City Hall - March 1, 2007

Serph Maltese, below, drives to see constituents in Back

in the District (Page 14), Betsy Gotbaum, right, gears up for the

Vol. 1, No. 10

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March 2007

ANDREW SCHWARTZ PHOTOS

Public Advocacy Project (Page 5) and politicos suggest nicknames for Rudy Giuliani and

Hillary Clinton in our Pundit Poll (Page 23).

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New Costs Threaten to Derail No. 7 Extension

YoungTURKS How the reformers are changing Albany— and how Albany is changing the reformers

BY NEIL DEMAUSE hile Gov. Eliot Spitzer (D) has focused most of his ire on legislative leaders whom he sees as standing in the way of reform, one of the governor’s new appointees did fire the opening salvo in what might turn into a showdown with Mayor Michael Bloomberg (R).

Elliot “Lee” Sander, the longtime transit expert who Spitzer appointed to head the

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HE NEW, FRESH-FACED legislators burrow into their coats in the early morning cold and hurry to the train north to Albany.

Lobbyists, well-wishers and other attention-seekers stop by their seats—some resting their hands on the well-worn red Amtrak upholstery, some dipping in for a few minutes to the open spots.

Everyone in the train car, nearly, has business in Albany. Every one of them knows about Gov. Eliot Spitzer (D) and the reformer ideology he has been trumpeting around the state, and about the public pressure to change the way business is done in the state capital.

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INDEX: State of the Unions: Congress debates the Employee Free Choice Act Page 4 Another exclusive excerpt from Brooke Masters’ new afterword to Spoiling for a Fight Page 6 Editorial: Straying from democracy in the would-be race to succeed Assembly Member Pete Grannis Page 20 Citizen Action’s Richard Kirsch explains his case for full public financing of state elections Page 21

By EdwardIsaac Dovere

CONTINUED ON PAGE 12

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People Who Can Help Get a Project Built—Or Help Stop One PAGE 16

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CITY HALL

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MARCH 2007

ON/OFF THE RECORD

Buildings, Brickbats and Breakfast Thompson addresses development issues in the Big Apple the project has come about so far?

WT: Atlantic Yards doesn’t change the flavor of Brooklyn. If you look at—the tallest building in Brooklyn was the Williamsburg Bank Building, 1 Hanson Place. If you don’t change, if you don’t move, if you don’t adapt, your city stops growing. New York City’s always been able to grow and reinvent itself. Is it different?

Yes it is. More than anything the commercial units, or the commercial space, is a good idea.

The stadium there is a great transportation hub. But the truth is the biggest sell in all of this is the residential units. And the biggest component of it, or a major component of it, is probably I guess now probably a third to 40 percent of the units is affordable across an income spectrum. That’s important. So the city has needs, Brooklyn has needs. You don’t want to turn your back on that and say to people, well, good luck. You’re not going to be able to stay in Brooklyn, you’re not going to be able to afford to live in New York City.

ity Hall hosted its first On/Off the Record breakfast March 8, with City Comptroller William Thompson, Jr. The questions at the event focused on land use, asking the comptroller to weigh in on the Hudson Yards, the Atlantic Yards, how he invests city pension funds with developers and how developers invest in his election account. Some of the questions and answers on the menu in the on the record portion:

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City Hall: Is there a recent project or development in New York which you would say has gone well, as best as it possibly could?

CH: New York has developed a reputation for being a place where big development ideas come to die— in a way—people have grand projects that don’t get built after a lot of discussion. Do you think it’s become too easy for community activists to stop up big development ideas?

WT: I think that if you look at New York City, it isn’t that big projects aren’t going to get done any longer. I think that if you look at the West Side there will be big projects and development on the West Side and on the Hudson Yards. We’ve moved forward on financing and putting dollars aside to be able to do that. I think that is, if you want to use the stadium as an example of big projects failing or not moving forward because of opposition, I think you would have to look at the project. The disagreement on whether a stadium made sense on the West Side is based on who you spoke to—whether it was the economic generator engine for the West Side and West Side development, I don’t know that there are many people other than the mayor and a few others who thought it was. So, to be able to look and say, well then you can’t do major projects or big development or soaring entities in New York City, isn’t true. If you look we’re in a construc-

CH: The Atlantic Yards is using eminent domain. Are there projects or developments you see in the city currently which misuse eminent domain?

WT: No, I think that eminent domain in the city of New York is, if you see it, if it occurs, then you say something about it.

ANDREW SCHWARTZ

William Thompson: Is there a project that has gone well—a development project in the city of New York that has gone well? I don’t know that anything moves that quickly on a development basis … I think the Atlantic Yard project in downtown Brooklyn, while not necessarily moving quickly has moved along, and that is something that will, both for the size of it—and I’m a Brooklyn resident—both for its size first as well as for the mix of housing and the inclusion of a large percentage of affordable units in it—I think that is a project that everyone can look at as something that is different, something that I think you’re going to see more of in the future, and just as far as scale and size and hopefully focus on affordability. As well as, I think, if you look at the—and it’s not to keep a Brooklyn theme in this—but Greenpoint-Williamsburg Waterfront, both looking at land that used to be manufacturing, and the manufacturing has long since disappeared, but is going back in rezoning, making use and making sure that as part of the discussion there is also access to the waterfront but you’re rezoning, you’re going to be building and increasing your density dramatically—you’re kind of going up over there but also, as part of the trade-off, again an affordable component that was part of it.

tion boom probably unlike the city has ever seen.

CH: What do you see as the future of Ground Zero?

WT: You had so many people involved in and looking at a World Trade Center site. For development I think that’s what some of the problems were, and then what should go there. The vision that I’ve heard that probably made the most sense was probably the one that’s been put forward by the mayor, which talked about mixed usage—commercial, retail, some residential, as well as a destination, a performance space, and being able to make that more of a 24 hour location also.

CH: Aesthetically speaking, do you like the current design of the Freedom Tower?

WT: That’s things I’m not getting in the middle of again and it is the discussions of design and should this and should that and I don’t like this; there are more people who have been involved in the discussion of this—great design—just move forward. I think that’s something right now, let’s move forward.

CH: You’re a Brooklynite. How do you feel about the argument that the Atlantic Yards threatens Brooklyn’s character, and how it has been worked into the way

CH: Your office considered investing in the proposed but failed tenant buyout of Stuyvesant Town. How much of the pension funds are invested in developments or real estate, and how do you make those decisions about which ones to invest in?

WT: The question of how you would make a determination, what’s invested in development, particularly in New York City, and then how do you make those decisions—first we probably have about $1.2 billion in New York City in real estate. We probably have about $200 million in the Tishman-Speyer Sidecar Fund—that does not include Stuyvesant Town.

We have about $450 million in the City Investment Fund, which is really being run by the Fisher Brothers and Morgan Stanley … That’s $5 billion for us so, a billion in New York City is about all that, as far as risk, is about as much as we want to entertain.

CH: Are you accepting campaign contributions from developers for your unspecified 2009 campaign?

WT: It’s a little strange. We haven’t. Part of where you’re at on raising dollars is the people in the comptroller’s office have no idea what gets raised outside so you maintain that separation. The one thing and probably the only person who tries to track, the one thing you try not to do is anybody who’s in front of us either just, or afterwards, you try not to take contributions from those individuals. But right now, it’s, given the nature of public finance in the city of New York, and I think it is, New York City having a great public finance structure, it limits the ability of anybody to really have influence.

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MARCH 2007

evaluated, Maloney’s was among 18 to receive the highest award.

Koch, Checking Out?

Rep. Carolyn Maloney (DManhattan/Queens) was New York’s only member of Congress to receive a 2006 Congressional Management Foundation Gold Mouse award in recognition of her website’s accessibility and content.

“Rep. Maloney’s website shows that she has identified the needs of her constituencies and has developed easily accessible content that meets their needs online,” said Beverley Bell, executive director of the Washington, D.C. nonprofit.

Of the 615 House and Senate websites

New Voter on the Upper East Side Council Member Jessica Lappin (DManhattan) has a new constituent: her son, Lucas Edwyn Wuertele, born to Lappin and her husband, Andrew Wuertele, March 4. He weighed 7 pounds, 13 ounces and is 21 and 1/2 inches long.

Lappin called her son—who they will call Luke—”perfect in every way.”

Civil Confinement, By the Numbers Estimated cost of civil confinement legislation for the coming fiscal year:

$81 million Amount set aside in Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s (D) executive budget proposal:

$66 million Estimated number of criminals to be included in the program:

ANDREW SCHWARTZ

Maloney Only New Yorker with a Golden Mouse in the House

Along with his oddball movie reviews, former Mayor Ed Koch (D) sends out his weekly commentary to anyone who asks.

In his March 5 commentary, the famously spotlight-grabbing politician— who has hardly settled into retirement since losing the 1989 Democratic primary in his quest for a fourth term—included a comment suggesting that he is starting to feel his 82 years.

“I am one of Governor Spitzer’s supporters and friends. After he serves as New York’s governor for eight or twelve years, I hope to see him running for and winning the presidency, as FDR did,” he wrote. “If he serves as governor for twelve years, I doubt that I’ll be around to help. I’d be 94. How quickly time has gone. I have no complaints; it has been a wonderful ride and there is still a little more time left. But enough about me.”

Koch closed his analysis of Spitzer’s hard-charging approach to governing, “Keep it up, dude, you’re doing just fine.”

City Council Member Jessica Lappin with husband Andrew Wuertele and their newborn son Luke.

She will be on maternity leave from the Council for the next eight weeks.

Earlier Primary, More Campaign Commercials

New Yorkers who feel they have missed out on having presidential candidates appeal to them during breaks in the evening news may be in luck.

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (DManhattan) joined the governor in supporting moving up Brooklyn Council Member Simcha Felder next year’s presidential prisometimes complains about wasted time in mary. His bill would set the the Council stated meetings. He tried this date for Feb. 5, 2008. method of wooing his colleagues into back- Signatures on ballot petitions ing his resolution requiring the Food and would be collected Oct. 30Drug Administration to post caffeine content Dec. 6. Currently, the primary on nutritional labels. And no worries about is scheduled for March 4, with violating a gift ban, Felder said: he only paid ballot petitions able to be col45¢ per can. lected from Nov. 26-Jan. 4.

Silver believes the earlier

AN DR EW SC HWARTZ

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date is appropriate because of the size and prominence of New York’s population. More than that: New Jersey is also thinking of moving up its primary, so “presidential candidates could realize a more effective use of advertising dollars in the large metropolitan market,” according to a statement issued from Silver’s office.

133 currently, with another approximately 100 people added each year.

The costs for this program irked several legislators, including Assembly Member Joel Miller (R-Dutchess County), who supported the bill.

“You could build a really fine hotel and put a 30-foot fence around it, and get mental health professionals in twice a week,” he said, speaking on the floor of the Assembly just before the bill was passed. “It shouldn’t, even with cable television, come to $225,000 a person.”

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MARCH 2007

STATE OF THE UNIONS

Employee Free Choice Act Raises Questions and Worries Bill to ease unionizing passes House, has uncertain fate in Senate, White House should think twice about unionizing. The managers who speak at these meetings— Mecir said every week brings a different ESPITE PASSING THE HOUSE manager—neither acknowledge the workof Representatives by an overers’ desire to form a union, nor deny it. whelming margin March 1, the If they were to unionize, management fate of the Employee Free Choice Act warns them, they might not get the bonusremains very much in doubt, leaving es. some New Yorkers up in arms—but some Mecir said that originally everyone he very much relieved. worked with wanted to unionize, but talk If signed into law, the act would stiffen of decreased pay and benefits at mandatopenalties for employers who violate labor ry meetings is getting to them, and now law during organizing drives, allow work“people are getting thoughts about it.” ers to unionize by signing authorization A recent study by the Center cards rather than asking the for Economic and Policy National Labor Relations Board Holding union drives this way Research found that “about 1 in (NLRB) for a secret ballot eleccould be intimidating for people 5 union organizers or activists tion, and allow unions to take their first contract negotiations unwilling to sign, because the can expect to be fired as a result to the NLRB for binding arbitracards are turned over to the of their union organizing.”

Frederick Braid, a partner tion if both parties cannot reach employer, the NLRB and the union. at Holland & Knight who repan agreement within the first 120 resents management in labor days of a given union’s recogni“Your fellow employees will see which and employment law, recognizes that tion by the NLRB. increasing penalties for employers who The last two provisions are the most way you chose,” he noted.

He said that the binding arbitration is a break the law could be the “one fruitful controversial.

The bill, which was drafted in the last “very bad, dangerous part” of the bill area” of the bill.

But like other opponents of the bill, he session of Congress, is sponsored in the because it puts things like wages and beneSenate by Ted Kennedy (D-Massachusetts) fits in the hands of an outside governing said in a telephone interview that “Free and in the House of Representatives by body (the NLRB) that has no understand- Choice” is a misnomer because, in his view, Peter King (R-Nassau) and George Miller ing of its particular circumstances. The taking away the secret ballot process takes (D-California). This year was the first time NLRB’s terms would be binding for two away workers’ right to decide independently whether to unionize. years. it came to the floor for a vote.

Braid thinks that mandatory meetings Workers at Verizon Business (formerly No date has been set for the Senate MCI) are trying to join the Communications like the ones David Mecir described are vote, though it is expected soon.

In February, Vice President Richard Workers of America (CWA). Management a right of management, comparing them Cheney (R) told reporters that President at the company, located in the Financial to a national election in which voters get to hear from both candidates and vote in George W. Bush (R) would veto it if it District, is aware of the effort.

David Mecir, an installation technician private. reached his desk.

Rep. Anthony Weiner (D“I don’t believe Bush would sign this. I and maintenance worker for the company, mean, I would hope he would, but in my said that he and his coworkers feel mis- Brooklyn/Queens), who voted for the House version of the Employee Free heart of hearts, I don’t believe he will,” said treated by management.

“They’re taking away two vacation Choice Act, thinks that while not a “magic Ed Ott, Executive Director of the New York days,” he said. “They took away three sick bullet,” the act is “a necessary first step” to City Central Labor Council.

Jason Straczewski, director of human days. They took away all our banked sick reduce the trend of organized labor’s documented decline in membership. resources policy for the National time.”

He rejects the idea that having members According to Mecir, each week, manAssociation of Manufacturers, called the legislation “anti-democratic” and “anti- agement calls in the workers for mandato- sign authorization cards out in the open competitive” and said it would not benefit ry meetings at which directors from vari- compromises their ability to make an indeous offices around the country make pendent choice about whether to unionize. employees.

“Union organizers don’t have the ability He objects to the card provision, argu- appearances and explain to them why they

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ing that this would allow workers to unionize without holding an election. If 51 employees of a company of 100 signed authorization cards, Straczewski said, they could get union recognition from the NLRB. “We’re concerned about other 49 employees,” he said.

Straczewski believes holding union drives this way could be intimidating for people unwilling to sign, because the cards are turned over to the employer, the NLRB and the union.

TASINI DID NOT FARE too well against Hillary Clinton in last year’s Democratic primary for Senate. But he is not done with Clinton yet: the Labor Research Association, of which Tasini is executive director, will have Clinton presidential rival John Edwards as the keynote speaker at its 30th annual dinner.

Tasini said the former North Carolina senator and 2004 vice presidential nominee was the group’s first-choice speaker because his pro-labor stance aligned with the group’s trade union advocacy ideology.

“Edwards has been a great friend of ONATHAN

labor,” Tasini said. “I think he has a very strong claim on being the labor candidate in 2008, but that will be up for the individual unions to decide.”

Greg Tarpinian, executive director of the Change To Win Federation and a former Labor Research Association executive director, will receive a Labor Award during the event.

The response to the annual fundraiser has been so far strong and Tasini expects additional attendees to RSVP in the coming month for the event, scheduled for April 11 at Manhattan’s Hilton Hotel.

—Natalie Pifer

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ANDREW SCHWARTZ

Tasini to Host Edwards J

Jonathan Tasini

ANDREW SCHWARTZ

BY MATT ELZWEIG

Rep. Anthony Weiner calls the Employee Free Choice Act “a necessary first step.” to fire someone. Union organizers don’t have the ability to harass someone in the workplace or cut their wages. The power in the workplace is in the hands of management,” Weiner said. “This is to give workers a fighting chance.” melzweig@manhattanmedia.com

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32BJ’s Doyle to IDA KEVIN DOYLE is Manhattan’s new representative to the New York City Industrial Development Agency.

Doyle, who has been Local 32BJ Service Employees International Union’s executive vice president for nine years, was appointed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg (R) on the recommendation of Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer (D).

The Industrial Development Agency supports companies and non-profit organizations to expand their capital and encourages economic development through services such as tax assistance.

“Nothing is more vital than maintaining our city’s robust development, and no issue more important than ensuring our city’s development meets the needs of all our communities,” said Doyle.

Stringer said Doyle’s more than 30 years of union service demonstrated his commitment to public service and helping others.

The position, which is unpaid, will involve representing Manhattan’s interests as the Industrial Development Agency reviews project proposals.

Doyle, who will also remain at 32BJ, is the only representative who is a current union employee of the 14 members of the agency’s board of directors.

—Natalie Pifer

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CITY HALL

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Public Advocacy Project to Begin This Summer Gotbaum, aiming to go past 311, will urge New Yorkers to rate their government

BY ANDREW HAWKINS

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OR EVERY SUCCESSFUL AFTER

school program there will invariably be a congested intersection.

Looking to see which services are excelling and which lagging, Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum (D) will conduct a series of “citizen satisfaction surveys” this summer, using flash polls and focus groups to find out how people rate the government at doing its job.

Based on the results of the surveys, a select group of community leaders will assist Gotbaum and others in prioritizing which services are in need of the most

improvement. Participants will include tenant and block association members, business and religious leaders and others.

The results will then go to Mayor Michael Bloomberg (R), who Gotbaum hopes will use them to enact policy changes.

“Who is a better judge of how the city government performs than the people that receive those services?” said Gotbaum.

The Public Advocacy Project, as it is known, is Gotbaum’s attempt to extend the influence of her office beyond fielding transferred 311 calls.

New Yorkers will able to point out the problems in the delivery of government services, said Douglas Muzzio, a professor

Quinn’s Complaint Nexus his spring, the CouncilStat database will come online, modeled after the popular New York Police Department (NYPD) database, CompStat.

“CouncilStat will let us see when one constituent call is more than an isolated problem—when it’s actually part of a larger trend that requires a legislative, budget or policy response,” said Council Speaker Christine Quinn (D-Manhattan) during her State of the City speech in February.

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The plan is to test the database in one office in each of the five boroughs.

Eventually, all 51 Council offices will be integrated into the system, allowing members to determine whether constituent complaints are isolated events or part of citywide problems.

Though there are no final figures for how much the program will cost, money was included in last year’s budget to fund CouncilStat. The five district offices where CouncilStat will be tested have not been finalized,

of public affairs at Baruch College. And based on the data, lawmakers will be able to make the appropriate policy decisions, he said.

The scope of the surveys will be broad, with a total of 3,500 residents from all five boroughs slated to participate. Muzzio and others at Baruch’s Survey Research Unit will be in charge of the scientific nuts and bolts of the surveys.

The project is rooted in “Giving Taxpayers More Bang for Their Buck,” a report released over the summer by the Citizens Budget Commission (CBC). The 14-month-long study concluded that taxpayers were not engaged enough in the according to Quinn’s office.

The Council took a cue from the NYPD in designing the database.

CompStat, the police department’s computerized database for crime statistics, was introduced by then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in the mid-1990s.

Many say that the integrated information has eased police action, and contributed to the decline in the crime rate, though some argue that the NYPD has used the system to obscure data in order to massage statistics.

—Andrew Hawkins ahawkins@manhattanmedia.com

city’s $54 billion enterprise.

The commission recommended conducting citizen surveys to help officials ascertain how well the city is performing, said Elizabeth Lynam, deputy research director at the CBC. Diana Fortuna, president of the CBC, will sit on the board of advisors.

In a preliminary step, the public advocate’s office invited over 60 community leaders in November 2006 to Baruch to vote on the importance and quality of more than 100 city services.

The top five issues—according to how many people thought the issue was “extremely important” and “poor” in management by the city—were affordable housing, traffic congestion, high school dropout prevention, after school programs and access to city agencies.

Eighty-two percent of the meeting participants thought that affordable housing was extremely important, and 60 percent believed the city was doing a poor job providing it. Around half of the participants said the city was doing just a fair job of keeping schools safe, which 90 percent said should be a top priority.

Taking these surveys and translating them into the larger Public Advocacy Project is anticipated to cost around CONTINUED ON PAGE

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ISSUE FORUM

: GROUND ZERO REDEVELOPMENT

A cornerstone has been laid and moved, different plans have been debated and discussed, 7 World Trade Center is built and looking for tenants. But more than five years after the Twin Towers were destroyed, a lot of questions remain about the

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N THE YEARS SINCE THE HORRIBLE

events of September 11, 2001, the people of this historic community have demonstrated an inspiring commitment to our neighborhoods and to each other. And despite numerous delays and disappointments, we have stood together with the kind of fortitude and hope I would expect from our remarkable community.

Many of us long to see Lower Manhattan rise from the ashes of September 11th, but none more than I do.

After all, five generations of Silvers have called Lower Manhattan home, from my grandparents to my grandchildren.

There are many great things happening here in Lower Manhattan, in large part as a result of an incentive package I passed that seeks to attract businesses back to Lower Manhattan.

A key priority of my Lower Manhattan Marshall Plan is the Church Street Corridor. Construction of the Corridor will stabilize the surrounding community and assure existing retail and commercial firms that remaining in Lower Manhattan is a sound business decision.

We now have designs for the Corridor

BY CITY COUNCIL MEMBER ALAN GERSON

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HE GENIUS OF OUR DEMOCRACY

is the checks and balances between the legislative and executive branches at every level of government. The redevelopment of Lower Manhattan has been placed in the charge of a public authority, effectively removing the legislative branch and the public from the decision-making process.

The role of the City Council has been to provide actual public hearings on these issues, and we will be holding one such hearing before the end of the year on the performing arts center at the World Trade Center site. The New York City Council committees on Lower Manhattan Redevelopment and Cultural Affairs, Libraries & International Intergroup Relations will hold a joint hearing on the progress of the Performing Arts Center at the World Trade Center site.

I am deeply concerned that this project has gone off track. How is it that infrastructure work could be proceeding at the site if one of the major buildings in the complex still does not have an approved design?

I am encouraged that Mayor Michael Bloomberg has taken leadership of the

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lowing the collapse of the Towers. Looking ahead, we must make screening available to all Lower Manhattan residents and students, monitor their health and make sure that they receive treatment for any World Trade Center related health problems.

Transportation infrastructure is another critical component of the economic vitality of an urban community. As we move forward, there are several system expansion projects that also must be undertaken if the city and region are to grow and prosper. In establishing our priorities, we must maintain the MTA’s commitment to the Second Avenue Subway; to Long Island Railroad East Side access to Grand Central Station; and to direct access to JFK, Nassau and Suffolk counties from Downtown Manhattan.

It is also imperative that we open up Park Row. Chinatown will never be fully restored unless there is east/west access through this vital thoroughfare.

With more people moving to Lower Manhattan, we also need more schools, more libraries, more community centers, and better retail services. We also must make sure that critically important projects promised for Lower Manhattan, including the restoration of the East River Waterfront

World Trade Center Memorial Foundation Board. His commitment to the arts is well established. But the people of New York City have every right to be worried about the fate of the performing arts center. Proposed plans by the Port Authority would seem to preclude the groundbreaking for the performing arts center for many years to come. This should not be allowed to happen.

I support the imperative to build a worldclass memorial as a tribute to those who perished on September 11th as soon as possible. But I also see the construction of the performing arts center, which has been part of the Master Plan from the very beginning, as essential to the success of the entire site.

The plans for the reconstructed World Trade Center site include three sectors of

development: memorial, commercial and cultural. The combination of the three provides the most fitting tribute to those who perished, and makes the best possible statement about our society’s values.

We believe that the cultural institutions called for in the Master Plan will provide a critical bridge between the memorial and commercial activities to be located on and adjacent to the World Trade Center site, and that the absence of culture would actually undermine the memorial.

It was the consensus of the earliest charter involving independent architects, victims’ family members and residents of the community that there should be a strong cultural presence on the World Trade Center site along with a respectful memorial and commercial and retail redevelopment. The memorial itself will pay tribute to the sanctity of the individuals who perished and provide a place for loved ones to pay their respects. Strong commercial structures, reaching back to the sky, and bustling retail activity will demonstrate our determination to carry on their work and business, undeterred by enemies. A significant cultural presence remains necessary to demonstrate our

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has so far been kept outside the five boroughs, other “Big Box” stores have moved in: Ikea, Circuit City, Best Buy, Target and other large-scale retailers are already in or coming soon to many spots throughout the city. In the October issue forum, City Hall asked for views on what Big Box stores mean for the Big Apple.

To Be in Communities, Big Box Stores Must Be of Communities

BY CITY COUNCIL MEMBER THOMAS WHITE, JR.

A and the WTC Performing Arts Center, begin construction in the near future.

Lower Manhattan has endured hardships never before experienced on American soil. In looking ahead, I recommit myself to honoring America and serving our community with hope and determination. I look forward to working with a new governor in ensuring the rebirth of Lower Manhattan, fulfilling our moral and foremost obligation.

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Sheldon Silver is a Democrat representing the 64th Assembly District, covering Lower Manhattan and the Lower East Side.

He also serves as speaker of the Assembly.

A Cultural Imperative on the 16 Acres

Earn a Master of Science degree in: Nonprofit Management Urban Policy Analysis and Management Human Resources Management Organizational Change Management Health Services Management and Policy

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that address the needs of our community.

There are few symbols of recovery that are more inspiring than the construction of a school. I am proud to say that we were able to secure a new K-8 public school for Lower Manhattan.

Known as the Beekman School, it will occupy five floors on a site adjacent to New York Downtown Hospital.

Another effort that has proven to be a real success was my Coordinated Construction Act for Lower Manhattan to streamline procurement, speed up rebuilding and ensure that neighborhood streets and sidewalks are not ripped up over and over and over again.

While there has been some significant progress, there have also been disappointments, setbacks and false starts. I have repeatedly expressed concern over the lack of a comprehensive plan for rebuilding and revitalizing Lower Manhattan, as well as a lack of leadership in this effort.

Another critical concern is that we are still living with the fallout of gross misjudgment by the Environmental Protection Agency that misled first responders, local residents, construction workers and students into believing that Lower Manhattan's air was safe immediately fol-

ANDREW SCHWARTZ

BY ASSEMBLY SPEAKER SHELDON SILVER

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: BIG

Not long after Wal-Mart abandoned its efforts to open a store in Queens, the company began eyeing the southern tip of Staten Island. That plan is generating almost as much controversy, as opponents and proponents argue over community impact, employment opportunities and affordability. Although Wal-Mart

The Redevelopment of Lower Manhattan

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ISSUE FORUM

future of development on the 16 acres of the Ground Zero site. In the November issue forum, City Hall asked the elected leaders from the area for their opinions on different things that should be considered and contemplated as construction begins.

faith in humanity’s rich promise for goodness and progress towards a better world for all.

There are, as well, practical reasons for having a strong cultural presence on the site, sooner rather than later. The last thing the neighborhood needs is 16 acres that becomes completely deserted at night. For safety reasons and for the economic viability of small businesses in the surrounding area, it is critical to have the extended hours of foot traffic that cultural activities will provide. As office workers leave for the day, a wave of music, dance and theater audiences will fill the sidewalks, restaurants and stores.

Culture celebrates life itself, and by so doing underscores the intrinsic worth of every life, including those who perished on the site. The absence of culture’s strong reaffirmation of humankind’s promise would diminish the legacy of humanity of the people to whom we pay tribute and would leave incomplete the statement we need the World Trade Center to make to the world and to ourselves.

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Alan Gerson is a Democrat representing the Council’s 1st District, covering Lower Manhattan.

S THE CHAIR OF THE ECONOMIC Development Committee, my commitment to all New Yorkers is unwavering.

During my campaign and since my reelection to the City Council, I continue to “make good” on my promise to press for more opportunities for men and women relating to small, minority-owned businesses.

The Economic Development Committee has held hearings that focused on the Empire Zones in New York City. The committee analyzed the administrators of each of our 11 zones throughout New York City, and assessed zoning issues. In particular, we looked at whether New York State is giving adequate support to the administrators of each zone. I will continue to monitor the issues of effective accountability and work on improving existing zoning issues and programs.

Earlier this year, I joined my fellow chairs of Finance and Small Business in the successful fight to get Albany to repeal the state sales tax on clothing and shoes under $110. We lose millions of dollars and jobs to New Jersey because of this tax.

New York City has more than 200,000 small businesses. They are the lifeblood

of our city and account for $4.5 billion in tax revenue and 96 percent of the business in New York City. There is no question in my mind that these “smaller” stores generate great benefits to the local economy of our communities. We cannot lose these businesses to competition across state lines or competition from the “big box” retailers.

I am a proponent of bringing economic opportunity and commercial revitalization to our city, but at what cost?

For the most part, these big box stores are not unionized. Therefore, basic wage packages, which often don’t include medical benefits, are inadequate and unacceptable. Last year, there was a public outcry when it was reported throughout the media that a major big box retailer locked its employees in a store during the overnight shift. These are conditions that would never exist if there was union support.

In 1995, one of my colleagues at the time, Juanita E. Watkins, led the fight against big box stores in her community— Pathmark, in particular. On behalf of the residents and small business owners in Springfield Gardens, Queens, Councilwoman Watkins courageously negotiated with the Pathmark Corporation to ensure that in the end, the project would be tailored to fit the needs of her community in the way of jobs, cor-

porate-community partnerships, and most importantly, a fund to offset possible financial losses by local businesses due to the presence of Pathmark. Although groundbreaking legislation was passed by the Council to establish the parameters of the fund, to date, Pathmark has not made contributions to the fund.

Let me be clear, I’m not saying there isn’t a place for big box retailers. I feel that as I look at impact studies conducted around the country, we must ask ourselves if the commitments these companies make to secure location, property, higher wages and benefits are genuine.

More importantly, are they long-term commitments? Critics say superstores/big box retailers such as a Home Depot, WalMart, Target, BJ’s, and Costco virtually wipe out the smaller competition.

Ideally, these big box stores should be more community-oriented with a firm commitment of support.

Some questions we should ask in the long term are: How committed are these businesses to maintain decent wages and benefits?

Tax benefits - do they outweigh the resources that have to be put into creating better road access, fire and police services? Or, are we asking taxpayers to subsidize the stores?

This is a situation that we should con-

tinue to address locally, statewide, and nationwide.

I look forward to creating legislation that will continue to encourage economic growth and job development in our city. But I remain particularly interested in supporting minority and womenowned businesses because they are the heart and soul of our communities.

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Council Member Thomas White, Jr. is a Democrat representing the 28th Council District, covering parts of Jamaica, Rochdale Village and Richmond Hill in Queens. He has been the chair of Economic Development Committee since the beginning of 2006.

Corporate Outlaws: How Wal-Mart Creates Its Own Consumers

BY STATE SENATOR DIANE SAVINO

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N MY FIRST TERM AS STATE Senator, I have been involved in two struggles against Wal-Mart.

One was the successful effort to block a store in my district on Staten Island. The second was my response to the corporation’s reliance on Medicaid to provide health benefits for many of its employees, the Fair Share Health Fund Act. The bill would require large retailers, like Wal-Mart, to provide basic health benefits for their employers or else pay into a state health care fund.

Other legislators and activists have been involved in similar battles throughout the country. Defenders of the corporate giant have tried to reframe these efforts as an attack on the free market itself or on the working classes that rely on the store for its cheaply priced goods and its promises of new jobs.

The reality is Wal-Mart’s negative impact on local economies is true and well-documented. According to the Public Policy Institute of California, the chain actually reduces retail jobs by 2 to

4%. Another study by the University of California shows that Wal-Mart’s presence in a community depresses real wages, as it wipes out the higher paying jobs of its competitors.

It is the finest example of rampant capitalism gone wrong.

This corporate outlaw, which has been accused of everything from hiring minors to do dangerous jobs to forcing employees to work off the clock, denying overtime pay, and discriminating against women and minorities, has been found to

be in violation of some our most hardwon labor laws.

The argument that we are unfairly targeting Wal-Mart and are, in effect, putting barriers to the free market, simply does not wash either.

With the chain’s reliance on “corporate welfare” such as tax abatements and government social programs to keep its labor costs down, other companies who are trying to do right by their employees simply do not stand a chance, and this is the true assault on one of the most basic principles of the free market—competition.

As the largest retail employer in the world, its effects on jobs and wages are not limited to our borders, but have global repercussions.

With its openly antagonistic attitude towards unions and as a proponent of sweatshop labor practices, Wal-Mart, the largest retail employer in the world, is fueling the global race to the bottom in terms of wages, benefits and working conditions.

And in the process, they have figured out a way to create their own consumer base, by promoting poverty. Twenty-

three percent of Wal-Mart customers live on incomes of less than $25,000 a year.

Ultimately, the fight against Wal-Mart is the fight against the “walmartization” of our jobs. As union membership of our country’s workforce has declined, so has our ability to reap the benefits of our work. According to the Economic Policy Institute, productivity increased 33% between 1995 and 2005, but real wages have declined since 2000 by 5.4%.

An organized workforce, which guarantees our share of the economic pie, is the best anti-poverty program of any economy.

On a local level, we must end the tax abatements, zoning variances and WalMart’s reliance on our publicly funded welfare programs.

And ultimately, we must take a broader look at how we identify ourselves— are we workers or are we consumers?

Yes, we may save money at Wal-Mart, but at what cost?

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Diane Savino is a Democrat representing the 23rd State Senate District, covering the North Shore of Staten Island and portions of Brooklyn.

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CITY HALL

EXCERPT EXCLUSIVE

Swinging Hard on the Campaign Trail to Warm Up for Office Spitzer’s runaway lead in the 2006 polls provided experience taking risks he thought best KEN LANGONE’S threats to make the Democratic gubernatorial primary a referendum on Eliot Spitzer’s Wall Street cases, the race was never remotely close.

Nassau County executive Thomas Suozzi raised and spent $10 million with Langone’s help, but he was unable to put much of a dent in Spitzer’s halo. It certainly didn’t hurt that Spitzer got on the airwaves with his first commercials in March and would remain a television presence straight through to November.

(The ads were often teeth-achingly sappy: one offered nostalgic glimpses of New York’s past; another featured the sound of little children singing “This Little Light of Mine,” and pictures of chalkboards filled with promises to improve education. But the polls suggested that they helped Spitzer maintain his sky-high favorability ratings.) Suozzi tried a variety of tactics, none of them with much success—he highlighted the many hedge funds and entrenched interest groups that were donating to Spitzer’s campaign, criticized the attorney general’s lack of management experience, and even suggested that Spitzer was waffling on the death penalty, always a hot-button issue in New York. Nothing really worked. Even Spitzer’s apparent gaffes ended up helping rather than hurting his campaign.

In March, there was the “Appalachia incident.” On March 12, Spitzer told a

D

ESPITE

INT 530 A Local Law to amend the administrative code of the city of New York, in relation to licensing and regulating furniture retail stores.

Sponsor: Council Member Helen Sears (D-Queens) “Constituents have come in and said they have put down money, but have never gotten their furniture,” said Sears. “There needs to be protection for the consumer Bills on the burner and the for the Council recourse there is right now for them to go to court on their own and spend even more money.”

Sears can sympathize—she bought a bunk bed that was never delivered and when she sought a refund, the check bounced.

The bill would give jurisdiction to the Consumer Affairs Committee and exempt stores who dedicate less than 20 percent of their floor space to furniture.

—Natalie Pifer

:

ON THE

AGENDA

gathering at a synagogue on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, “If you drive from Schenectady to Niagara Falls, you’ll see an economy that is devastated. It looks like Appalachia. This is not the New York we dream of.” Several Republican candidates for governor, including William Weld and Randy Daniels, seized on the quote, saying it proved that Spitzer was an out-of-touch Manhattanite with a snobby attitude toward the

First look at an excerpt of the new afterword from the book Spoiling for a Fight: The Rise of Eliot Spitzer by Brooke A. Masters.

R EPRINTED BY ARRANGEMENT WITH TIMES BOOKS, AN IMPRINT OF H ENRY HOLT AND COMPANY, LLC. COPYRIGHT (C) 2006 BY B ROOKE A. MASTERS. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

state’s rural areas. Governor George Pataki called the comment “unfortunate and certainly insulting.” Spitzer’s advisers were concerned, because such attacks had worked brilliantly in the past. New York mayors Edward Koch and Rudolph Giuliani had both seen their statewide campaigns falter amid concerns from upstate residents that they were too focused on the city.

But Spitzer refused to back off, telling The New York Times, “People don’t have to like metaphors, but they have to look at reality....We have to deal with the population loss, with the continual decline.”

Within a few days some upstate leaders had chimed in to agree with him, pointing out that Alabama, Kentucky, and West Virginia had higher job growth rates than upstate New York and praising Spitzer for talking about the problem and taking it seriously. Joseph Bruno, the Republican majority leader of the state senate, told reporters that Spitzer was right to paint a bleak economic picture. “I understand what he’s saying,” Bruno said. “There are real pockets of poverty throughout the state.”

In the end, the contretemps reinforced Spitzer’s image as a man who spoke his mind. “Any poll or focus group on Eliot [comes out saying] he’s trusted. He’s an honest guy, he’s going to give it to you straight and he doesn’t sugarcoat things,” said campaign manager Ryan Toohey.

Spitzer also brushed through another potential rough patch when he faced Suozzi on July 25 for their first and only debate. The ground rules had banned notes and other props, but as the two men got ready to go on stage, Spitzer spotted a notebook filled with papers on Suozzi’s podium. “I thought he had props,” charts and graphs that would mischaracterize Spitzer’s positions, Spitzer remembered.

In a scene witnessed only by the two can-

didates and Bob Hardt, the moderator of the debate, Spitzer’s temper flared. “I said ‘Bob, he has to take it off. It wasn’t there earlier when we did the walk through....If it’s not gone you will have empty airtime.

I will not participate in this debate if it is out there.’” Suozzi resisted and the two men faced off just a few feet from the waiting crowd. But in the end Suozzi backed down. “We were both angry,” Spitzer remembered. “I was right and it was a test of wills and I won because the rules were clear.” Suozzi declined to be interviewed for this book but he recounted his version of the encounter to reporters right after the debate, saying, “Eliot got really hostile.” His consultant Dan Gerstein accused Spitzer of having had a “hissy fit.”

While some new Spitzer campaign staffers were shocked by the allegations and assumed that Suozzi must have exaggerated the incident, Spitzer’s longtime aide Rich Baum wasn’t surprised at all. “I bet that it happened. It sounds like Eliot,” he remembered. “People come out of these meetings and say, Oh my god he’s a monster, and all Eliot did was lay it on the line.” The incident briefly revived questions over whether Spitzer’s fiery temperament would prevent him from being an effective governor, but it also backfired for Suozzi. Much of the postdebate coverage focused on the spat rather than on the actual debate, which most political observers rated a draw.

Suozzi’s efforts to highlight differences between himself and Spitzer on issues like property taxes, managerial experience, and the death penalty (Suozzi was

opposed, while Spitzer was for it in some circumstances) were all but drowned out in the chatter about the briefing book fight. As a result, Suozzi failed to get the bump in the polls that he so desperately needed. By the time primary day rolled around on September 12, the race was over. Spitzer ended up winning 81 percent of the vote. *** After his upset victory, Faso faced extremely heavy sledding. Spitzer had already positioned himself as the inevitable victor and had already secured endorsements and donations from groups and individuals who might have been able to help Faso. “They had locked up a lot of the money early,” Faso recalled. “Folks that had previously supported me when I ran for comptroller had to say to me, ‘I’m sorry I already promised this guy a year ago that I would support him.’”

Faso also believed that his fund-raising efforts were hurt by Suozzi’s poor showing in the Democratic primary.

“Many of the people had reason to oppose Spitzer, people who were adversely affected by his tactics and techniques,” Faso said. But “when Suozzi didn’t make a dent, those people threw up their hands and said it’s hopeless.” Most notably, the friends and colleagues of Ken Langone who had given heavily to Suozzi did not do the same for Faso. As a result, Faso had to run a shoestring campaign, raising just $4 million to Spitzer’s $40 million. While Spitzer blanketed the airwaves with his commercials, Faso could muster just one major ad buy. A frustrated Faso regularly received emails from peeved Republicans asking why he wasn’t on the air more.

“People simply don’t understand what it takes to buy those commercials,” Faso said. “You need $1.5 million a week to pierce through at the height of campaign season, and my entire spending on commercials in the campaign was a million dollars.” Still the Republican soldiered on, using two debates and innumerable campaign appearances to argue that Spitzer was promising more than he could deliver and more than the state could afford.

Spitzer responded with a promise not to raise taxes, a rarity for a New York Democrat, but he otherwise pretty much stuck to his own game plan, releasing thick policy papers and delivering substantive speeches while touring the state in a bus emblazoned with the campaign’s ambitious motto: Day One, Everything Changes. “When you play tennis, and Eliot knows tennis, it’s called playing the ball,” Ryan Toohey explained. “You play your game and don’t worry about the guy on the other side of the net....When you have a lead like we had, you can afford to play the ball.”

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LETTERS PAGE THURSDAY NOVEMBER 2, 2006

Tax Burden … should be shared equally among all New Yorkers.

By John A. Catsimatidis treet vendors, selling fruit, vegetables, and handbags have permeated almost every commercial street in Manhattan, taking away, with lower prices derived from the absence of basic overhead costs, millions of dollars from tax paying New York businesses. It is time for us to seriously ask our elected officials, “Who Owns New York City’s streets?”

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per year. There is no rent to be paid, no real estate tax collected, and the vendors themselves are often, unlike the popular misconception, exploited laborers with no health insurance or pension benefits- hired by the push cart owner who often owns multiple numbers of carts.

paying between 100 and 200 dollars a square foot in rent in addition to commercial real estate taxes that have escalated dramatically since they were raised to help meet the city’s fiscal crisis in 2002. Added to this fiscal burden is the fact that the work force in my markets, and those of my competitors as well, is unionized and receives a living wage and a full array of health and pension benefits

Street peddlers cannibalize existing business and threaten the city’s tax base.

The question needs to be asked since it appears that there is a romanticizing of street peddlers, a belief that they somehow embody the American dream. This belief leads to support for the expansion of the number of licensed vendors and the removal of restrictions that limit where they can legally hawk their wares. It also leads to the almost complete disregard of the legitimate store owners and their important role in this city’s economy.

At the same time, the vendors clog the city streets causing a pedestrian safety hazard that has led to a number of community boards issuing resolutions calling for their restriction. In addition, when their day is done, the sidewalks around the carts are littered with debris, often leading to the nearby store owner being cited for a dirty street.

On the store owner side of the Let’s see how this looks. The street ledger we see an entirely different vendor licenses run at about $250 picture. Retailers in Manhattan are PAID ADVERTISEMENT

Put simply, there is a high cost to these lower prices.

Street peddlers cannibalize existing business and threaten the city’s tax base. They have no inalienable right to use the city streets with impunity, and with a total disregard for the city’s legitimate store owners. Our position is that everyone needs to pay their fair share and play on a level playing field. There should be no sacred cows. If this kind of competitive fairness is established, taxes would go down and we wouldn’t be driving the middle class out of the city.

John A. Catsimatidis is CEO of Gristede’s supermarkets.

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CITY HALL In every borough, on nearly every street, New York’s building boom continues every day. With those cranes and bulldozers come questions, however, and this month City Hall turned to four borough presidents for their perspectives on how those considerations should be put on the scales.

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ISSUE FORUM:

LAND USE

From Burning to Booming to Building for the Future

BY BOROUGH PRESIDENT ADOLFO CARRIÓN, JR. OWARD C OSELL’ S WORDS , “Ladies and Gentleman the Bronx is burning,” are a relic of

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long ago.

The Bronx is no longer burning, we are booming. Through the power of smart investment and strong development we have helped change the story of the Bronx and in the little time we have left, 2 years, 9 months and about 15 days (not that I’m counting), we will continue this unprecedented boom. I have just returned from Germany, where I was working with New York City & Co. to help remarket the Bronx as a tourist and business destination, something just a few decades ago would have been impossible.

Attracting businesses and development into the Bronx or any part of New York City is not just about what is good for the business or the developer; it must be what is good for the community. Those of you who’ve been following the Bronx story remember we launched the Bronx at Work and Buy Bronx/Buy New York campaigns. The message was and continues to be, “If you do business in the Bronx…you must do business with the Bronx.” Through this program we have

created 1,700 construction related jobs since 2002.

We have also crafted two historic community benefits agreements that committed at a minimum, 25 percent of the construction contracts and 25 percent of the local construction workforce to these projects. On the Yankee Stadium Neighborhood Redevelopment Project alone, 37 percent of the construction contracts have gone to Bronx businesses.

And at the Gateway Center at the old Bronx Terminal Market, 51 percent of the construction contracts have also gone to Bronx businesses.

In five years, we’ve created more private sector jobs in the Bronx than any other borough. 10,000 new private sector jobs have been created. 30,000 people have found jobs and unemployment has been cut by more than 50 percent, from 11.3 percent to 5.4 percent. And 13,000 fewer people are living in poverty. Last year, the Bronx ranked third in the state, and first in the city in personal income growth.

To continue this development in the Bronx and spread it throughout New York City, we must remain competitive in the 21st Century’s world economy. To do this we must ensure that the region’s infrastructure for moving goods, people and information offers the highest level

of service and technology. We must expand and improve our freight and passenger systems, fully utilize harbors and rail freight yards as logistical centers for trade and distribution. The future health of our economy depends on reducing congestion and consequent time delays, which in turn will alleviate air pollution from idling vehicles, particularly those using diesel fuel.

Additionally, all this new construction provides us with a unique opportunity to lead the world in development that is not only smart economically but also environmentally. In the Bronx, we have been working hard to promote green development. I have provided nearly $7 million for the construction of 8 green buildings throughout the borough. I have even started to turn my office into a green building, unveiling a green roof on it this past September.

I established the Bronx Initiative for Energy and the Environment to provide interest-free loans and grants to Bronx building owners who use energy efficient and environmentally friendly measures in their properties—whether it is green roofs, solar technology or boiler retrofits.

Through this initiative, I have also provided numerous free energy surveys to businesses to reduce their energy costs.

Focus on Zoning

BY BOROUGH PRESIDENT HELEN MARSHALL

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AND USE IS AN ISSUE THAT HAS

influenced our past and will define our landscape for generations to come.

Here in Queens County, New York City’s largest borough, with 112 square miles, the borough president holds public hearings approximately every three weeks to gather testimony, pro and con, on proposed developments for housing, commercial establishments, zoning and everything else from sanitation garages to prisons. All street maps for projects and zoning change applications are reviewed. Whether public or private, proposals must be processed and reviewed.

These proposals can potentially change the house next door to yours, the view outside your window, your access to open space, and even where you park your car.

That’s why it is so important that— whether building a park on land where gas tanks once squatted, reviewing the use of buildings for residential, cultural or commercial space, or renewing a variance to allow the continued operation of a single

store, there must be a public review process.

Successful land use and development begins with understanding how our neighborhoods function and how best to assure that the highest quality of life remains a priority. The borough president sorts through the issues and concerns before, during and after the formal hearing process.

And, very often, development projects are presented to the borough president, throughout the course of a project.

Government agencies and private developers are brought in to explain the scope and purpose of their project. The community boards and civic organizations are consulted to address potential impacts and local concerns. The results of all these meetings are aimed at making certain that all pertinent information is disclosed and that problems are addressed and remedied. In some cases, the borough president also allocates capital funding for public projects.

The borough president makes a recommendation, sometimes with conditions, to the Department of City Planning or the Board of Standards and Appeals for further action.

All reviews of applications and recommendations are aimed at doing what is

reasonable and responsible for the use, development or improvement of land within the borough.

The city’s uniform land use review procedure was significantly changed when our city charter was revised almost a generation ago. The City Planning Commission was expanded and the Board of Estimate disappeared into the history books. The five borough presidents and community boards across the city became involved in the approval process earlier and borough presidents could now file a written appeal to the City Council if the City Planning Commission voted in favor of a proposal that the community board and borough

In addition, I organized two citywide energy conferences targeted to developers, architects and contractors.

The Bronx’s story is New York City’s story. To continue to be a borough and a city of opportunity where people from all parts of the country and the world come seeking opportunity and a better life we must continue to promote smart and balanced investment.

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Adolfo Carrión, Jr. is a Democrat serving his second term as Bronx borough president.

president did not. Each borough president now also appoints a member to the City Planning Commission.

A major component of how land can and will be used is zoning. That’s why the borough president’s zoning task force meets regularly at Borough Hall to make sure that the unique character of many neighborhoods is preserved. The task force has helped to rezone vulnerable communities facing out-of-character development and continues to play an active role in the rezoning of many neighborhoods.

Since 1990, the borough presidents have reviewed countless proposals, approved many and disapproved others.

Each item is reviewed on the merits and each decision takes a multitude of factors into consideration.

We may lower a building’s floors or raise an objection about parking. We may look for landscaping and traffic improvements or raise maintenance issues related to the appearance of the property. No matter what, working together we will continue to protect our neighborhoods while building for the future.

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Helen Marshall is a Democrat serving her second term as Queens borough president.

CITY HALL

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Guiding our Growth

Organized for Action

BY BOROUGH PRESIDENT MARTY MARKOWITZ I REFER TO BROOKLYN as the fourth-largest city in America, it’s more than just a way to evoke pride. It’s a framework for the kind of broad vision that our elected officials are entrusted, and expected, to design and implement. With our 2.5 million residents expected to grow by more than 10 percent in coming decades, Brooklyn needs and deserves the kind of amenities that most cities half that size have long enjoyed—not because we’re selfish, but because it makes sound planning sense for the future.

For Brooklyn, where our population increased for the first time in 50 years in the 2000 census, our central objective moving forward must be continuing that growth, while being smart about how and where we do it, and where we don’t.

I firmly believe that Brooklyn’s ongoing “renaissance”—in real estate, as well as culture, tourism, recreation, and quality of life—is a direct result of residents and businesses attracted by our unrivaled ethnic and economic diversity. And government must use every available tool to maintain that rich mix by creating and preserving housing affordable to all residents wherever possible.

In Greenpoint-Williamsburg, the thousands of below-market units that will result from the inclusionary-zoning incentive I successfully advocated for in the city’s rezoning is one strong example of this approach. So are the 2,250 new affordable units that will comprise half the new rental units at Atlantic Yards, which is the basis of my support for this project.

Ensuring that apartments remain in the Mitchell-Lama and rent-regulation systems is also critical, and momentum for this priority has been created by preventing a Mitchell-Lama “buyout” at the Tivoli Towers complex in Crown Heights and presenting a unified public stance to keep Starrett City affordable—forever.

And as we continue to creatively use cityowned land for new housing, those units must also remain affordable forever.

Because today, residents don’t leave Brooklyn and New York City as they once did, seeking a better life. They leave because they can’t afford the good life we have here.

Considering that available land for new home construction in Brooklyn has been virtually exhausted, prohibiting sprawl-style growth, we must responsibly guide the necessary addition of moderate- and higher-density buildings, like those currently going up on Flatbush Avenue Extension and Fourth Avenue, in Downtown Brooklyn, DUMBO, and Greenpoint-Williamsburg, and those planned at the Atlantic Yards project.

It’s in that spirit that I have been working with the Bloomberg administration to

MARCH 2007

Advocating for a better, safer New York

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HEN

Working to promote:

create a true Downtown Brooklyn. In addition to an arena for the Brooklyn Nets and major events and eight acres of public open space at Atlantic Yards, Downtown Brooklyn will also be the anchor of a synergy I envision with Lower Manhattan—“two downtowns” so to speak. With a revitalized Fulton Mall area, the burgeoning BAM Cultural District, thousands of additional mixed-income apartments, and the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership attracting exciting new businesses, this 24/7 live-work environment served by abundant public transportation will be our borough’s vibrant center of urban life for future generations.

In other parts of Brooklyn, government must continue to work with the private sector to guide residential and commercial growth where it’s appropriate, especially near mass-transit access, while protecting the character of unique neighborhoods through historic landmark status, like in Fort Greene-Clinton Hill and Sheepshead Bay. It is also important to preserve our industrial base—and its jobs for every skill level—as we have in East Williamsburg, Gowanus, Sunset Park, and East New York.

We are reclaiming every inch of Brooklyn’s 70-plus miles of gorgeous coastline: from the 85 acres of Brooklyn Bridge Park to the 23 acres of a planned Sunset Park waterfront recreation area, and from the new Brooklyn Cruise Terminal in Red Hook to, of course, the 21st Century Coney Island.

And we are achieving the delicate balance between development, environmental sustainability (and its related health impacts), community involvement (especially regarding construction safety), and a tax system that maximizes the benefits of our building boom for all Brooklynites.

With that as our guide to growing, together we are building a better Brooklyn, and New York City, for everyone.

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Marty Markowitz is a Democrat serving his second term as Brooklyn borough president.

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MARCH 2007

11

LAND USE

Being the World’s Capital While Preserving Our Character

BY BOROUGH PRESIDENT SCOTT STRINGER S THE ENGINE OF THE REGION’S

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economy, and the unofficial capital of the world, Manhattan has been subject to massive waves of development for more than a century. In recent years, the borough’s stratospheric real estate values have resulted in demolition and development that is nearly unprecedented in scope.

Development is essential if we are to accommodate the growth that reflects Manhattan’s power to attract the best, and the special place we hold in the hearts of the millions who want to live here. The development pressure we are experiencing today is a strong measure of our leading role on the world stage. This makes it all the more imperative that development in Manhattan be responsibly planned. It also means doing whatever it takes to make Manhattan affordable for the children and grandchildren of the people who built our city, as well as for new residents just starting out.

Manhattan needs a progressive urban planning agenda to meet crucial citywide and neighborhood goals. I am focused specifically on using two of my chartermandated responsibilities—participating

in the land use review process and overseeing Manhattan’s twelve community boards—to promote a three-point agenda for sustainable development.

First is empowering community residents to be effective in neighborhood planning. After thoroughly reforming Manhattan’s community boards, I created my Manhattan Urban Planning Fellowship Program, which has put a top-flight graduate-level urban planning student to work with each community board to help them actively carry out community-based planning projects. I also created a “Land Use 101” seminar that equips neighborhood leaders to “speak the language” of planning and zoning. In addition, I have reinvigorated the planning capacity of the Manhattan borough president’s office, with a land use unit of expert planners who are available to provide technical assistance to any community that wants to take an active role in planning.

Second is collaboratively advocating for development that serves neighborhood needs. For example, through collaboration between my office, Community Board 11, and local officials, plans for large-scale development in East Harlem that had been created with little neighborhood input were scrapped. New guidelines were written for

an RFP that includes cultural space, space for local businesses, and affordable housing.

In the Theater District, I discovered that a community benefit fund that was supposed to be created almost a decade ago had never been activated. I negotiated to have funds set aside that are now being used to create office space for nonprofit theater companies.

In Tribeca, residents were at loggerheads with a developer whose plans would have permanently cut them off from their riverfront. My staff designed a rezoning that allowed the development to move forward, while preserving residents’ light, air and waterfront views.

On Governors Island, while the vast open space is a magnet for future development, especially given the island’s historic significance, we must get the development right. That’s why I asked for—and got—a public advisory board to review all development proposals. This is exactly what I envisioned when I set out to reform the community boards—giving New Yorkers a viable voice in how their communities are shaped.

The third point on my development agenda is striking the right balance between growth and preservation. I will continue to support the big projects our city needs to keep growing. At the same time, I have

worked to preserve Manhattan’s character through contextual rezoning of the Upper West Side and the East Village, and through community stabilization efforts in East Harlem and Greenwich Village, which feel intense developmental pressure from large institutional neighbors.

Involving communities in the planning process has moved important projects forward while yielding better results for Manhattan’s diverse stakeholders.

Together, we are building a new paradigm for how growth can serve, rather than deny, the needs of our communities.

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Scott Stringer is a Democrat serving his first term as Manhattan borough president.

CITY HALL

131 DUANE ST, TRIBECA • 212.227.7777 • WWW.CITYHALLNEWYORK.COM

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The Young Turks CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

When the hangers-on are not talking to the new legislators, they are talking to their more experienced colleagues, or dealing connections and cracking jokes with each other.

“I’m going to straighten out Albany,” one says to another with a laugh on a recent Tuesday, before the first train pulls out of Penn Station.

The other snickers.

“I’ll follow you,” he says, pivoting and heading to his seat a few rows back. eform. A lot of people read a lot of things into the Legislature’s election of Thomas DiNapoli as the new state comptroller. One thing few noticed: when DiNapoli’s seat is filled— along with the others scheduled for special elections March 27—76 of the Assembly’s 150 members will have first arrived in Albany only since the year 2000. More people will have first come to the Assembly after the dawn of the 21st Century than before it.

An arbitrary statistic, perhaps. For a Legislature routinely attacked as needing term limits to flush out the entrenched interests and encrusted legislators, though, the 50 percent turnover has come as a slow and rarelyremarked upon surprise. On the other side of the Capitol, nearly a third of state senators—20 of 62—are new with the millennium.

Most of the new legislators campaigned their way into the Legislature precisely on promises to change Albany’s status quo, which has for years been targeted by good government groups across the state and across the nation.

To some extent, they have been successful in making changes. Both the Assembly and State Senate adopted rules reforms in January 2005. Assembly committee hearings are now more frequent, with committee membership decreased in both bodies to stop attention from being spread too thin and increase attendance.

Conference committees open to members outside the leadership are still rare, but when bills reach the floor, members need to be in their seats to vote on them. Before, members were automatically recorded as voting yes on everything, unless they entered the chamber specifically to vote no. Few did then, or at other times.

“There’s no question that there’s been a change because there’s new blood, particularly in the Assembly,” said Lawrence Norden, counsel at New York University law school’s Brennan Center.

Norden co-authored last year’s “Unfinished Business: New York State Legislative Reform 2006 Update.” The report examined the extent to which the 2004 proposals of the public policy institute have been implemented, and to what effect.

These days, from what he reads and

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from the conversations he has with legislators, Norden speaks of both a new energy and new atmosphere within the two chambers of state lawmakers, echoing a common sentiment about Albany in 2007. With that, and Spitzer as the new, reform-minded governor after 12 years under his predecessor, the state is at the brink of what Brennan Center executive director Michael Waldman has called a “once-a-generation opportunity to renew government and politics in New York.”

Norden and Waldman are among those watching expectantly for those who charged to the capital as reformers to tear the status quo apart. Whether after a few months or years on the job, these reform-minded politicians will be doing so with quite the same ferocity

Reform, said Assembly Member Charles Lavine (D-Nassau), is “much like pornography and beauty: it’s in the eye of the beholder.” they promised and springs in their steps still remains unclear.

To Richard Gottfried (D), Manhattan’s Upper West Side Assembly member whose 36 years in office make him the longest-serving Albany lawmaker (first elected before several of his current colleagues were born), that has a lot to do with false expectations.

Gottfried contended that the openness of the political process in Albany and the ability to influence debates at every level is surprising for newcomers and would be “eye-opening for their constituents,” whom he knows are pessimistic about state government.

When Democrats “dramatically rewrote the rules” after first taking the Assembly majority in 1975, Gottfried said, they oversaw a necessary transformation of the chamber. Those changes forced bills to be sent to committees, eliminated proxy voting within committees, and enabled bill sponsors to force votes on legislation within committees. Gottfried is fast to point out that the State Senate did not adopt those changes then, or since.

Gottfried still is not satisfied—he speaks ardently about the need to create a public campaign finance system as a way of making competitive elections more frequent, and thereby, forcing incumbents to be more accountable to their constituents. But he feels the need for more rules reform in the chamber is not as dire as outsiders think.

The man who sits at Gottfried’s right on the Assembly floor, Charles Lavine (DNassau), is one of those people who says

he has experienced a perspective shift.

Lavine defeated sixterm incumbent David Sidikman in the 2004 Democratic primary as the first candidate backed by Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi’s (D) Fix Albany campaign. That movement was based on the argument that Albany dysfunction was corroding municipalities through reckless spending and “unfunded mandates” for programs like Medicaid.

After two years of experience, Lavine said, he now realizes that what he “used to read in the papers is not quite the way things really happen,” adding, “the reality is of course what I knew it would be, which is infinitely more complex.”

The Fix Albany campaign has itself gone mostly dormant, with even its website recently going off-line.

Lavine is still after structural tweaks, like enabling bills passed but not signed into law by the end of a calendar year within one session to be debated without being reintroduced (“we probably spend close to a month, give or take, sitting and passing the same darn bills that we had passed a year before,” he said). He also wants to make the Legislature meet year round.

He admits that his ideas may not match exactly with those of all the others who have helped make “reform” the most popular word for stump speeches and campaign mailers in contemporary New York politics.

Reform, he said, is “much like pornography and beauty: it’s in the eye of the beholder.”

But whatever changes do come, Lavine said, he now realizes they will come slowly. Even with a “critical mass” of new, reform-minded legislators growing in the Assembly, he said, they first must put in their time, “establishing credibility and then being able to stand up for change.” ith its gold-etched committee room walls reaching up to high, carved ceilings hung with ornate lamps, the Capitol can be an imposing place.

First-time visitors regularly get lost, confusing one red stone internal staircase for another. Even those with a few more trips to Albany under their belts can occasionally be seen doing laps around the corridors, searching for room numbers not always so apparent from the posted signs.

Within that imposing, imperial design is another reality, perhaps best represented by the dorm room-issue wooden tables crowded into the historically restored rooms for committee hearings.

Hearings easily give way to newer legislators eager to make their statements for the record or question those testifying before them. For those who seek to, quickly establishing a presence among 150 members of the Assembly or 62 state

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CITY HALL senators is not difficult.

Becoming involved in floor proceedings is not much harder. Unlike in the United States Senate, there is no tradition of waiting for several months, or even years, before speaking on the floor.

Forcing legislators to be in their seats to listen to these speeches has led to some more colorful and substantive debate. [See sidebar.] But Albany insiders are divided as to the efficacy of these reforms.

“There’s perception and there’s reality in Albany,” said State Sen. Kevin Parker (D-Brooklyn), the minority whip, who first arrived in 2003. “There are some things that seem intuitively right, but they really at the end have a different kind of result.”

Eliminating empty seat voting, many felt, was an absolutely necessary change that would improve the functioning of state government. Parker said that this failed to fully consider the competing priorities of busy legislators.

“You have committee meetings going on, you have session going on, you’re meeting with constituents,” he said.

“Eliminating empty seat voting has now put us in the position where we’re now stuck on the floor, paying attention sometimes to debates that have no real impact on your district.”

Parker also criticized the intensity of the push to further restrict lobbyist donations to $75 meals, especially in contrast to the recently increased legal limit of $15,000 cumulative between primary and general elections for individual contributions to legislators.

Moreover, he argued that no elected official could really have their opinions swayed by having a lobbyist buy them dinner, and that restricting these meals impedes the political process, which is built on these relationships. These, Parker said, are some of the dangers to the rhetoric of reform which people soon come to realize after a little time in office.

This is the kind of talk which gets

“I don’t think there’s any question: the longer that you’re there, the more the way it works makes sense,” said Lawrence Norden, counsel at the Brennan Center. reform advocates anxious. The Assembly already opted against several rules resolutions sponsored by Minority Leader James Tedisco (R-Saratoga) earlier this month.

These would have eased the process for members outside the leadership to force hearings and bring bills more rapidly to the floor, institutionalized conference committees and given Republicans in the chamber more money for resources and staff.

Though the State Senate has remained quiet on this topic, the Assembly’s majority leader, Ron Canestrari (D-Rensselaer), indicated that there may be more institutional reforms on the docket for the

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Reform Meets Reality: A Case Study Legislation which established civil confinement for sex offenders—which had been kicking around Albany in some version or another since 1993— was recently fast-tracked to passage after a deal between the governor and legislative leaders. The bill was put before the Assembly immediately after a bill to change state workers’ compensation laws, negotiated in a similar deal.

The perceived closed-door genesis of the deals over those bills has drawn the ire of some rank-and-file members like Assembly Member Adriano Espaillat (D-Manhattan), who felt the deliberations should have been more inclusive.

Espaillat is himself a sponsor of the bill, but complained that he was not included in the final negotiations over it.

Undercutting any claims of reform, he argued that Spitzer, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan) and Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno (R-Rensselaer) were still behaving like “three men in a room,” the common shorthand slur for Albany dysfunction.

“I have never seen anything worse,” he said, addressing a lunch meeting of the Continuing Care Leadership Coalition shortly after the deals were

Assembly this year. The Brennan Center’s Norden is skeptical these will come, or that they will be significant if they do.

“It will be small steps,” Norden said.

“That’s what they did in 2005. My guess is that they’ll take a couple more.”

And those, Norden insisted, will not nearly be the “dramatic change” he feels the Legislature requires.

Norden is among those who say that if more reforms are not adopted early in the session, they may not be adopted in the session at all. As time passes and the chamber’s leather seats become ever more comfortable, he fears that the reformers willing to take up the cause will lose their nerve.

“I don’t think there’s any question: the longer that you’re there, the more the way it works makes sense,” he said. o many outside observers, that is at the root of legislators’ decision to flex their collective muscle in appointing a new comptroller, beating back Spitzer’s attempts to strong-arm them.

Most Assembly members insist that this should not be read as a contradiction of their reform efforts, and moreover, that it should not be read as a demonstration of a stranglehold by Silver over his conference, whom they say was forced unwillingly into the conflict with Spitzer by his conference.

“You can’t look at that as a litmus test for reform,” contended Assembly Member Karim Camara (D-Brooklyn).

Camara first came to office in a 2005 special election to fill the seat thenBrooklyn Democratic Leader Clarence

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announced, insisting that he felt a complete lack of transparency and involvement.

Espaillat voted for civil confinement.

Fellow Manhattan Democrat Daniel O’Donnell, who spoke at length on his reservations about the bill, did not.

“We rush to judgment and do what we’re told,” he said, explaining his vote to his colleagues. “Well, folks, I’m not going to do what I’m told.”

O’Donnell was one of 19. While no match for the 127 backers, this group did include several senior, more institutionalized members who seemed surprised to be among the nays.

Among the 19 was Brooklyn’s Vito Lopez (D), who said that he felt compelled to vote against the legislation due to the lack of a sunset provision. He insisted this might have been added had the bill gone into committee sometime between coming out of the leaders’ negotiation room and appearing on the Assembly floor.

Fears of how the new laws might disproportionately affect his poorer constituents struck him.

“For the first time in 23 years—and maybe that’s the benefit of being here— I’m going to change my vote and vote

no,” he said.

Eyeing the button on his desk, he hesitated until all but a few others had voted, then rose to speak again about why he could not support that version of civil confinement. The chair translated the speech into a vote against the bill.

Fellow Democrat David Gantt (Monroe), first elected in 1983, followed Lopez’s lead in voting against the bill after listening to the floor debate.

Though the decades-long streak since a bill was voted down on the floor continues, if not for the 2005 changes, which required them to be in their seats to vote, Lopez and Gantt might well have simply been counted as voting yes.

Most reform advocates would likely see this as a victory, though the legislation still passed overwhelmingly.

Certainly, this moment can be read as a demonstration of the power of having people in their seats for debates, though most of the legislators spent the hour of discussion chatting with each other, eating bananas or fiddling with Blackberries and giggling at emails, more than looking up at and listening to the debate.

Norman was forced from on his way to prison. He strongly identifies himself as a reformer. He was one of five relatively new city-based members who recently agreed to self-imposed restrictions on campaign fundraising modeled after those adopted by Spitzer and Lt. Gov. David Paterson (D) at the beginning of the year.

While identifying himself strongly as a reformer, he said, “I’m not interested in reform just for the sake of reform. I’m interested in reform that can help the people that I represent.”

He calls his vote for DiNapoli a pragmatic decision.

“I liked Martha Stark a lot,” Camara said, referring to the New York City finance commissioner who got just 56 votes, compared to DiNapoli’s 150. “She just didn’t have the support or the votes.

So if I’m thinking about what’s best for my district—do I support a candidate who has no chance to win, or do I support another candidate who I believe is qualified and have access for another three and a quarter years?”

Trading votes for support, not picking fights when the battles have clearly ended—these are staples of ambitious, effective politicians in any legislative body.

And for those who seek it, the possibility of personal gain, whether through more member items headed to a district or leadership stipend lulus tacked onto the salaries, is there as well. (“It’s not something that’s said,” confided one Assembly member. “But if someone wants to sell his or her vote, I’d be shocked if there’s no way to do it. It’s been going on in democracy since the day we had democracy.”)

Brian Kavanagh (Manhattan), who

beat incumbent Sylvia Friedman last year just months after she won a special election for the seat, also voted for DiNapoli.

Central to Kavanagh’s campaign was a charge that Friedman had cozied up with Silver and the encrusted establishment between taking office March 1 after winning a special election and their Sept. 12 Democratic primary.

He also campaigned on a message that Albany needed to institute reforms which had proven successful in the city, like the campaign finance system and redistricting reform.

Kavanagh said that after 20 years of late budgets, having them done on time the past two years (time will tell if this year’s will follow suit, and how much larger it will be than last year’s) show the power of reformers to change the structure, as does the more open process of finalizing the budget and the recently-passed ethics bill.

Still, he feels the Legislature must be made more transparent as a route to crafting more effective policy, and to rooting out corruption. Success, however, meant a careful, deliberative effort to bring all his colleagues around to that same realization, and keeping a good relationship with leaders. He called his current relationship with Silver “cordial.”

“Being a reformer, which I do consider myself, is not about making yourself in the wilderness,” he said. “It’s not about standing entirely outside the system.”

Looking to change the system is not mutually exclusive with looking to reap the benefits from working well within the system until those changes come, Kavanagh said. “I want to do both.” eidovere@manhattanmedia.com

—Edward-Isaac Dovere eidovere@manhattanmedia.com

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BACK IN THE DISTRICT

DISTRICT

Holding His Own

15 BRONX

ANDREW SCHWARTZ PHOTOS

Outnumbered 2-1, Maltese courts the constituents who almost ousted him

A constituent takes time out of a poker game to debate Tom DiNapoli’s appointment with Maltese.

BY ANDREW HAWKINS TATE SEN. SERPHIN “SERF” Maltese (R-Queens) breezed through the doors of the Peter Cardella Senior Center in Glendale and immediately began pumping hands. On the wall was a bronze plaque with the senator’s grinning likeness.

“Who’s that guy?” Maltese said wryly.

Despite a slight limp still with him from a car accident decades ago, Maltese strode into one room and greeted the half dozen or so men there playing poker.

The reply, however, was less than cordial.

“Hey, senator, what’s the deal with DiNapoli?” shouted one man with a distinct mole on his nose, referring to the recent dust-up between state legislators and Gov. Eliot Spitzer (D) over the appointment of Thomas DiNapoli (D) as the new state comptroller.

“I love him,” Maltese replied. “The guy knows his politics.”

They bantered for another minute.

Then Maltese wished them a good game and left.

“There was a time when it would have been enough that the guy was Italian,” Maltese said later, registering his slight surprise that DiNapoli’s ethnic background did not win over the poker players.

Party loyalty trumping ethnic loyalty is just one thing of many that have changed about his Queens district since Maltese was first elected in 1988 as the candidate of the GOP and the Conservative Party (which he helped found in 1962).

Back then, Maltese said, his was “the Archie Bunker district,” with its working

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class German and Italian population.

Now, with Spanish-speaking residents in the majority and a rapid influx of immigrants, the neighborhood—like most outer-borough communities—looks remarkably different.

“Guys like us, we had it made. Those were the days,” goes the refrain of the theme from “All in the Family.”

Maltese, who has lived in the area since 1954 and in the same house since 1958, still says he feels right at home.

He knows that in order to make his constituents feel that a 74-year-old Italian-American can represent them in Albany, he needs to surround himself with aides and advisors who speak their languages. He has employees who speak Russian, Polish, Italian and Spanish.

“I’m even learning a little Spanish myself,” he said.

Maltese got his first taste of the power of elected office when he joined the Marines to fight in the Korean War. Underage and still a student at Stuyvesant High School, he convinced a local congressman to help him beat the enlistment rules.

He went to Manhattan College on the G.I. Bill, and first ran for State Senate in 1965. He was first elected 23 years later.

“I always tell people that it pays to be persistent,” he joked.

During his 18 years in office, he has issued thousands of resolutions honoring everything from older residents’ birthdays to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911. Maltese’s grandmother, Caterina, and two aunts, Lucia and Rosalia, were killed in that blaze.

He speaks as warmly about New York history as he does about the hundreds of

civic groups in his district that he helps QUEENS fund.

Back at the senior center, in a room full of waltzing grandparents, Maltese asked for a microphone and a brief pause in the festivities to thank everyKINGS one for their support.

“I know if I interrupt your dancing for too long that I’m kaput!” he said.

RICHMOND Laughter and clapping ensued.

“He’s a mainstay of our organization,” said Peter Cardella, the director of the senior center.

“We should run him for mayor!”

Like Maltese, Cardella, a diminutive man with a neat mustache and penchant for gripping arms as he talks, is a Cavaliere, or knight, the highest honor bestowed by the Italian government.

After the senior center, Maltese was back in his gray Dodge Durango and driving himself to another, the Queens Multi-Service Center.

He has been instrumental in securing funding for both senior centers. These are where he appears most relaxed and at ease, surrounded by grateful and loyal constituents who are quick to laugh at his jokes and nod seriously as he “I’m a bit of a junk collector,” Maltese said, picadlibs about the failing edu- tured here with his decades’ worth of political cation system or the rich buttons and Little Orphan Annie memorabilia. diversity of his borough.

Since his narrow victory over changed course slightly. He resigned Democrat Albert Baldeo last November, from his position as chair of the Queens he can been seen more often in County Republican Party, which he had Ridgewood, Glendale, or any of the other been for 10 years. This led to a lawsuit 20-some communities within his district. filed by some Queens Republicans claimBaldeo lost by just 890 votes, despite an ing Maltese violated the bylaws by almost complete lack of endorsements or appointing Phil Ragusa, the vice chair political support. He plans to run again in and district leader, as his successor.

“Since it was such a close election, 2008.

But Maltese insists that he does not giving up the chairmanship has allowed me to concentrate more on the majority,” read too much in to the results.

Registration in the district is tilted 2-1 he said.

He has been fielding other job offers, in favor of Democrats, Maltese said. His partisan disadvantage, combined with a though—from his colleagues on the general discontent towards President other side of the aisle in Albany, who George W. Bush and the Republican hope they can convince him that the best Party last year, leads Maltese to call his way to insulate himself from Democratic victory a testament to the strength of his assaults is by switching to become a Democrat. His defection and two others community ties.

“It didn’t have a hell of a lot to do with could swing the chamber to the Democrats for the first time in 40 years. me as a state official,” he insisted.

Still, following the election, Maltese CONTINUED ON PAGE 15

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15

Battles Branches OF THE

Highlights from past spats between governors and legislators

BY JOHN R.D. CELOCK

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20th Century, Gov. Theodore Roosevelt (R) was basically run out of town and into the vice presidency because of his battles with the Legislature and party bosses.

“Inevitably the two branches of government will have disagreements,” said Democratic political consultant Evan Stavisky.

While no one has tried to move Eliot Spitzer to Washington—yet—the recent battles have prompted memories of some of the more recent battles for power in the Capitol.

In 1993, Albany was in the middle of another fight over filling the comptroller’s office, with then-Board of Education President Carl McCall battling former City Council President Carol Bellamy for the post. Gov. Mario Cuomo (D) started to flex his muscle in trying to sway legislative opinion, when then Lt. Gov. Stan Lundine received a call from the late Assembly Speaker Saul Weprin (D-Queens).

“The speaker indicated that he had the votes,” Lundine said. “The speaker called me and said to hold the governor off.”

Lundine noted that Cuomo recognized the Legislature’s supremacy in the fight and held off further involvement.

Ironically, McCall—who was Cuomo’s choice as well—ultimately got Weprin’s support.

“Serf” CONTINUED FROM PAGE 14

“They said that by being part of a Democratic majority, I could earn more as a retiree,” he said, laughing.

But political intrigue can wait when there are veterans to pose with for pictures.

That is what he does in between listening to veterans at the Sgt. Edward R. Miller Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 7336 on Cooper Avenue. They excitedly

SCOTT WILLIAMS

T THE TURN OF THE

Tensions in Albany have led Eliot Spitzer to call himself a steamroller ready to roll over anyone who stood in his way. But it was Gov. Nelson

The events and aftermath of the Rockefeller who actually chased down Dale Volker in his car back in 1973. selection of Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli (D) this year were somewhat past the era when Gov. Nelson Brydges (R-Niagara County), a fiercely different.

“I can’t blame the governor for being Rockefeller dominated state govern- pro-life politician, consented to a floor vote on a bill to legalize abortion in the upset,” Lundine said, while adding, “he ment with an iron fist.

State Sen. Dale Volker (R-Erie state. Brydges allowed the bill, which might have gone overboard in singling out individual legislators with his wrath.” County) was a novice Assembly Member had passed the Assembly and had the Stavisky notes this is not the first in 1973, when a displeased Rockefeller support of Rockefeller, to come to the time a Democratic Assembly has defied almost ran head first into him. Volker floor believing it would be voted down a Democratic governor. In 1975, during likes to tell a story of a night walking and the issue would be dead in the the city’s fiscal crisis, Gov. Hugh Carey down State Street in the midst of a dis- state.

On the day of the vote, abortion pro(D) vetoed a bill sponsored by Stavisky’s agreement with Rockefeller over legislafather, then-Assembly Member Leonard tion. Volker saw a car following him and ponents had succeeded in turning Stavisky (D-Queens), to prevent the cuts jump the curb, and Rockefeller came out enough senators that the bill passed by in the city school budget Carey was and pinned Volker against a wall, threat- one vote, over Brydges’ objections.

According to published reports, folseeking. The newly Democratic ening his reelection chances if he didn’t Assembly overrode the veto, the first change his vote. Volker did lose his 1974 lowing the passage, Brydges—a close time an override had happened in reelection, but was elected to the Senate Rockefeller ally—sat in his chair on the Senate floor and wept. in a 1975 special election.

Albany in 106 years.

And sometimes the breakdowns have The post-Watergate era of openness johncelock@aol.com in Albany and empowerment of the come on the floor of the Legislature. In Direct letters to the editor to cityLegislature helped the Legislature move 1971, then Senate Majority Leader Earl hall@manhattanmedia.com.

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surround the senator, slapping him on the back and telling him about their trips to Washington, their brand new website and the fish fry they have planned for that weekend.

Maltese is, of course, invited.

This kind of veteran backing, coupled with his own military experience, may come in handy in 2008.

City Council Member Joseph Addabbo Jr. (D), who declined Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s (R) encouragement to challenge Maltese in 2006, has expressed interest in running next year.

Maltese said that Addabbo—unlike Baldeo, whom he finds “intolerable”— would be a tough and worthwhile opponent.

“I have a great deal of respect for Addabbo,” Maltese said over a hearty lunch of meats smothered in gravy at Von Westernhagen’s, a German restaurant just a stone’s throw from his district office on Myrtle Avenue.

A contest between the two “would be an exciting race,” he said, discussing it as perhaps an outsider, rather than a candidate, would.

Until then, Maltese will continue smiling and posing for pictures with loyal retirees and veterans, mulling over the changes to the district from the Archie Bunker days. He will welcome constituents to his office that overflows with as much Little Orphan Annie collectables as it does political memorabilia (“I’m a bit of a junk collector,” Maltese admitted), and hope that he still has it made.

“Queens is like a small town,” he said wistfully. “A small town with two million people.” ahawkins@manhattanmedia.com

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People Who Can Help Get a Project Built—Or Help Stop One

SHELDON SILVER Assembly Speaker (D-Manhattan) Depending on whom you ask, Silver is either a total killjoy or a voice of reason amidst a cacophony of development-happy politicos and citizens’ groups.

The speaker sees himself as a mixture of pragmatist and moralist. His number one priority, he says, is downtown revitalization.

Along with the governor and State Senate majority leader, Silver sits on the Public Authority Control Board, an obscure yet powerful agent charged with evaluating the economic merit and security of large private projects. All three board members must agree before giving any project the go-ahead. Silver used his power to abstain to block the West Side Stadium Project.

ELIOT SPITZER Governor (D) Spitzer has never thought small. As an antitrust lawyer, he helped win a multi-billion-dollar settlement on behalf of all U.S. merchants who accepted Visa and MasterCard; as attorney general, he took on Wall Street and insurance brokers. As governor, his vision for building and development is no less grand.

Spitzer has only been in office since January, but major developments are already underway. One of the governor’s chief campaign promises was to focus revitalization efforts on upstate New York, a long-neglected region that he once compared to Appalachia.

Before starting his term, the governor announced that he planned to split the Empire State Development Corporation, the state agency that oversees all New

DAN DOCTOROFF Deputy Mayor for Economic Development and Rebuilding A former investment banker whose city salary is a dollar a year, Dan Doctoroff has played a key role in the Bloomberg Administration’s dozens of development projects from the Greenpoint-Williamsburg waterfront to lower Manhattan to the Bronx Terminal Market. He refuses to elevate any one project above the rest, though some might say the 2005 Hudson Yards rezoning will have the greatest long-term impact.

An outgrowth of Doctoroff’s failed attempt to attract the 2012 Olympics to New York, the rezoning set the stage for high-rise development on 310 acres of Manhattan’s previously derelict Far West Side.

Doctoroff envisions a mix of residential, commercial and cultural development—a “21st-century

New York’s reputation as a place resistant to many new buildings has done nothing to discourage more people from trying every year, every day. Among the most important decisions which go into translating a project from concept to blueprint to concrete foundation are those made by people charged with mediating between government and private developers. Of the many who do, here are 10 (in no particular order) who City Hall thinks help bridge public demands and private interests when it comes to getting shovels in the ground in New York.

While saying that he considers every project on its own merits, Silver has a reputation for extending extra consideration to downtown New York, especially his Lower East Side district, even to the detriment of the rest of the city.

Silver maintains that developing the stadium would have created undue competition against downtown revitalization.

“Ultimately, 75 years from now, I believe that New Yorkers are going to need 60-75 million more square feet of office space, but the issue now is how fast we can rebuild downtown,” he said. “What we really don’t want is anything going on at the same time that would compete with that.”

But many supporters of the stadium suggested that he was simply protecting the interests of his backers, including Cablevision.

Silver has a reputation for holding his cards close to his chest when it comes to major votes and for being prickly with lobbyists and fellow Assembly members offering advice. He also is known for “mem-

ber items” targeting his Lower East Side district. With 7.2 million state dollars funneled into pork projects, many of them on the Lower East Side, his 2006 expenditures on pork were about 100 times those of his fellow Democrats.

York building and development, into two branches: one for upstate and one for downstate.

The agency has always been seated downstate, and upstate New Yorkers have long complained that it is out of touch with their region’s economic needs and reality. The upstate division, which has already garnered enthusiasm from some and skepticism from others, will be seated in Buffalo.

The governor calls reform his number one priority, saying that prosperity and regeneration will be impossible without it. In this vein, he will revise the “member items” system by which individual legislators are able to funnel state money to pet projects, enforcing greater investigation into whether pork projects are genuinely in the public interest.

To the extent that pork projects revolve around building and development, genuine reform of this system could hugely impact the prospects for building and development in districts that have been blessed with powerful, pork-packing senators and representatives.

Projects he has supported: St Regis Mohawk Casino in the Catskills, $230 million purchase of Farley Complex on 33rd Street to expand Penn Station while creating office towers and building a new arena, Freedom Tower and downtown revitalization, redevelopment of brownfields (abandoned industrial areas located mostly upstate), Peace Bridge expansion

Rockefeller Center,” perhaps—and predicts the area will yield $25 billion in city revenues over the next 25 to 30 years.

More recently, Doctoroff has led Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s (R) Sustainability Advisory Board, which will release a report next month featuring recommendations such as how to reclaim up to 1700 acres of polluted land and put it to productive use.

He is also working on ways to accommodate the city’s projected population growth to 9 million over the next few decades through smarter use of space, investment in aging infrastructure and innovative environmental stewardship.

Doctoroff is known as an incredibly hard worker with a stubborn streak that gets results. Bloomberg has said that Doctoroff will ultimately have a greater impact on New York than Robert Moses, albeit while operating more democratically and with greater oversight. Doctoroff says the comparison is flattering, though the true credit is due to Bloomberg, whose vision he is working to execute.

Projects he has supported: Far West Side Jets Stadium, Hudson Yards rezoning, GreenpointWilliamsburg rezoning, Atlantic Yards, Gateway Center at Bronx Terminal Market, many more Projects he has opposed: [Would not say.]

Projects he has supported: Atlantic Yards, Hudson Yards rezoning, Javits Center expansion (as long as it remained separate from West Side Stadium plans), general downtown revitalization Projects he has opposed: Moynihan Station, Far West Side Jets Stadium Philosophy regarding proposals for building and development: “I’m looking for something that I think promotes the economy of New York, something that will be consistent with the moral obligation of restoring lower Manhattan, and nothing should be done to deter the restoring of that. I think we have a moral obligation to the victims of 9/11 to go forward full-blast.”

—Leah Nelson

Projects he has opposed: None yet.

Philosophy regarding building and development: In his State of the State address, Spitzer said, “Our first objective is to reform our government … because if our state is to prosper again we need a government that is a catalyst for change instead of an impediment”. Spitzer spokesperson Jennifer Givner added that every proposal for development will be scrutinized carefully. “Part of the governor’s core belief is that money can’t just be handed out,” she said.

—Leah Nelson

Philosophy about building and development in New York: “We have very fundamental views about where the city is going and what we need to achieve, including providing a diverse mix of office space in a diverse number of locations. We have, on the residential side, major concerns about affordability. … We have very concrete targets for what we believe we need to get built over time and so that sets what I’d call the strategic framework for any individual project. And then what we’re looking for is a function of design. It is a function of how it helps to achieve those broader strategic objectives, how it enhances the vitality of the city, how it acts as a catalyst to other development that may take place.”

—Daniel Weiss

CITY HALL

KEN FISHER Partner in Real Estate and Land Use Practice Groups, WolfBlock Former City Council Member (D-Brooklyn), Chair of Land Use Subcommittee on Landmarks, Public Siting and Maritime Uses As a City Council Member, Ken Fisher fought to preserve the residential character of Greenpoint-Williamsburg, helping to block incinerators, power plants and waste transfer stations proposed for its waterfront. Since being term limited out of office in 2001, he has remained a key player in the neighborhood’s development, marshaling support for the massive rezoning plan approved by the Council in 2004, which cleared the way for increased residential development, and representing developers there—as well as throughout the city—as a real estate and land use lawyer with WolfBlock.

ROBERT LIEBER President, New York City Economic Development Corporation Before being appointed to head the Economic Development Corporation

by Mayor Michael Bloomberg (R) in January, Robert Lieber spent 23 years at Lehman Brothers, specializing most recently in private equity investment in real estate assets and companies.

Last year, he was one of a group of volunteers from the firm that advised the city on how to handle the lease for the World Trade Center site. Though he had no previous plans or aspirations to work in the public sector, he came away from the experience with newfound respect for what government could achieve.

ROBERT TIERNEY Chair, Landmarks Preservation Commission In his four years as chairman of the Landmarks Preservation Commission, Robert Tierney has walked the sometimes difficult line between preserving landmarks and deferring to the city-wide trend toward development. Tierney lacks formal training in architecture or urban planning, and many in the preservation community have viewed him warily, but they were pleased and property owners were irked by one of his first controversial decisions—to create the Gansevoort Meat Market historic district.

In succeeding years, his commission’s refusal to hold a public meeting on whether 2 Columbus Circle, the “lol-

MELINDA KATZ Chair, City Council Land Use Committee (D-Queens), and Member of Advisory Council, Lower Manhattan Development Corporation As chair of the City Council’s Land Use Committee, Katz has a vote on virtually every building and development project the city undertakes. She tries not to form opinions about projects prior to their arrival in committee, she said, because kinks that might initially have appeared problematic are often worked out by the time they cross her desk officially.

But as a former Legal Aid attorney who used to work on eviction cases, the tenant perspective on any proposal

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Starting with the rezoning, Fisher has pulled off a series of impressive coups. In 2005, he convinced the Council to reject the landmarking of a Cass Gilbert warehouse in Williamsburg—over the Landmarks Preservation Commission’s recommendation and Mayor Bloomberg’s veto. Last year, he convinced the Council to approve a long-delayed rezoning of the Kedem Winery in Williamsburg. And, though he tends to turn down opposition work, he helped Green-Wood Cemetery put the brakes on a condo project that would have blocked a view of the Statue of Liberty.

Preservation groups that lauded Fisher for his work on the Council (where he chaired the subcommittee overseeing landmarks) were stung by his efforts to develop the Cass Gilbert warehouse, but Fisher is unapologetic. He calls his opposition to the landmarking a “Nixon-goes-to-China moment” and argues that developing the warehouse and the rest of the rezoned area in Greenpoint-Williamsburg is part of a “strategic plan” to ensure Brooklyn thrives in the future.

With a hand in many projects there and elsewhere, Ken Fisher will continue to play a major role in charting that future, in or out of government.

Now he is charged with using the government’s power to help promote economic growth through a variety of means including the administration of vacant city-owned property and the encouragement of projects that put underused property to more remunerative use. He emphasizes the importance of developing growth outside Manhattan—and the corporation has a role in a number of major outer-borough projects.

Among them is the Downtown Brooklyn Plan adopted in 2004, which aims to dramatically increase the commercial office and retail space as well as available housing in the city’s third largest business district. In Queens, plans for Flushing Commons include a hotel, residential units and retail space. Nearby, Willets Point is projected to have its infrastructure upgraded to ready it for development. And the stagnant Bronx Terminal Market will be torn down to make way for Gateway Center, an 18-acre plot including plenty of retail space and a park on the Harlem River waterfront.

Though still a new arrival, Lieber is clearly enthusiastic about his work with the Bloomberg Administration.

“What is it, a thousand and thirty-six days left in this mayor’s administration?” he asks. “There’s a lot to do and not a lot of time to get it done in.”

lipop building,” deserved landmark status made it the target of preservationist protests and lawsuits. In 2005 the building was sold to the Museum of Arts and Design, which is in the process of significantly altering its distinctive facade.

Later in 2005, it was Tierney’s turn to grow outraged, as the City Council took the rare step of rejecting his commission’s recommendation of landmark status for two buildings in the space of a month. Many felt that the second of these, the Austin, Nichols & Company Warehouse in Williamsburg, deserved a special exemption from the Greenpoint-Williamsburg rezoning approved the year before.

In January, the commission blocked a proposed 22story glass-and-steel tower from being built atop an Art Moderne low-rise at 980 Madison Avenue because it would not have fit in with the standards of the Upper

East Side Historic District.

While the commission has been criticized in the past for focusing on Manhattan, under Tierney it has begun to shift its attention to the outer boroughs. The commission established the Fieldston Historic District in the Bronx last year and others are under consideration for Sunnyside, Queens and Crown Heights, Brooklyn. In addition, last year the commission completed a survey to identify landmark-worthy buildings on Staten Island, the fastest-growing county in the state.

has a clear impact on her opinions. Affordable housing is one of her top priorities. She opposed allowing WalMart to become an anchor store in Rego Park because of its reputation for low pay and for treating workers badly.

Katz sees the city as a collection of small communities, each with unique flavors and needs, and she tends to look askance at development proposals that would unduly wipe out large residential areas.

“Development is important for the city, but you also need places for people to live,” she said. “We are trying very hard to make everything balanced.”

Katz supporters always cite her proactiveness as a politician and her involvement with the community she represents. But Katz does have a reputation for closeness with real estate developers, which has led some colleagues to question her integrity.

Projects she has supported: Rego Park rezoning, Bronx Terminal Market, Hudson Yards, WilliamsburgGreenpoint rezoning Projects she has opposed: Bronx BJ’s Club, Wal-Mart at Rego Park

Projects he has supported: Greenpoint-Williamsburg Rezoning, Kedem Winery Rezoning, Triangle Equities’s Flatbush Junction Retail Complex Projects he has opposed: incinerator/power plant/waste transfer stations on Greenpoint-Williamsburg waterfront, condos near Green-Wood Cemetery Philosophy about building and development: “No matter how benign a project is in New York, it’s going to ruffle somebody’s feathers, but just because that’s true doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be sensitive to the fact that you’re changing somebody’s quality of life,” Fisher said. “To you, building a building may be creating jobs and housing and wealth, but to the person who’s got to live with the construction debris next door, it may be a different story.”

—Daniel Weiss

Projects he has supported: Flushing Commons, Gateway Center at Bronx Terminal Market, Red Hook Piers 7-12 redevelopment, Hunts Point Vision Plan, New Stapleton Vision Plan, Sherman Creek Neighborhood Plan Projects he has opposed: To date, none.

Philosophy about building and development: “What we’re trying to do is use our resources to take a view of the long-term needs of the city of New York,” Lieber said, “to promote growth in areas where we can create incentives to get people to diversify the businesses, as well as diversify the locations of those businesses.”

—Daniel Weiss

Projects he has supported: Alteration of 2 Columbus Circle’s distinctive facade, demolition of Dakota Stables on the Upper West Side Projects he has opposed: Proposed tower at 980 Madison Avenue, addition to Austin, Nichols & Company Warehouse in Williamsburg —Daniel Weiss

Philosophy about building and development in New York: “There needs to be a balance of different interests.

On the one hand, there are small communities that people are proud of, but also, we are New York City and, people, thankfully, want to put their companies here,” Katz said.

“It’s always a balancing act because [development] is part of the underpinnings of the economic revitalization that’s been going on in the last five years, while at the same time the committee prides itself on downzoning some communities because they need to remain pristine.”

—Leah Nelson

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AMANDA BURDEN Chair, City Planning Commission, and Director, City Planning Department In her five years as head of city planning, Amanda Burden has overseen the city’s most extensive rezoning campaign in decades. The City Council has adopted 68 of her commission’s plans covering 4,600 blocks—and plans to rezone 2,300 more are in the works. The result makes way for the development of over 30 million square feet of new office space and 35,000 additional housing units, including many affordable ones.

Burden has also played an important role in preserving the High Line railroad bed as a park and in reducing the scale of the controversial Atlantic Yards development in Brooklyn. A proposed rezoning of Jamaica, Queens, which will be voted on by Queens Community Boards 8 and 12 next month, would be the largest in the city’s history and would allow for the development of office space in the vicinity of the neighborhood’s Air

JOSEPH BRUNO State Senate Majority Leader (RRennselaer) In December 2006, the New York Times christened Bruno “king of legislative pork.” But to those privileged few that he showers with favor in the form of “member items” Bruno brings little but good news.

Regardless of the looming FBI investigation, the man that the Daily News designated “damaged goods” seems far from backing down. The consensus among fellow Republican senators is that Bruno’s power and popular-

PATRICK FOYE “Economic Czar” and Co-Chair, Empire State Development Corporation Named “Economic Czar” and Downstate Chair of the Empire State Development Corporation by Eliot Spitzer, this government outsider has not wasted any time in getting down to business.

Like his boss, Foye puts due diligence high on his to-do list. Foye’s top priority is a strategic review of economic activities and improved results and accountability for the ESDC. To this end, the downstate branch is currently undertaking a top-to-bottom review of every project now

INT 512 A Local Law to amend the administrative code of the city of New York, in relation to eliminating the prearrangement and passenger manifest requirement for commuter vans.

Sponsor: Councilmember Jessica Lappin (D-Manhattan) When many New Yorkers say they are “on the list,” they are not talking about the latest nightclub. They are referring to the daily practice of calling ahead to reserve a seat on their local commuter vans.

“There is no subway service on the far East Side, and many people call ahead to ride the commuter vans to work,” said Lappin.

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Train station.

Despite the ambitious agenda, Burden is known for her meticulous, groundlevel approach to zoning and for her insistence on high aesthetic standards.

She spends many of her weekends walking the streets of neighborhoods under consideration for rezoning and calls this her favorite part of the job. Eschewing the “broad-brush” zoning of the past, her plans aim to concentrate development close to public transportation while discouraging it in areas dependent on cars, all while providing generous amounts of public space and waterfront access.

Burden has received criticism from both sides of the development debate: neighborhood groups argue that the immense 2004 Greenpoint-Williamsburg rezoning has unleashed a disruptive construction boom, while developers complain that she tends to micromanage projects, unduly imposing her own design principles. To the former, she replies that the rezoning will help preserve the neighborhood in the

People

long run by imposing height caps on new buildings. To the latter, she says she is “unapologetic about our emphasis on design quality and architectural excellence” in all projects—from low-income housing to high-profile office buildings.

Projects she has supported: GreenpointWilliamsburg Rezoning, Hudson Yards Rezoning, the High Line Projects she has opposed: Many “down-zonings” in areas such as Bay Ridge, Whitestone and City Island that have limited development.

Philosophy about building and development in New York: “The philosophy of the administration, and this is the philosophy of the mayor and it’s been implemented by Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff, is to make sure we have a five-borough policy for economic development, affordable housing, recapturing the waterfront and neighborhood preservation—and good design.”

—Daniel Weiss

ity are such that it will take a lot more than a mere federal inquiry into his personal ventures to affect the Majority Leader’s momentum.

Though he is among the three members of the Public Authority Control Board, which makes decisions about development in the city, most of Bruno’s efforts are focused on the Capital region. Bruno says he hopes to improve upstate New York’s viability through hundreds of millions of dollars in incentives to high-tech companies and to infrastructure.

When it comes to building and development, the senator has a taste for local edifices that will hear his name, including a Minor League baseball stadium, a YMCA and the Albany International Airport, which dis-

plays a bust of the senator among its treasures.

underway, and recently voted to expand the environmental review of the Moynihan Station proposal.

Speaking for both himself and Foye, upstate Economic Czar and Empire State Development Corporation Chair Daniel Gunderson has said, “We need to change the mindset away from economic development being geared merely as doling out large bags of cash.”

Following Spitzer’s lead, Foye and Gunderson have self-imposed anti-conflict-of-interest measures upon themselves, promising not to invest in or do business with any person or entity doing business with the corporation for the duration of their terms.

The reason, Foye has said, is because he wants the ESDC to be an “open and level playing field for all those who want to do business in New York State.”

Projects he has supported: “Everything is under review right now,” said Foye’s spokesman Errol Cockfield. The board has approved $1.5 million to reconstruct the Bay Shore Marina, $50,000 for a salt shed in the village of East Hills, $250,000 to keep 1-800FLOWERS and the 422 jobs it provides in Nassau County, and just over half a million dollars to expand several other downstate-based companies.

Project he has opposed: To date, none.

Van companies are required by law to have passenger manifests, lists of every person they will be transporting. Lappin often receives complaints from delayed riders and van companies that drivers are getting tickets for not having these.

“If I take this van every day and the driv- Bills on the burner er knows me, I should- for the Council n’t have to call every night to reserve a spot,” said Lappin.

The new law would eliminate the reservation process for riders and the paperwork for commuter van companies.

—Kenyon Farrow kfarrow@manhattanmedia.com

Projects he has supported: Javits Center Expansion, Atlantic Yards, downtown revitalization, numerous Albany-based developments Projects he has opposed: Moynihan Station, West Side Stadium Philosophy on building and development: “He is looking at projects that will strengthen the economy of the state and the city and create jobs for New Yorkers,” said Bruno spokesman Mark Hansen, contending that, Bruno “really is open-minded to evaluating proposals for economic development and job expansion.”

—Leah Nelson

Philosophy on land use and development: Cockfield said the “goal is to use public resources and try to leverage those as much as possible to stimulate private investment, and to make sure that taxpayers get the best return on their investment.”

—Leah Nelson

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As Sander wavers and construction costs rise, price tag worries for new West Side stops Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), threw the city’s plans for extending the No. 7 subway line to 11th Avenue into disarray by declaring that the MTA was “under no legal obligation to absorb any additional costs or overruns” for the project.

The question of overruns has been the 800-pound gorilla in the room for over a year. Though Gov. George Pataki’s (R) MTA chair Peter Kalikow assured the city that the project was not in jeopardy, the project’s official price tag of $2.1 billion was set back in 2003, and has not been adjusted since, despite soaring costs in the construction industry.

“You go through this period when there’s this construction boom worldwide—steel prices rising, oil prices rising,” says James Parrott of the Fiscal Policy Institute, who has previously warned that the project’s existing budget would be insufficient. “And you get to 2007 and what’s the city’s estimate of the cost? $2.1 billion. It was playing games with the numbers in a manner that the MTA made famous—and the MTA doesn’t do that anymore.”

Ironically, Parrott notes, if the extension had gone through the normal MTA capital plan, it could have been eligible for federal funding that might have filled the funding gap.

“The city was the entity that said, no, we have to fast-track this,” he said.

The No. 7 extension was first conceived as part of the Hudson Yards project concocted by Dan Doctoroff, Bloomberg’s deputy mayor for economic development, which would have been anchored by the $2.2 billion stadium for the New York Jets and 2012 Olympics.

Under that plan, the No. 7 line was to be

Public Advocacy CONTINUED FROM PAGE 5

$510,000 over two years.

Gotbaum, whom Muzzio and others referred to as an “excellent fundraiser,” is raising the money through the Fund for Public Advocacy, a registered not-for-profit she helped create.

So far, the New York Community Trust has donated $100,000. Several other organizations and foundations are in talks.

No public money is expected to be used.

Elected officials, survey experts and political observers say that they are eager to see the results of the surveys, but that the devil is in the details.

“This project is interesting because it appears to be designed differently than other citizen surveys,” said City Council Member Gale Brewer (D-Manhattan).

“With people from various civic groups advising them, it seems specifically designed to get at the root of these issues.”

Brewer served several years as deputy

19

extended down 42nd Street to 11th Avenue, then turn south to a new station at 34th and 11th, across the street from the stadium.

To get the otherwise uninterested MTA on board, Doctoroff proposed to fund the new line entirely with city money, raised by levying payments in lieu of taxes (PILOTs) on developers in the new Hudson Yards office and residential district that would be served by the subway extension. City figures show that— in addition to the $2.1 billion siphoned off to pay for the subway line— since the PILOTs are fixed at below the expected property rate, the city stands to lose up to $650 million more in tax revenue because of this plan.

Even that much money, though, is now likely to be insufficient to provide for the astronomical costs of building underground transit in densely built Manhattan. In addition to construction cost inflation, critics have long noted that the city’s plan omits funding for a second proposed station at 42nd and 11th that would be needed to serve new residents of Hudson Yards farther north.

In all, overruns and added costs are projected to run as high as $1 billion—a figure that apparently proved too rich for Sander’s blood.

What happens now is uncertain. The

city’s Hudson Yards Infrastructure Corporation sold $2 billion worth of PILOT-backed bonds last December, with another $1 billion planned to be sold later this year. Without the MTA’s approval, though, the project cannot proceed without the train line, and developers are unlikely to start putting up the office towers that are needed to generate the PILOTs. The City Council has agreed to provide $1 billion in interim funding out of the gen-

eral fund to pay bondholders until the PILOTs start flowing. If the construction schedule slips, this money could run out, leading to a potential scenario in which the city would be pushing for quick completion of the subway line, leading to even more money in rush charges.

As of now, the West Side war is on a low simmer. Early in March, Sander issued a statement saying that he would put off any decisions until he has a clearer picture of what the project’s cost will be.

Jeremy Soffin, the longtime Regional Plan Association spokesperson who was recently brought on to run the MTA’s communications department, said that “Sander has had positive meetings with Deputy Mayor Doctoroff,” with the result that the authority plans to solicit bids first, and cross the bridge of any cost overruns as they develop.

“Everyone agreed that it was premature to come to an agreement on overruns when no one knew what the costs were,” Soffin said.

Still, with neither Sander nor Doctoroff eager to swallow what could be billions in added costs, and with the MTA’s budget projections reportedly showing massive deficits in the offing while the authority faces likely cost overruns on other projects such as the Second Avenue Subway, the battle between Albany and City Hall over the No. 7 line may have only just begun.

How much of the price the city is ultimately saddled with remains to be seen. neil@demause.net Direct letters to the editor to cityhall@manhattanmedia.com.

public advocate for intergovernmental affairs under Mark Green (D) and is thought by some to be mulling a bid for the office herself in 2009, though she denies it.

And there may be other problems as well.

Surveys are inexact when looking at more complex matters, said Barbara Cohn Berman, vice president of the Fund for the City of New York, which provides millions of dollars to non-profit and government

projects annually.

Others were more critical of Gotbaum’s intent.

“It sounds like they’re using 20th Century technology rather than 21st Century technology to bring this thing together,” said Andrew Rasiej, an internet entrepreneur and a candidate for public advocate in 2005.

“I don’t understand why they can’t use the Internet to engage people.”

But despite all the potential pitfalls, Gotbaum is sure the project and its results will grab Bloomberg’s attention.

“It won’t get lost on the mayor’s desk because in the end it’ll make everyone look good,” she said. “It’s not about standing on the steps of City Hall and saying, ‘Gotcha!’

It’s about saying, ‘Let’s take the time to fix this process.’” ahawkins@manhattanmedia.com

SCOTT WILLIAMS

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Skepticism Over 311 Camera Phone Plan ayor Michael Bloomberg (R) has a new idea for 311: integrating camera phone technology.

The administration has grand promises for the idea: people who send in pictures of potholes snapped on their phones could see repair crews by the next day.

According to John Feinblatt, Bloomberg’s criminal justice coordinator, the effort to integrate camera phones with 311 is being developed in tandem with a similar upgrade to 911.

M

The mayor hopes to roll out the project soon given that the technology it will rely on already exists, according to Feinblatt.

“The trick will be integrating the new features into our existing 311 and 911 computer systems,” he said.

The mayor’s office, however, does not plan on collaborating with Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum (D), who is technically charged with being the ombudswoman for city services.

“What difference does it make if we

get a picture of a pothole sent to 311?” said Gotbaum’s chief of staff, Anat Jacobson. “I can see how it would be useful for the NYPD, but not 311.”

The mayor’s 2007 budget proposal does not include cash for the 311 upgrade. Feinblatt would not comment on how much the project would cost beyond saying the upgrade would require a “new investment” in the city’s information technology infrastructure.

—Andrew Hawkins ahawkins@manhattanmedia.com

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here is no election to succeed Alexander “Pete” Grannis in the Assembly, but East Side politicians already want to tell you who won it.

Whether Grannis will ever even get confirmation hearings on his nomination to be the new Department of Environmental Conservation commissioner remains in doubt.

But however hard it is to stomach the State Senate Republicans’ tactical dawdling, in this case they have done the residents of Grannis’ Upper East Side Assembly district some good, preempting an effort to sidestep representative democracy.

That is the only way to describe how the once-active field of Democratic hopefuls who began lining up within minutes of the governor’s Jan. 25 announcement of the nomination has been pounded into submission, and winnowed to Micah Kellner.

On the Democratic side (the side which has the edge in registration, despite Republicans looking at the race), after Rep. Carolyn Maloney decided she liked Kellner best, she was quickly joined by Council Members Jessica Lappin and Dan Garodnick, Assembly Member Jonathan Bing, State Sen. José Serrano and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer.

Comptroller Bill Thompson and Council Speaker Christine Quinn, citywide officials who rarely get involved in special

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elections, were on board with Kellner as well.

Grannis, who first won the seat in 1974, made no endorsement.

“There is a tendency after this long, long run of mine to view this as my seat,” he said, explaining his intent to stay out of the race. “I was borrowing it for these last three decades. And I fully understand that I don’t have the right to will it to somebody.”

The other elected officials who got involved did not seem to share this view, or see any significance of endorsing before an election date was set.

At least publicly, they had a simple reason for their unanimity: reform. Kellner, they said, would bring reform to Albany. He publicized a 12-point “reform platform,” and pledged to do his “best,” and though he was not sure he actually would, added, “I intend to.”

Strong enough words, apparently, for this parade of local elected officials—acting as if they had all reached the conclusion independently—to attempt to decide who won long before anyone even knew whether there would actually be a race, or when it might be if it happened.

That sounds a whole lot more like bullying, protect your own, Soviet-style politics than reform.

Granted, translating endorsements into actual political advantage under normal circumstances can be tricky, with a success rate that is almost impossible to pre-

LETTERS Planning Department’s Technological Shortfall To the Editor: In “Developer Donations May Be Loophole in Reform Efforts,” John Celock reports that, “No database currently exists of who has land use applications pending with the city.” That is not exactly correct. Since the early 1980s, the Department of City Planning has maintained the Land Use Management Information System (“LUMIS”) that tracks all land use applications submitted pursuant to the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (“ULURP”).

LUMIS can be searched by any number of criteria—applicant name, community board, block and lot, address, type of application. Unfortunately, the database uses an archaic text-based computer technology similar to the old MS-DOS personal computer operating system. To those of us who work in the land use field, this lack of access to such valuable and critical information is not only an occupational hindrance, it is a curious gap in the Bloomberg administration’s general record of success in bringing the city into the computer/internet age. The failure to modernize LUMIS and make it publicly available stands in stark contrast to the Department of

Buildings and the City Register, both of which have digitized their voluminous records of building permits (“BIS”—the Buildings Information System) and deeds and other real property documents (“ACRIS”—the Automated City Register Information System) and put them on the internet. To be fair, the Planning Department has an excellent, user-friendly web site that contains much useful and important information. But the lack of access to the LUMIS database of land use applications is a significant omission that one would hope Mayor Bloomberg would address before he leaves office.

FRANK E. CHANEY, ESQ. NEW YORK, NY The author is a zoning and land use attorney who worked for the Department of City Planning from 1986-1997 and currently works at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP.

Re-Rigged Democracy?

To the Editor: Forcing Alan Hevesi to resign was a mistake, in my view, for three reasons: 1) He was an able, excellent, comptroller.

2) I, and a majority of New Yorkers, reelected him knowing about the issue. We

dict. Not so for the closed special election process, wherein the only people who matter in picking party nominees are die-hard activists heavy with political debts and a panoply of reasons to cozy up to the local ruling caste.

Protecting one’s own is nothing new in politics. Calling all of that reform, however, shows just how far we have come.

And it worked. Susan Chamlin, an aide to State Sen. Liz Krueger, announced her withdrawal after a month in the race with a letter which argued, “until Gov. Spitzer calls a special election, there is no race. Yet it appears the race has already been decided. The urgency to move this election forward, in the absence of a vacant seat, has severely limited the electoral process.”

Succinct, but reserved, perhaps in the interest of preserving party unity. The odd urgency to move this election forward did more than just severely limit the electoral process. At best, the machinations sidestepped the process. At worst, they trampled right over it.

Grannis would make a good environmental commissioner, but the Senate Republicans appear determined to include him among the couple of the governor’s nominees rejected out of pocket, for reasons that subvert good decisions for the sake of politics.

Now comes the real question: will any of those who came out to endorse Kellner have the gall to complain about it?

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Editor’s note: We welcome letters to the editor.

All letters must be identified with the author’s full name and, for verification, phone number. Anonymous letters will not be published.

Substantive letters addressing politics and policy will receive top priority.

Submit your letters by e-mail to cityhall@manhattanmedia.com, or contact our staff writers directly with the email addresses at the ends of their articles.

wanted him. Mr. Spitzer and Mr. Soares, in effect have re-rigged the election. This is not what democracy looks like.

3) His misjudgment reveals a structural problem with the access officials have to public resources. Checks and balances are needed. Driving Hevesi from office was, in my view, pointless posturing which does not stop misallocation of public money.

DANIEL MILLSTONE NEW YORK, NY Correction: An article in the February issue should have stated Staten Island Borough President James Molinaro’s primary party affiliation as Conservative and that his home phone number has always been listed. In addition, his vacation home is in Florida, but not in the Florida Keys. We regret the errors, and have amended the edition of this story on our website at www.cityhallnews.com.

CITY HALL

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MARCH 2007

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OP-ED

Prescription for the Presidency As Spitzer tangles with 1199, presidential ambitions might be the subtext N nerable, considering that Spitzer’s candiow comes this health care mess.

At the same time all the date on Long Island, Craig Johnson, just DiNapoli stuff was happening, took the Dems closer to nirvana than Spitzer was taking on the huge Goliath of they have been in recent memory.

Then there is the union’s 1199 SEIU, the health bona fides with Andrew care workers union.

Cuomo, acting head of the Headed by Dennis Cuomo dynasty. 1199 literRivera, one of the allally ran the Cuomo camtime political heavypaign. Just look at the role weights (now moved their political operative on to be the head guy Jennifer Cunningham of the national parplayed moving the ent union), 1199 has chess pieces. The way so many politicians in

BY ALAN I see it, Andrew owes its pocket that Rivera will CHARTOCK have to go to the tailor for a new suit with 1199 big time. That, of course, has to put him at some odds with Eliot Spitzer, who bigger pockets.

Just look at the influence the union seems to be going out of his way to take has. They have made no secret of their the union on.

What could have been on Spitzer’s love for the Republicans in the New York State Senate. That can’t be making mind when he decided to cut back on Spitzer happy and makes 1199 very vul- health care expenditures? Everyone

knows that New York State’s Medicaid bill is the highest in the country.

Everyone knows that Spitzer made a lot of promises about education when he was running.

On the other hand, would you want your local hospital closed down? This is a tough one for Spitzer. He may be right but he might be sacrificing some of his popularity to tighten the health care belt.

Then, too, there is the Presidential thing.

The truth is that unions are not faring well with the American people. Fewer people are joining and staying in.

Organizing campaigns (Walmart and others) are not going well and a moderately conservative Eliot Spitzer must know that. So, even if Spitzer loses this fight, he still remains a David to the union Goliath.

When the health care budget goes through the roof, Spitzer gets to say, “Well, I tried.”

Legislature Should Join Spitzer in Support of Full Public Financing

BY RICHARD KIRSCH t hasn’t taken long to learn that our new governor isn’t afraid to throw down the gauntlet in Albany.

Soon he’ll be challenging the Legislature on one of the issues closest to their hearts—campaign finance reform.

Legislators would be well advised to join the governor’s call for creating a new system of full public financing of elections in New York, one that puts voters and taxpayers before the wealthy special interests that fund campaigns. They might even be surprised to find they like a system that frees them from perpetual fundraising from interests who expect something for their campaign dollars. That’s been the experience of legislators in the two states that regularly elect legislators—and statewide officials including a governor—who have never collected a contribution of more than $100 for their election campaigns.

Full public funding of campaigns is already law in Maine and Arizona, where it has worked well through four election cycles. Connecticut will implement the reform in its 2008 election. Arizona’s Gov. Janet Napolitano was elected twice under the system as were four out of five state legislators in Maine, Democrats and Republicans both. It is a proven, sensible way for voters to take back control of politics and make elected officials accountable.

To participate in the voluntary, publicly funded system, candidates must demonstrate broad community support by collecting several hundred small contributions in the district they wish to represent. If successful, they receive

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enough public funding to wage competitive campaigns and agree to accept no more private donations.

This reform enables people with community support but ordinary financial means to run for office. It frees candidates from too much fundraising, giving them more time to listen to regular voters. Most important, publicly funded candidates who win owe nothing to deep-pocket contributors.

There’s a big difference between the full public financing system backed by Eliot Spitzer and the partial public financing system that the State Assembly passes each year, which is a watered-down version of New York’s City’s matching system.

Under the New York City system, according to a recent report from the city’s Campaign Finance Board, candidates who are backed by wealthy campaign contributors still have a big advantage, as do incumbents. The Campaign Finance Board found that, “It is clear that candidates with access to the wealthiest donors have a substantial advantage over opponents who do not.” In fact, the Board reports that less than 6 percent of high-end contributors gave 40 percent of the money in 2005’s citywide races. The Board also found that City Council incumbents maintain a sizeable financial advantage against challengers under the city’s system.

It’s no mystery why the city’s partial public financing system falls short of its stated goals: partial public financing means mostly private financing. In 2005, two-thirds of the money (64 percent) for City Council races was private.

Candidates for City Council or citywide office still need to raise money through-

out the campaign, looking for the biggest checks possible, often from interests with a financial interest in city government. Under full public financing, candidates get their money up-front, once they qualify, and can stop fundraising.

Full public financing has one more big advantage over partial systems: the ability to effectively deal with “the Bloomberg factor,” the specter of a candidate who either from personal wealth or private fundraising, spends more than the spending limits allowed for publicly financed candidates. Under a matching system, the publicly financed candidate must keep fundraising in the hope the he or she will stay competitive. But under full public financing, candidates receive grants of public funds to keep them competitive, without having to do more fundraising.

Now, with the governor’s endorsement, that support is rapidly growing.

The Democratically controlled Connecticut State Legislature and Republican Gov. Jodi Rell established that state’s full public financing system in 2005, shortly after Rell’s predecessor, Gov. John Rowland, went to jail in a campaign finance scandal. We shouldn’t need a scandal in New York for the Legislature to join Gov. Spitzer in giving New York a campaign finance system that is among the strongest in the nation, one which removes all the conflicts for legislators having to choose between voters and campaign contributors.

Under full public financing, voters are campaign contributors and the public’s interest comes first.

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Richard Kirsch is the executive director of Citizen Action of New York.

Will the governor try to bulldoze Dennis Rivera as he charts his road to the White House?

Ask yourself whether the American people want the unions to be stronger or weaker. As the son of a mother who worshiped Albert Shanker as a near deity, I can only say that things have changed.

Eliot continues to build on his reputation as a fighter and as a populist and to speak truth to power, something for which he is widely admired.

This leaves us wondering whether Spitzer just does the right thing (as I suspect) or whether he is this Machiavellian politician who is always trying to figure out how to advance himself.

As someone who did a radio show with the brilliant Mario Cuomo for what seems like a thousand years, I know Machiavelli when I see it. Cuomo was the reincarnation of Machiavelli. You never knew whether he meant it, whether he was being satirical, or whether he was just trying to frighten the enemy. In fact, there were days when even I didn’t know which was which. With Spitzer, you had better believe that he is sick and tired of hearing how expensive and corrupt our health care system is. He knows what ticks people off and hearing of a hospital system where the three top suits are paid $12 million, I think he’s on to something. If he can clean that up, he is one step closer to the great White House on the hill.

For more on Albany, it’s WAMC.org.

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Alan Chartock is the president and CEO of WAMC/Northeast Public Radio and the executive publisher and project director of The Legislative Gazette. welcomes submissions to the op-ed page. A piece should be maximum 650 words long, accompanied by the name and address of the author, and submitted via email to cityhall@manhattanmedia.com to be considered.

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CITY HALL

Mixed Signals on Human Trafficking Bill Despite national pressure and celebrity attention, no movement on immigrant slave labor law

BY JOHN R.D. CELOCK

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ETAILS BURIED IN LEGISLATION

to make human trafficking illegal in New York continue to stall the popular bill in Albany.

While Senate and Assembly leaders agree a statewide ban is needed, the details of the competing bills in both chambers continue to stymie passage.

The details include the types of crimes covered under the bill and the social services offered to victims. Currently, 27 states have passed some form of antihuman trafficking legislation, which advocates say is needed to complement the seven-year-old federal human trafficking ban.

While the federal ban covers a variety of social services and criminalizes the modern day form of slavery, state laws are needed to provide an extra level of protection for victims.

The caseload is too much for federal law enforcement alone, said Kevin Balles, president of the Washingtonbased international anti-trafficking advocacy group Free the Slaves.

“The fact of the matter is under the federal law, there were more cases than the federal prosecutors could handle,” Balles said. “They were cherry picking cases.”

State laws allow state and local law enforcement to prosecute these cases.

He noted that existing laws on prostitution and forced labor do not always cover human trafficking cases.

Federal statistics estimate that between 14,500 and 17,500 people are

HIS YEAR, COURT

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Dinowitz said. “We have the whole array of services for • 14,500-17,500: estimated number of people victims who are survivors.” trafficked into the United States each year While the federal govern• 50% of people trafficked into the U.S. ment offers assistance to viceach year are children tims, most services are 5% • 800,000 people are trafficked offered to those who go Factories worldwide each year through the process of • East Asia/Pacific is the region becoming certified human that is the largest source of peotrafficking victims. ple who are trafficked into the Dinowitz’s bill would provide U.S. each year. a variety of services to victims during the certification process, including housing assistance.

A spokeswoman for Sources: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Sources: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Assembly Speaker Sheldon U.S. Department of Justice; FreeSlaves the Slaves U.S. Department of Justice; Free the Silver (D-Manhattan) said that while Silver supports the trafficked into the United States each Assembly in order to send the bill into legislation, the bill is still pending in the Codes Committee and she does not know year. Most victims are forced to work in conference.

Last year, the Assembly passed a ver- when the bill will be posted for a floor the sex trades, but others work in forced labor and domestic servitude. There is sion of the bill in the last week of the ses- vote.

Gov. Eliot Spitzer (D) has also even a case where a group of teenage sion. A compromise could not be reached expressed support for a human traffickboys from Zambia were trafficked to in time.

Assembly Member Jeffrey Dinowitz ing ban.

Texas and forced to sing in a religious The human trafficking ban has (D-Bronx) said the new Assembly verchoir at shopping malls.

The State Senate passed a version of sion of the bill, which is sponsored by become something of a cause célèbre in the bill on Feb. 26 for the third time. well over half the chamber, has a Manhattan, where a bi-partisan advocacy According to State Sen. Frank Padavan stronger amount of social services than group has formed, with a rally in mid(R-Queens), the bill’s sponsor, the two the Senate version, and tweaks the penal- February in Albany. Advocacy group chambers have differed on the penalties ties section to accommodate requests members include activist Gloria Steinem, covered by the bill. In addition, the Senate from the Legal Aid Society and District Karenna Gore Schiff, playwright Eve has made changes to the types of social Attorneys Association. In addition, the Ensler, Deputy Mayor Carol Roblesservices made available to the victims of social services section provides mental Roman, Republican fundraiser Georgette health, health care, immigration assis- Mosbacher and actress Meryl Streep. the crime.

Padavan said that, as in previous ses- tance and education programs to victims. johncelock@aol.com “I would like to see provisions that are sions, the Senate has acted first, and is Direct letters to the editor to awaiting a version to be passed by the tough we are dealing with slavery,” cityhall@manhattanmedia.com.

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Philadelphia government watchdog proceedings rather group. than platforms are “City campaign catching headlines in the finance control is a Philadelphia mayor’s race. good practice anyOn Dec. 13, where, but the bigger Philadelphia Judge Allan the city, the bigger Tereshko ruled the state the budget,” said alone has the authority to Zach Stalberg, presiregulate campaign contrident and CEO of the butions, effectively tossing Committee of out the city’s three-year-old

By Natalie Pifer Seventy. “If big busicampaign finance law. nesses can influence Mayoral hopeful and former Philadelphia City Council Member Michael Nutter campaigns, they can effectively buy public officials and (D) filed the lawsuit, currently on appeal. If successful, you’re dealing with a lot of money in big cities.”

Tereshko’s ruling comes despite a September decithe suit would force candidates in violation of contribution limits to return excess funds and comply with the sion which found state campaign finance legislation did not preempt the city’s law. Meanwhile, the city appealed other aspects of the fundraising law.

Designed to break up the monopoly of influence held Tereshko’s ruling, meaning that its campaign finance by big-money contributors, Philadelphia’s law limits system is back in effect, pending further decisions.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg (R) pledged to create the campaign contributions and requires both candidates and political committees to disclose financial informa- strongest campaign finance legislation in the country in his State of the City address this year. But he will not tion to the Philadelphia Board of Ethics.

Nutter’s lawsuit follows on another lawsuit, which have to worry about the situation in Philadelphia affectsought to impose the same campaign finance restric- ing things in the Big Apple.

New York City Campaign Finance Board spokesman tions on announced and unannounced mayoral candidates, filed on behalf of the Committee of Seventy, a Eric Friedman said he does not expect the Philadelphia

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

City Campaign Finance System Gets Tangled in Courts

proceedings to prompt a deluge of similar cases in New York, where the laws are designed differently from those in Philadelphia.

To receive public funds, candidates must adhere to spending limits and meet minimum requirements for both campaign money raised and the number of individual contributors.

The system is not all voluntary, though.

According to the Campaign Finance Board, all candidates must comply with some regulations. These include contributions limits, a ban on corporate contributions and required public disclosure of campaign finance activity.

Also, while Albany has its own set of campaign finance regulations for state office candidates, there has been no legal conflict between city and state, as in Pennsylvania.

“No one has challenged the limits in New York City,” said Friedman.

Suzanne Novak, a campaign finance reform lawyer at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, also does not expect that to change based on the Philadelphia proceedings.

“The New York law has been developed independently, and unless New York has the exact same provisions as the Philadelphia law, there shouldn’t be any impact,” she said. npifer@manhattanmedia.com

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PUNDIT POLL What would a match-up mean for New York?

“It would be what I’d call the Presidential Subways Series.”

Who would carry New York’s 31 electoral votes? “Hillary.”

Who would win the whole race? “Hillary.”

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a formal, staged announcement of a presidential run, both former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani (R) and Sen. Hillary Clinton (D) have made their White House ambitions clear. And according to poll after poll, voters nationwide are happy to hear it: Giuliani continues to dominate the Republicans, and Clinton remains well ahead of all fellow Democrats.

The last New Yorker at the top of a major party ticket was Gov. Thomas Dewey in 1948, who four years before ran against fellow New Yorker—and his predecessor in the governor’s mansion— Franklin Roosevelt.

With the race already getting the national and local press abuzz, City Hall asked five New York politicos to weigh in on some of what a GiulianiClinton showdown might mean.

HOUGH NEITHER HAS YET DONE

KIERAN MAHONEY

Managing Partner, Mercury Public Affairs

BILL O’REILLY

Founder, O’Reilly Strategic Communications

What are the odds that the race will be between them? “50-50.”

Between the two of them, who would carry New York’s 31 electoral votes? I think Rudy would.

Who would win the whole race? “Rudy.”

If you had to give each of them a nickname, what would it be? “I’d call Rudy the Sheriff, and I’d give Hillary the Weather Vane.”

HANK SHEINKOPF

Founder, Sheinkopf Communications

November 4th, 2008 What would a match-up mean for New York? “It would mean that New York would be very much in play.

The New York tabloids would have a field day with both of them. Everything about their lives that has happened would be national news.”

Who would carry New York’s 31 electoral votes? “Hillary.

New York is a Democratic state with a two million plus Democratic voting edge.”

Who would win the whole race? “It would be a close race, but Hillary would win.”

What are the odds that the race will be between them?

“50-50, but Hillary has a better chance of getting the Democratic nomination than Giuliani would of getting the Republican nomination.”

BILL LYNCH

Founder, Bill Lynch Associates

What are the odds that the race will be between them?

“Right now, I think a 50-50 chance, but I don’t think it will happen a year from now.”

What are the odds that the race will be between them?

“Clinton 50-50, and Giuliani 1 in 5.”

What would it mean for New York? “It means they wouldn’t have to change senators, because Hillary would lose.”

Between the two of them, who would carry New York’s 31 electoral votes? “Hillary.”

Who would win the whole race? “Giuliani in a landslide.”

If you had to give each of them a nickname, what would it be? “Lefty and Tiger.”

ED KOCH

Former Mayor

What are the odds that the race will be between them?

“35 percent.”

What would it mean for New York? “Hillary wins, the city wins. Rudy wins, the country loses.”

Between the two of them, who would carry New York’s 31 electoral votes?

“Hillary.”

Who would win the whole race? “Hillary.”

If you had to give each of them a nickname, what would it be? “I’d give Giuliani Inspector Javert, and Hillary Lady Godiva—that’s the one that was naked on the horse right?”

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WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

“Queen of Queens” still active in retirement Shulman keeps health care improvements, arts funding in focus

BY KENYON FARROW SHULMAN MAY HAVE LEFT public office in 2002, but the former Queens Borough President is still trying to serve the 2.2 million people of the largest borough.

“I am busier now than I was when I was borough president,” she insisted.

Shulman, 81, currently sits on the board of eight institutions, ranging from arts organizations to hospitals. She actively advocates for the arts, women and children, and health care.

Decades before she had a Queensborough Community College center and a pair of bald eagles named for her and her husband at the Queens Zoo, Shulman first caught the eye of Queens

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politicos as a concerned mother campaigning to raise funds for school improvement. By 1968, she was chair of Queens Community Board 11. She served as director of the Queens community boards for eight years, then became deputy borough president in 1980, under Donald Manes.

After Manes resigned (and later committed suicide) in a corruption scandal in 1986, Shulman was appointed to replace him. She was reelected in 1989, 1993 and 1997, before being one of the many forced from office by term limits in 2001.

Among her signature issues in office was health care—she was a registered nurse before getting into politics, and met her husband, Dr. Mel Shulman, while both were working at Queens Hospital Center.

“My nursing background was helpful as a politician because I understood health care issues,” Shulman said.

She added that the 2001 construction of a new $149 million complex for the center serving 400,000 patients annually— making it the largest health care provider in Queens—was one of the greatest accomplishments of her political career.

Nonetheless, the octogenarian show no signs of slowing down. In addition to her involvement with all the boards on which she sits, she continues some involvement with public life, and said that she is working with the office of Mayor Michael Bloomberg (R) on a project to be announced later this month. She would not go into detail, though, eager to now pass the spotlight to the next generation.

Claire Shulman “I think there are so many more new and young politicians out there who are doing good work and deserve recognition,” she said. kfarrow@manhattanmedia.com

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WINNER Vallone Scholarship

Letters over

Vallone Scholarship 2001-2005

ANA PAZO 2005 BBA in Finance and Investments, Baruch College/CUNY

2007 Management Associate, JPMorgan Chase

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MAINTAIN a “B” average or better and receive up to $1,250 a year for four years. You may qualify for additional financial aid, based on need

For more information, call 1-800-CUNY-YES or visit www.cuny.edu/vallonescholars

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