is a betrayal of the public trust,” said New York City Public Advocate Letitia James. For its part, the Christie administration has hailed the $225 million settlement as the largest of its kind in state history, and one that comes on top of the oil company’s ongoing work to remediate the two sites as required by a 1991 administrative consent order. According to a statement released by acting Attorney General John Hoffman, the deal with Exxon also “preserves the state’s claims against
A view of Port Newark in Bayonne, N.J. Exxon Mobil” for natural resource damages “to the Arthur Kill and Newark Bay and other water bodies impacted by Exxon Mobil’s operations.” But New Jersey’s Democratcontrolled Senate passed a resolution this month calling for a judge to reject the settlement, with one lawmaker commenting that the deal “stinks.” Starting next month, the public will have 30 days to comment on the agreement. Afterward the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection will review the comments and file its own report with the judge presiding over the Exxon litigation. The settlement could also be challenged in the state courts. “These waterways don’t belong to a private company and they need to be restored to their intended uses and to the state that they would have existed in but for the actions of the company,”
said Mitchell Bernard, head of litigation for the Natural Resources Defense Council. Bernard says his organization is working with New Jersey environmentalists and reviewing their legal options to intervene in the case. New Jersey initiated legal action against Exxon Mobile in 2004. In 2008 the foundation was set for what promised to be a substantial damages award after a Union County judge ruled that the company was indeed liable for the contamination in Bayonne and Linden. “It was estimated in 1977 that at least some seven million gallons of oil ranging in thickness from 7 to 17 feet are contained in the soil and groundwater underlying a portion of the former Bayonne site alone,” wrote former Judge Ross R. Anzaldi, who contended that the level of hydrocarbon contamination was so high that one creek was covered with “a gelatinous, oily emulsion overlying grey
silt.” Unlike the storied Hudson River, which both states also share, the Newark Bay has historically been a kind of orphan whose rich history as a productive fishery and source of clams and oysters has largely been forgotten. “There are many waterways in the region like the Newark Bay that get little or no public attention,” said Suzanne Mattei, former Region 2 director for the New York Department of Environmental Conservation. “But the Hudson River had Pete Seeger and the kind of charisma that’s inspired the Hudson River Foundation, the Hudson River Estuary, the Hudson River Park Conservancy and of course the Clearwater.” Environmentalists say it is hard for the public to realize what they have lost to pollution because there’s no one living who remembers just how productive the estuary once was. An cit yandstateny.com
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cleaning up the water quality,” said Debbie Mans of NY/NJ Baykeeper. “Now it is time to clean up these hot spots.” Environmentalists say restoring the salt water marshes and fresh water wetlands will accelerate the rebound of the fishery while shoring up the coastlines in the face of rising sea levels and extreme weather events like Hurricane Sandy. “These wetlands give us the resiliency that can’t be engineered,”
Kennedy said. But advocates say more is needed. Angela Cristini, a professor at Ramapo College and a leading expert on the region’s tidal marshes, said she is optimistic that if both states pulled together, the fishery that once fed so many could be re-established. “Unfortunately we don’t have a group of folks from both states talking about this,” Cristini said. “We need a bi-state committee that looks at how best we can do this restoration.”
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candidate for Grimm’s vacated House seat. “Staten Island shares as much of the waterway as New Jersey does. Any agreement with Exxon must ensure that the Arthur Kill and the surrounding affected areas are fully remediated and steps are taken to protect this from happening again.” The controversy comes as experts say the estuary’s water quality has continued to improve thanks to billions of dollars in sewer plant construction throughout the region. “We are
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CITY & STATE — March 23, 2015
1885 report by the New York State Commissioner of Fisheries found that there were still 400 boats harvesting oysters as part of an industry that supported 635 families. That year 765 million oysters were harvested and close to 200,000 bushels of oysters were exported to Europe. “There was a time in the 18th century when New Yorkers ate more oyster meat then every other kind of meat combined,” said Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an environmental attorney and president of Waterkeeper Alliance. “Keep in mind that just a gallon of spilled oil kills all the fish in a million gallons of water.” Kennedy, who says the toxic legacy of the Exxon Mobil sites goes back decades, is sharply critical of the Christie administration’s settlement. “This is an active theft,” he said. “We own these wetlands. It’s like saying to a gang that robs a bank that they just have to pay back 3 cents of every dollar they stole.” New York City Councilman I. Daneek Miller, who represents southeast Queens, says he knows first-hand the challenge of going up against Exxon Mobil. New York City was once locked in a decade-long court battle with the Houston-based company over allegations that its methyl tertiarybutyl ether, or MTBE, contaminated several drinking water wells in South Jamaica, Queens. In 2009 a jury awarded the city $104 million from Exxon Mobil, but the company fought the judgment all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which rejected their appeal in April of 2014. Miller says he’s troubled by the actions of the Christie administration. “The corporation has the resources and they should be held accountable and I think this body has a responsibility to insure that they,” Miller said. “They’ve made a lot of money throughout the globe.” Miller’s fellow councilman, Vincent Gentile, is also concerned. “It does sound like a very small settlement,” said Gentile, the Democratic candidate for the Brooklyn and Staten Island House seat vacated by former Rep. Michael Grimm. “It is a concern to me and we are looking into it.” It is a point upon which Gentile’s congressional opponent can also agree. “As the son of a longshoreman, I understand how important it is to protect our natural resources,” said Daniel Donovan, Staten Island’s district attorney and the Republican
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COUNCIL WATCH:
FUNNY MONEY
SETH BARRON
WHY IS THE WFP ATTACKING A SPECIAL PROSECUTOR IN THE DATA AND FIELD SERVICES CASE?
WILLIAM ALATRISTE FOR THE NEW YORK CITY COUNCIL
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city & state — March January23, 20,2015 2015
New York City Councilwoman Debi Rose speaks with Councilman Brad Lander.
T
he most hardcore elements of the New York City Council’s progressive cadre trooped out to Staten Island on March 11 to bang on a railing and denounce the “McCarthyism” behind the “political persecution” of former Working Families Party/Data and Field Services staffer Rachel Goodman, currently chief of staff to powerful Councilman Brad Lander. Goodman was identified in an unsealed indictment as a conspirator to defraud the Campaign Finance Board in the two 2009 campaigns to elect Debi Rose as Richmond County’s sole
Democrat on the Council. Progressive rhetoric was unrestrained at the St. George conference, which stands as an overblown sequel to a November presser at City Hall, where Council members were incredulous that someone as insignificant as a Staten Island special prosecutor could dare to question the probity of the Working Families Party’s saintly electoral operations. Indeed, may a cat look at a king? Councilman Jumaane Williams called Roger Adler, the special prosecutor in the case, “a willful imbecile,”
and repeatedly shouted “Investigate Adler!” Williams echoed the November comments of his colleague Corey Johnson, who ranted, “Roger Adler is a failed civil court judge who has never been a prosecutor and is trying to make a name for himself. It is disgusting he is doing this to one of the finest elected officials we have in this body. Shame on you, Roger Adler, go do something else with your life. Go after real criminals, not Debi Rose.” Roger Adler, incidentally, is not a “failed civil court judge”; he ran for civil court judge in a 2008 election cit yandstateny.com
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the WFP’s campaign machine? She was offered immunity from prosecution, so she isn’t protecting herself. Indeed, one supposes the corruption could go to the very top. After all, it was Bill de Blasio’s 2009 campaign for public advocate that had the deepest involvement with DFS—paying the entity some $200,000 for work, which might or might not bear scrutiny. There is also the odd 2006 payment of $33,000 to Bill de Blasio personally, for consulting services by the mysterious “Progressive America Foundation,” another WFP entity operating out of 2 Nevins St. The payment was approved by the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board, but exactly what de Blasio did for $33,000 was never explained. Another important element pointing to, though not proving, campaign fraud is the existence of “common vendors,” who can easily coordinate resources for their clients. Consider the fantastic rise of the influential BerlinRosen consulting firm, whose eponymous principal Jonathan Rosen was a top ACORN official, and which helped engineer many of the WFP’s 2009 electoral successes, including the re-election of future Council Speaker Melissa MarkViverito. BerlinRosen took in close to $4 million in the 2013 municipal cycle alone, and is generally known as a primary lever of political power in the de Blasio era. BerlinRosen raised eyebrows during the 2014 state legislative campaign cycle when de Blasio raised money for upstate state Senate campaigns, which then spent most of the funds with BerlinRosen. This circulation of money, while not illegal, nevertheless provokes serious questions about the role of the consultant/lobbyist in the political scene today. The WFP’s leadership got ahead of the unsealing of the indictment of Rachel Goodman by finding a friendly reporter at The New York Times to write a softball piece about “freakish” special prosecutors, who are somehow allowed to terrorize hapless and innocent campaign workers in a “Twilight Zone” effort at political persecution. Jim Dwyer’s article echoes closely the message of Brad Lander and his WFP acolytes: that Rachel Goodman and Debi Rose’s campaign workers committed clerical errors that are common to many campaigns, and do not rise to the level of criminality. Indeed, Lander and other WFP allies have made the case that since no other prosecutors have chosen to pursue criminal charges in the 2009 DFS campaigns, then that is proof that Roger Adler must be politically motivated. But what if this argument is turned inside out? Perhaps the problem is that all the other prosecutorial entities are already compromised. Maybe what we need is more, not fewer, Roger Adlers.
Seth Barron (@NYCCouncilWatch on Twitter) runs City Council Watch, an investigative website focusing on local New York City politics.
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By Michael Cavanaugh New York’s six nuclear power plants provide tremendous economic benefits to the state, including thousands of skilled contractor jobs when they undergo temporary shutdowns for maintenance and refuelings. In March, Indian Point began a planned shutdown at one of its two operating reactors, Unit 3. After 18 months of nearly continuous 24/7 power production, the plant needs maintenance work and refueling. Fortunately, a shutdown in the world of nuclear power plants does not mean workers are sent home or laid off; it means more workers are brought in to perform the various upgrades required during this time. This has resulted in over 1,000 contract workers being hired, nearly doubling Indian Point’s workforce. These are not low-paying temp jobs either. The plant is paying $30 million alone in salaries for the skilled craft workers. Business owners and retailers in Westchester have reported a significant increase in economic activity from this workforce. That is in addition to the everyday economic benefits that Westchester and surrounding counties realize from Indian Point. According to a study by the Business Council of Westchester, Indian Point is responsible for 3,300 jobs and $200 million in annual wages in the county alone. The overall annual statewide economic impact of the plant is $1 billion. New York’s other nuclear power plants provide similar economic benefits. And, like all of these plants, Indian Point has long provided my union brothers and sisters with high-paying jobs that allow us to support our families, buy homes, and patronize area businesses.
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Despite the fact that Indian Point continually provides safe, clean, and reliable power to the region along with jobs and economic stability, there are continued calls from powerful voices to close the plant. This would be a major mistake, economically and environmentally, as Indian Point’s nuclear power results in zero carbon emissions. Furthermore, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has granted Indian Point its highest safety rating for the past five years. If my union brothers and sisters had any doubts about the plant’s complete and total safety, we would not work there, nor live close to the plant. Indian Point, and New York’s other nuclear power plants, provide non-pollution emitting power, many jobs, and 30 percent of the state’s electricity which is critical for economic prosperity and growth. It’s the reason why we should all support the facility’s continued operation. Michael Cavanaugh is Vice President of the New York City District Council of Carpenters. The Carpenters Union is a member of New York Affordable Reliable Electricity Alliance. SPECIAL SPONSORED SECTION
The New York Affordable Reliable Electricity Alliance (New York AREA) is a diverse group of business, labor, environmental, and community leaders working together for clean, low-cost and reliable electricity solutions that foster prosperity and jobs for the Empire State.
WWW. A R E A - A L L I A N C E . O R G
city & state — March January23, 20,2015 2015
and lost. He has, however, been practicing law since 1971, was president of the Brooklyn Bar Association, worked in the Brooklyn D.A.’s office, and was three times appointed a special prosecutor, by Elizabeth Holtzman and Charles Hynes. He was counsel to the state Senate Investigations Committee, and was praised by Democratic state Sen. Craig Johnson as “a brilliant attorney and extremely fair minded.” Accusations of racism have been levied against Adler by Council Members Dominic Richards and Laurie Cumbo, and Debi Rose herself claimed that “justice is elusive in Richmond County.” Brad Lander, speaking in November, explained patiently that he used Data and Field Services in 2009, and that their services were strictly aboveboard. “There is nothing here that merits criminal prosecution … it’s appalling,” Lander said. Anyone paying the remotest attention to city elections in 2009 was aware that Rose’s campaigns were swamped with irregularities. Tens of thousands of dollars in payments to Data and Field Services (the WFP’s for-profit subsidiary) in February of 2009 appear to have covered work done by the Party itself, which is a direct violation of the law. Perhaps each of the 23 counts against the Rose campaign falls into a grey area, but for the WFP leadership to pretend that investigation of Debi Rose has come out of nowhere and is purely malevolent or a politicized fishing expedition, is absurd. Indeed, the WFP has built itself into a force in municipal politics by playing as close to the edge of the law as possible in regard to channeling resources between its union backers and the candidates the party chooses to endorse. WFP staffers are routinely shuttled between various campaigns, and coordination of resources is common. Data and Field Services was formed as a means of providing accounting cover for the distribution of WFP operatives between different campaigns. The fact that DFS even existed at all should make people think twice about what the WFP was up to. How many other political parties form “for-profit” subsidiaries, and let them operate from the same offices? As recently as February 2014 the Working Families Party was forced to sign a consent agreement with the state of Connecticut regarding irregular campaign practices of precisely the sort under investigation in Staten Island. For instance, “To the extent that WFCC (Working Families Campaign Committee) or WFP shares staff with any other entity, the WFCC or WFP as applicable shall maintain timesheets detailing the specific hours committee staff spent in performance of the work for WFCC or WFP….” The backstory of the WFP’s Connecticut dealings is not detailed, but one can reverse-engineer the narrative easily enough, given even the slightest familiarity with how the party has worked in New York. The volume of the shouting on the part of WFP politicians and union supporters is enough to raise alarm bells for even mild skeptics—likely wondering if there is something worthy of investigation being covered up. If the case on Staten Island is so vaporous, then why did top de Blasio aide Emma Wolfe refuse to talk to the special prosecutor about her role managing
Nuclear Power Plant Refuelings Boost New York’s Economy
STATE
CUOMO’S CUBA
AHEAD OF THE GOVERNOR’S VISIT, CUBANS HOPE EXPANDED TRADE EASES SHORTAGES By JON LENTZ
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hen Gov. Andrew
Cubans going about their business in Havana earlier this month.
“We are hoping that the negotiations between Cuba and the U.S. government go well,” Orestes Leon, an 83-year-old who makes balloon animals in Havana’s Parque Central, told City & State. “There are many needs here, a lot of hunger, and the food is very bad.” Another local only gave his name as Roberto, saying that he feared that he or his family would get into trouble with the police if he was seen speaking with an American reporter. Roberto, 33, bemoaned the lack of food, clothing and other products in his country and complained that the economy lags behind other countries. “The Cuban people need the change,” he said. “In Cuba, it is not possible to get anything, unlike in other parts of the world. In Cuba, the people only eat chicken and pork. Every shop has nothing. The people work and work, and they get nothing.”
Yet despite the economic challenges, other Cubans staunchly defend the leadership of Fidel Castro and his brother Raul, who took over in 2006. A university student named Carlos, who also declined to give his last name, said that his government makes it “easy” for people, thanks to free healthcare and other services. By contrast, the United States has “the most terrorists in the world,” Carlos claimed. “I think the improving relations with the United States will be good for us,” Carlos added. “We have the right to live in peace with them. We need them to respect our government.”
Senior Correspondent Jon Lentz traveled to Cuba earlier this month to interview residents about the normalizing of relations with the U.S. ahead of Cuomo’s trade mission.
JON LENTZ
city & state — March 23, 2015
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Cuomo visits Cuba on a trade mission next month, he will see a country crippled by the U.S. trade embargo and a population optimistic that their plight will be eased by improved relations with their powerful neighbor to the north. The signs of shortage in the island nation are hard to miss. Many buildings in Havana, Cuba’s capital, are literally crumbling. Taxi drivers convey passengers along the city’s pothole-ridden streets in 1950s Fords, Buicks and Chevrolets. Outside the city center and in rural areas, many Cuban travelers clamber onto crowded old trucks or simply try to hitch rides. Even for those who receive remittances from American relatives or have landed a lucrative tourism gig, there is not much to buy. Large stores that appear to have changed little in decades have a limited assortment of products and lots of empty shelves. On one Havana street, a long line of Cubans lingered outside a state-run telecommunications storefront on one side, while on the other, a crowd of locals waited to get their rations of eggs and other staples. The state provides universal healthcare and education, but Cubans say that their paltry wages still make it hard to get by. So when President Barack Obama made a surprise announcement in December that he would move toward normalizing relations and expanding trade with the Communist country, Cubans cheered the news. New trade missions, such as Cuomo’s, are bolstering those hopes—even if questions about New York’s governor drew only blank stares from a number of Cubans.
A Cuban woman gets a ration of eggs in Old Havana.
cit yandstateny.com
NOT SO FAST, JOSE! RESOLUTION TO OPEN STATE PORTS FOR TRADE WITH CUBA DELAYED By GERSON BORRERO challenges to moving the resolution forward. “At no time were we told that we would have to have our resolution go to committee,” Rivera said. City & State has reached out to Coyne but has yet to receive a response.
REPUBLICAN OPPOSITION
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ssemblyman José Rivera—sounding completely surprised—told City & State that Brian Coyne, director of legislative operations for the counsel to the Office of the Assembly Majority Leader, indicated that a resolution calling on the governor to open New York ports to trade with the Republic of Cuba would not be introduced this past week as previously scheduled. According to Rivera, who is the resolution’s main sponsor, Coyne told him it was a policy-oriented measure and that it must go to the Committee on Corporations. Rivera said neither he nor any member of his staff had been warned about these potential
This month City & State learned of an exchange that took place in the Assembly Chamber between Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis, a Staten Island Republican of Cuban and Greek descent, and Rivera, a Bronx Democrat who was born in Puerto Rico. Rivera said Malliotakis told him that the resolution was a tontería (something silly or foolish) and that she would be coming out against it. City & State wrote to Malliotakis to confirm what Rivera had shared. In a written response, she said, “I disagree with resolution and will say so on floor. They should put forth a resolution calling on Cuba to improve human rights and fair pay for its people instead.” Rivera then told us that after the original exchange, Malliotakis promised him, “I’m going to get that resolution pulled.” Stay tuned!
STATE
Eliminate Hidden & Regressive Electricity Taxes By Richard Thomas Electricity bills are lengthy and complicated and do not follow a uniform format; however, one thing is consistent across the entire Empire State; that is, electricity taxes are zapping all ratepayers to the tune of $1.6 billion annually. This translates to $75 every year for every man, woman, and child in our state. And for those on limited or fixed incomes, electricity taxes are much like electricity itself – invisible but jolting. In a recent report, New York AREA revealed how expensive, hidden, opaque, and otherwise undisclosed costs are borne by New York energy consumers. The staggering, yet conservative figures show that policy makers can provide the economy a much needed boost by cutting regressive and hidden electricity taxes to benefit all of New York. The U.S. Energy Information Administration found that New Yorkers pay the third highest electricity prices in the nation, 58 percent above the national average. Meanwhile, the cost to generate electricity has fallen by approximately 30 percent over the past five years, and yet utility bills remain high. Why? Transmission charges increased roughly 55 percent, but electricity taxes in New York State skyrocketed by 136 percent since 2008. These onerous and arcane fees hide in plain sight, driving a wedge between producers and consumers of electricity, amounting to 25 percent of the typical utility bill. The below table summarizes the state of electricity taxes: Item Est. Annual Amount Gross Receipts Tax – New York State $162,733,769 New York City Utility Tax $405,000,000 18-a Assessment $208,666,667 System Benefit Charge $ 98,800,000 Renewable Portfolio Standard $243,900,000 Energy Efficiency Portfolio Standard $372,400,000 RGGI $112,000,000 Total: $1,603,500,436 Increased transparency on electric bills and state expenditures is urgently needed.
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The notorious 18-a assessment is an illustration of an electricity tax out of control. It was meant to sunset in 2014, but New York State gave it a new lease on life. The Gross Receipts Tax provides Albany with two bites at the apple by taxing utilities on both net income and 2 percent of gross receipts from residential distribution. To reduce the shock, the following steps should be taken immediately: • The Gross Receipts Tax should be cut by at least 50 percent this year and repealed next year. • The 18-a assessment should be permanently capped at a rate not to exceed 0.33 percent. • The Public Service Commission should disclose the taxpayer subsidies that have financed and are financing various energy projects to ensure affordability as well as to maintain a level regulatory playing field. The bottom line is Albany should warm up to the idea of eliminating, or reducing, many of these taxes to give all New Yorkers a break, especially after a long and brutal winter. Richard Thomas is the Executive Director of New York Affordable Reliable Electricity Alliance (New York AREA). Founded in 2003, New York AREA is a diverse group of more than 150 business, labor, and community groups whose mission and purpose is to ensure that the New York metropolitan area has an ample and reliable electricity supply, and economic prosperity for years to come.
New York AREA’s membership includes some of the state’s most vital business, labor and community organizations including the New York State AFL-CIO, Business Council of New York State, Partnership for New York City, New York Building Congress, National Federation of Independent Business and many more.
WWW. A R E A - A L L I A N C E . O R G cit yandstateny.com
city & state — March 23, 2015
SPECIAL SPONSORED SECTION
BUFFALO
KILL THOSE ZOMBIES!
NEW HOME CONSTRUCTION LAGS BEHIND IN BUFFALO By BRUCE FISHER from THE PUBLIC
APRIL 28, 2015 • 3:30PM - 6:30PM - TASTE PENTHOUSE 45 BEAVER STREET, ALBANY, NY 12207
BRIEF:
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City & State convenes leaders in government, business, advocacy and the media to discuss some of the biggest issues and opportunities in New York. By focusing our first discussion on affordable housing, we can also highlight the economic development and jobs aspect of the housing crisis. Our second discussion will touch on the need for a better understanding of the unique New York and Canada bilateral relationship covering everything from energy, to transportation and more. The final panel will look to pull elements from the first two discussions and assess the current state of New York’s infrastructure.
PROGRAMMING
3:30PM
Registration and Networking
4:00PM
Opening Remarks and TBD Keynote
4:15PM
PANEL: Affordable Housing and Opportunity Darryl Towns, Commissioner and CEO, New York State Homes and Community Renewal
5:00PM
BACK & FORTH: Albany and Canada: Working Together
CITY & STATE — March 23, 2015
5:30PM
PANEL: Assessing NY’s Infrastructure Howard Zemsky, President & CEO of Empire State Development and Commissioner of the New York State Department of Economic Development*
For more information or sponsorship opportunities, please contact Jasmin Freeman at jfreeman@cityandstateny.com or call 646.442.1662
L
ike a catchy new tune hummed by somebody old, the urban geographers and academic economists look a bit silly as they amuse themselves by using references to brain-eating, undead, staggering cannibals when they write about broken Rust Belt towns. Even the smarter-than-thou professors who describe Buffalo as a zombie city appreciate that within its bounds are functioning neighborhoods, even thriving urban villages. Successful cities are clusters of villages, with agoras, athenaeums, amphitheaters, gymnasiums, museums and those other instrumentalities of urban life, our very words for which indicate their continuity with how ancient Athens worked. To the annoyance of mayors from Byron Brown to Rahm Emanuel to Bill de Blasio, peer-reviewed academic research keeps finding the same data, the same patterns that we report here. Every mayor wants to tell the tale of uplift, renaissance, resurgence and success. Rahm Emmanuel, now fighting for his political life, reportedly despises the description of his Chicago as “one-third San Francisco, two-thirds Detroit.” But nobody in any mayoral office wants to read the numbers that we read for the Buffalo-Niagara area, especially the ones about new home construction. Data aggregated by the U.S. Census, and generously shared with us by the good people at the University at Buffalo’s Regional Institute, show the pattern: of the 59,915 permits issued for new singlefamily homes constructed in the
Buffalo-Niagara Falls metro area between 1980 and 2011, only 1,901 happened in Buffalo—home of the largest concentration of abandoned properties in the region. Over the same three decades, almost 8,500 new single-family homes were built in Amherst, around 6,185 in Lancaster, in Clarence 5,011 new builds, in Hamburg 4,785, in Orchard Park 3,156, in Grand Island 2,556, West Seneca 2,150, Cheektowaga 1,764 and Elma 1,293. In Niagara County, ditto: within the city limits of Niagara Falls, which is also afflicted with abandoned properties, there were only 219 new single-family houses built in the 31-year period, but out in the far-flung suburbs and exurbs of Niagara County (which, like Erie County, continues to lose population), the hammers sang: 3,187 new-builds in Wheatfield, the town of Lockport 2,346, Lewiston adding 1,083, and Timothy McVeigh’s hometown Pendleton, just across Tonawanda Creek from Amherst, adding 1,033.
T
GORY WORDS
he fad of movie-fantasy horror imagery in scholarship really got going in 2012, when Silverman, Yin, and Patterson published a paper, “Dawn of the Dead City: An Exploratory Analysis of Vacant Addresses in Buffalo, NY 2008-2010,” in the Urban Affairs Journal. Since then the papers with zombie references keep a-comin’. Expert trend-spotter Richard Florida CIT YANDSTATENY.COM
BUFFALO DAVID TORKE
ISSUE BRIEF: An aging home in the East Side of Buffalo where new home production is vastly outpaced by the surrounding suburbs.
On April 30th, City & State is publishing its first ever Queens Special Issue, focusing on the landscape of Queens politics and featuring industry spotlights specific to the borough.
FEATURES INCLUDE:
cit yandstateny.com
the fastest-declining Rust Belt cities with the age of their housing stock. Here’s his table of the 10 fastestshrinking cities in the U.S.: 1. St. Louis, Mo. (63% decline, 77% built pre-1960) 2. Detroit, Mich. (61% decline, 81% built pre-1960) 3. Youngstown, Ohio (61% decline, 77% built pre-1960) 4. Cleveland, Ohio (57% decline, 79% built pre-1960) 5. Gary, Ind. (55% decline, 63% built pre-1960) 6. Buffalo, N.Y. (55% decline, 84% built pre-1960) 7. Pittsburgh, Pa. (55% decline, 75% built pre-1960) 8. Niagara Falls, N.Y. (51% decline, 84% built pre-1960) 9. Flint, Mich. (48% decline, 70% built pre-1960) 10. Scranton, Pa. (47% decline, 76% built pre-1960) Dedicated urbanists know, of course, that it’s not that simple. Pittsburgh has a truly thriving centercity area, where the new normal is rehabbing and renaissancing 1920sera housing, because there’s been a robust, well-funded, well-led preservation movement there at the very same time that there was a robust, well-funded, well-led
• Back and Forth with Queens Borough President, Melinda Katz • Top 10 Queens Political Hangouts • Views of Queens, featuring insights on the intersection of Queens culture and New York politics from some of the borough’s most influential players and residents
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QUEENS-SPECIFIC INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHTS ON:
• Transportation/Infrastructure: City & State highlights upcoming projects that will define Queens, and New York City as a whole, for years to come. • Economic Development: With the ascendancy of neighborhoods like Long Island City and Astoria, City & State shines a light on Queens’ multi-dimensional economic present and future. • Cultural Institutions: Queens has a plethora of internationallyrenowned museums, libraries, and educational centers that are integral to the borough’s policies and policymakers.
EXPANDED DISTRIBUTION:
• City & State will partner with Queens-based organizations to enhance print distribution and increase magazine drops in prime Queens locations. The Queens Special Issue will premier at City & State’s On Queens Cocktail Event on Thursday, April 30th at Penthouse 808 in Long Island City from 6:30 – 9:00pm. The event will feature Borough President Melinda Katz.*
For more information on pricing and content, please contact
Aholt@CityandStateNY.com or call 212.894.5422
city & state — March 23, 2015
got into the act in a blog in 2012. Georgette Phillips did a paper in the Rutgers Journal of Law and Public Policy in 2014, “Zombie cities: urban form and population loss,” which she previewed as a Wharton School working paper the year before. Journalists generally miss the story’s complexity, as do planners and others who remain willfully innocent of the devastating legal framework that keeps old cities locked within what David Rusk calls “little boxes,” i.e., the obsolete but mainly indestructible municipal boundaries that population, trade and industry leapfrogged decades ago, but that continue to shape the sprawl dynamic today. What’s good about these academic papers is that they help clear the fog of PR. And they’re just a teensy bit more readable, too. But the story of how happy, resurgent, renaissancing Buffalo got to need renaissancing takes a bit of digging. (To renaissance: a brand-new transitive verb. I renaissance, you renaissance, s/he, we, they renaissance!) Doomsayers (not here, folks!) say that cities like Buffalo, with old housing stock, are going to have a very, very hard time getting renaissanced—which would be a laughable assertion in anyplace but America. A smart blogger from Detroit links
BUFFALO
economic revitalization movement there, happily congruent with a built environment that put three universities, many museums, the medical center, and diverse housing opportunities within walking distance to downtown offices and, very nearby, the places where the Steelers, the Pirates, and the Penguins play. Pittsburgh made its luck, and the lesson for Buffalo is to study up.
Senator Jeff Klein
I 20
Joan McDonald, NYS Department of Transportation
ADVERTISE WITH CITY & STATE TO:
Senator Dean Skellos
Commisioner Ken Adams
city & state — March 23, 2015
Reach elected officials Educate NY’s most engaged leaders Raise awareness and shape legislation
For advertising information, please contact Andrew Holt at 212.894.5422 or AHolt@CityandStateNY.com
LEGACIES OF QUALITY, AND OF WRECKAGE
n the 1920s, when a huge portion of the central City of Buffalo’s housing stock was built, palaces and hovels alike, foursquares and clapboard-clad frame two-flats and the lovely upstate New York two- and three-story brick commercial strips (think Saratoga, the 500 block of Main Street, Canandaigua, East Aurora) were built in clusters near one another. They were everything that New Urbanists love: walkable, multimodal, diverse, adjacent. Buffalo in artist Alexander Levy’s heyday, between 1909 when he arrived here and the onset of the Depression after October 1929, was indeed a latter-day Athens, with many new mansions, thriving village shopping-districts, a robust city center, and, like Athens, with a tiny elite and masses of disempowered, fungible, barely native, largely unskilled workers who were nevertheless able to thrive here because, well, early-stage industrial capitalism was happening. Before industries like automobiles and banking and heavy metals and food processing became oligarchical, there were lots of firms in Buffalo hiring lots of extra workers, and all those people jammed themselves together into a landscape of just over 40 square miles, next to a port that was incomprehensibly huge. We see that epoch’s shattered remains in the zombie parts of town, and still live in astounding comfort in the prior-to-the-current-renaissance renaissanced parts of town—but like the port, there are parts we cannot see anymore. Producing war materiel for both World Wars I and II, Buffalo became America’s leading airplane manufacturer—but that’s gone, utterly. Gone also: the dozens of institutions that thrived because of
the relentless economic exploitation of women. A story awaiting a dissertation or at least an academic paper is how decades of the wage-less labor of thousands of women enriched this largely Catholic city, as masses of nuns, under a small directorate of similarly poor priests, worked for room and board operating the schools and hospitals that socialized and maintained all those workers in the brand-new 1920s built environment. Buffalo became a city of zombie neighborhoods after its industrial economy’s collapse, a slow-motion process, to be sure, which rapidly accelerated thanks to Nixon’s tricks with the currency and the U.S. Supreme Court in the early 1970s. Communist and mob thugs had pushed Bell Aircraft out of Buffalo in the 1950s (though that Buffalo invention beloved of Monty Python, the hovercraft, was tested in the Bell Slip in the 1960s), and the pull-push of globalization and incompetent management destroyed the heavymetals business here in the 1970s. But the knife in Buffalo’s belly was sprawl. So it remains. The sprawl knife cuts again and again, but it’s cutting the region’s vitality: Of the 59,915 single-family housing permits issued between 1980 and 2011, two thirds were for houses built before the 20th century ended. There were 19,094 built between 2000 and 2011. Since 2000, Hamburg, Amherst, Lancaster, Clarence, Orchard Park and Grand Island have cumulatively seen 9,413 of the new-builds, about half of the total, with Weatfield, Lockport and Pendleton accumulating 2,770 for shrinking Niagara County. The sprawl dynamic is this: folks move farther and farther out. Folks abandon property inside the urban core, moving into the first-ring suburbs, especially Cheektowaga and western and southern Amherst. The first-ringers move out to the second ring. The rate of construction is shrinking—40,821 new-builds in Erie and Niagara counties between 1980 and 1999, but just 19,094 between 2000 and 2011—but they’re still being built outside, not inside, the urban core. For all the energy fueling the new apartment projects on Ohio Street, and loft development downtown, and West Side rehabs and the gloriously rapid Allentown and Delaware cit yandstateny.com
SCHNEIDERMAN’S INITIATIVE
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ow comes New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s initiative to punish banks for the zombie problem. Schneiderman is pushing a
“The knife in Buffalo’s belly was sprawl.” program bill, the Abandoned Property Neighborhood Relief Act. Its aim is “to reduce the number of vacant and abandoned properties falling into disrepair across the state by informing homeowners of their right to stay in their home until a court orders the homeowner to leave, requiring mortgage lenders and servicers to identify, secure and maintain vacant and abandoned properties much earlier in the foreclosure process, and creating a registry of such properties to assist municipalities with enforcement of laws regarding property maintenance.” The Attorney General is absolutely correct about the problems banks cause. But with somewhere between 16,000 and 20,000 abandoned properties in Buffalo alone, properties that have been documented as abandoned for at least a decade and sometimes longer, this legislation would seem to be more relevant to cities where things are not so far gone. But wait. Let’s be positive here. If you’re a west of Richmond homesteader, picking up a 1920s fixer-upper for a mortgage payment of $500 a month, you want Schneiderman’s bill to pass, and for enforcement to get funded—because chances are damned good, sadly, that there’s a house or two or five on your block that somebody has abandoned, and that some bank (probably local) foreclosed on after the go-go years of no-look mortgages—the time, just 10 years ago, that one local banker refers to as “those days.” The renaissancing process, resting on our Buffalo comparative advantage of a big stock of sturdy, fixablecit yandstateny.com
existing regional land-use planning bodies; and by the fecklessness of bankers who, rather than using their awesome and unparalleled power to shape the regional economic dynamic, merely profit from a system that thrives best (for them anyway) when perfectly re-useable real estate is abandoned in favor of new-builds. Toss in a little racism, the self-interest of politicians who thrive on ethnic and racial division, and the see-noevil narcissism of folks who won’t challenge any of these destructive patterns, and voila! Voici! You get one third San Francisco and two thirds Detroit. Except that for most of the Rust Belt, most towns, except Chicago, are Detroit—vast in potential, stunning in legacy, still anchoring their regions, but crossed, day and night, in every season, by the zombies whose numbers we count. Those 16,000 to 20,000 properties, out of 92,000 inside the city limits, are a structural problem that won’t go away by calling them movie names. Will challenging the banks arrest the march of the zombies? Our response: So long as there is no regional land-use planning, then renaissancing Buffalo will be a piecemeal, village-by-village effort. The big movement is still outward. Sprawl continues to replenish our supply of zombies.
Bruce Fisher is visiting professor at SUNY Buffalo State and director of the Center for Economic and Policy Studies. This story originally appeared on the website of The Public, a Buffalo-area newspaper.
BUFFALO
uppable 1920s-era houses, will be easier if Schneiderman’s bill passes. Anything to ease the burden imposed by the relentless logic of sprawl … which is funded, and largely driven, by the broken logic of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1926 Euclid v. Ambler Realty decision; by the corrupt insistence of New York State’s town governments to do their own zoning, planning, and issuance of building permits; by the unwillingness of state leaders to force any effective consolidation; by the toothlessness of
By Susan M. Kent, PEF President
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overnor Andrew Cuomo’s Executive Budget seeks legislation that would make Design-Build procurement permanent in New York state. The Public Employees Federation (PEF) is vigorously opposed to this proposed legislation.
The professional PEF members employed by NYS agencies are the most competent and cost-effective solution to most of New York’s design needs. Multiple studies have shown that consultant engineers are more costly than in-house engineers. In fact, our research shows that consultant engineers cost about 87 percent more than in-house engineers. New York state can save real money and get greater value out of dwindling transportation dollars by doing more engineering work in-house and decreasing its reliance on costly consultants. Any legislation that increases the state’s reliance on costly consultants is misguided. While cost is a main issue, we also oppose Design-Build for other reasons. Design-Build introduces more subjectivity into the contract award process, reduces competition, and may decrease objective oversight of projects. New York state’s competitive bidding laws have guaranteed taxpayers the best price on public works construction projects and helped maintain public trust and confidence in the awarding of public works contracts. However, Design-Build represents a shift away from the lowest bid to a more subjective “best value.” Additionally, Design-Build reduces competition because fewer companies are capable of performing both the design and build aspects of the contract. This results in a few large companies that are able to bid on projects. The fact that Design-Build projects are inspected by consultants hired by the design-builder means there is less independent and objective oversight of the project.
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The mythology surrounding Design-Build procurement appears to give it magical qualities. Proponents say Design-Build saves money, allows construction to be completed faster, and unlocks the creativity and innovation of the private sector. Design-Build is magical only in the sense that these statements are never challenged. For example, even before it was sufficiently funded, before single penny was spent, and even though the final cost will not be tallied for several years, the governor has claimed Design-Build has saved at least $1.5 billion dollars! Is there any way to verify this claim? No, there is not. The claim is based solely on the fact that the winning bid was lower than estimated costs. Is it possible that a Design-Bid-Build procurement would have also saved as much or more? Absolutely. However we will never know because the only bids that were submitted were Design-Build. Given these facts, we urge the legislature to cast a critical eye towards Design-Build. Before this legislation is renewed or expanded, the public and the legislature should know if Design-Build procurement truly provides savings and/or advantages to the public.
The union that cares for the community
New York State Public Employees Federation, AFL-CIO www.PEF.org
Representing 54,000 professional, scientific and technical employees Susan M. Kent Carlos J. Garcia President Secretary-Treasurer
city & state — March 23, 2015
District real-estate appreciation, there are structures at work that continue to divert and diminish that energy. And east of Main Street, the zombie neighborhoods march on.
DESIGN-BUILD: Heading Down the Wrong Road
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recurring theme with transportation infrastructure projects and proposals in New York is the uncertainty over funding, from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s $15 billion gap in its capital plan to the questions swirling around the financing of the new Tappan Zee Bridge. But these questions have not kept the state and New York City from moving forward with transportation projects totaling billions of dollars. That’s because infrastructure improvements cannot wait. The alternative is letting the roads, bridges and subways fall into disrepair, eventually driving away businesses and eroding the revenue stream needed to fund the projects—a far more dire consequence for politicians than failing to be transparent about funding. In New York, the necessity of upgrading and expanding infrastructure is apparent from Buffalo to Brooklyn. With subway ridership up in New York City and the population still growing, there are serious concerns about whether the current system can reliably get commuters to their jobs. And in many upstate cities, where generations of people have relied on cars to get around, leaders are looking at ways to redevelop downtown areas to reduce congestion so it is easier to walk around—while still providing a way for commuters from the booming suburbs to avoid traffic jams to can make it to their jobs in time. These trends bring with them a unique set of problems and the solution always includes the need for more money. State lawmakers were handed nearly $6 billion in settlement funds from the financial services sector, and almost all agreed that that cash should be invested directly back into infrastructure projects, with the bulk focused on transportation. But even if the windfall were spent entirely on such projects, glaring needs will remain. In this special section on transportation infrastructure, City & State identifies the major projects, explores how to pay for them and interviews top officials on the key issues.
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city & state — March 23, 2015
CONTENTS:
24... Key transportation projects By Wilder Fleming
28... Assessing design-build By Ashley Hupfl
34... Q&As with Patrick Foye, Ydanis Rodriguez, Joseph Robach, Joan McDonald, Richard Hanna and Jerrold Nadler
32... Financing Sunnyside Yards By Sarina Trangle
36... Nicole Gelinas on the inevitability of congestion pricing
cit yandstateny.com
210,604 660,183 120,452 Workers who can access jobs by proposed BRT Lines
125th St. 2nd Ave, Manhattan
People living in BRT station service areas JFK Airport, Queens
Low-income workers who can access jobs by proposed BRT Lines
Albert Einstein Medical Centre, Bronx
TWU Local 100 Says: Bus Rapid Transit means stronger communities, better access to jobs, and new economic development. The New York State Assembly agrees, with $100 million just appropriated in a line item for Bus Rapid Transit infrastructure.
NYC Comptroller’s new report confirms: Commutes are too long. BRT is the way to fix it for 40,000 job seekers
We’re proposing: Two Bus Rapid Transit lines, that would serve 8% of NYC’s population, giving them access to almost 40,000 jobs via a 40-minute transit trip. The Bush Terminal – JFK route brings workers workers from a wide range of neighborhoods to growing industrial and business centers. The East Harlem – Northeast Bronx route brings workers to a large concentration of hospitals, health care, and retail businesses.
TWU also supports using existing rights of way on rail lines in Queens to expand public transportation. We will all benefit tremendously from new Bus Rapid “Transit (BRT) routes, bringing more speed and capacity
NYS Assemblyman Marcos Crespo with TWU Bus Operators from the Bronx
a great proposal out there for “BusThere’s Rapid Transit that we should be talking about. What are you doing to make it a reality?
”
— Assemblyman and Bronx Leader Marcos Crespo, March 13, 2015
to daily commutes and serving as an economic engine for access to jobs. This will grow economic centers in all corners of our city.
”
— Assemblywoman Rodneyse Bichotte, Brooklyn
Let’s work together to expand opportunities for working New Yorkers arlem, the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens in neighborhoods in Harlem, which are currently under-served by transit options! TWU Local 100 – New York’s Public Transit Union John Samuelsen, President
TRANSPORTATION
NEW YORK ON THE MOVE By WILDER FLEMING
I
t’s no secret that New York’s transportation infrastructure, as in much of the rest of the country, is in dire need of an overhaul. But even as a $15.2 billion funding gap dogs the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and questions go unanswered over the new Tappan Zee Bridge’s opaque financing, some efforts are being made to update the state’s dilapidated transportation systems. Last year the state secured a $5.4 billion windfall from settlements with big financial institutions (a figure that continues to grow) and Gov. Andrew Cuomo intends to spend a chunk of the money on infrastructure. Among the initiatives are a $250 million plan that will directly connect Bronx and Connecticut residents with Penn Station via the Metro-North commuter railroad for the first time, and a Thruway Authority stabilization program aimed at offsetting “the impacts of major Thruway investments on toll payers.” This is in addition to the proposed $4.5 billion in the governor’s executive budget for statewide capital spending on transportation (up just slightly from last year), which includes $750 million for a state and local bridge rehab initiative and another $750 million for investment in the MTA. (Cuomo’s capital budget would take $121.5 million from day-to-day transit operations to pay for capital projects.) City & State highlights a few additional transit projects in the works or underway around the state:
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RTHOMA / SHUTTERSTOCK.COM
city & state — March 23, 2015
AIRPORT OVERHAUL
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ignificant attention has been paid to New York City’s airports of late: Frequent and lengthy delays, inadequate connection to mass transit and a notoriously dingy ambience that prompted Vice President Joe Biden to make his infamous comment last year likening La Guardia Airport to a “third world country.” Then, in the fall, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced his $500,000 design competition aimed at revamping not just La Guardia but John F. Kennedy International Airport as well. Final submissions were due Feb. 2, and while Cuomo’s office has said six and four proposals have been submitted for La Guardia and JFK respectively, it isn’t clear when the winners
will be announced. Ironically, the governor’s design competition has become the latest roadblock to a repeatedly delayed restoration of La Guardia’s decrepit Central Terminal Building: the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey has been seeking a team equal to the task since 2012, but Chairman John Degnan recently announced that the authority would await the outcome of the governor’s competition before proceeding.
La Guardia Airport
cit yandstateny.com
AMTRAK GETS A BOOST IN NORTHEAST
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VACCLAV / SHUTTERSTOCK.COM
he U.S. House of Representatives recently passed a $7.1 billion spending bill that would reauthorize Amtrak funding for the next four years, and while the sum is around the same as current spending levels—a disappointment to some transportation advocates—the measure would for the first time allow all profits from Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor to be reinvested there. Passenger rail service between Boston and Washington is by far the most profitable, but under the current arrangement these surplus revenues are reinvested in Amtrak’s money-losing cross-country routes. Under the new bill, the Northeast Corridor would be formally distinguished from Amtrak’s so-called National Network, meaning that its famously
run-down rail infrastructure would stand to benefit from all operating surplus generated in the region—calculated to be $205 million in 2011 by the Brookings Institution. (The money from the spending bill would be split as well: $1.9 billion for the Northeast and $3.9 billion for the National Network.) Thanks to a rare show of bipartisanship in the House, the bill is now awaiting a vote in the U.S. Senate. But while President Barack Obama has voiced his support, at least one Senate Democrat, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, has raised concerns about a provision that would require Amtrak to study instituting express service between Boston and Washington, which Blumenthal says would be unacceptable for his constituents.
Congress is weighing a bill to fund Amtrak and allow revenues in the busy Northeast Corridor to be reinvested exclusively in the region.
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MTA CAPITAL CONSTRUCTION/REHEMA TRIMIEW
EAST SIDE ACCESS
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he construction of the Harold Interlocking rail junction at Sunnyside Yard in Queens, one of the busiest rail interconnections in the United States, is a key component of the MTA’s East Side Access project, which is slated to connect the Long Island Rail Road to Grand Central Terminal by 2023. “Workers on the East Side Access project are essentially doubling the complexity of what is already one of the most complex and busiest railroad ‘interlockings’ in the country,” MTA spokesman Aaron Donovan said in an email. “Performing any work at Harold requires close coordination between the East Side Access project managers and the four railroads that
use the tracks 24/7: Amtrak, NJ Transit, the LIRR and New York & Atlantic freight. And it requires tracks to be taken out of service. That, at times, has caused pre-planned weekend service diversions for the LIRR. … MTA Capital Construction President Dr. Michael Horodniceanu has said: ‘It is like you’re trying to fix your bicycle while you’re riding it.’ ” Upgrades to the Harold Interlocking, where 190 new switches will help grant the LIRR access to Grand Central for the first time, are scheduled to be complete by 2022.
East Side Access Project progress as of Dec. 3, 2013 along Sunnyside Yard and Harold Interlocking in Queens.
S
ince the middle of the last century, cities around New York have been suffering from a proliferation of elevated highways that were jammed through urban centers with little thought for the neighborhoods in which they were built. Now, with the reversal of a suburban boom that hastened such construction, upstate cities like Rochester and Syracuse are considering plans to redevelop these elevated freeways, which physically divide parts of their downtowns, with an eye to more pedestrian-friendly land use. In Rochester, plans to revitalize the socalled Inner Loop—a now-sunken highway that will be turned into a grade-level
JOE PHILIPSON
city & state — March 23, 2015
TAKING BACK DOWNTOWN
boulevard—are expected to become clearer this month. In Syracuse, the useful life of the Interstate 81 overpass that slices through downtown is set to expire in 2017, and city and county lawmakers are pitching a number of replacement options to state and federal lawmakers, including a combined tunnel and street-level boulevard, a depressed highway and boulevard, or some combination of a viaduct (as exists now) and a boulevard. State transportation officials are expected to narrow down the viable choices sometime this spring, but Onondaga County officials are already concerned that an actual tunnel could be off the table.
Rochester plans to partially fill in the Inner Loop to reconnect its downtown to the neighborhoods. cit yandstateny.com
An Open Letter to: Federal, State and Local Elected Officials, Commissioners of the Triborough Bridge & Tunnel Authority, Metropolitan Transit Authority, Port of Authority of New York and New Jersey, NYC Department of Transportation, NYS Department of Transportation, NYS Thruway Authority and All Our Fellow Toll Payers: Often, our transportation infrastructure decision makers opt to purchase steel made by Chinese, state-subsidized companies that pay extraordinarily low wages, use substandard manufacturing procedures and must ship their goods thousands of miles. This policy undermines our American way of life and poses a threat to our middle class. It does so by causing our fellow Americans to lose decent paying jobs, and attacks our domestic steel industry, which is the backbone of our national manufacturing base. It is imperative that decision makers take into account the multiplier effect that domestically produced steel provides for local and national economies. Damage to those economies jeopardizes our defense capabilities and our national security. In addition, huge cost overruns, shoddy workmanship and time delays that imported Chinese steel has created on a number of projects, are a solid reason for decision makers to search for and locate American made steel. There are U.S. companies ready and willing to competitively produce all the product needed for our infrastructure. This is not the time to be penny wise and dollar foolish with our hard earned toll monies. No loyal, patriotic American wants to see the further expansion of our rust belt. Today, with so many Americans being left out of the rapid growth in our economy, let us ensure that the right thing be done for the U.S.A. and its workers. If this critical issue is not addressed, we shall all become parties to the continued disappearance of the American middle class.
Metal Trades Department, AFL-CIO
TRANSPORTATION
DESIGN-BUILD DOLLARS AND SENSE
OPINIONS DIFFER ON COST SAVINGS OF PROJECT DELIVERY METHOD BY ASHLEY HUPFL
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city & state — March 23, 2015
The Cuomo administration says design-build will save $1.5 billion in the construction of the new Tappan Zee Bridge.
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he Cuomo administration and the state Thruway Authority have been battling constant criticism for a lack of transparency over the funding of the Tappan Zee Bridge replacement project—especially after the federal government denied a $511 million loan from the Clean Water State Revolving
Fund—but that has not deterred the administration from repeatedly touting the bridge as a prime example of the benefits of the design-build law that expired last year. The governor’s office has said design-build cut $1.5 billion off the total bill for the project, which began in 2011 after Cuomo pushed through
the design-build legislation and fasttracked the new bridge. While there have been few details to support the cost savings claim, it still remains a key argument used to advocate for the legislation’s renewal. Design-build allows a contractor to submit a single bid for both the design and construction of designated
projects, potentially cutting costs, saving time and spurring innovation. Before the law was enacted, the design and construction of projects overseen by the state Department of Transportation had to be bid out separately. However, state officials were unable to identify a specific amount cit yandstateny.com
Design-Build technology is a...
BFORLDUEPRINT ISASTER
Design-Build projects will privatize the state workforce, cost taxpayers more money and could put all of us at a higher degree of risk.
Here Is why.. • WHAT IS DESIGN-BUILD A Design-Build
project is one in which one contractor is hired to design, construct AND inspect the entire project. This method of construction is more costly and results, among other things, in the loss of checks and balances and the continued erosion of professional public employees.
• SLOW DOWN An independent study of
Design-Build effectiveness is needed.
• PUTS PUBLIC AT RISK Design-Build
bypasses competitive bidding laws, labor protections, and other safeguards that ensure transparency, fairness, and impartial oversight.
• HIGHER COSTS Federal and state studies have
shown that contracting out engineering and inspection work is more costly in 85 percent of cases.
• HURTS LOCAL ECONOMIES Larger,
bundled Design-Build projects make it impossible for smaller local companies to bid, and contracts often go to larger, out-of-state firms.
Want more FACTS? Go to www.pef.org Search engine keyword: Design-Build
The union that cares for the community
New York State Public Employees Federation,
AFL-CIO
Representing 54,000 professional, scientific and technical employees www.PEF.org
Susan M. Kent President
Carlos J. Garcia Secretary-Treasurer
NEW YORKERS — STAY INFORMED — BE ACTIVE — GO TO WWW.PEF.ORG TO FIND OUT MORE!
INFRASTRUCTURE: It’s a big word, because it’s a big deal... 30
Economic growth depends on business and the people who power those businesses. But without safe roads & bridges and efficient transportation systems — for both people and product — there would be no way to support or sustain that growth. That’s why infrastructure matters. It’s more than just a big word. It’s a big deal... On Long Island alone, infrastructure investment (by local municipalities and the NYSDOT) has had the following economic impact:*
Supports $1.13 billion in local economic activity Supports over 8,300 local jobs with a payroll of $360 million/yr
city & state — March 23, 2015
Generates & sustains over $149 million in government revenues
and a big issue with voters. How big will your support be? www.licanys.org *Based on The Economic Impact Report of Highway & Bridge Construction Investment in Long Island prepared for LICA by the American Road & Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA) - September 2014.
of time that design-build has saved on the Tappan Zee Bridge project, but they argue that completing a project in a shorter time frame—which proponents for design-build claim it does—inherently results in cost savings. “The results of using the designbuild project delivery system across New York are overwhelmingly positive: projects are being delivered sooner and on-budget, jobs are being created, and the state’s infrastructure is improving,” Cuomo said in a statement. “And because contractors agree to deliver a project for a set cost and within a set time frame, the financial risk associated with most cost overruns or schedule delays lies with the design-build contractor, rather than taxpayers.” But some observers are skeptical of that logic, and they are emboldened by a string of headlines about the lack of transparency in funding the new Tappan Zee. “I think we need to take a hard look at the pros and cons of the designbuild process now that we have some actual project data,” state Senate Transportation Committee Chair Joe Robach said. “I’d like to be shown actual data from projects where we have recently used the design-build process which can demonstrate that real economic benefits have ensued without any compromise on long-term project quality.” State records show the early project estimates were more than $1 billion more than the final cost, which is now estimated to be $3.9 billion. A floating super crane has saved more than a billion dollars by performing functions that would otherwise require two floating cranes and reduces the amount of dredging needed by about 50 percent, according to state officials, who say that also lessens the environmental impact. Mike Elmendorf, president and CEO of the Associated General Contractors of New York State and a proponent of design-build, argues that cost savings are not necessarily the ultimate goal of design-build. When a team submits a design-build proposal, cost is considered, but there is also a technical score based on the design proposal. “I think it’s a little bit of a slippery slope just to say the reason you want to use design-build is because it’s less
expensive. Like I said, it may or might not be, but that’s not really necessarily what it’s all about,” he said. “I can’t tell you if it did or didn’t save you money on the Tappan Zee Bridge, because what are we comparing it to? They’re only building one of those. I’m sure that it certainly saved time. They would not be out there doing what they’re doing if we had to sit around and wait for the Thruway Authority to design the bridge.” Susan Kent, president of the state Public Employees Federation, disagrees. PEF strongly opposed the concept of design-build last year, arguing that it shifts work away from public employees and is just a scheme to privatize what they argue should be public work. Kent wants Albany to hold off on renewing design-build this year so that the state can assess completed designbuild projects to see if they really are more efficient, cut costs and ensure high quality. “There is zero evidence that designbuild saves money, and especially on this Tappan Zee project, we have no idea what the end dollar figure will be,” Kent said. “Why would you just continue on doing something when you have absolutely no assessments of it? The governor throws out and the DOT commissioner throws out how much money this has saved, but when you ask, ‘Where’s the proof, where’s the evidence?,’ it’s nonexistent.” The fate of design-build in the 2015 session is still uncertain. In December of 2014, designbuild was not renewed largely due the governor’s insistence that project labor agreements be used on all designbuild projects worth more than $10 million—a proposal received poorly by many construction groups. The expiration of design-build does not affect projects that are already in the pipeline. “At the end of the day it really is unfortunate because I think designbuild is a good tool, it’s something the state agencies should have,” Elmendorf said. “It’s probably something some of the more sophisticated local governments should have, but again it’s kind of in a ditch now because of the injection of this controversial unrelated issue into the mix. As a result, if I was placing a bet right now I think design-build is not going to continue, at least in the budget.” cit yandstateny.com
TRANSPORTATION
MUNICIPAL UNIONS PRINT ISSUE SPOTLIGHT
SETTLEMENT SHOTS BY MICHAEL GARETH JOHNSON
GOVERNOR’S PLAN:
STATE SENATE’S PLAN:
• $1.285 BILLION toward the new Thruway Stabilization program to help pay for the new Tappan Zee Bridge • $500 MILLION for the expansion of broadband through 2018 • $400 MILLION to support debt restructuring and other capital projects for hospitals in rural communities • $250 MILLION for Penn Station access, which includes building of new Metro-North stations • $150 MILLION to encourage mixed-use development at key public transit facilities through investment in vertical parking facilities • $150 MILLION to support preparedness and response efforts • $150 MILLION to enhance programs encouraging local government efficiencies • $115 MILLION for “enhanced infrastructure funding in New York State” at the ports of Oswego, Albany and Ogdensburg • $50 MILLION to assist farmers and other related businesses in the Southern Tier • $850 MILLION held in reserve to address financial risks
• $1.5 BILLION for highway and bridge capital projects as part of a new five-year road and bridge capital program • $1.5 BILLION for upstate revitalization projects • $700 MILLION for regionally significant economic development projects statewide to help create jobs • $25 MILLION for upstate transit capital projects • $50 MILLION for the Main Street Revitalization program to assist local governments in cleaning up blighted areas. • $50 MILLION for the Consolidated Local Streets and Highway Program (CHIPS)
cit yandstateny.com
ASSEMBLY’S PLAN: • $200 MILLION increase in affordable housing projects over the governor’s budget • $125 MILLION for NYCHA capital repairs • $32 MILLION for a homelessness prevention pilot program to allow for enhanced rental assistance to individuals and families who are at risk of losing their homes • $5 MILLION for homeless and supportive housing services
EDUCATE AND INFLUENCE NY GOVERNMENT WITH THIS TARGETED AD VENUE. PUBLISHING APRIL 13TH, AD DEADLINE APRIL 9TH
FEATURED EDITORIAL: TAKING STOCK: City & State examines what New York City municipal labor contracts have been resolved, which union contracts are outstanding, and what agreements look likely in the next several months based on public information and City & State reporting.
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LABOR AMBASSADORS: Governor Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio may be New York’s top officials, but their relationships with municipal labor unions have been contentious at times, with a need for a softer touch or in some cases, a firm nudge. City & State looks at what lawmakers, consultants and advocates have taken an integral part in smoothing the relationships and contracts. IS LABOR WORKING IN BUFFALO?: City & State’s Buffalo bureau and editorial partner The Public examines the state of municipal labor contracts in the City of Buffalo, and how western New York municipal unions work with their counterparts across the State to push Albany.
GOVERNMENT Q&As*
• • • • • •
New York Comptroller Scott Stringer NYS Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli I. Daneek Miller, Chair, Council Labor Committee Alphonso David, Secretary to Governor Andrew Cuomo Assemblyman Peter Abbate, Chair of Municipal Labor Committee Bob Linn, Commissioner, NYC Dept. of Labor
*Pending Confirmation
For Advertising/Advertorial Opportunities Contact Andrew Holt At Aholt@Cityandstateny.com Or 212-894-5422.
city & state — March 23, 2015
T
here’s a commonly used term in Albany budget parlance: one-shots. It’s not about the post-session gettogether at the bars—these are one-time cash influxes into the state coffers that lawmakers quickly scramble to distribute to pet projects, arguing that adding the money to the overall budget baseline would be irresponsible because the revenue stream is not recurring. This year, the extra funds were less a shot than a huge keg of beer as the state has secured nearly $6 billion in settlement funds from the financial services sector—opening up a lot of ideas of how to splash that cash on projects. Many of the ideas proposed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo to spend the money are supported by the state Senate and Assembly— though each house has their own priorities. Here’s a recap of what’s been proposed in their respective budget proposals.
TRANSPORTATION
KEEP ON THE SUNNYSIDE IS THE SUNNYSIDE YARDS FUNDING PROPOSAL A GAME-CHANGER—OR A RISKY BET?
A
city & state — March 23, 2015
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slew of affordable housing is not the only transformative element brewing at Sunnyside Yards. While announcing his intention to deck over the 200-acre rail yard in Queens and construct a mixed-use development atop it, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio described the proposed creation of 11,250 affordable homes as “game changing.” At the same time, the city appears to be considering an equally innovative funding mechanism for the Sunnyside Yards initiative called value capture financing (VCF), which uses the revenue anticipated from an infrastructure investment to finance the project. But just like the affordable housing plans for the site, which Gov. Andrew Cuomo was quick to shoot down, the funding scheme is a big question mark. While VCF can open up revenue streams for municipalities otherwise limited by capital plans and debt ceilings, it can be risky if forecasted revenues don’t materialize and the government is saddled with larger interest payments and debt. Some point to Manhattan’s Hudson Yards development as evidence of the risks. The project, located on the far West Side, was VCF’s major debut in New York City. To help fund it, the city backed bonds for a No. 7 subway line extension with projected increases in property taxes and fees. “Hudson Yards has not been successful,” said David King, assistant professor of architecture, planning and preservation at Columbia University. “That’s a lot of investment that went into expanding the system for land development that’s not showing up … and that’s money that the city cannot
Mayor Bill de Blasio announced his Sunnyside Yards proposal at his 2015 State of the City address. or will not spend elsewhere on the transit system.” Nonetheless, the city’s recent request for proposal (RFP) to study the feasibility of decking over all or part of Sunnyside Yards called for research on the success VCF at Hudson Yards and other sites as well as for a recommendation on its viability in Queens. The RFP does not explicitly state whether the value would come from an upscale development with affordable units, new transit or other infrastructure improvements. But local politicians have made it clear de Blasio’s vision is a non-starter without linking transit investment—and said that the administration is aware of this. “If the administration is thinking so big, in terms of future development, then the thinking around transportation infrastructure has to be equally as big,” City Council Majority Leader Jimmy Van Bramer said, before ticking off a list of potential projects
to pair with housing, including a new train line, additional bus routes, more ferry stops, expanded bike sharing and a pedestrian bridge from Long Island City to midtown Manhattan. “I can’t support going forward with anything that doesn’t address the needs of the people I represent today, never mind the tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands that might be envisioned for the future.” He and state Sen. Michael Gianaris said growth near the targeted area— bounded by Northern Boulevard to the north, Skillman and 49th avenues to the South, the No. 7 train tracks to the west and 43rd Street to the east— already has led to burgeoning transit needs. Van Bramer said subways are under stress due to dense, marketdriven developments in Long Island City and upzonings passed without parallel transit investments before he took office. The administration is also contemplating re-zoning
in Long Island City to allow for large developments that further its affordable housing push. Increased capacity on Amtrak is already in the works. The national railroad system has crafted a Sunnyside Yards master plan that aims to meet increased demand by reconfiguring the yards, doubling the number of highspeed rail tracks and adding roughly 40 daily trips by 2030, according to the city’s RFP. The Long Island Rail Road currently uses the yards to stage construction for the East Side Access project, which will add a new terminal beneath Grand Central, and has considered a new LIRR Sunnyside station below the Queens Boulevard Bridge near Skillman Avenue. But the city RFP notes that it is not fully funded in the MTA’s 10-year capital plan. Specific infrastructure investments aside, Nicole Gelinas, a fellow at the right-leaning policy Manhattan Institute policy research group, said that Hudson Yards is an example of how not to proceed in Queens. The anticipated revenues did not materialize, she said, so the city wound up paying more in interest than it would have with bonds backed by traditional sources. The Bloomberg administration secured $3 billion in bonds to finance building the No. 7 train line out from Times Square to 11th Avenue, but the project proved costlier than expected, even after scrapping plans for a second subway stop. Since the project’s inception, the city has made $152 in capital commitments and $334 million in interest payments, according to the Independent Budget Office. VCF in most New York City settings is “a gimmick,” Gelinas said. “If you’re going to use [VCF], it’s not
cit yandstateny.com
DEMETRIUS FREEMAN/MAYORAL PHOTOGRAPHY OFFICE
BY SARINA TRANGLE
Workers build a track bed leading toward tunnels underneath Sunnyside Yards in 2012.
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city & state — March 23, 2015
PATRICK CASHIN/METROPOLITAN TRANSPORTATION AUTHORITY
really affordable housing anymore. … It would be high, six-figure costs per apartment.” VCF also poses political questions. Gelinas and King said it involves selecting investments based on the potential to generate value, not on need. That can divert funds to a single area instead of letting all constituents and legislators compete for thems. “Value capture is ripe for shenanigans,” King said. Yet VCF can also provide financing that otherwise would not have existed, according to Stephen Schlickman, executive director of the Urban Transportation Center at the University of Illinois Chicago. For instance, Schickman said a group of property owners in downtown Chicago approached the city and offered to put up the financing for transit improvements that would not be possible in the transit authority’s budget. “None of them hired anyone to do a forecast for them,” he said. “They knew prices would go up, and they would get paid back. … They made a business judgment and went to the mayor.”
TRANSPORTATION
a new license for for-hire vehicle bases that use apps? YR: I am not involved. I have heard about it, but I have not had any discussion with any of my colleagues. For me, at this moment, things have been working fine, but I’m always open to hearing the arguments that any of my colleagues will have when they propose any new legislation.
airside redesign; incorporation of mass transit and other access improvements; the inclusion of state of the art amenities including dining, retail and entertainment experiences; improvements to hotel and meeting spaces; and increased cargo opportunities that support economic growth and job creation.
PATRICK FOYE Executive Director, Port Authority of New York and New Jersey
city & state — March 23, 2015
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Q: What are the greatest needs facing the Port Authority and how does the agency intend to address them? PF: We have three major challenges that we face in the next 20 years. Maintaining existing transportation assets—some of which are more than 80 years old—in a state of good repair; serving projected growth in transHudson capacity; and confronting these issues while maintaining the Port Authority’s financial sustainability. Our 10-year capital plan takes the first step to address the deferred maintenance issue by budgeting $27.6 billion to upgrade and expand airports, tunnels, bridges, the seaport and the PATH system. But there are far more projects that need to be done than there is money to pay for them, including our three major airports and the Port Authority Bus Terminal, which is key to dealing with growth in trans-Hudson commuting. The bus terminal was built in the 1950s to serve bus commuters and buses from a different era. Today, the facility can no longer efficiently handle the level of trans-Hudson bus commuters. We’re currently exploring options of what can be done and how we can pay for it. In that regard, we’re exploring the use of public-private partnerships to help fund critical projects and still operate within our financial capacity. Q: What is the latest on the Master Plan Design Competitions for JFK and LaGuardia Airports? PF: Final submissions for the JFK and LaGuardia Airport master plan design competitions were submitted for review to the Airport Advisory Panel last month. In total, we have received six submissions for LaGuardia and four for JFK. The goal of the competitions is to offer a holistic reimagining of both of New York’s major airports and set them up as world-class gateways to the region and the nation for the next 50 years. The Advisory Panel will select finalists based on a host of criteria including the maximization of current airport footprints with possible
Q: How is Cuomo’s proposal for an elevated AirTrain link from the No. 7 subway and LIRR station to La Guardia Airport progressing? PF: Governor Cuomo has offered a clear vision and strong call for the transportation infrastructure that is absolutely essential for the New York region to compete successfully in the global economy. We are working closely with the MTA to establish the scope, schedule, financing plan and management of the La Guardia AirTrain, just as we worked closely to create the successful JFK AirTrain. We will build this project in a cost-effective way that minimizes disruptions to nearby communities as well as airport operations. Both our organizations recognize the importance of these infrastructure projects and appreciate the governor’s focus and leadership on this issue. Q: How have various investigations into the authority and efforts to reform it impacted its day-to-day operations and ability to fulfill its mandate? PF: The investigations and the significant reform efforts under way are matters that are being taken very seriously. In fact, reforming the agency has taken center stage with the agency’s Board of Commissioners during the past year. The reforms undertaken so far include making the board meeting process more transparent by posting agendas and resolutions at least three days in advance of a meeting; conducting a roll call on all action item votes; and realigning the board room to give prominence to those who wish to address the board. In addition, the board approved a new Freedom of Information policy that took effect Jan. 1 to make more records accessible to the public and a new code of ethics and whistleblower policy are in the process of being developed and approved. At its February 2015 meeting, the board also endorsed the recommendations of the bi-state Special Panel on the Future of the Port Authority, appointed by Govs. Cuomo and Christie in May 2014, which will result in additional reforms in the coming months. However, the investigations and reform efforts have not caused this agency to lose its focus on the day-to-day operations of the Port Authority, which have not been affected.
YDANIS RODRIGUEZ Chair, New York City Council Transportation Committee Q: What are the biggest transit needs facing the city, and how do you anticipate the city addressing them? YR: When I think on new legislation or initiatives, I want to organize it and work around those two goals—how do we make transportation in New York City safer and efficient? The reality is infrastructure in New York City has to be improved. Forty-three percent of all roads in Manhattan have been considered substandard; followed by Staten Island, which has 40 percent; and the Bronx, 34 percent; Queens, 31 percent; and Brooklyn, 28 percent. I am so happy that the mayor has committed $250 million to improve our arterials, and that money will be used for redesigning dangerous intersections. With that investment, I am pretty sure that we will be able to break our old record that we had in 2014 when we were able to get the lowest number of pedestrians being killed by car accidents. Q: What are the next steps for Vision Zero? And what are your thoughts on the debate about whether the current level of prosecution is appropriate for drivers and bus drivers who fail to yield and hit and injure or kill a pedestrian? YR: I am a strong supporter of increasing penalties for drivers who fail to yield. I [was] one of the co-sponsors together with Councilman Mark Weprin on this bill. I do believe that the Transit Workers Union has made a legitimate concern on the case of one of the drivers. I have been going over the standards that the MTA drivers have to follow. I am at this particular moment reviewing all the information produced by the MTA on how they investigate drivers who get involved in accidents, so that I can make a decision on any changes we should make. But I want to be informed before I make any decision. Q: Are you involved in discussions about the possibility of creating
Q: How is the bus rapid transit and select bus service push progressing? What neighborhoods do you foresee getting this next? YR: Brooklyn, Far Rockaway, they have made a case on how it takes an hour and a half for someone to come to Manhattan, and how bus rapid transit will help to reduce the time it takes. We will be working with the commissioner of the Department of Transportation and the administration to make sure that we connect those isolated communities with bus rapid transit. I hope that New York City looks at other models, at other places where there is a public-private partnership contributing to investing in transportation. Investing in bus rapid transit is something that benefits and connects isolated communities, and it’s a good investment. Q: What are your thoughts on the Move NY’s tolling plan? Do you think it will go anywhere? YR: I believe it is important that the plan include $200 million to be reinvested in transportation at the local communities throughout the five boroughs. If we go throughout the communities in the five boroughs and we let them know that there is going to be a particular amount of money to be reinvested in areas related to transportation needs in their community, I believe that we can gain their support. I believe that the plan has good merits. It will help congestion in lower Manhattan. It will help to raise money. Q: Why is there no movement on the bill banning horse carriages? What is the hurdle for your colleagues that don’t support it? YR: I am confident that we will be able to get this bill passed. At the end of this process, we should be able to create a win-win situation, where those individuals who own those permits—that I believe is less than 50 people who own those carriage horse permits—they should be able to get a good reward and a job training. Those horses, they will be able to be in another place, not in the street of New York City, where the weather is sometimes more than 100 degrees, interacting with buses, ambulances and trucks, that we didn’t have in the 1940s when we created this industry. cit yandstateny.com
JERROLD NADLER
JOSEPH ROBACH
JOAN MCDONALD
Representative, 22nd Congressional District
Representative, 10th Congressional District
Chair, State Senate Transportation Committee
Commissioner, New York State Department of Transportation
Q: Do you support President Obama’s $478 billion Grow America transportation funding plan? RH: I support a long-term, fully funded highway bill. I’m pleased that the administration also supports getting a long-term surface transportation bill passed. There is more than enough common ground to believe that we can get a highway bill done this year. That’s what I am working toward.
Q: The House recently passed legislation that would authorize $7.1 billion in funding for passenger rail service through 2019. How will this benefit the New York region and does it go far enough? JN: Reauthorizing Amtrak is critical for New York. The Northeast Corridor Region is home to more than 51 million people, and our regional economy is the fifth largest in the world. If the NEC were to shut down for one day, the potential impact on the U.S. economy could be $100 million in transportation-related impacts and productivity losses. Although the bill focuses resources on the NEC, it does not go far enough. We are still spending less than 2 percent of federal transportation spending on Amtrak, despite a backlog of at least $52 billion just to meet ridership demands and state of good repair. It is past time we put rail on equal footing with other modes of transportation.
Q: The MTA’s capital plan has received criticism for its funding gap. What changes would you like to see the MTA make? JR: The MTA remains critically important to the economy in the New York metropolitan region and continuing capital investments are needed to maintain its network. The MTA is proposing a $32 billion capital plan with a $15 billion funding gap, roughly half the size of the plan itself. It’s also worth remembering that the state Department of Transportation needs a new five-year state and local highway and bridge plan. Additionally we need to consider the needs of nonMTA transit systems. So I think we need to consider the MTA’s needs within a larger discussion of the transportation needs facing the entire state and the funds available, while remembering that state taxpayers desperately need additional tax relief.
Q: What are the most important initiatives you would like to see get done in 2015? JM: The state’s top priority is always safety and our most important initiatives reflect that. The largest project in NYSDOT history—the $555 million replacement of the Kosciuszko Bridge—got underway last fall and is entering its first full construction season. The new bridge will relieve a well-known bottleneck along the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, ease congestion, improve air quality and reduce accidents. This project is scheduled to be completed in 2018. Other substantial investments include Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s commitment to spend $1.2 billion on the NY Works program, which re-paved more than 2,100 miles of roads and rehabilitated or replaced 121 bridges. Also under construction is the $148 million rehabilitation of the Patroon Island Bridge in Albany. Also in this budget, Governor Cuomo proposed committing $750 million over five years to accelerate the rehabilitation, reconstruction or replacement of more than 100 bridges statewide that serve critical freight, agriculture and commerce corridors.
Q: Should the gas tax be raised to fund transportation infrastructure upgrades since gas is so cheap right now? RH: Gas prices are relatively affordable now, but they will go back up eventually, and simply raising the gas tax is problematic because it’s a diminishing source of revenue—people are driving less and vehicles are becoming more efficient. It’s also regressive because it disproportionately impacts lower income and rural drivers, including many in upstate New York. I am the original co-sponsor of the Bipartisan Infrastructure 2.0 Act, which uses international business tax reform to fill the Highway Trust Fund for six years and creates a new infrastructure financing tool. Q: The House of Representatives passed legislation to authorize $7.1 billion for passenger rail service through 2019. Why did you vote yes on the measure, which divided Republicans? RH: Amtrak is important and popular in upstate New York, and passenger rail is a great way to move large numbers of people from city to city. This legislation is important and I supported it because it introduces more transparency into how Amtrak operates. I believe that the reforms in the bill will make Amtrak more efficient and enable it to better perform its core functions for more people.
cit yandstateny.com
Q: How will President Obama’s $478 billion transport infrastructure plan fare in Congress? Could there be compromises? And how can New York meeting its future transport infrastructure needs? JN: The President should be commended for putting forward a comprehensive transportation plan, but the prospects for passing a longterm bill depends upon identifying a bipartisan revenue source. The President pays for his bill through comprehensive corporate tax reform. Others support raising the gas tax, or placing a tax on the fraction of a barrel of oil that goes to transportation uses. The Republicans’ insistence on budget cuts and resistance to raising revenue makes it nearly impossible to identify a solution. The Republican budget should indicate how much they intend to spend on transportation and how they will pay for it. Congress must reach consensus on a funding solution, or else New York will be unable to meet its future transportation infrastructure needs.
Q: You have said you would like to see the federal government use a different funding mechanism instead of the fuel tax. What? JR: The federal government and Congress need to find a way to reauthorize a new multi-year transportation spending program, rather than relying on short-term extensions and patches. I cannot support an increase in the federal gas tax, especially when our citizens are in need of tax relief. But discussions must continue to restore the fund’s longterm solvency. New York also needs to work hard to ensure that it gets its fair share of any available federal transportation funding. Q: What investments Upstate would you like to see made? JR: Achieving greater funding balance and parity for Upstate transportation needs is critically important. This includes additional investments in local roads and bridges, putting thousands of skilled laborers to work and providing them with good paying jobs that will boost our state’s economy.
Q: Why should design-build legislation be renewed? JM: When used on appropriate projects, design-build allows the project design and construction phases to be consolidated into one contract— so we can get a project awarded and constructed in less time. Accelerating project delivery through design build creates jobs sooner, saves time, and provides cost certainty. In addition, it can help expand the potential use of innovative construction technologies. Since being signed into law in 2011, NYSDOT has awarded 10 designbuild contracts worth more than $811 million, including the Kosciuszko Bride project. Twelve other design build projects worth an additional $289 million are in procurement.
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city & state — March 23, 2015
RICHARD HANNA
TRANSPORTATION
WHITHER GOTHAM’S TRANSIT?
NICOLE GELINAS
H
city & state — March 23, 2015
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ere’s the central challenge New York City faces if it wants to keep growing: the way New Yorkers get around has changed. With some nudging from city government, people have made it clear that they want to get from there to here every day on subways, commuter trains, bicycles and feet— not stuck sitting in car and truck
traffic. That’s great. But it’s also hugely expensive, and getting more so—at least the way New York does it. The political class has got to come to terms with how much it costs to move a growing city, and they’ve got to get smarter in how they spend this money. Over the past 20 years, something happened that nobody noticed: the private automobile stopped being New York’s growth engine. Car and truck traffic had fallen before, yes— but that was when New York itself was shrinking, not growing. Between 1960 and 1980, the number of people using cars or trucks to get into Manhattan
each day fell by 2.5 percent—the first time traffic fell since we invented the internal combustion engine. New York marked those two decades with a falling population and rising crime. The number of people living in the five boroughs fell 9.1 percent and the number of people murdered more than tripled. As Wall Street started to take off in the early Reagan years, the people started coming back. Traffic, too, rose again, soaring 41 percent between 1980 and 1998. But that late Giuliani era was the high point—or low point—for Manhattan gridlock, with more than 1.3 million people driving or car-pooling in every day that year. Since then, car and truck traffic has fallen 29 percent, back to the 934,000 people who drove in daily way back in 1980. If this had happened half a century ago, you’d think we were in recession or a depression. Nope. New York has a record number of jobs and a record population. What’s happened is that those 382,000 people who used to drive in, now take the train—and then some. Since 1998, we’ve added 526,000 daily subway, bus, rail and bicycle commuters, and the majority of them—406,000—onto the subways. Consider that before last October, the MTA never clocked a day with more than six million subway riders. Now, it breaks this onetime record regularly. That’s not what happened the last time car traffic fell: between 1960 and 1980, transit ridership fell, too, by 312,000 daily commuters. Back then, the population drop-off hurt the state-run Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) and
its predecessor agencies. The city was dying, and nobody wanted to re-invest in its assets. This time around, New York’s resurgence can hurt the MTA. Last year, the MTA’s wait times were up, with only 78.8 percent of weekday trains coming in on or close to on time, down from 80.3 percent the previous year. Overcrowding was the single biggest reason for delays. When too many people try to pack into a 4 train, they delay the next train, and so on. More ominous, though, trains are breaking down more often. The MTA’s average “mean distance between failures”—a wonkish term describing how far a train can go before it unexpectedly breaks down, often causing headaches for stranded passengers—fell 7.9 percent, from 153,382 miles between failures the previous year to 141,202. Since 1980, the MTA has improved this reliability measure by more than twenty-fold; any slide-back on the indicator most predictive of whether you’ll get to work on time or arrive an hour late
and exhausted is a bad sign. What does the MTA need to keep New York growing? The short answer is money: the authority’s five-year capital investment plan, which began earlier this year, calls for spending $32 billion, but the authority has no idea where it will get $15 billion of that figure. Most of that money is not for expansion projects. It’s just for normal repair and replacement, plus long-overdue upgrades like being able to pay for your train by quickly tapping a chip card. Gov. Andrew Cuomo lost his chance to wring some of that money out of labor savings in the MTA’s everyday budget. Thanks to bad MTA deals with Long Island and New York City labor unions over the past two years, the MTA will soon spend $379 million more annually than it had expected to spend on salary, wage and overtime costs. That’s easily $5 billion in lost capital spending. There is always time, though, to save money on construction-labor costs. New York spends 14 percent more
cit yandstateny.com
can quadruple the number of daily ferry passengers into Manhattan, and boat riders still would only amount to 4.4 percent of the people who take the subway in every day. Similarly, on a good day, the Citi Bike bikeshare program serves 40,000 people. We could—and should—more than double that figure, too. But we cannot move a whole city on blue bicycles. Nor can we avoid transit upgrades by simply building new housing and new office buildings where trains aren’t too crowded already. As de Blasio launches his housing plan mostly in the outer boroughs, more people may start their commutes in less dense areas of the city. But they’ll end up where the jobs are: busy Manhattan. Over the past decade, Manhattan has created more than half of the city’s new jobs. Yes, other boroughs grew
if Manhattan stops creating jobs, the outer boroughs won’t pick up the slack. That congestion pricing is coming, though, doesn’t mean our transit problems are fixed. First, all that money only pays for the borrowing for one MTA capital plan. In five years, we’ll be right back where we started. Second, a new source of revenue is no guarantee that the pols will build the right projects. In fact, the political wrangling needed to get a successful vote in Albany may guarantee the opposite. Long Island politicians, for example, are already angling to electrify the eastern parts of the Long Island Rail Road, even though Long Island isn’t the part of New York that’s growing, and the $10.2 billion project to bring the railroad to Grand Central, five times the size of its initial
Politicians are fooling themselves, too, if they think they can avoid putting more billions into heavy transit with a focus, instead, on light transit: ferries and bicycles. Ferries and bicycles are important. The mayor, in particular, is right to encourage their expansion. But we
at faster rates. But they grew in large part because of the money people brought home from Manhattan; workers in the Bronx and Brooklyn, for example, overwhelmingly serve the residents of these boroughs at places like restaurants, stores and doctors’ offices. It’s a good bet that
budget and more than a decade late, has already overwhelmed a decade’s worth of MTA capital spending. New York’s transit infrastructure struggled when the city was shrinking five decades ago. Now, it’s struggling as we grow.
cit yandstateny.com
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Nicole Gelinas (@nicolegelinas on Twitter) is a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal.
city & state — March 23, 2015
on construction in general than runner-up Chicago, and 26 percent more than Boston, thanks mostly to higher labor costs, according to the Engineering News-Record. Absent such savings, the MTA will need a lot of new revenue. It will most likely come from some version of the Move NY plan to charge drivers coming into and riding around in core Manhattan and put $1.1 billion of the proceeds each year into transit investment. Yes, congestion pricing is inevitable, even if Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio, who are studiously neutral for now, are the last to know. The alternatives—higher payroll, sales or income taxes or an increasingly decrepit transit system, and, from the politicians’ perspective, labor savings—are worse.
HOUSING
BUILDING BRONX
MAP EMERGES FOR AFFORDABLE HOUSING DEVELOPMENT By KATE PASTOR from CITY LIMITS
T
city & state — March 23, 2015
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he Bronx is building—or at least that’s the plan. City Limits has identified dozens of addresses being eyed for housing development in the Bronx. Some are under-used lots owned by the city’s department of Housing, Preservation and Development (HPD), which is seeking developers for at least 25 of them to build 100 percent affordable housing. Some were pinpointed as possible sites for affordable housing in an advisory document created by the office of Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. and passed on to the mayor and city housing agencies last winter, and others are already being marketed for their affordable housing potential. Though Diaz has no formal role in choosing the sites that will make up the mayor’s ambitious to build or preserve nearly 200,000 units of affordable housing, he has taken early steps to insert himself into the process and has emphasized what power he does have over building in the borough. He likened his build green edict to “an executive order” and says he holds sway over developers who need an address for a new structure, who want to build on city land or who request capital funding for their projects. “We use that as leverage,” he said in front of a group of architects and developers on a tour of the Bronx last fall. When it comes to the mayor’s housing plan, Diaz’s rundown includes a crop of HPD-owned sites in addition to the ones for which the city is seeking developers. It lists vacant lots and parcels identified as underutilized by HPD, as well as privately owned parcels where the beep nevertheless sees room to build. HPD says it is currently in talks with some of the private owners. Diaz’s report doesn’t just point to individual properties but entire swaths of the borough being eyed for rezoning, like the controversial Jerome Avenue project on a 73-block stretch that spans the avenue from Mullaly Park north
Bronx parcels targeted for development by HPD or highlighted in a report by Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr. about potential housing sites. across the Cross Bronx Expressway to just south of Fordham Road. The area is now the subject of a neighborhood study by the Department of City Planning. Less defined areas for potential rezoning are Tremont/Crotona, Concourse Village, around Metro-North stations in Tremont and Fordham and proposed stations in Hunts Point, Morris Park and Parkchester. Diaz’s plan for development in the borough includes the Harlem River waterfront from Third Avenue to 149th Street. In recent comments, he called the stretch from 138th to 149th streets “the next frontier of high-rise development,” and pointed to the 161st Street corridor, the southern portion of the Grand Concourse and up-zoned parts of Webster Avenue, Fordham and White Plains roads as places where new development could thrive—even dazzle. If a listing for 320 Fordham Road is any indication, real estate forces are getting on board with the borough president’s vision for both the waterfront and the borough’s growing housing potential. The waterfront site in University Heights called Fordham Landing is being marketed by Massey Knakal for $29 million and offers close to 1 million square feet of residential development. The bulk of addresses on the
borough president’s list are concentrated in the South Bronx, where the borough’s poverty is most pronounced. Diaz’s office says that’s because land is cheaper and more plentiful in the south. “Our office is actively engaged with the de Blasio administration and the appropriate agencies on their housing plan, and we have submitted numerous potential sites to this administration for consideration for future development. These include the Harlem River waterfront and the potential decking of three borough train yards, as well as other sites across the Bronx,” said John DeSio, communications director for Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr., in a statement. “We are committed to helping to keep this borough and this city affordable, and the development of new, affordable housing of all kinds is a major component of that goal.” DeSio says Diaz would stick with funding housing projects serving households making between 30 percent and 110 percent of area median income, a range that encompasses $2,5150 to $90,612 for a family of four. He adds that while there may be some wiggle room on the high end, 30 percent of AMI is the lowest income level for which capital funds can be used. Not all new housing would be
income-targeted: Borough Hall also recently pitched building housing above train yards, including two in the Northwest Bronx, but did not bill it as “affordable.” Still, the real estate brokerage Massey Knakal/Cushman & Wakefield, which has several sites listed on its website that could be used for affordable housing, is certainly peddling the borough’s potential in the affordable housing arena. “With Manhattan sites fetching $500 to $800 per [base semi finished] and prime Brooklyn/Queens between $200 & $300, the Bronx is an increasingly attractive market for both public and private housing developers and one that will likely become even more popular as the new administration strives to reach its housing targets,” the Fordham Landing listing boasts. But Tom Angotti, professor of urban affairs and planning at Hunter College and a former senior planner with the city, warns that city officials must not think in terms of quotas, but rather in terms of communities, when planning affordable housing. “Their vision is to build housing, 200,000 units of affordable housing and there’s talk about community, but so far it’s a numbers game. And in fact they’re putting their foot forward first with these rezonings, in East New York and in the South Bronx. What that really does is put new market rate development first,” he said, noting that even proposed rezonings can reinforce a “ speculative land-buying frenzy.” He argues that government should not be in the business of identifying points on map as development opportunities without considering whether communities can sustain and support new housing. “Then you’re thinking like a real estate developer and not like a public agency,” he said. This story was published by City Limits, which City & State is partnering with to cover crucial housing policy stories in 2015. cit yandstateny.com
This is what happens when the 25,000 landlords of 1 million rent-stabilized apartments have the financial resources to make repairs and improvements. They re-invest the rent in their buildings and our neighborhoods. They provide work to small businesses and jobs to local residents – and, most importantly, they preserve existing affordable housing.
But some Albany and City Hall politicians, like Mayor Bill de Blasio, want to turn back the clock to old policies that failed in the past. They want stricter rent laws, and they want to freeze rents while raising property taxes and water and sewer rates. That would push affordable housing right back into the 1970’s and 80’s. We need to move forward, not backwards.
IT’S TIME FOR NEW SOLUTIONS TO AN OLD PROBLEM.
NYC TOP LOBBYISTS
NEW YORK CITY’S TOP 10 LOBBYISTS
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city & state — March 23, 2015
W
ith a new mayor and lots of turnover in the New York City Council, the total number of dollars spent on lobbying jumped significantly last year, from $62.7 million in 2013 to nearly $72 million in 2014. There were also some small shifts in the list of top 10 lobbyists, which is compiled and distributed each March by the New York City Clerk’s office. In our annual special section, City & State reached out to the top 10 firms and asked each of them to recap their year, identifying the key players at their outfits, highlighting their biggest successes and weighing in on changes they would like to see to city lobbying laws.
cit yandstateny.com
AWARDS
Pollie Awards for Creative Ad Design
WINNING
2004-2014 Top 10 New York Public Affairs Firms
NYC TOP LOBBYISTS
#1 KEY PLAYERS: Chief Executive Officer James Capalino; Chief Operating Officer Travis Terry; Executive Vice Presidents Chris Collins, Jeanne Mullgrav, Mark Thompson; Senior Advisors Richard Barth, Claire Altman; Senior Vice Presidents: Cathleen Collins, George Fontas, Tom Gray, Brooke Schafran; Vice Presidents Ben Kleinbaum, Fred Kreizman, Steven Figueiredo, Tunisha Walker. WHAT IS THE FIRM’S FOCUS/ SPECIALITY? Capalino+Company is a full service lobbying and strategic consulting firm with a specialty in helping our clients succeed in New York City. Through our deep commitment to integrity and longstanding knowledge of both city and state administrations, we have earned a reputation as New York’s premier government relations advisor and problem solver. With a team of incredibly experienced, well-
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connected professionals, Capalino advises and advocates and helps our clients resolve complex issues with city agencies, secure land use approvals, raise public sector funds, work with communities and deploy effective corporate social responsibility programs to boost visibility and strengthen connections to consumers and clients, leading to long-term sustainable success. With more than three decades of experience helping clients develop business opportunities and forge strong ties with government and communities, Capalino+Company consistently generates value in New York’s ever challenging marketplace. WHAT WERE SOME OF THE HIGHLIGHTS OF 2014 FOR THE FIRM? Our most exciting highlight was the addition of many experienced and incredibly skilled individuals to round out our deep roster of talent. In 2014, we also launched a number of
new services to expand and improve our offerings to our clients. These services include Corporate Social Responsibility, MWBE compliance, and affordable and supportive housing. Combining these new services with our team’s expertise in land-use, public-sector funding and working with the public and civic sector, we are now even able to help our clients achieve long-term and sustainable success in New York City. IF YOU COULD CHANGE ONE THING ABOUT LOBBYING IN NEW YORK CITY, WHAT WOULD IT BE? Our team has worked hard over the past 30 years to help shape what it means to be a government relations and lobbying firm in New York City. We see the value in bringing people together in order to help the business and nonprofit community succeed in New York. After all, we know who, we know how! We are specialists in collaborating with our clients to
successfully navigate the complex rules, regulations and politics of local and state governments to develop business opportunities and forge strong ties with government and the impacted communities. Through our decades of successful work throughout the city, we believe we have shown that our work is about collaboration, problem solving and strategic planning. We look forward to working with our colleagues to ensure we protect the integrity and professionalism of the government relations sector in New York.
Firm: Capalino & Company Total Compensation Reported: $8,230,922 2013 Ranking: 2 Founded: 1985
Patients should be allowed to acquire hearing aids from the physicians who know them and their medical history and needs best. (Not just at big box stores who don’t know them)
SUPPORT A127
You’ll be supporting the hearing needs of every New Yorker. CITY & STATE — March 23, 2015
Learn more at betterhearingNY.com
CIT YANDSTATENY.COM
KEY PLAYERS: Every member of the Kasirer Consulting team plays a key role in delivering success for our clients. Our team includes Suri Kasirer, Julie Greenberg, Omar Alvarellos, Peter Krokondelas, Cynthia Dames, Shane Myers, Tracy Fletcher and Tyesa Galloway. In 2014, Kasirer Consulting was honored to add Jervonne Singletary and Michael Krevet to our growing team. WHAT IS THE FIRMS FOCUS/ SPECIALTY? Our firm handles a wide variety of government and community affairs needs for our clients, which include some of the leading real estate developers, Fortune 500 firms and non-profits throughout the City. Our trademark is the results we get for our clients. Our record of success on behalf of
our diverse clientele is unmatched. Our focus is always on those we represent and the end result. Our clients do not just want our advice, counsel and reasoned judgment; they want results, and we know how to achieve them. We deliver our services with a combination of hard work, integrity, professionalism, a deep knowledge of how government functions, a reservoir of contacts across the city and, very importantly, our superb relationships with elected and senior government officials as well as business, community and civic leaders across the City. Our team has real experience working inside government at the highest levels and also in the political world, so we uniquely understand the nexus where government and politics meet. WHAT WERE SOME OF THE HIGHLIGHTS OF 2014 FOR THE FIRM?
Every day we deliver successful results on behalf of our clients—no matter how large or small—whether it’s a high profile project featured in The New York Times or a smaller project that may not merit a blog post—and everything in between. We moved forward major real estate development processes including SL Green’s 1 Vanderbilt ULURP, secured millions of dollars of funding to help support our nonprofit clients, coordinated outreach on the proposed Comcast/Time Warner Cable merger and positioned all of our clients for current and future success in a rapidly changing political environment. Consistent success for our clients— that’s our baseline and the hallmark of Kasirer Consulting. Trumpeting one over another or choosing between our clients’ success is not our role—it’s getting them there.
IF YOU COULD CHANGE ONE THING ABOUT LOBBYING IN NEW YORK CITY, WHAT WOULD IT BE? Ours is a profession of hard-working people dedicated to helping others with often complex issues that require a special expertise and knowledge of government and business. That is how we should be viewed, and our hope is that with continued hard work our profession will gain even broader acceptance, because we do provide an important service.
NYC TOP LOBBYISTS
#2
Firm: Kasirer Consulting Total Compensation Reported: $7,754,736 2013 Ranking: 1 Founded: 1996
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THE WOOLWORTH BUILDING
233 Broadway, Suite 830, New York, NY 10279 • 212-393-6500
www.candvconsulting.com CIT YANDSTATENY.COM
CITY & STATE — March 23, 2015
Constantinople & Vallone Consulting LLC is a results oriented government relations, public affairs and business development firm with a strong record of success. As a boutique firm, C&V provides customized, hands on consulting services to a select group of clientele. C&V works to understand a client's needs and develops a detailed strategy and budget while defining short and long term tactical goals. We at C&V believe that effective government relations is not just who you know, it's knowing who you need to know. C&V's principals bring a unique combination of experience and expertise in the sectors of government, finance, law and public affairs. C&V believes in creating and fostering an open dialogue with government officials, policy makers, community leaders, business executives and members of the media.
NYC TOP LOBBYISTS
#3
KEY PLAYERS: Partners Emily Giske and Michael Keogh lead Bolton-St. Johns’ quickly growing New York City office. Albanybased Partners Giorgio DeRosa, Ed Draves, Bill McCarthy, and Tom Connolly, in addition to Buffalo Partner Jack O’Donnell are also vital to the success of the firm in New York City and throughout the state. BSJ most recently hired John Albert, an accomplished lawyer who has over fifteen years of experience lobbying in New York City as well as renowned labor advocate Suzy Ballantyne. John McCarthy, Counsel, has helped lead our New York City office for over five years with experience in Albany as well. Our success in New York City is also due in large part to team members Julian Kline, Natasha Avanessians, Kenan Kurt, and Ilyssa Meyer.
WHAT IS THE FIRM’S FOCUS/ SPECIALTY? Our New York City team’s diverse backgrounds bring experience and relationships that hail from all boroughs and touch upon all aspects of NYC government, making Bolton-St. Johns the premiere one-stop-shop for city government relations. Our New York City team works primarily on matters before the Mayor’s Office, regarding City Council legislation, city agency RFP and procurement opportunities, city budget funding allocations, and transportation concerns at the Taxi & Limousine Commission. BSJ also has an increasingly influential practice in land use, community relations and business development. WHAT WERE SOME OF THE HIGHLIGHTS OF 2014 FOR THE FIRM? Famously being declared by Emily
44
Giske, followed by a hearty laugh, Bolton-St. Johns is On the Move! We were very proud to play a role securing funding for a 207-unit affordable housing development in the Bronx. In 2014, BSJ continued to secure city funding to support critical communitybased nonprofit organizations throughout the five boroughs. BSJ also continued to expand our presence and position as the go-to lobbying firm for New York City’s tech industry. This past year, Bolton-St. Johns increased its positioning within the land use sector, while continuing to participate in New York City’s civic community. Bolton-St. Johns officially opened its Buffalo office in 2014, where Partner Jack O’Donnell was joined by Camille Brandon. IF YOU COULD CHANGE ONE THING ABOUT LOBBYING IN NEW YORK CITY, WHAT WOULD IT BE?
Lobbying and government relations make up a unique professional field that allows for comprehensive interaction with government regarding matters that can be complex and too timeintensive for leaders or employees of companies and nonprofits to interact with. Our only wish is that more individuals and organizations can become aware of the rights and opportunities that they have available to participate in democracy.
Firm: Bolton-St. Johns Total Compensation Reported: $3,568,192 2013 Ranking: 3 Founded: 1988
Informed. Focused. Effective. city & state — March 23, 2015
Manatt is proud to be a part of the city and state of New York: as government advisors, as neighbors, as citizens.
Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, llp
manatt.com
cit yandstateny.com
KEY PLAYERS: Together, founding members Vincent Pitta and Robert Bishop have more than 40 years of government relations experience in New York City and Albany. Mr. Pitta is managing member of the firm, while also serving as managing partner of the affiliated law firm of Pitta & Giblin LLP. Mr. Bishop manages the firm’s Albany office, overseeing all state legislative and agency matters. Jon Del Giorno oversees and coordinates the firm’s New York City advocacy efforts along with recently named member Vito Pitta. Former Staten Island Borough President James Molinaro heads the Staten Island office and has recently been joined by former FDNY Commissioner Salvatore Cassano. Vincent M. Giblin, a former Assistant U.S. Attorney in New Jersey, provides a recognized presence in New Jersey. WHAT IS THE FIRM’S FOCUS/ SPECIALTY?
Pitta Bishop is a full service government relations firm providing a broad range of services, including legislative and regulatory issues, business development, marketing trends, funding and advocacy with offices in Lower Manhattan, Albany and Staten Island. WHAT WERE SOME OF THE FIRM’S 2014 HIGHLIGHTS? We helped to include $4.9 million from New York City Council in FY 2015 budget to fund the Vera Institute for Justice’s New York Immigrant Family Unity Project, which provided universal legal representation to any indigent immigrant facing deportation. We assisted ASPCA in urging City Council to pass legislation banning the sale of animals obtained from “puppy mills.” Pet stores will also be required to disclose information to customers about the origins of the animals they sell, as well as to spay/neuter and microchip dogs and cats (and license
dogs) before selling them. Through a campaign of education towards a legislative solution ending a NYPD policy which prevented undercover detectives from transferring to other more traditional assignments, the Detectives Endowment Association was able to negotiate an agreement with the NYPD permitting “any detective assigned to undercover duties in the OCCB who desires to be reassigned to a non-undercover investigative assignment to do so after completing 48 months in undercover assignments.” On behalf of the Board of Education Employees, Local 372, PB spearheaded the passage of state law which increases the penalty for assaulting a school crossing guard while on duty or otherwise on school grounds. Legislation was created to protect these civil servants who are often the victim of physical and verbal threats and violence. We assisted developers of New
York Wheel in obtaining $1.55 million grant through state Regional Development Council to help promote tourism on Staten Island. Officials will break ground on the 630-foot tall observation next month. Once in operation it is expected to attract more than 4 million tourists in its first year.
NYC TOP LOBBYISTS
#4
IF YOU COULD CHANGE ONE THING ABOUT LOBBYING IN NEW YORK CITY, WHAT WOULD IT BE? Would not make changes. The current system is open and transparent and subject to more than adequate regulatory oversight.
Firm: Pitta Bishop Del Giorno & Giblin Total Compensation Reported: $3,343,952 2013 Ranking: 7 Founded: 2008
45
Davidoff Hutcher & Citron LLP Named One of the Top 10 Lobbying Firms in New York City
New York 605 Third Avenue New York, N.Y. 10158 T 212.557.7200 F 212.286.1884
CIT YANDSTATENY.COM
Long Island 200 Garden City Plaza, Suite 315 Garden City, N.Y. 11530 T 516.248.6400 F 516.248.6422
Albany Government Relations 150 State Street Albany, N.Y. 12207 T 518.465.8230 F 518.465.8650
Washington, D.C. Government Relations 1211 Connecticut Avenue, N.W. Washington, DC 20036 T: 202.347.1117 F: 202.638.4584
CITY & STATE — March 23, 2015
Davidoff Hutcher & Citron LLP, founded in 1975, is one of New York’s most respected commercial law and government relations firms. The firm has melded its multi-discipline law practice, with its distinguished government relations practice handling legal and lobbying matters from the routine to the complex.
NYC TOP LOBBYISTS
#5 KEY PLAYERS: Senior Partners Anthony Constantinople Jr., Peter Vallone Sr.; Partners Anthony Constantinople III, Perry Vallone; Sr. Vice President Keith Powers; Associate Lobbyists Steve Williams, R. Kevin Jones, Aycan Kaptaner; Compliance Associate Carol Swift; Administrative Associates Heidi Mathis, Trisha Hahn. WHAT IS THE FIRM’S FOCUS/ SPECIALTY? The firm provides clients with the ability to effectively communicate their message to City Hall, Albany and Washington, D.C. The team at C&V consists of individuals with extensive backgrounds in law, government and business. C&V represents a diverse set of industries, including retail, banking, land use, energy and environment, transportation and hospitality, in addition to community organizations and not-for-profit service providers. C&V guides its clients through the
entire governmental process and utilizes a community outreach and consensus-building strategy to address the client’s needs. WHAT WERE SOME 2014 HIGHLIGHTS FOR THE FIRM? Through the efforts of our firm, Prestige Properties & Development Corp. was able to successfully open a 780,000 square foot enclosed mall in the Bronx known as The Mall at Bay Plaza. We worked with the local community leaders and elected officials to address any concerns during permitting and construction. Moreover, we brought Prestige together with the Bronx Overall Economic Development Corporation and successfully implemented a strategy to obtain funding for the traffic improvements needed for the access ramp from I-95 to The Mall— obtaining support letters from all local and elected community leaders, getting the project recognized as a priority
through the Regional Economic Development process, and working closely with the Governor’s Office to secure funding from the Thruway Authority and state Department of Transportation. These efforts helped bring 2,000 construction jobs, 1,700 permanent jobs and over 100 new stores to the Bronx. We provided lobbying support for the financing and permitting of the first building to be built through the City’s HARP program in LIC, Queens—turning a stalled development project into a successful mixed–use, mixed-income building in which 93 percent of the units provide affordable housing to middle income families. The majority of the families are from the community and all of the units have amenities that rival the best market rate developments in the area. We assisted our client JCPenney in opening its first store Gateway II Mall in Brooklyn in the summer of 2014. For three years leading up to the opening,
we met with the Brooklyn Borough President, Economic Development Corporation (EDC), and Mayor’s Office to identify suitable locations in Brooklyn. We facilitated a solution between Walgreens and Windsor Terrace that allowed for a supermarket on-site, as requested by the community and local leaders. We assisted Long Island Health and Human Services’ Network’s expansion from Long Island to Queens, including providing support for their budget requests in the City, Nassau County and Suffolk County.
for expansion and enhancement of vital services ranging from science and art education to equitable parks programming to effective alternative to incarceration services. We also helped our clients secure millions of dollars in capital funds for cultural construction projects throughout the five boroughs. Another highlight was longtime client Titan’s success in winning an RFP for a citywide franchise to replace the city’s pay phones with interactive Wi-Fi kiosks, complete with free telephone service and digital advertising. As part of a consortium known as CityBridge, Titan and its partners Control Group, Comark and Qualcomm will bring free, high-speed broadband to the public streets of all five boroughs. Finally, we successfully implemented new leadership as Claudia Wagner transitioned from department chair to counsel and strategic advisor, allowing for the promotion of longtime lobbyist Katie Schwab and the addition of former
City Council Finance Director Preston Niblack.
Firm: Constantinople & Vallone Total Compensation Reported: $3,147,922 2013 Ranking: 4 Founded: 1997 (as Constantinople Consulting)
46
#6
city & state — March 23, 2015
KEY PLAYERS: Our City Government and Regulatory practice team consists of Katie Schwab, Steve Polan, Joshua Bocian, Rose Christ, Peter Ebright, Preston Niblack and Claudia Wagner. Our Albany and Washington lobbying practices, are headed by Jim Lytle and Jim Walsh, and Jim Bonham respectively. WHAT IS THE FIRM’S FOCUS/ SPECIALTY? Our clients are varied and diverse, ranging from small City-based nonprofits to complex international corporations, but they all share an interest in working in and with the City of New York. We pay attention to detail and pride ourselves on our ability to develop creative, clientcentered strategies to address whatever challenges that client is facing, including but not limited to budget advocacy, legislation, regulation, community engagement and procurement. Manatt offers all the advantages of a full-service
law and consulting firm, with real strength in the areas of public policy and government contracts, nonprofit organizations, arts and culture, and healthcare. Our budget expertise is particularly strong, and we regularly work with nonprofit clients over a period of years as conceptual projects are realized through budget and community advocacy, followed by contracting and capital project implementation. We are also known for in-depth analysis of legislation and budget trends. WHAT WERE SOME OF THE HIGHLIGHTS OF 2014 FOR THE FIRM? The seismic shift in city leadership challenged and energized our advocacy, often allowing us to showcase the services and core competencies of our clients in a new light. Working with new Speaker and the Administration, we assisted our clients in securing millions of dollars in expense funding, allowing
IF YOU COULD CHANGE ONE THING ABOUT LOBBYING IN NEW YORK CITY, WHAT WOULD IT BE? Lobbying in New York City is every bit as rewarding, exhilarating, and demanding as the city itself. While transparency and regulatory requirements undoubtedly contribute to the professionalism of our industry, the state and city requirements are often inconsistent, leading to confusion and burdening both non-profit and for-profit clients with conflicting and onerous paperwork.
Firm: Manatt, Phelps & Phillips Total Compensation Reported: $2,343,990 2013 Ranking: 6 Founded: 2003
cit yandstateny.com
Proudly celebrating our 20th Anniversary and the successful results we get for our clients every day. Our record of success on behalf of our diverse clientele is unmatched. Our focus is always on those we represent and the end result. Our clients do not just want our advice, counsel and reasoned judgment; they want results, and our professional team knows how to achieve them. We deliver our services with a combination of hard work, integrity, professionalism, a deep knowledge of how government functions, a reservoir of contacts across the city and, very importantly, our superb relationships with elected and senior government officials as well as business, community and civic leaders across the City.
To learn more about Kasirer Consulting, please visit us at www.kasirerconsulting.nyc 321 Broadway, Ste 201, New York, NY 10007 Tel: (212) 285-1800 Email: info@kasirerconsulting.nyc
SURI KASIRER JULIE GREENBERG OMAR ALVARELLOS CYNTHIA DAMES TRACY FLETCHER TYESA GALLOWAY MICHAEL KREVET PETER KROKONDELAS SHANE MYERS JERVONNE SINGLETARY
NYC TOP LOBBYISTS
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#7 WHO ARE THE FIRM’S KEY PLAYERS? Sid Davidoff, Chair of firm’s Administrative Law and Government Relations groups; Howard S. Weiss, Chair of firm’s Land Use group; Arthur Goldstein, Sean Crowley and Brian W. Simon, members of the firm’s Government Relations group. WHAT IS THE FIRM’S FOCUS/ SPECIALTY? Davidoff Hutcher & Citron has a broad-based government affairs and administrative law practice. The firm is well known for its land use and zoning work involving significant development projects that must go through New York City’s complex public review and approval process. DHC also has unsurpassed experience in lobbying the legislative and executive branches of City government, working closely with the Mayor’s Office and local legislative leaders, along with city agencies, boards and commissions. The firm advocates on behalf of
businesses, trade associations, service organizations, educational institutions, government authorities, communitybased groups and not-for-profit organizations. WHAT WERE SOME OF THE HIGHLIGHTS OF 2014 FOR THE FIRM? For the Madelaine Chocolate Company, we worked over the last year with City government to get the largest employer of the Rockaways back up and running after being devastated by super storm Sandy. The City of New York awarded the company a $13.2 million grant. For 2030 Astoria Developers, DHC obtained City Planning Commission and New York City Council approvals for the Astoria Cove project. A mixed-use project with 1,700 units of housing that is the first major development project in the City subject to mandatory affordable housing requirement initiated by Mayor Bill de Blasio.
We obtained City Planning Commission and City Council approval of the Seaside Park and Community Arts Center, consisting of a 5,100-seat amphitheater entertainment complex and public park at the site of the historic Childs Restaurant building at Coney Island’s Riegelmann Boardwalk in Brooklyn. Most recently we worked with local government officials and city departments to bring to fruition Brooklyn’s inaugural Rock ‘n’ Roll half marathon, which took place on Oct. 10. IF YOU COULD CHANGE ONE THING ABOUT LOBBYING IN NEW YORK CITY, WHAT WOULD IT BE? The definition of a lobbyist. We believe very strongly in transparency in city government but the way in which New York City’s lobbying law defines “lobbying” is so broad as to lead to confusion. Our land use lawyers work on some projects that need special permits from the Board of Standards
and Appeals and that’s not lobbying, and they apply for special permits from the City Planning Commission, which is defined as lobbying. They seek some approvals from the Landmarks Preservation Commission that are considered lobbying and other approvals that are not deemed lobbying. It would be much easier for a number of professional service providers, whether dealing with zoning or procurement, for example, if they could just do their work and not deal with the cumbersome registration and compliance issues resulting from their work being labeled “lobbying” simply because their professional practice involves the government.
Firm: Davidoff Hutcher & Citron Total Compensation Reported: $2,321,933 2013 Ranking: 8 Founded: 1975
#8
city & state — March 23, 2015
KEY PLAYERS: New York City Office Co-Chairman Edward C. Wallace; NY Government Law & Policy Practice Chair John Mascialino; NY Government Law & Policy Practice Chairman Robert M. Harding; NY Environmental Practice Chair Steven Russo; National Land Use Practice Co-Chair Jay Segal; Land Use Practice Shareholders Deirdre Carson and Nick Hockens; NY Government Law & Policy Practice Counsel William B. Mack and Associate Julia M. Rogawski. WHAT IS THE FIRM’S FOCUS/ SPECIALTY? Major transactions with government including procurements, economic development and land use approval. In addition, we provide legislative and regulatory advocacy as well as challenges to government actions. Greenberg Traurig’s New York Government Law & Policy Practice
has on the ground presence in both New York City and Albany. We provide a unique skill set built on real government and business experience. Our approach includes collaborating with government decision makers and understanding key players’ priorities to foster “win-win” strategies that help our clients achieve their economic goals. Our team, complemented by attorneys in our Real Estate, Environmental and Land Use practices, provide government affairs assistance to companies in a wide range of areas, including affordable housing, construction, economic development, education, environmental, energy, government contracts and procurement, health care, land use and zoning, real estate, technology, transportation and taxation. Whether defending against executive or legislative action or working to create and implement an initiative or opportunity, our lawyers and lobbyists craft strategies tailored
to the specific needs of our individual clients. Our attorneys are part of a national practice named “Law Firm of the Year” in the U.S. News-Best Lawyers 2014 edition of Best Law Firms for Government Relations and have been consistently ranked among the top five law firm lobbying practices in New York State, by the Joint Commission on Public Ethics, and its predecessors and consistently ranked among the Top 10 lobbying practices in New York City by the City Clerk’s Office. WHAT WERE SOME OF THE HIGHLIGHTS OF 2014 FOR THE FIRM? Greenberg Traurig’s Government Law & Policy, Real Estate, Land Use and Environmental practices had several successes in 2014. Our team has provided advice regarding economic development and land use approval counsel for Waterview at Greenpoint LLC, Elad Group / Silverstein
Properties (Riverside Center), Jewish Home Lifecare and JCDecaux. IF YOU COULD CHANGE ONE THING ABOUT LOBBYING IN NEW YORK CITY, WHAT WOULD IT BE? There’s been a great emphasis on increased communication with the regulatory agencies. We would like to see continued collaboration with the regulatory agencies as well as more informational sessions where lobbyists can make recommendations for changes in the law and the way it is enforced.
Firm: Greenberg Traurig Total Compensation Reported: $1,986,501 2013 Ranking: 5 Founded: 1991
cit yandstateny.com
Capalino + Company, your full service government relations specialist has expanded its bench. To bolster our extensive list of services, we now specialize in representing Minority Women-Owned Business (MWBE). We provide problem solving, technical assistance and business development.
Government Relations & Lobbying Capalino+Company brings an in-depth knowledge of all New York City and State governmental agencies, boards and legislative bodies to support clients in a wide array of government relations services.
Entering the New York Market We tap into our vast network of leaders in corporations, notfor-profit organizations, and government to ensure that clients are able to forge the necessary relationships to successfully operate in the New York market.
Land Use & Real Estate Services Since 1981, Capalino+Company has provided land use planning services to many of the largest real estate development companies in New York City.
Corporate Social Responsibility A Corporate Social Responsibility agenda focused on economic and community development, institutional effectiveness, and sustainable ecosystems is a proven means for boosting employee skills and morale while strengthening connections to consumers and clients.
w w w. C A PA L I N O . c o m c o n t a c t @ c a p a l i n o. c o m • 2 1 2 . 6 1 6 . 5 8 1 0 •
Community Relations & Mobilization Through an extensive network of personal relationships with community leaders across the City, our staff of community relations consultants help our clients craft effective proposals and strategies to build strong support from communities.
Securing Government Contracts We have successfully secured government contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars for some of New York’s leading not-for-profit and for-profit organizations.
@capalino
NYC TOP LOBBYISTS
#9 KEY PLAYERS: Mercury’s New York City Office is led by Partners Michael McKeon and Tom Doherty and Co-Chairs Charlie King and Fernando Ferrer; Managing Directors Jonathan Greenspun, Jan Feurestadt and Pat Halpin; Senior Vice Presidents Jim Quent, Violet Moss and Austin Finan; Partner Kirill Goncharenko; Managing Directors Ben Feller and Erin Pelton. Our Albany team includes Managing Director Patrick McCarthy, Senior Vice Presidents Lisa Reid and Cassie Prugh. WHAT IS THE FIRM’S FOCUS/ SPECIALTY? Mercury provides high-level strategy for clients with issues at the intersection of government, business and media. We are a full-service public affairs firm with expertise in crisis communications, public
affairs campaign management and government relations, bringing bestin-class offering in all these areas to ensure our clients achieve the results they seek. Our success is due in large part to our bipartisan team of elite professionals who have been tested in politics, government and the corporate worlds. Our government affairs team has decades of combined service at the highest level of New York City and state government, as well as in local government, while our reach stretches from Suffolk County to Buffalo and everywhere in between. Mercury’s commitment to delivering measurable results to each and every client sets us apart as the gold standard in lobbying and government relations. WHAT WERE SOME OF THE HIGHLIGHTS OF 2014 FOR THE FIRM? Last year was a tremendous time of
growth and change for Mercury, as the size of our New York City staff nearly doubled. We ended the year on high note by merging with CGK Partners, one of the state’s most prolific lobbying firms, adding veteran strategists Charlie King and Jan Feuerstadt to our already impressive roster. We played critical roles in the crafting and passaging of important legislation regarding issues that will impact all New Yorkers in both the City Council and the State Legislature, while managing success political and corporate campaigns for a number of clients. IF YOU COULD CHANGE ONE THING ABOUT LOBBYING IN NEW YORK CITY, WHAT WOULD IT BE? The majority of New York City’s lobbyists comply with all of the rules and regulations set out for them, but these good actors are rarely
acknowledged. Mercury believes that the City should focus more of its attention on applauding these firms and individuals, rather than solely highlighting the failings of those who do not comply with the laws. We also would support the creation of a Lobbying Commission to assess the current state of lobbying, similar to the initiative undertaken by former Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former City Council Speaker Christine Quinn.
Firm: Mercury Public Affairs Total Compensation Reported: $1,824,583 2013 Ranking: New Founded: 1999
50
city & state — March 23, 2015
#10 KEY PLAYERS: The Parkside Group is a diverse group of seasoned professionals. Company President Harry Giannoulis has tackled some of the most complex land use approvals and was the architect of the hugely successful Jobs for New York independent expenditure that helped elect 17 members of the City Council. Co-Founder Evan Stavisky is one of the state’s best-known legislative strategists and successfully represents Fortune 500 companies, labor unions, and non-profits on a variety of legislative, regulatory and procurement matters. Vice President Paul Thomas directs multifaceted government relations efforts that engage community stakeholders by building upon skills and relationships he developed as a senior aide in the Attorney General’s office under Andrew Cuomo and as chief of staff to Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie. General Counsel Dan Katz’s
substantive, policy-driven approach to passing landmark legislation, and killing bad bills, helps corporate and labor clients alike. They, and other members of our team, are part of the New York’s political fabric, bringing extensive experience in government to advance our clients’ goals. WHAT IS THE FIRM’S FOCUS/ SPECIALTY? Beyond our government relations work, our political consulting practice, led by Joe Reubens, has elected more than 80 officials throughout the state, and our PR and grassroots engagement practice, led by Jake Dilemani, has built advocacy campaigns on land use, health care, education, and other matters. Our specialty is high-stakes public battles. Whether it is our successful effort to keep Wal-Mart from invading New York, winning approval for the redevelopment of Willets Point
after decades of inaction or helping FreshDirect secure the support necessary to remain in the city and become the largest employer in the Bronx, we never shy away from the tough fights. Rather, we embrace them, and win. WHAT WERE SOME OF THE HIGHLIGHTS OF 2014 FOR THE FIRM? This past year marked our tenth year as one of New York’s largest lobbying firms, and saw changes in both wings of City Hall. Some of our key victories included legislation dramatically increasing penalties for companies that fail to pay their workers, helping companies with hundreds of millions of dollars in government contracts navigate the challenges of a new administration, and working with a wide array of non-profit organizations to secure millions of dollars in funding from the new New York City Council.
IF YOU COULD CHANGE ONE THING ABOUT LOBBYING IN NEW YORK CITY, WHAT WOULD IT BE? If we had to change one thing about lobbying in New York, it would be to add more disclosure. It sounds counterintuitive for a lobbyist, but if New York City switched to a system of bi-monthly reports, transparency would increase while compliance would be streamlined, since state and city regulators operate on different reporting schedules.
Firm: The Parkside Group Total Compensation Reported: $1,798,749 2013 Ranking: 10 Founded: 2000
cit yandstateny.com
1800 Attorneys | 37 Locations° | www.gtlaw.com
HELPING CLIENTS NAVIGATE
GOVERNMENT ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT | EDUCATION | ELECTION LAW | ENVIRONMENTAL | FINANCIAL REGULATION GOVERNMENT CONTRACTS & PROCUREMENT | HEALTHCARE | LAND USE & ZONING | LEGISLATIVE & REGULATORY P3 & INFRASTRUCTURE | REAL ESTATE | TECHNOLOGY
One-Stop Service: Government Law & Policy, Real Estate, Land Use and Environmental Law Greenberg Traurig’s New York Government Law & Policy Practice draws upon its professional knowledge and government experience to guide corporations and organizations through a wide range of legislative and regulatory challenges. With on the ground presence in New York City and Albany and complemented by attorneys in our Real Estate, Land Use & Zoning, and Environmental practices, we provide government affairs assistance in a wide range of areas. Greenberg Traurig’s Government Law & Policy, Real Estate, Land Use & Zoning and Environmental attorneys work as a team. NYC GOVERNMENT LAW & POLICY
REAL ESTATE
LAND USE & ZONING
ED WALLACE | Co-Chair, GT NY Served as NYC Council Member and a VP at Boston Properties; listed on City & State’s 2014 and 2015 NYC Power 100 Lists, Super Lawyers and The Best Lawyers in America wallacee@gtlaw.com | 212.801.9299
ROBERT IVANHOE | Co-Chair, Global Real Estate Practice Named New York Post Top 4 commercial real estate lawyer, NY Super Lawyers Top 10 and The New York Observer “Top 100 Most Powerful People in New York Real Estate;” listed in Chambers USA Guide ivanhoer@gtlaw.com | 212.801.9333
JAY SEGAL | Chair, National Land Use Practice Named 2014 “Lawyer of the Year” in The Best Lawyers in America for Land Use and Zoning in NYC and listed in Chambers USA Guide segalj@gtlaw.com | 212.801.9265
JOHN MASCIALINO | Chair, NY Government Law & Policy Practice Served as First Deputy Commissioner of the Department of Citywide Administrative Services and as Counsel/ Deputy Chief-of-Staff to the Deputy Mayor for Operations; listed in NY Super Lawyers, 2012-2014 mascialinoj@gtlaw.com | 212.801.9355 ROBERT HARDING | Shareholder Former NYC Deputy Mayor for Economic Development and Finance and Former Director of the NYC Office of Management and Budget hardingr@gtlaw.com | 212.801.6750 WILL MACK | Of Counsel Served as Principal Counsel for Enforcement at the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) in New York and before that worked as Director of the Executive Secretariat in the Office of the United States Trade Representative and as a Deputy Associate Counsel at the White House mackw@gtlaw.com | 212.801.2230
STEPHEN RABINOWITZ | Co-Managing Shareholder, GT NY Listed in The Best Lawyers in America, Chambers USA Guide and Super Lawyers magazine; Member of the Board of Trustees, East Harlem Tutorial Program and Lupus Foundation of America rabinowitzs@gtlaw.com | 212.801.9295
ENVIRONMENTAL STEVEN RUSSO | Chair, NY Environmental Practice Former Deputy Commissioner and General Counsel to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation russos@gtlaw.com | 212.801.9200
DEIRDRE CARSON | Shareholder More than 25 years of land use law experience; named a Real Estate New York “Women of Influence” in 2009; served as an Assistant to Mayor Koch carsond@gtlaw.com | 212.801.6855
NICK HOCKENS | Shareholder Worked as an urban planner before practicing law. He has a Ph.D. from Northwestern University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School hockensn@gtlaw.com | 212.801.3088
Greenberg Traurig is a service mark and trade name of Greenberg Traurig, LLP and Greenberg Traurig, P.A. ©2015 Greenberg Traurig, LLP. Attorneys at Law. All rights reserved. Contact: Ed Wallace, John Mascialino or Robert Harding in New York at 212.801.9200. °These numbers are subject to fluctuation. 25138
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$8,230,922.00
11.45 %
NYC TOP LOBBYISTS
TOP TEN LOBBYISTS IN 2014 BY COMPENSATION
$7,754,736.00
%
79 10.
4.96%
49.49%
James F. Capalino & Associates, Inc.
4.65%
Kasirer Consulting LLC Bolton-St. Johns, LLC Pitta Bishop Del Giorno & Giblin LLC
3% 3.2
Davidoff Hutcher & Citron LLP
Mercury Public Affiars, LLC
$1,798,749.65
$1,824,583.48
$71,902,589.32
$1,986,501.80
2011
2012
2013
2014
$80,000,000.00
$70,000,000.00
$60,000,000.00
$50,000,000.00
$40,000,000.00
$30,000,000.00
city & state — March 23, 2015
$2,321,933.00
$62,680,528.87
COMPARISON OF COMPENSATION REPORTED BY LOBBYISTS (2010-2014)
$2,343,990.62
$62,059,416.20
52
$35,581,105.64
%
$3,147,922.00
$53,257,172.75
The Parkside Group, LLC
3%
2.54% 2.50%
Greenberg Traurig, LLP
Other
8%
26
Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP
$3,343,952.50
4.3
3.
Constantinople & Valone Consulting LLC
$3,568,192.63
$20,000,000.00
$10,000,000.00
$0.00
cit yandstateny.com
By MICHAEL GARETH JOHNSON
L
obbying in New York City underwent several changes in 2014 following the passage of Local Law 129 the year before—not to be mixed up with the much more famous Local Law 129 passed in 2005, which significantly increased the number of M/WBE firms certified to participate in city contracts. The new regulations that took effect in 2014 broadened the definition of lobbying. Now, any activities related to New York City Council oversight hearings or the issuing of executive orders by the mayor must be reported. Some of the other changes include: • The reporting threshold was increased from $2,000 to $5,000. • The reporting threshold for architects, engineers and landscape artists increased to $10,000. • The daily late filing penalties of $10 per day for first-time filers and $25 per day for repeat filers were reinstated. In 2015, several more changes are taking place and are outlined by the Office of the City Clerk’s Lobbying Bureau:
TOP TEN LOBBYISTS OF 2014
(BY NUMBER OF CLIENTS REGISTERED) James F. Capalino & Associates, Inc. = 237 Kasirer Consulting LLC = 117 Pitta Bishop Del Giorno & Giblin LLC = 90 Greenberg Traurig, LLP = 70 Sheldon Lobel, P.C. = 61
Wilson, Elser, Moskowitz, Edelman & Dicker LLP = 59 Constantinople & Vallone Consulting LLC = 54 Bolton-St. Johns, LLC = 51 Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP = 48 Davidoff Hutcher & Citron LLP = 47
nothing
NYC TOP LOBBYISTS
ADAPTING TO LOCAL LAW 129
“In politics... “In politics...
happens happens by by accident.” accident.”
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt - Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Pitta &Giblin GiblinLLC LLC PittaBishop Bishop Del Del Giorno Giorno &
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Lobbying,Consulting, Consulting, Strategic Strategic Planning, Lobbying, Planning,Business BusinessDevelopment, Development, Crisis Management, Fire Safety and Emergency Response, Crisis Management, Fire Safety and Emergency Response, Community and and Public Community PublicRelations RelationsStaten Island Albany New York Albany 111 Washington Avenue, Suite 401 111 Washington Suite 401 Albany,Avenue, NY 12210 Telephone: 518.449.3320 Albany, NY 12210 Facsimile:518.449.3320 518.449.5812 Telephone: Facsimile: 518.449.5812
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New York 120 Broadway, 28th Floor 120New Broadway, Floor York, NY28th 10271 Telephone: New York,212.652.3890 NY 10271 Facsimile: 212.897.8001 Telephone: 212.652.3890 Facsimile: 212.897.8001 info@pittabishop.com info@pittabishop.com
Staten 25 Hyatt Street,Island Suite 202 Staten Island, NY 10301 25 Hyatt Street, Suite 202 Telephone: 718.943.1050 Staten Island, NY 10301 Facsimile: 718.943.1051 Telephone: 718.943.1050 Facsimile: 718.943.1051
CITY & STATE — March 23, 2015
• Text changes to screens and the user guide • Adding more drop-downs to replace free-form fields • Allowing electronic credit card payments • Editing the automatic e-Lobbyist emails • Allowing lobbyist/client filers whose total compensation is between $5,000 and $10,000 to file two periodic reports per year instead of six
REMEMBERING THE REVOLUTION N
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elson A. Denis is known in political circles as a former state assemblyman, reformer and commentator. But the New York City native’s career also includes work as an attorney, filmmaker and—most recently—as an author. His new book, “War Against All Puerto Ricans: Revolution and Terror in America’s Colony,” will be published next month. Denis, who is of Puerto Rican heritage, spoke with City & State Editor-at-Large Gerson Borrero about his forthcoming book and the history of how Puerto Rico came under U.S. control. The following is an edited transcript. City & State: I find the title fascinating, because people will say, “Who’s got the war against Puerto Ricans?” And basically you are saying, “It’s the U.S. government.” Nelson A. Denis: Actually, there’s a real story behind this. I feel like there’s a war against Puerto Ricans every time I pay my taxes—
city & state — March 23, 2015
C&S: Why? NAD: Well, that was just a joke. On a more serious note, this “war against all Puerto Ricans” were the words that were uttered by the chief of police of Puerto Rico. His name was Francis E. Riggs. C&S: Who was not Puerto Rican. NAD: No, absolutely not. He was Yale educated. His father was president of the Riggs National Bank, which was known for financing and destabilizing a lot of regimes in South and Central America. The bank was finally closed when they got caught laundering money for Augusto Pinochet in Chile. Riggs was sent down to Puerto Rico to help “stabilize” the situation together with an army general named Blanton Winship who was designated as the governor. Why did this happen? Because Pedro Albizu Campos,
actual history, and you have over 100 pages documenting this. What is most compelling in here to draw in people who don’t know about the atrocities committed by the U.S.? NAD: When that strike happened and the U.S. government was very unhappy, they started assailing, assaulting, provoking all the nationalists and they assassinated four of them in what was known as, before the Ponce Massacre, the Rio Piedras Massacre in Oct. 24, 1935. They killed four nationalists in broad daylight, they just assassinated them. They killed them, just for being nationalists. When asked to explain that in a press conference, the police chief, Yale-educated Riggs, son of the bank president Riggs, said if people kept following Albizu Campos, and if Albizu Campos kept stirring up the macheteros and the college students that there would be war to the death against all Puerto Ricans.
A Q&A WITH
NELSON A. DENIS the president of the Nationalist Party, had been writing editorials, holding meetings, giving speeches, touring through South America, making his presence felt. The United States could care less—the First Amendment was alive and well on the island of Puerto Rico—until an islandwide agricultural strike in 1934, which brought the economy to a standstill for about two or three months. There was a meaningful negotiation, which actually ended up doubling the workers’ wages, los macheteros, the sugar cane workers in Puerto Rico, from 75 cents to roughly $1.50 a day for a 10-hour day. That was actually a big deal. That was amazing. They doubled their wages. It was the difference between starvation and not to many of these people.
C&S: What was the role of Albizu Campos? NAD: Albizu Campos was brought in by the macheteros to lead and negotiate the terms for the workers. He led this strike. Originally it was supposedly led by the labor leaders, the FLT, but the rank and file found out that those leaders in the union had sold them out for comfortable government jobs in San Juan. That’s when they went to Albizu. Albizu led that strike. When he led that strike, immediately Blanton Winship and Riggs paid attention to him. That’s when Riggs invited Albizu to el Escambrón, to a lunch to offer him large sums of money to buy him off politically and he didn’t go for it. C&S: This is not a novel. This is
C&S: You reviewed FBI documents called las carpetas taken from espionage on Puerto Ricans. How many of these carpetas did the FBI collect on Puerto Ricans? NAD: People were followed all over the island, and not just a small group. There were over 100,000 secret police dossiers, FBI files, called carpetas, over the period from the mid ’30s to the mid ’80s. When you think about the process and the human interactions that comprised that, in order to create 100,000 files you have to have a hell of a lot of informants, because the informants are the ones that provided the data for those files. Most of the FBI agents didn’t speak Spanish. These informants, the vast majority of them were Puerto Ricans. This is something that over two generations affected the Puerto Rican character. To watch the complete interview on City & State TV, go to cityandstateny.com.
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