City Hall - May 25, 2009

Michael Bloomberg, below, unveils another 5-boro economic plan, though not the details (Page 4),

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May 25, 2009

State of ISRAEL WHAT THE ALMOST-CANDIDATE’S RUN-IN WITH THE WHITE HOUSE MEANS FOR HIS FUTURE

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James Gandolfini goes from mob boss to mayor (Page 18) and CSA president Ernest Logan, above, explains his plan to reform mayoral control (Page 23).

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MAY 25, 2009

Forethought

Full Accounting he piecemeal approach to putting together the city budget, which results in deficits whenever times get tough and surpluses used mostly to pay off old debt when times are good, has to end.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s proposed increase of the sales tax and other fees begs a fundamental question: if New York City’s stable financial future depends on yet another half of a percentage point on every purchase and other surcharges, then how could there not be something wrong with the thinking behind the city budget? Yes, the economic crisis that has engulfed the rest of the world requires harsh decisions. Yes, the mayor inherited a budget structure from so many of the mayors before him, which limits his leeway. But if the only way to pay the government bills is to impose a tax increase not structured to be phased out when the recession subsides, the mayor must fix the deep structural problems in the budget and have a frank conversation with the city about why government is costing more, even on top of the property tax increases and other hikes.

For those who gripe about the budget Bloomberg presented at the beginning of May, his response has been fair: point to the cuts which should be made. No one can—at least not easily. No one wants fewer

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Letters To The Editor: The latest edition of “The Ghosts of Gracie Mansion,” concerning Mayor Thomas Willet, was very interesting. However, its publication may come with some peril.

Reviving the memory of Willet’s role as a supporter of pirates and the brigand history of New York City will surely give some ideas to those dealing with our fiscal problems.

Do not be stunned when Staten Island ferries raid the posh dens of the Hamptons flying a new version of the “Jolly Roger” of skull-andbones and dollar signs.

Do not feign surprise when a fleet of Department of Sanitation scows slip past Fort McHenry and make off with every tasty Maryland crab cake.

No being shocked when OMB auditors wearing accountant eye shades and wielding sharp pencils raid the golf courses of Hilton Head and make off with expensive golf clubs and Tiger Woods’ balls.

No place in the Atlantic will be safe except for Bermuda … for obvious reasons.

It is true that this resurrection of our past can help New York City with its fiscal woes. When the city tells the unions it has no money for wage increases or pensions, they can say there are some new things for the offering. Like Chesapeake crabs, two weeks on Martha’s Vineyard, a year’s supply of cotton candy from the Asbury Park boardwalk and monogram golf bags.

And when the press demands answers from the Mayor, he will have resuscitated New York City history on his side. He will simply say, “Hey, all my folks at OMB read City Hall faithfully.”

Fair warning … you will be blamed for sure.

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teachers in the schools, fewer cops on the streets, fewer garbage pick-ups. No one wants the potholes to be filled more slowly or patients to be booted out of beds in city hospitals. No one wants our cultural centers and libraries to cut back their hours or offerings even more.

But just as this recession has forced many people to look some hard truths in the face, so should it make New Yorkers realize that there is a fundamental flaw in our conception of city budgets. There are the fundamental problems that bloat the budget—decades of poorly managed debts, maintenance costs for an infrastructure that was not upgraded for too long and outdated thinking on several fronts—to which in some cases the mayor has already commendably proposed innovative solutions to combat, as in his idea to create a fifth tier in the pension system.

His financial and management skills are precisely the argument that the mayor makes for continuing in office. To demonstrate these, he needs to go several steps further and start the city budget from scratch, building it anew instead of tweaking the hodgepodge it has become. He should have started doing this with the current budget, but there is still some time. Then, if he does win a third term, he should take that beginning and continue the process in the years to come. With his ample political capital to spend and the management prowess that makes so many trust his guidance, the mayor could spur the revolution in municipal thinking the city needs. That is the kind of paradigm-busting With his ample political thinking which produced congestion pricing, and that is the kind of legacy that would do more good capital to spend and the for the city than any of the signature projects, like management prowess the West Side Stadium or the Freedom Tower, that makes so many trust his guidance, the which have thus far eluded him.

At the same time, the mayor needs to be honest mayor could spur the with his constituents. Even with a radical overhaul, revolution in municipal it may still be the case that city government simply thinking the city needs. costs more these days than in years past. There are more students in the schools than ever, more police officers on the streets—and whether for the children or the cops, there is more equipment using more expensive technology to buy. Perhaps we need to accept that to live in New York means paying 8.875percent sales tax instead of 8.375, and that without a nickel going to the government for every plastic bag, New York will not be able to sustain itself. If that is indeed the case, the city deserves a mayor who will say exactly that.

After all, he and most of the Council backed the extension of term limits under the argument that they had the experience to soberly assess the financial situation and come up with solutions. At this point, he and most of the Council seem headed toward safe re-elections. The mayor and the Council members could and should step forward and tell New Yorkers where, in fact, they and their city stands.

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Bloomberg’s Five-Borough Economic Plan, Though Much Touted, Lacks Details ast month, thousands of New Yorkers opened their mailboxes to find a colorful, glossy 12-page mini-magazine titled “The Mike Bloomberg Five Borough Economic Opportunity Plan.” According to the headlines, the plan involves “Helping New Yorkers through tough times,” “creating and saving 400,000 jobs,” “creating opportunities in every neighborhood,” “strengthening our middle class” and “protecting our quality of life.”

The Bloomberg administration says the plan in its current form was developed as a response to the collapse of the financial markets and the economic downturn last year. But for all the promotion, there is no plan per se, and certainly not one as comprehensive as the graph- and chartheavy 127-initiative PlaNYC. Instead, according to the administration, the fiveborough plan is a vague, overarching system that includes all the economic development policies started or about to be started.

If New Yorkers thought the phrase rang a few bells, they were right.

During the 2001 mayoral campaign, a much darker-haired Bloomberg appeared in several television ads talking about a “five-borough plan” to help New York rebuild and recover from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Four years later in the 2005 campaign, there was another election and another ad touting the five-borough plan.

“Through a recession and tough times, Mike Bloomberg’s five-borough economic plan has created 62,000 jobs,” the voiceover went, “and there’s more to come.”

Now, the “five-borough economic plan” has reappeared and, becoming a popular feature of his campaign that is regularly mentioned in every economic development announcement in the past five months and practically every one of the campaign’s many ads.

But others contend that the plan has been kicking around long before that, in one shape or another, and may just be a term Bloomberg dusts off during election years to help bolster his financial expertise.

Fernando Ferrer, the former Bronx borough president and two-time mayoral candidate, said he remembers running against the mayor’s economic plan in 2005, just as he remembers first hearing about it during the 2001 campaign.

“I’ve always had a sense of déjà vu about these things,” Ferrer said.

Ferrer added that the fact that Bloomberg has been pushing his plan for the past eight years undercuts his central argument for extending term limits and

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running for re-election: that he is the only one who can steer the city through the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

Bloomberg supporters say the “plan” should be viewed as an umbrella term for all the mayor’s efforts to spur economic growth in the city over his time in office so far, with the addition of some new proposals to respond to the current crisis.

“It’s really a summary of various initiatives that the city is undertaking to continue and expand on policies that have been put in place by the Bloomberg administration to diversify our economy, to expand our focus on entrepreneurial sectors and small business growth and development,” said Kathryn Wylde, president and CEO of the Partnership for New York City.

For Bloomberg, the plan is meant to convey the message to voters that if reelected, he will continue to undertake a massive effort to get the city back on its feet, get the unemployed back to work and help the city’s dwindling middle class make ends meet.

“I think this is overall an integrated effort at the hands of the maestro, which is the mayor,” said Robert Lieber, deputy mayor of economic development.

“This is a carefully-orchestrated, overall program to maintain New York City’s competitiveness and attractiveness, at the hands directly of Mike Bloomberg.”

The core of the plan is “creating and saving 400,000 jobs,” though Lieber said SCOTT WILLIAMS

BY ANDREW J. HAWKINS

“I call it ‘The FiveBorough Bunko Plan,’” said Richard Lipsky, lobbyist for the Neighborhood Retail Association. that figure may change as the city’s fiscal outlook continues to improve.

“When we put the goal out there of 400,000 new jobs, the tone was more negative, by a lot, than I think it feels today,” he said.

The 12-page mailer on the plan arrived in the first week of May, and commercials remain on the air touting the 400,000 figure.

Of those proposed jobs, Lieber could not say how many will be created and how many will be saved. But he did specify that the city was looking at ways to increase private-sector employment in the city by more than 15 percent, or 100,000 new jobs, by 2015.

“We think we can do that because we have a very strong competitive advantage that gives us the ability to grow faster than other parts of the country coming out of this recession,” Lieber said.

That seems to contradict projections coming out of Bloomberg’s own administration. The Office of Management and Budget is predicting that there will be fewer jobs available in 2013 than there are today. And the Independent Budget Office is saying that revenue shortfalls and the continuing constriction of the financial markets will lead to wider budget gaps and more job losses, complicating Bloomberg’s efforts to increase privatesector employment. Furthermore, in

MAY 25, 2009

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April, the mayor indicated he may need to lay off 7,000 city workers unless agencies could reduce spending by hundreds of millions of dollars.

Another feature of the mayor’s plan is to strengthen the middle class, mainly through job training programs, lending programs and the development of affordable housing.

“We try and develop plans that accommodate that supply and demand [of jobs],” Lieber said, “and a big part of what we’re doing now is looking at ways to increase the demand side so we can help New Yorkers find jobs, so we can help re-pot people who are being displaced from their current jobs into new industries by developing new skills.”

But some critics say Bloomberg’s policies are hurting the middle class.

They point to the fact that property taxes have gone up 18 percent since the mayor took office, and to his proposal to raise the sales tax by half a percentage point to balance the budget.

These are not the policies of a mayor who understands the middle class, they say.

“I call it ‘The FiveBorough Bunko Plan,’” said Richard Lipsky, lobbyist for the Neighborhood Retail Association, who successfully blocked efforts to build bigbox stores like Wall-Mart in New York.

He added: “Purely smoke and mirrors.”

Others are taking issue with Bloomberg’s decision to push the plan hard as part of his re-election campaign.

Many have been left wondering where the economic solutions ends and the election year chest-thumping begins, especially with both the administration and the Bloomberg 2009 campaign using the same phrasing.

Lieber said those criticisms do not take into account all that Bloomberg has done to encourage economic growth, and all that the mayor has planned in his next term, should he win. Lieber said he has been trumpeting the five-borough economic plan since the day before he started his job as deputy mayor at the beginning of last year.

“I have spewed this five-borough strategy over and over and over and over and over. My kids are even sick and tired of hearing it,” he said. “But this is not election-year rhetoric at all.” ahawkins@cityhallnews.com

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MAY 25, 2009

Unlike In 2007 Report, Bloomberg Now Silent On Regulation With Schumer, called for fewer derivatives rules to help New York

BY SAL GENTILE hen Mayor Michael Bloomberg (Ind.) announced his support for extending term limits, he cited his history “as a businessman with expertise on Wall Street and finance,” and warned that “the enormity of the challenges ahead should not be underestimated.”

But critics of the mayor say for all his work history, he has been fundamentally wrong about what ails the financial services industry. They point to a 2007 report as evidence.

That report, called “Sustaining New York’s and the US’ Global Financial Services Leadership” and co-authored with Sen. Charles Schumer (D) decried the over-regulation of Wall Street, which Bloomberg called “devastating for both our city and our nation.”

It further argued for keeping capital requirements for investment banks lower than in other countries, so that New York could compete in the “rapidly growing derivatives market.” Looser regulation in cities like London, according to the report, made “businesses more comfortable about creating new derivative products and structures there than in the U.S.” Bloomberg’s chief rival in the mayoral campaign, Comptroller Bill Thompson (D), said the 2007 report and similar remarks made

by Bloomberg throughout his term undercut the argument that he is the most qualified candidate to shepherd the city through the recession.

“He has been the Wall Street mayor,” Thompson said. “When it became apparent that so many of these corporate CEOs, heads of investment banks and others didn’t even know what they held in their own portfolios … it calls for greater regulation, or at least transparency.”

Of the 2007 report, Thompson added: “Obviously that has been shown that

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was a mistake. And I think it would be interesting to ask the mayor these days what he believes. Should there be less regulation moving forward and less transparency?”

Economists say no.

“I’m not sure Mr. Schumer or Mr. Bloomberg would write the same words today,” said Lawrence White, a professor of economics at New York University. “I think that they would be embarrassed to go back and look at what they wrote.”

Most of the report’s proposals were never implemented, and several of them focused on policy areas other than financial regulation, such as immigration reform.

But the report focused considerable attention on what was, at the time, a booming market for derivatives and securitized products, such as creditdefault swaps and mortgage-backed securities. The report warned against making it too difficult for U.S. businesses located in New York to participate in what the authors called “financial innovation,” a phrase many prominent economists have since said was a standin for “irresponsible speculation.”

“What they were arguing for essentially was the opposite: Let’s put all the power

Mayor Bloomberg stood in 2007 with what Sen. Chuck Schumer called “the dream team,” including then-Gov. Eliot Spitzer and then-Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff, to call for further deregulation of the financial services industry.

Some experts say that, at the time, Bloomberg was right to call attention to the state of the financial services industry, given how important that sector is to the city’s overall economy. Financial services companies contribute large portions of the city’s tax revenue and create two additional jobs for every one job in the industry itself.

“They’re the goose that’s laid the golden egg time after time,” said Jonathan Bowles, director of the Center for an Urban Future. “If you have that golden egg, you want to protect it at all costs.”

The mayor’s press office referred questions about the 2007 report to Deputy Mayor for Economic Development Robert Lieber. Andrew Brent, a spokesperson for Lieber, said in a statement: “In February, the city committed to reexamining the 2007 report, and—with input from the

“I think that they would be embarrassed to go back and look at what they wrote,” said Lawrence White, a professor of economics at New York University.

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and the money in the hands of the financial services industry,” said Mark WinstonGriffith, executive director of the Drum Major Institute. “As a result, with so much lack of restraint, it was inevitable that there was going to be a proportional amount of abuse that occurred.”

Financial Services Advisory Committee— arriving at a prioritized list of regulatory needs based on current conditions. That work is ongoing.”

The Obama administration is now proposing rules that in some cases directly contradict what Bloomberg proposed in 2007. For example, President Barack Obama (D) has called for raising capital requirements for banks, so that they can pay off their losses without a massive infusion of taxpayer money.

The new rules have sparked considerable debate about whether they go far enough in regulating what some see as a runaway industry.

But Bloomberg, in a change of tack, is staying out of it.

“No, I haven’t looked at that,” he said at a May 18 press conference when asked about the new rules. “You know, I’ll leave that to those people that are doing that fulltime. I’ve got to worry about the city.” sgentile@cityhallnews.com

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Eva Moskowitz, right, mulls a 2013 comeback (Page 8), new Council Member Liz Crowley braves the harsh weather for her first day on the job (Page 18)

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and Richard Ravitch, left, explains why everyone should get on board his plan to save the MTA (Page 23).

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MAY 25, 2009

In Eugene’s District, Caribbean Groups Divide

DISTRICT

40 BRONX

QUEENS

Flatbush North

Claims of neglect as incumbent tries for first full term

BY DAN RIVOLI

Caribbean community Flatbush Central as a whole.

“I give money to ince 2007, Council Member organizations across Mathieu Eugene (D-Brooklyn) has my district,” Eugene won a special election, beat back Ditmas Park said. “It is not about charges of living outside his district, ran one ethnic group.” and won a second special election three In addition to favoring months later, and then yet another that STATEN the Haitian community, his November.

ISLAND challengers also feel that But the honor of being the first Haitian he has been invisible in the elected to office in the city is becoming Council and district. something of a roadblock in “You should be able to Eugene’s campaign for his first distinguish yourself in two full term. His opponents charge years,” said Rickie Tulloch, a candidate that he is inattentive to the who is taking a second shot at the seat. multitude of ethnic groups that Tulloch, a community board member, make up the majority-black came in eighth out of a 10-candidate field district. in the February 2007 special election. In Eugene rejected this idea. the two years since, Tulloch charged that “I transcend the Haitian Eugene failed to bring services to the community,” Eugene said. “Of district, such as a neighborhood center course, I’m a Haitian-American. or adequate funding to local hospitals.

But I’m the City Council “He has taken credit for member for everybody.”

The Flatbush-based district Mathieu Eugene is being challenged as he providing funding for two hospitals.

Unfortunately, none of them are in the consists of a black population runs for his first full term.

ANDREW SCHWARTZ

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with a smaller subset of Hispanics, Orthodox Jews and Middle-Easterners.

But native English-speaking Caribbean people, mainly from Jamaica, make up the largest voting bloc in the district.

Last year, Eugene gave $18,000 to organizations that serve the Haitian community. The rest of his $363,964 in member item money went to neighborhood groups, religious nonprofits and merchant associations that serve the district or the

Rock Hackshaw, the political candidate-turned-bloggerturned-candidate again, stands by every prickly post he put on the Room 8 blog. But now that he is a running against Council Member Mathieu Eugene (D-Brooklyn), he is thinking more about the ramifications of his opinions.

In a March post, Hackshaw questioned how he would manage his new dual role.

“How do I balance my blogging and my candidacy?” he wrote. “I am still trying to muse over that one.”

He never decided on the answer. But he has come up with a response should his opponents try to use his words against him.

“I have been willing to put my reputation on the line,” Hackshaw said defiantly. “What have they put out to the public?”

Hackshaw started his blogging career as a persistent commenter on Room 8, named after the imaginary counterpart to the City Hall press room, Room 9. He regularly engages in lengthy arguments with his foil, Howard Graubard, better known as Gatemouth.

Graubard said that Hackshaw the blogger may not translate into Hackshaw the candidate. But he would make the Council a livelier place, Graubard added.

“Here’s a guy who says exactly what’s on his mind, all the time,” Graubard said. “Unlike [Council Member] Charles Barron, whose opinion seems to stem from this body of ideology, Rock is utterly unpredictable in what he’s going to say.”

In addition to his blogging, which only targets a small percentage of the people in the district, he is often quoted in the community’s ethnic press.

He also has name recognition for his failed bids at office.

In 1998, he lost to Assembly Member Rhoda Jacobs (DBrooklyn), a white elected official who represents a majority black, Caribbean district. Hackshaw split the vote with other black candidates.

DANIEL S. BURNSTEIN

A Blogger Tries To Juggle His Opinion And His Political Future

Rock Hackshaw is trying to balance blogging about politics and politicking.

Then in 2000, he unsuccessfully ran for district leader, winning around 2,300 votes. That is more than the 2,076 votes Eugene received to win the special election.

Hackshaw said a chorus of supporters in the media and central Brooklyn political community asked him to run for the vacant Council seat in 2007. But with his father and brother having both died shortly before that election, Hackshaw opted against a run.

Despite Eugene’s cash advantage and name recognition, Hackshaw said he is going to hire a fundraiser and build a formal campaign closer to petitioning.

“You’re going to see some original stuff,” Hackshaw said slyly.

In other words, to borrow his signature sign off, “Stay tuned in folks.”

—DR

BROOKLYN

district,” Tulloch said.

Rock Hackshaw, a Brooklyn political observer who is running for office again, said he found Eugene’s Council performance to be “wanting.”

“There’s a dissatisfaction with his leadership,” Hackshaw said. “He hasn’t said much in the Council.”

Perhaps better known to New York’s political class as a blogger at Room 8, Hackshaw touts his ties to Caribbean groups in the community and advocacy for immigration rights.

“I have worked with more organizations than Mathieu Eugene,” Hackshaw said. “I have paid much more dues and been around longer than him.”

Hackshaw, a Trinidadian, believes the Caribbean voters will support his candidacy.

He even dismissed the idea of splitting the native English-speaking Caribbean vote with the Jamaican-born Tulloch, who is a “non-factor” in the race, Hackshaw said.

“This race is strictly between me and Mathieu Eugene,” said Hackshaw, who ran for state office twice.

Former Council Member Una Clarke (D), one of Eugene’s predecessors and most prominent supporters, said the incumbent is being challenged in part because of a language difference. Eugene’s first language is French, whereas most of the long-standing Caribbean community speaks English. Also, Haitians, relative newcomers to the district, are sizable in number but often perceived as insular.

“Because of that culture, ‘more traditional’ Caribbeans feel the seat should be in the hands of an Englishspeaking Caribbean,” Clarke said. “A lot of people did not want to see a Haitian in that seat.”

Eugene’s main competitors say they share his goal of adequately representing all ethnic groups in the district. They just happen to believe that they are better equipped than Eugene to do so.

“Yes, I’m from Jamaica,” Tulloch said.

“But my motto is service for all.” drivoli@cityhallnews.com

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MAY 25, 2009

Queens County And Others Inch Toward Dromm In Race Against Sears Immigrant issues, LGBT resonance define Jackson Heights primary

BY BETWA SHARMA

Dromm, who was the party’s choice before the term limits extension, has managed to retain his support inside the party. The district leader expressed confidence that the majority of district leaders were leaning towards nominating Dromm as the party candidate.

But district leader and Assembly Member Michael Den Dekker said he believes Sears remains strong.

“She has worked in the community since I was a little kid,” he said. “Her political record is hard to beat.”

That is the argument Sears herself is making on the trail.

“No one has more insights into this community and no one can represent it better,” she said.

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Jackson Heights

QUEENS

DISTRICT

Corona

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BROOKLYN

Elmhurst STATEN ISLAND

The district has undergone rapid change since Sears was first elected in 2001, becoming a center for immigrants from Latin America, South Asia and East Asia.

Two immigrants, Bryan Pu-Folkes and Rodolfo Flores, gave Sears a spirited challenge in the 2005 primary.

In that extremely low-turnout, 6,800vote race, Sears eked out a victory with 4,225 votes.

Despite the flood of immigrants, the voting pattern does not reflect the changing demographics of the community.

Many newcomers do not register to vote, do not apply for citizenship or eventually move out to a richer neighborhood.

Out of 58,664 total registered voters, there are some 7,000 South Asians registered to vote, according to SEVA, an immigrant advocacy group based in Queens.

Stanley Kalathara, a lawyer who has Council Member Helen Sears is raised $67,952, and Mujib Rahman, a defending herself against charges Bangladeshi resident of Elmhurst who that she is out of touch with her has not reported campaign funds, are changing district.

ANDREW SCHWARTZ

ncumbents do not tend to get voted out of the Council. But that is exactly what several challengers are hoping to do in the Jackson Heights district of Helen Sears (D), who is defending herself against charges that she is ineffective and out of step with the constituents.

“She has achieved little in eight years, and now her time is over,” said Daniel Dromm, who teaches the fourth grade and is considered by many to be the most likely to knock off the 80-year old Sears. “The community is desperate for change.”

A dedicated gay rights activist since the early 1990s, Dromm has already secured endorsements from the United Federation of Teachers and from many district leaders—almost unheard of for a challenger.

Dromm is confident that he will get support from the two political clubs he founded—the New Visions Democratic Club and the Lesbian and Gay Democratic Club. He also hopes to get the backing of the John F. Kennedy Democratic Club of Queens, which is Sears’ home club.

A big boost for Dromm is that Maureen Allen, president of the JFK club, has already endorsed him. Political heavyweights in the community, including Assembly Member José Peralta (D) and Council Member Julissa Ferreras (D), who represents the neighboring district, are also on his side.

By making education, quality of life and civil rights his top issues, Dromm has won support in different groups of the diverse neighborhood.

“Danny is the fresh air this neighborhood needs,” said Will Sweeney, a resident and community activist. “The generation that would vote for Sears has passed.”

The buzz is that Dromm will also win the nomination of the Queens County Democratic Party over Sears. A political insider described the incumbent as “not very innovative,” who did not go out of the way for her electorate. “The party is in a tight spot right now,” he said. “They’re thinking of easing her out.”

There is some fatigue in the community as well, according to a district leader who spoke on the condition of anonymity and slammed the Council member for skipping meetings and events.

“People do not get help from her office in accessing city services, and they are simply tired of Helen Sears,” the district leader said.

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also in the race but have not emerged as serious competitors. Then there is Alfonso Quiroz, another LGBT activist, who has $67,686 in the bank.

Sears, meanwhile, reported $119,623 on her May filing for a committee that remains technically undeclared. Dromm reported $81,087.

While Dromm is seen as the inimitable pioneer of activism, Quiroz is making his mark as a new-age activist. He is addressing issues like clean energy, economic development, education, affordable housing and transportation.

Many residents, however, are put off by his position as spokesperson for Con Ed. Quiroz called that background an advantage.

“My experience in the energy sector will be very useful for the community,” he said.

There remains some question, however, over whether or not two gay candidates will split the vote of the burgeoning LGBT community of Jackson Heights. But Quiroz is not worried about splitting the vote with Dromm.

“We’re two completely different people. Different generations, political paths and outlooks,” he said.

Plus, there are old-fashioned factions among the South Asians who may not vote for a gay candidate, like local Muslim merchant Mohammad Pier.

“We are very conservative and it is against our religion,” Pier said.

But many South Asians seem not to care about the sexual orientations of the candidates, and, like Sikh voter Jaspreet Singh, are more concerned about civil rights for people often targeted because of their turbans and long beards.

For all that is being discussed, though, Den Dekker said he believes September will be about one question.

“This is what an election is all about,” he said. “Vote for experience, or vote for Daniel Dromm has already secured endorsements from the United Fed- change.”

Direct letters to the editor to eration of Teachers and from many district leaders—almost unheard of editor@cityhallnews.com for a challenger.

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PJ Kim Starts Gerson Challenge With Cash Splash New challenger raises $71,000 in first two weeks of campaign Tobman, Kim has also hired other top talent, including Jon R. Del Giorno to handle Campaign Finance Board compliance and Jerry Goldfeder as his election lawyer.

Gerson has been slow to fundraise and has raised only $26,000. Gerson expressed confidence that he would eventually max out his own campaign spending, however, and said Kim’s fundraising did not surprise him.

“He travels in very wealthy circles,” Gerson said. “But I don’t think money makes up for a lack of record.”

Gerson also noted that several months ago, Kim was kicked off Community Board 1 for a lack of attendance by Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer (D).

“He’s a nice enough guy,” Gerson said. “He should remain working on the community board for awhile longer, then consider running in a few more years.”

Kim’s campaign said he could not attend many board meetings because he was out of the state setting up antipoverty programs.

According to SoHo Alliance head Sean Sweeney, Kim decided to run this year rather than in 2013 because he felt he had a better chance against Gerson than against Community Board 1 chair Julie Menin, who had planned to run for Council until the term-limits extension.

Kim is trying to become the first Korean-American to win a seat on the Council, along with several other Korean candidates running for Council Member John Liu’s (D-Queens) seat in Flushing.

Meanwhile, Margaret Chin, a long-time immigrant activist making her fourth Council run, is trying to become the first Chinese-American to win the CD 1 seat, which was originally created with the idea that a Chinatown resident would hold it.

The district also includes Wall Street, the Lower East Side and SoHo. Kim is unlikely to win much of the Chinatown vote, according to sources in the district, since the neighborhood remains mostly Chinese and its inhabitants are unlikely to back a Korean candidate in any large number.

Chin, who has been running for two years and has raised $108,000, said she was not concerned about another AsianAmerican running.

“I have a very strong base,” Chin said.

Since he is unlikely to win Chinatown, Kim said his strategy was to draw support from the influx of new voters that have moved into Battery Park City, the Financial District and other parts of the CD 1 in recent years.

“The candidate who wins this race is not going to just pull from a particular geographic base or a particular neighborhood,” Kim said.

“He travels in very wealthy circles,” Gerson said. “But I don’t think money makes up for a lack of record.”

BY CHRIS BRAGG wo weeks ago, when P.J. Kim joined the crowded field challenging two-term incumbent Council Member Alan Gerson (DManhattan) in Council District 1, hardly anyone in political circles noticed.

Kim, after all, was joining the five-way race late, had never worked in government and was relatively new to the district.

But he is likely to get everyone’s attention now.

Kim, 30, has raised a whopping $71,000 in just two weeks, even though he has held no formal fundraiser. Instead, Kim has raised almost all the money through his website and on Facebook, and is already on pace to pull in more for the next filing, with a trip to Washington to meet with the

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Asian-American Action Fund members just after the May 11 deadline.

Kim has had 275 donors overall, including 15 who have maxed out.

In part, connections with alumni and particularly in the Asian-American community explain the initial surge. Kim graduated from Princeton in 2001, where he served as a board member of a PAC devoted to electing Korean American leaders. He later earned an MBA from Harvard and a Master’s from the Kennedy School of Government in a dual degree program.

For the past three years, Kim has served as vice-president of Single Stop USA, a company that helps the poor access government services providing food, child care and medical care.

Besides campaign consultant Michael

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Kim’s entrance into the race could hurt the prospects of former firefighter and police officer Pete Gleason, who had been running as the anti-Gerson candidate in the affluent western portion of the district. Kim now will be competing for those votes.

Gleason questioned how much of the money Kim has raised actually came from inside the district.

Kim appears to have a detailed game plan going forward.

Sweeney recalled how a few weeks ago, when he met with Kim, the candidate brought along charts laying out how each Electoral District had voted in past Council races and showing exactly where Daniel Squadron (D-Brooklyn/ Manhattan) had drawn votes away from incumbent Marty Connor (D) during their State Senate primary last year.

“It was like a political science thesis,” said Sweeney.

Sweeney compared Kim to recent Kentucky Derby winner Mine That Bird, who unexpectedly took the race despite 50 to 1 odds.

“He’s a dark horse running from behind,” Sweeney said, “but he could run to victory.” cbragg@cityhallnews.com

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Landlords Begin To Take Control Of Rent Debate N

BY SAL GENTILE

eil Patres owns a 48-unit building in Astoriawithtwoidentical two-bedroom apartments. 5-J rents for about $600 a month. 6-J goes for about $1300.

The difference, Patres says, is rent control.

“5-J and 6-J, 10 years ago, were the exact same price. 5-J turned over three times in those 10 years, and because of the system of vacancy increases, its rent is now 50 percent higher than 6-J,” he said. “And I’ve always wondered how that is deemed to be fair. I just don’t get it.”

Patres is one of thousands of landlords who have marshaled their political might, including thousands in campaign donations and an intensive lobbying effort, to keep the Legislature from strengthening current rent regulations.

The Assembly has passed a raft of bills to recapture thousands of apartments that have left the rent regulation system over the years and gut a program that allows landlords to hike rents after investing in improvement projects. The Senate is set to consider some of those bills before the end of the session in June.

But in addition to the political skirmishes, landlords and their advocates in Albany are also advancing an economic argument that has, since rent control was first implemented in 1943, been largely marginalized in New York: rent control does not work.

There are signs now that they may finally be breaking through.

The view of rent regulation as a cherished New York institution is for the most part at odds with the consensus among even the most progressive economists. Polls taken since the 1970s have found consistent agreement among economists that price controls exacerbate housing shortages.

Most introductory economics textbooks use rent regulation as an example of how price controls warp supply and demand.

And most cities, including San Francisco, have begun dropping their strongest provisions.

New York, where rent regulation is a legacy of World War II-era price controls meant to curb inflation, is one of the

last holdouts. City tenant groups are among the most politically influential in the country. They too pour tens of thousands of dollars into the coffers of Senate Democrats, knock on doors and staff campaigns. Not only that: many city politicians have themselves come up through the ranks as housing advocates, including Council Speaker Christine Quinn (D-Manhattan).

All of which seemed to suggest that with the Democrats seizing power, 2009, as Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (DManhattan) put it, would be “the year of the tenant.”

But landlords and developers say they have made considerable headway in holding the Legislature back from a wholesale revision of the rent laws. Part of their success can be attributed to the gridlock in the State Senate, where anything radical is unlikely to have enough votes to pass this year.

The economic arguments have begun to take on a larger role in the lobbying effort as well. Opponents of rent control, including the economists, say the current state of the housing market makes any change to the rent laws potentially lethal.

“It’s reckless to tinker with the system with the uncertainties we have,” said Ken Patton, a dean at the New York University Schack Institute of Real Estate. “Suddenly we’re going to tighten the screws on investment at a time when we need more, not less?”

With the collapse of the housing market making it harder to turn a profit, the battle over vacancy decontrol, for example, which had been anticipated as one of the next major fights in the state Senate, seems to have fizzled. Landlords and developers have found a sympathetic ear in State Sen. Pedro Espada (DBronx), who was made chair of the Housing Committee in January over the fiercely procontrol State Sen. Liz Krueger (D-Manhattan).

Espada said the landlords were right to consider him an ally.

“People who think this through logically and rationally ask the question, ‘Do we, when we regulate, limit supply?’ Answer: Absolutely yes,” he said. “So why would we want to do that, and to hell with the consequences for continued investment in an aging

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housing stock?”

He added: “They are right to experience me as someone who is absolutely concerned about the negative concerns in that regard.”

Even some of the most fiercely progressive Democrats from New York City—who have won the support of tenants groups and the Working Families Party—confess privately to much more tepid feelings about the more radical provisions passed by the Assembly.

One Democrat who has supported the repeal of vacancy decontrol said recapturing the tens of thousands of nowmarket-rate apartments that have escaped the system would be “a huge lift,” adding that, “when there’s legitimate concerns about the availability and the strength of the housing market right now, I think that’s a hard sell for people.”

Those evolving attitudes have even resulted in the Assembly holding back some legislation that has passed in recent years because the bills might actually clear the State Senate and become law. One such measure would have extended the contracts for Mitchell-Lama public housing units from 20 to 50 years.

That bill was considered “something that we throw as red meat to tenant activists,” according to one lawmaker, and scrapped this year by the Assembly Housing Committee.

Democrats in the Legislature now admit that most of the sweeping measures pursued by tenant advocates are unlikely to pass this year or next, and that real movement may take a combination of factors—an expanded majority for Senate Democrats and a resurgence of the housing market—to advance those bills.

In the meantime, tenant advocates have promised to take on any senator who opposes strengthening rent laws. Espada, likely a prime target, said he plans to hold his ground nonetheless.

“That becomes a political threshold and a line in the sand that somebody else has drawn,” he said. “I’m not scared by that.

I’m not going to be intimidated by that. Because it doesn’t make sense to me to just give in to a political jackhammer.” sgentile@cityhallnews.com

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OF

The weird and woeful mayors through hizz-tory

The Dainty Diarist A hundred years before Jimmy Walker was tap-dancing all over the mayoralty in high style, Philip Hone, one of New York’s lesserknown mayors, was living it up in a way that could have made the Jazz Age mayor bite his fist with jealousy.

Like New York during the Roaring Twenties, the city in the 1820s was in the midst of an economic boom, spurred largely by the mercantile trade.

By the middle of the decade, roughly 4 percent of taxpayers held half the city’s wealth. And Hone was most definitely ensconced in Philip Hone, that top 4 percent.

Having made a fortune in the Whig 1826-1827 auction business, Hone retired in 1821 at the ripe old age of 40, bought a mansion across from City Hall, and commenced establishing himself as an entertainer of the city’s moneyed set. His wine and art collections were the talk of the town, as were the A-list guests at his frequent dinner parties.

Elected as an Alderman in 1824, Hone was a Whig at a time when that party was trying to challenge Tammany Democrats, who they claimed were too controlled by the “low Irish” and other immigrant groups. More than anything, Hone’s politics were defined by his opposition to the working classes having a hand in city government. The bulk of his snobbery was saved for the Irish, though, whom he seemed to regard as several steps below pond scum.

Despite his social reputation and status as an Alderman, Hone’s rise to the mayor’s office was somewhat accidental.

In 1826, the Common Council, which then selected the city’s mayor, was divided over a slate of candidates, and Hone just happened to be someone everyone liked. Voila, Hone was made the mayor.

What did he do with the opportunity? Not a whole lot.

Following his year in office, Hone continued to sashay around New York society in his best finery. Despite his colorfulness, when he died in 1851 Hone seemed destined to the well-populated scrap heap of forgettable ex-mayors. He averted that fate, however, via a surprise discovery among his things: a diary.

It turns out that from 1828 until his death, as he was whirling his way through New York’s upper echelon, Hone was also writing everything down. By 1851, he had amassed some 2,000,000 words in a tome of observations on just about everything New York, which is considered the most elaborate and extensive document of its kind from 19th-century America.

New York historians regard it as an indispensable window into the life of the city from that era.

The material on the Irish, however, would have been more than enough to earn the book at least a PG-13 rating.

—James Caldwell

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11

Despite Slight Schism, Green Party Gets Religion With Rev. Billy Members put hope for political revival in faux-preacher’s run for mayor

BY CORINNE RAMEY side from the spiraling disco ball lights and the large “ELECT-ALUJAH” sign on the wall, it could almost have been any campaign meeting.

Rev. Billy Talen—performance artist, fake preacher and now mayoral candidate—had left his cobalt-blue polyester suit and white preacher’s collar at home. After a lengthy discussion on defining commercial rent control policy, the conversation turned to campaigning in Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza greenmarket that Saturday.

“Should we get singers?” Talen asked, referring to his choir, the recently renamed Church of Life After Shopping.

Campaign manager Austin Osmer gently but forcefully laid down the law.

“No,” he said. “That’s not a place to put on a spectacle.”

Talen acquiesced, but then a transformation occurred. His voice got deeper and louder, his flat Midwestern accent replaced by something out of a revival hall in the Deep South.

“Sometimes it’s difficult for a person who wants to preach to hold back when there are souls to be saved out there,” Talen said, his hands in the air.

An instant later the reverend was gone again, and Talen was once more the 58year-old mayoral hopeful in a maroon button-down shirt and gray slacks, wrinkling his forehead and fiddling with his glasses.

Talen is the Green Party’s candidate for Gracie Mansion this year, which would be an uphill battle enough. But not even everyone in the Green Party has been happy to see him enter the political fray, with some members eager to instead see the party put up a more serious candidate, someone who uses less “amens” and “hallelujahs.” Talen is out to convince them all with policy proposals, like free public transportation and neighborhood-based economies, that he insists are serious. And, he said, doing all this while maintaining his persona as Rev. Billy is not only possible, but, in fact, the best way to get his message out to a broader public.

The Green Party first approached Talen with the prospect of running for governor in December, hoping his minor-celebrity status could help draw the 50,000 votes the party needs to regain its automatic slot on the ballot. Talen declined, saying that his message resonated better with people in the city.

“He said, ‘How about mayor?’” recalled Green Party campaign committee chair Gloria Mattera.

The Greens said yes.

Talen has been involved with the Greens for at least a decade, singing at

ANDREW SCHWARTZ

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“Rev. Billy” Talen is trying to balance his performance artist antics with a serious platform. fundraisers with his choir and leading several rallies.

“I’ve been in touch with the Greens through the years, but I’ve been more Catholic in my tastes,” he said. “I haven’t been voting a straight Green Party line, but did work on behalf of Ralph Nader, Malachy McCourt, Joel Kovel.”

Most Greens said they believe Talen will broaden the party, adding his flock to the party regulars. Some say that he has challenged them to campaign more creatively, with stunts like doing baptisms on World Water Day. “It’s a departure for the party in terms of the type of campaign that Billy is running,” said Mattera. “But in his many years as an activist, there’s a complete synergy with the issues that the Green Party has taken up.”

But some Greens doubt that voters will

take the occasionally-collared reverend or his policies seriously and worry that the campaign is too much about Billy and not enough about the Green Party.

“We have some members here in the Bronx that are totally dead set against him,” said Bronx County Green Party chair Carl Lundgren. “It’s a very religious community, and we’re afraid that Rev. Billy may offend a lot of people here.”

While Talen’s anti-consumerist message may resonate in some neighborhoods of Brooklyn and Manhattan, people in the Bronx probably would not mind a few more chain stores because of the lack of other options, Lundgren said.

“My opinion was that we shouldn’t run any candidate for mayor, but concentrate on next year and try to get a good gubernatorial candidate,” said Lundgren.

The unique environment of running for office makes grabbing a bold-face name who can grab headlines imperative, said Howie Hawkins, editor of the book Independent Politics: The Green Party Strategy Debate and co-founder of the national Green Party.

“When you get somebody with some initial name recognition, it puts you several steps ahead of the game. New York is particularly difficult for Greens, I think, because it’s so competitive to get into the bigger media.”

But some argue that the strategy is flawed.

“It’s not enough to have somebody with something of a name,” said Stanley Aronowitz, who ran for governor as a Green in 2002. “They have to be able to say something and get their message out, and build their organization and their treasury.”

Democratic political consultant Jerry Skurnik disagreed.

“From their point of view, I think he’s a good choice,” Skurnik said. “What you need with the Green Party is someone like Rev. Billy, instead of some environmentalist who will show up in suit and tie and explain why Bloomberg is no good.”

Bigger cities, like New York, are generally harder for third-party candidates, said Micah Sifry, author of Spoiling for a Fight: Third-Party Politics in America. However, Sifry added, this year, Talen could get media coverage and people to take his campaign seriously if there are enough Democrats disaffected with their choices.

“There’s room somewhere between Mayor Bloomberg, who I think is vulnerable, and the Democrats, who have not produced a compelling candidate,” he said.

Powered by these hopes, Talen has been developing policies on issues such as education, garbage and mass transit in addition to his traditional anticonsumerist sermons.

“We are arriving at this candidacy with values we already have,” Talen said. “It’s a process of filling in.”

Talen has already swapped much of his anti-consumerist message for one centered on building neighborhood economies and promoting local shops, banks and institutions. For example, Talen advocates for community- and neighborhood-based control of schools, instead of what he views as the current “dictatorial” mayor-controlled approach.

He needs to have plans, he said, because he is in the race to win, as odd as the thought of a self-anointed anticonsumer faux-preacher running City Hall may be.

“I’m not that weird,” Talen said, “compared to some of the other candidates.”

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13

STATE OF

ISRAEL What the almost-candidate’s run-in with the White House means for his future

By Edward-Isaac Dovere

ANDREW SCHWARTZ

This is not what Steve Israel was expecting.

The heads-up dinner with Sen. Charles Schumer (D) was eaten. The internal poll showing 60 percent of people were less likely to vote for the incumbent after hearing her record on guns and tobacco had been parsed. The phone system was ordered, the website designed, the preliminary offers to campaign staff had been made. May 20 had been chosen to make the maximum splash while allowing enough time to clock significant fundraising numbers in the last month of the second quarter—conference call with supporters and friends at 2 p.m., blast to a 50,000-e-mail list at 2:30, conference call with reporters at 3. The paperwork was ready for a full campaign launch, not just an exploratory committee, and the schedule of targeted announcements and intimate town hall meetings through July was mostly set.

There was work left to do in the last week—shoring up a few more supporters, having a few more meetings with his colleagues in the delegation, finalizing the script for the campaign video, which would have featured photographs of places like the Brooklyn hospital where he was born and his father’s apartment building near Shea Stadium then and now, with his voice-over about how some things have changed in New York but some things never should.

“Some change is good, but some things should never change,” he said, sitting in his D.C. office a week before the campaign announcement. “For me, it’s protecting our kids from guns—we shouldn’t change our position on that. We should be standing

up to the NRA every day, not just recently. It’s protecting our kids from tobacco—we shouldn’t change our positions on that. It’s making sure our kids grow up in an inclusive, tolerant place—we shouldn’t change our position on immigration. On the fundamental, core issues of keeping New York safe and prosperous for our kids, I believe consistency and principle is vital. And that’s what this is about.”

He acknowledged that this was no random list, but precisely the issues on which he was planning to hit Kirsten Gillibrand, and on which she was most vulnerable. He knew. He had paid for the polls.

The clock on the wall began buzzing, calling him for votes, and he mused about Don Quixote. Israel keeps a cheap edition of the novel out on a shelf and a statuette of the Man of La Mancha himself at the edge of his desk.

“I love having Don Quixote,” he said. “It proves to me that if you’re not willing to give up, you’re not willing to give in, you can get things done.”

His candidacy was an open secret, leaking everywhere, but he resisted the urge to go public before the carefully-laid plan dictated.

“I believe in doing things on my time frame, at my own comfort level,” he said. “And I don’t want other people to decide when I do things, or how.”

He stood to welcome a group of car dealers down from New York, there to make their case to him. The meeting lasted a few

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MAY 25, 2009

minutes, then he rushed off to the House floor. Call time to pull in more donors was scheduled for the rest of the afternoon.

Then came the call from the White House.

Rahm Emanuel wanted to see him.

Immediately. hree hours earlier, Israel was sitting in Hunan Dynasty, a favorite D.C. haunt. The congressman is a Chinese food fanatic—three to five meals minimum per week—so this was the natural choice for an embargoed interview explaining the candidacy that was already underway, though not publicly. The hostess hugged him hello. The waitress brought over a complimentary California roll. But the congressman concentrated less on the food than on the rhetoric which he expected to soon make public.

“Leadership” and “principles” were key words. “Appointment, not anointment,” was a phrase he seemed to like, as was “vote any way the wind blows.”

The appeal to party unity being made by some back home did not faze him.

“I believe particularly when a senator is appointed that it is healthy, if not necessary for the public to have an opportunity, for Democrats to have an opportunity to shape that decision,” he said, adding later, “I always thought it was Republicans who discouraged competition at the polls. I don’t think Democrats ought to discourage competition at the polls after an appointment.”

Two days earlier, he had kicked off the last week of pre-campaign with a big green energy summit on the home turf at Farmingdale State to produce an integrated proposal for the Department of Energy aimed at making the Route 110 corridor the new smart-grid capital of the nation. Earlier that day, he stood with Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-Nassau), railing against illegal guns. Sure, the event was supposed to be better attended and about the Assault Weapons Ban, but whatever. The news hit was about gun safety, the picture of Israel at the side of McCarthy, the unimpeachable

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through New York City (Emanuel’s characteristic response to the dozen sent over when he became chief of staff was a short e-mail: “Thanks for bagels. You forgot the lox.”)

Israel has been a frequent visitor to Emanuel’s West Wing office since Inauguration Day to talk about policy.

This time, though, the conversation was pure politics, according to several people close to Israel familiar with the discussion.

Like many things, the end of Israel’s candidacy came as part of a larger deal.

Senate Democrats have set the new benchmark for a governing majority at a filibuster-proof 60, and even with Pennsylvania’s Arlen Specter now on board and Al Franken to arrive soon from Minnesota, they would prefer a few seats to spare. Next year’s political map presents opportunities in unlikely places like Kentucky, Missouri and Maine. There are already unexpected problems in Illinois and Connecticut.

They do not want to have to worry about another incumbent, particularly in the pricey New York media markets, even if there is no strong state Republican Party at the moment to run a general. The primary would be enough of a drain.

For all the excited talk of Democratic cooperation, the White House needs to be on good terms with the Senate to move its agenda. According to several familiar with what was said, taking care of this problem was the first and only Steve Israel’s Senate campaign was ready to launch, with among favor the Senate Democrats have asked other pieces, this website. The tagline, “Fighting for New York Values,” summarized the argument he was preparing to make that Kirsten Gillibrand of the White House so far. Somewhat reluctantly, the administration decided to was out of step in a core way with Democratic voters in the state. provide for them.

McCarthy hemmed and hawed. No one “Things hadn’t gone exactly as Clearing the field in New York was had announced yet, she said. Maloney put planned the whole way, so I think there not about Gillibrand or Israel, left wing her hand on McCarthy’s shoulder, said was some question as to exactly how the politics or moderate politics, gun stances she would be honored to support her. administration was going to come out or immigrant rights. It was about Senate Then there was Israel. Silently, he nodded here,” said one of the people involved Democrats having enough cash to seize red a few times quickly, a big grin on his face. with the Israel campaign. “You can’t be meat territory in the heartland and a new Yes. He could. as smart as Rahm Emanuel is and as White House eager to collect a big chit.

“There was a team in place, a manager brilliant as the president is—it’s not like So Israel was given an ultimatum: if in place, a group of consultants in place— they didn’t see these polls … it was not he proceeded with the Senate race, the a serious road map to do this,” said one a completely left-field scenario to let this White House would go to great pains to person close to Israel with knowledge of play out.” shut off every dollar in the state. With the planning. “He was 1,000 percent in.

Not that they expected warm words of Schumer’s help, the administration encouragement. would make sure all the big Democratic “Best case was that we go in there donors and institutional players kept and make our case that we were serious their distance. They would show no and we were going to bust our butts restraint, even campaigning against him and were going to make this happen, and raising money in Israel’s own home and convince them to give us time,” turf. Obama himself would come out to the person involved with the campaign campaign in New York City, cutting off said. “That would have been all we at the knees the downstate, Manhattancould ask.” focused appeal Israel would have needed Having until the fall to raise money to run to Gillibrand’s left. And perhaps and demonstrate support would have most damning of all, given whom the He was all the way in, prepared fully to been ideal. But even getting a pass to stay math dictated Israel would have needed engage in a full-throated campaign.” in until the end of the fundraising quarter in his column, Emanuel indicated that the Or, in the words of Resi Cooper, Hillary on June 30 would have been a victory for nation’s first black president was prepared Clinton’s former Long Island director and the nascent campaign operation. to barnstorm through New York’s black a consultant on Israel’s campaign: “This is Israel and Emanuel are friends, and neighborhoods hand-in-hand with the the greatest campaign that never was.” have been since their days working junior senator, employing his appeal to Israel and his team had been expecting together on the DCCC. Among the many African-Americans to a political degree he to hear from the administration. Just not things they connect on are New York usually avoids. Oh, and as for Israel having yet. They had a hunch what was coming. bagels, which Israel often brings for him any role shaping policy in the House while Nonetheless, they held out hope. when the trip to Washington includes going all this was going on? Forget it.

Emanuel made clear that the nation’s first black president was prepared to barnstorm through New York’s black neighborhoods hand in hand with the junior senator, employing his appeal to African-Americans to a political degree he usually avoids. voice on gun safety and on attacking Gillibrand. Fellow Gillibrand basher and Senate hopeful Rep. Carolyn Maloney (DManhattan/Queens) as a late addition to the event helped, too.

The inevitable question soon came: “Will the three of you agree among yourselves which, if any, of you would run in the Democratic primary in New York?”

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Those were the sticks.

Or, Emanuel told Israel, there was another option. Step aside and earn the gratitude of the White House. Israel wants to be a prime player on green energy, one of Obama’s legislative priorities. Common ground could be found. Emanuel knew how to rise through the ranks of the House leadership—he was third in command, not all that far from being speaker before accepting his job from Obama. Perhaps something along those lines was of interest? And hey, these days, you never know what could happen in politics anywhere in the country, but especially in New York. Another opportunity could arise sooner than he might think. Counting the president and White House chiefof-staff as friends might be of some use.

Israel left Emanuel’s office with a pretty clear picture of where things stood. His closest circle of advisors—chief of staff Jack Pratt, campaign manager Justin Schall and his consultants, Resi Cooper and John Lapp—anxiously waited for word of what had happened. He made them wait a little as he processed the conversation himself while keeping up appearances during the annual D.C. fundraiser for the Assembly Democrats hosted by Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan) and the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees reception that night.

Briefly, Israel and his team considered a campaign with the White House against them. Perhaps they could call Obama’s bluff—after all, he is the man who won the most successful anti-establishment, left-leaning primary campaign in history.

Coming out for Gillibrand if he stayed in would have required a notable conceptual contortion. But given how and when Emanuel weighed in, they believed the White House would follow through. Even so, they wondered whether they could still woo enough of the hard-core left that

votes in New York primaries (a population which gave Jonathan Tasini 16 percent in 2006 against Hillary Clinton, after all) to be competitive. Maybe, they said— though not with Obama, Emanuel and Schumer starving them of enough money to fund even the lower-cost, direct-mail,

The circle of those who knew what was happening remained extremely tight. Even Gov. David Paterson (D) was apparently kept out of the loop (the governor’s office declined comment as to whether the White House informed him before deciding to get involved in state party politics and protecting the senator he appointed).

The regular campaign staff call was delayed until the next morning, but mapping out an exit strategy through back channels with the White House began. How would he drop out?

When? The Israel camp had invested a lot of time and political capital in lining up the pieces. Promises had been made. Favors had been extracted. Deals had been struck.

Israel woke that Friday morning still in Washington, still sure he could run and run strong, no matter what Emanuel had said. He is a man with an admittedly healthy ego anyway, and the notion that his in utero candidacy had already forced the White House’s hand only fed that.

“Based on all the polls that are out there, and based on the president’s preference, I believed I could still go forward,” he said, reflecting on his mindset at the time. “But then I made the assessment that it would be a lot to ask of my staff, it would be a lot to ask of my family and it would be a lot to ask of myself to go against the preferences of the president of the United States.”

So okay, he said. He would not run.

But nor would he walk away from all that he had built without giving his supporters and allies, as well as the political world at large, a reason. The best reason, in fact.

The president would ask Israel to leave himself.

A call was arranged for that afternoon.

Israel landed back at LaGuardia just after 2:30. When the phone rang, promptly at 3, he was in the car, a staffer behind the

Clearing the field in New York was not about Gillibrand or Israel, left wing politics or moderate politics, gun stances or immigrant rights. It was about Senate Democrats having enough cash to seize red meat territory in the heartland and a new White House eager to collect a big chit. grassroots campaign being planned.

And then there was the line at the heart of Emanuel’s appeal: “We need you to serve your country.”

That proved the most difficult to get past, everyone agreed. Israel could not ignore the call to duty.

Said one person involved with the campaign: “It was a little hard for me to say to him, ‘Well, I think I know how you can serve your country better than the president.’ That was a hard one to sell.”

Israel spent much of the next day on the House floor, voting on bills, struggling with what to do and smiling as his friends in Congress, still in the dark, egged him into just declaring his candidacy already.

“Thursday and Friday were tough days,” he said later, looking back. “One of the most difficult elements of this was speaking to my colleagues and hearing their encouragement and not being absolutely certain that I was going to make this race.”

MAY 25, 2009

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wheel, moving slowly over the Queens/ Nassau border.

Up on the wall of the reception area of his Washington office, Israel has a photo of the last time he spoke to the president, when, he admits, he knocked his way through the crowd to get a handshake and a moment to chat after the State of the Union. This conversation was longer, more personal and much more direct.

Obama told Israel how concerned he was about holding the Senate seat for Democrats and the worrisome effect of a serious primary. Party unity at this moment, Obama told him, was extremely important.

Israel acknowledged what was in play.

“Mr. President, I understand your views, I understand how seriously you feel about this,” he said, “and to respect party unity and your request, I won’t pursue it this year.”

They chatted about the climate change bill, creating green jobs. They chatted about the congressional reception at the White House that Israel was planning to attend with his wife the following week, the evening of what would have been his debut as a candidate.

In a little over five minutes the conversation was over. They exchanged goodbyes.

“I’ll see you Wednesday night, buddy,” Obama said.

And so ended Steve Israel for Senate 2010.

But not all was lost in that phone call, the congressman joked.

“If you’ve got to sit in rush-hour traffic on the Grand Central Parkway,” he said, laughing, “not a bad way to pass the time.” he other major contenders did not take the news well.

McCarthy, who was finally content that she had gotten someone else to take on Gillibrand (and was planning to endorse Israel as soon

T

Just weeks ago, Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-Nassau) was speaking in definitive, confident terms about her ability to win a primary against Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D). By then, though, her plan seemed to be working: she had softened the ground for other people to make the race, and McCarthy, who desperately did not want to run herself, was at peace.

But with Obama and the White House now aligned against Gillibrand having a primary and urging Rep. Steve Israel (D-Suffolk), McCarthy’s preferred choice, out of the race, she avoided the same kind of strong language.

“I don’t know whether I could beat her. I honestly don’t know that,” she said, adding that while she understood that Israel had no choice but to follow what the president said, “I do believe, as far as democracy goes, if someone wants to run against her, they should be allowed to run against her.”

Asked whether the news of Israel’s and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer’s (D) withdrawals had prompted her to begin preparing a more active candidacy to ensure Gillibrand did not go through the primary

unchallenged, McCarthy said only, “I am preparing to raise a lot of money.”

A few hours before Israel’s conversation with White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel that resulted in his decision to leave the race, McCarthy took an opening at a press conference on new proposed gun legislation to tear into Gillibrand’s moderating of once hard-line gun rights stances.

“This was a strictly political move in my opinion,” she said, adding that she “would prefer someone who represented New York State has more values on protecting With Steve Israel out of the race, Carolyn what the majority of New Yorkers believe in.” At the McCarthy faces a decision she hoped to avoid. press conference, McCarthy indicated that Gillibrand’s I know that I already won because she’s changed her movement to a new position was not enough for her.

She is still holding out hope that Rep. Carolyn opinions certainly on every other issue because she Maloney or Suffolk Legislature Majority Leader Jon knows I’m always looking over her shoulder.”

However, she said, that does not mean her candiCopper will run. But with the weight of the White dacy against Gillibrand is dead, too.

House now behind the junior senator, McCarthy back“I want my name out there,” she said. “Yes I do. Yes tracked slightly, setting a different measure of victory.

I do.”

“The people who know me,” she said, “know that —EIRD when I’m pushed against a wall, I come out fighting.

And that’s what I’ll continue to do. But in many ways, eidovere@cityhallnews.com

CHARLES STECK

Staring Down Obama, McCarthy Softens On Gillibrand Challenge

www.cityhallnews.com

MAY 25, 2009

as possible without offending the other candidates), was standing in the flower aisle of her local Home Depot when the call came. She was furious, burning with a rage so white-hot about her president closing off the challenge that even her closest advisors kept back.

Maloney was furious, too, but not because Obama had called Israel. She was furious because she had not been called, had not been hauled in for a workout with Emanuel herself.

Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer (D), meanwhile, started road-testing a Catskills routine about wondering where his phone was and how he could get interrupted by a call at any moment. But his plans were unchanged, he insisted the next morning. Four days later, he was out of the race.

Israel got back to his district office, informed his staff. He made a few more calls, then headed home to get ready for a trip upstate that remained on the calendar: his older daughter Carly graduating from SUNY Albany. Campaign or not, that was where he was going to be spending his Saturday.

The last time Israel’s Senate hopes crumbled, at the end of the appointment process, he was standing in an airport on his D.C. commute. For a moment, his heart skipped: there, on CNN, was footage of him walking across the screen! It was actually happening!

But no, he realized after a few seconds, this was just B-roll of Paterson from the last time he had made national news with a visit to the Middle East at the end of December, which Israel had been part of as well. That had been a productive trip, or so it seemed at the time. Between visits with the troops, he and the governor had bonded over his interest in the Senate seat and a common interest in green energy. Paterson was in the midst of writing his State of the State then.

Somewhere over Afghanistan, they spent three hours conceiving and developing the section proposing an upstate research consortium on hybrid electric batteries— the only substantive policy proposal in the

ANDREW SCHWARTZ

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over the PA system, and even a story about completing an assignment earlier that year to draw a cartoon with Lyndon Johnson, in a Stetson, declaring, “Vietnam is a rootin’, tootin’ war.”

Running for Senate next is what people like Israel do: he was student council president in high school (actual campaign slogan: “Don’t be dizzy, vote for Izzy”), a congressional staffer right out of college, an aide to the Suffolk County executive back home and a Huntington town councilman, all leading up to the bare-knuckled, behind-the-scenes primary machinations which helped him flip Rick Lazio’s old House seat in 2000.

Almost immediately, he was negotiating

on the Armed Services Committee (since left behind), where his interest in renewable energy was first piqued as an offshoot of national security, and on the Appropriations Committee, which gives him crucial power over funding.

He was among the many beginning to circle for Clinton’s Senate seat as she led the polls in Iowa and New Hampshire, then had that dream die a slow death as the presidential primaries lurched through South Carolina, Super Tuesday, Wisconsin, North Carolina.

In the bizarre, drawn-out appointment process after her surprise departure for the State Department, though, Israel quickly emerged as a star. He was on every list of major contenders. He resonated.

He felt strong. Down to the wire, he knew he was still in the running.

Israel stayed away the morning that Paterson announced he was appointing Gillibrand, who had not traveled the state like he had over the previous weeks. He was, however, up in Gillibrand’s neck of the woods just a few days later, helping seal Scott Murphy as the Democratic nominee for her old seat as part of his duties as the national recruiting chair for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, a recent promotion.

Being in on the ground floor with the newer members has fed his popularity among his colleagues, building strong relationships he was planning to use to position himself as the delegation choice in the primary. Instead, in the days since the president’s call, his colleagues have been getting pressure to throw their support to Gillibrand, who has been told by the White House that solidifying the delegation is a precondition for further support. Many, however, still harbor resentment, either because of personal dislike, a lingering frustration with the absurdity of the appointment process, her leapfrogging over them despite lacking seniority or her ideological distance from them. Israel getting knocked aside has only exacerbated some of those feelings.

Rep. Charles Rangel (D-Manhattan), the dean of the delegation, said he was optimistic that the bitterness can be overcome.

“We hope we can avoid a primary, but every member has to decide. We have such qualified candidates in the delegation, so I don’t want to put a damper on anybody that’s worked hard,” Rangel said, the morning after Israel’s decision went public.

After all, Rangel said, with the new president’s standing in the Democratic Party and the country as a whole, there was no arguing with him, even with the controversial move of mixing up in a primary.

“Right now,” Rangel explained, “the president can’t do any bad things.”

Gillibrand and Israel did not speak after he made his announcement. They have not since a congressional reception

“This is,” said Resi Cooper, Hillary Clinton’s former Long Island director and a consultant on Israel’s campaign, “the greatest campaign that never was.” speech—building on ideas of statewide cooperation on energy that had come to him while traveling the state, to make him everyone’s first, or at least second, choice for Hillary Clinton’s seat, as he had been advised to do by the governor.

Of course Israel was going to run for Senate eventually. He has a story about watching the Watergate hearings in ninth grade while the other kids were outside playing softball, a story about being drawn into politics by seeing his fourthgrade teacher slump down upon hearing the news of Robert Kennedy’s death

a hardball gerrymander that traded the more Republican areas out of his district for the more Democratic ones of what was Rep. Peter King’s (R), even as he stayed in the conservative Blue Dog caucus, voted for the Bush tax cuts and the Iraq War and proudly circulated a photo back home of him and his wife arm-in-arm with George W. Bush that almost prompted a liberal primary challenge of his own in 2004.

Slowly, he began to tack left. He resigned from the Blue Dogs, though he retained his openness to tax cuts, and slowly worked his way up the ranks

CITY HALL at Gracie Mansion May 1. But though he may be out of the race, Israel said he does not expect to keep quiet about her in the years ahead, especially on those “New York values” he was planning to put at the center of his campaign.

“We’re going to have to continue to disagree on some of those issues, and I’ll continue to stand firm on principle,” he said. “You can speak up when you think someone is wrong without necessarily running a primary against them. And that’s what I told the White House that I’d be willing to do.”

One of the immediate reactions to the president’s intervention among local Democrats was fear. How weak really is Gillibrand if the White House needed to get involved so heavy and so early, they worried. Former Gov. George Pataki (R), whose spokesperson said is making a decision unaffected by the developments on the Democratic side, has opened up an eight-point lead in the latest Marist Poll. They wonder if the national political chess game which cleared the field for Gillibrand could cause a big problem for the party in New York next November.

Israel, a self-taught history buff who has an edited book of underdog military speeches under his belt, framed the reaction in those terms.

“History tells us that parties in the first election their candidate becomes president don’t do well. So I think there is a concern for history right now,” he said, admitting that he had heard the thought. “Add to that that the senator was appointed, not elected, and you have an even deeper concern.”

On the other hand, now Gillibrand seems unlikely to have to defend her left flank in any major way during a primary, sure to save her problems going into the general. Her fundraising prowess is already the stuff of legend. With that taken care of, she could have increasingly clear sailing going in to 2010, and then on through election for a full term in 2012.

If not, though—if for reasons national, historical, economic or personal she loses next year—Israel, who two years ago was a fairly obscure congressman from outside the state’s main media market, will be in the wings. And until a chance arises, he will keep raising money, traveling the state and holding onto some extremely powerful favors, along with a list of legislative accomplishments that will no doubt be pushed forward.

As much as options seem foreclosed right now, things could change very quickly.

Stranger things have happened to the man whom his junior senator, the Democratic majority, the White House chief of staff and the president himself all needed to very suddenly get out of the way.

“Just as a phone call from the president and a decision not to pursue a primary was unpredictable,” he said, thinking back on what he had just been through, “just as unpredictable could be a future opportunity where the earth, the moon and the stars are in the proper alignment.” eidovere@cityhallnews.com

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CITY HALL

www.cityhallnews.com

MAY 25, 2009

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City Begins Retooling Census Approach In Hopes Of More Accurate Count

BY JULIE SOBEL tacey Cumberbatch was appalled when she found out that only 55 percent of New Yorkers had responded to the 2000 census.

The national average, after all, was 67 percent.

“I was like, New York City can do better than that,” said Cumberbatch.

“Way better.”

So Cumberbatch, then chief of staff at the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), accepted a position as coordinator of the NYC 2010 census office that Mayor Michael Bloomberg (Ind.) created. The office is charged with serving as a liaison between the city and the Regional Census Office, identifying historically undercounted neighborhoods, partnering with neighborhood leaders to raise awareness and developing a message to promote census participation.

Cumberbatch has spent most of her career serving as an attorney to various city and state government offices. She grew up in New York, where she attended the United Nations International School.

She credits her 13 years there with teaching her the significance of the city’s unique multi-cultural population.

“I’ve always been fascinated by different cultures because that’s how I was raised,” said Cumberbatch.

ANDREW SCHWARTZ

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Stacey Cumberbatch is using her experience in various city and state government offices to guide a new approach to next year’s census for the city.

A questionnaire will be mailed in March 2010 to New York’s 3.4 million households that will ask people to fill out name, age, gender, relationship to others in the home, race, ethnicity and whether a member of the family currently resides at a different address. That information will determine New York’s representation

Wanted:

Comings and goings and weddings, too Let City Hall and The Capitol know about all your official staff changes by e-mailing information about your staff hires, promotions and departures. We’d also like your unofficial changes such as engagements, weddings and anniversaries. Please include photographs when possible.

Please e-mail all submissions to editor@cityhallnews.com and editor@nycapitolnews.com.

in Congress, as well as the amount of federal aid the city receives.

“It is very relevant to the level of service that community is going to receive,” said Cumberbatch. “To the extent that people don’t fill out the form, they basically don’t exist for purposes of federal funding.”

As the largest and most diverse city in the nation, New York City faced difficulties in previous census years, stemming primarily from the large number of “hard to count” people. Generally, these include renters, single people, those with low socio-economic status and those living in ethnic enclaves. Three million of the city’s residents are foreign-born, which poses its own enormous challenges in obtaining an accurate count.

The census office is planning to meet this challenge by verifying and updating its master address list that must account for changes since the 2000 census, including new building construction and commercial spaces converted to residential ones, as well as the illegal conversions found throughout the city.

The office is also working on a partnership program to promote community outreach via credible individuals and organizations already in the various communities to raise awareness that the census is coming and that filling out the forms is both necessary and safe: necessary because it affects city and neighborhood funding, and safe because

the information is confidential and cannot be legally shared—a major concern for illegal immigrants, for example.

“We are the most diverse city, so outreach has to be very specific in these different communities,” said Cumberbatch. “That it’s confidential, that’s a big issue for people. That it does not ask citizenship status, whatsoever.”

The census office is working with NYCHA, whose developments encompass approximately one in 13 New Yorkers. The housing authority presents challenges when residents are reluctant to reveal that additional people are living in their homes.

“You need to count everybody that’s in there,” she said. “We know there are people, unauthorized, living in public housing.”

The city is also seeking to recognize gay marriages in census responses.

Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn (D-Manhattan) wrote the Census Bureau explaining that since New York recognizes same-sex marriages legally performed in other states, the census should recognize these couples as married. The Census Bureau has yet to respond to the letter.

“Whether people are for same-sex marriage or not is irrelevant,” she added.

“It has to do with the statistics and reporting out that information.” jsobel@cityhallnews.com

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CITY HALL

www.cityhallnews.com

MAY 25, 2009

the

Art

of Politics

When Subway Hijackers Strike, Mayor Tony Soprano To The Rescue Gandolfini brings gravity to role as mayor in Taking of Pelham 123

BY ANDREW J. HAWKINS On June 12, the world will get to see James Gandolfini in a role some would consider the most morally ambiguous, complex and dangerous he has ever played: the mayor of New York City.

In the remake of the classic 1974 heist film The Taking of Pelham 123, Gandolfini plays a New York mayor under intense pressure to address an unfolding hostage situation on a subway train. And while New York mayors have a long and illustrious history of being portrayed on film as weak, indecisive and bumbling characters (think of Lee Wallace in the original Pelham or David Margulies in Ghost Busters), Gandolfini gives us a different sort of mayor, one with Michael Bloomberg’s management skills and Rudolph Giuliani’s zeal, sprinkled with a dash of Ed Koch for good measure.

Todd Black, one of the producers, said the filmmakers took great care with Gandolfini’s character, who is only known in the script as “The Mayor.”

James Gandolfini’s mayor has Michael Bloomberg’s management skills and Rudolph Giuliani’s zeal, sprinkled with a dash of Ed Koch for good measure.

“The mayors of New York are stars in their own right,” said Black, speaking by phone from the set of his latest film. “And so, we paid attention to that and we tried to put a little humor and spin into that, while still trying to be respectful of the role.”

Gandolfini, who is also currently starring in the play Gods of Carnage (for which he is nominated for a Tony) on Broadway, also took pains to ensure that his mayor was not an unlikable buffoon, as cinematic mayors have been in the past.

“He was very careful with the writer, Brian Helgeland, and myself and [director] Tony Scott to make sure he was never making fun and he was always about how proud he was of the city,” Black said.

In the movie, a band of thugs, led by John Travolta, hijack a downtown No. 6 train. (The title refers to the dispatcher’s designation given to a No. 6 train starting its run from the Pelham Bay Park terminal in the Bronx at 1:23 p.m.) A dutiful MTA dispatcher, played by Denzel Washington, must negotiate the safe release of the hostages with Gandolfini’s mayor breathing heavily over his shoulder.

Black said Gandolfini, known mainly for his role as the depressed, sociopathic crime boss Tony Soprano,

succeeds at showing how the hostage situation begins to crack his tough political outer shell.

“He kind of has this cranky quality of having to do the meaningful service that the mayor has to do on daily basis,” Black said. “This crisis hits right in the middle of his day. He brings a reality to that. But you can kind of see the twinkle behind his eyes, which is really nice.”

The city has changed drastically since 1974, when the first version of the film showed a New York on the brink of social and economic collapse. Then, the predominant fear was crime and bankruptcy. Today, a different economic cloud looms over New York. But Black said the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, as well as the increasing quality of life in the city, have created a more powerful sense of community in New York that he hoped would come across in the film.

The movie will come out in the thick of the citywide elections. And while Gandolfini has no political aspirations to speak of, Bloomberg may want to watch his back nonetheless. Gandolfini as mayor has polled very well.

“When we’ve tested the movie, across the board, he tests through the roof,” Black said. “The audience loves his performance.” ahawkins@cityhallnews.com

Some examples: P. Diddy, “We Gon’ Make It” “I spend absurd money, private bird money That Bill Gates, Donald Trump, Bloomberg money (you know what it is).”

The

Joe Budden, “Fire (Remix)”

Notorious B.L.O.O.M.B.E.R.G.

Rapper Chuck D once famously said, “Rap is CNN for black people.”

By that logic, Mayor Michael Bloomberg (Ind.) is a man often in the headlines. Impressively for a man whose name is so hard to rhyme, Bloomberg appears often in rap lyrics, usually on the receiving end of many rappers’ anger and frustration about his wealth, his power and the growing income gap in New York.

“Still Junior like Lou Gossett, Joey, right back on Overcharge New York to cut the lights back on Before Bloomberg to come get me all I send the goons that make the bad things happen in City Hall.”

Nas, “NYC” “Yo, ok, my city, my town, my crown Michael Bloomberg, forget what you heard I’m thought of highly, shoppin’ Louie, Gianni Christian LaCrosse shades, what can a boss say?”

Nas, “The Pledge (Remix)” “Inc. is the Murdah, Ill Will merger, let my cash Make sex with yo’ cash, it can’t hurt us Phones ringing off the hook, Bush and Bloomberg callin’ me constant Streets wanna know the cause of that gossip.”

Jay-Z, “Upgrade U”

Hell Rell, “Call the Cops”

“Jacob the Jeweler, baubles, Lorraine Schwartz sorta dude It’s big balling baby when I’m courting you I’m talking spy bags and fly pads and rooms at the Bloomberg And rumors you on the verge of a new merge.”

“They askin’ how he did it, but they all wanna roll I’m easy passin’ by so I ain’t worried ’bout the toll So holla at me homie when you see me in that blue spurn We run the city, need a office next to Bloomberg.”

CITY HALL

www.cityhallnews.com

MAY 25, 2009

Scratch Test Regulating etching acid rubs some people the wrong way

Though artist Alex Gardega had already installed his 20-foot etched glass wall in the Aspen Social Club in Midtown Manhattan, he still needed to add a few more details. But since he could not use the sandblaster he usually uses to etch inside the restaurant, he dashed over to the art store Pearl Paint, picked up a can of Armour Etch brand etching acid and added five more trees to the intricate wall.

“At the last minute they wanted a couple more birch trees,” said Gardega, who has been doing glass art for over 20 years. “[Armour Etch] saved my life because I was able to pull off this last-minute desperate thing.”

Those were the days. In September, purchasing Armour Etch will not be so simple for Gardega and other artists and hobbyists, thanks to a bill passed by the Council in early May regulating the sale of etching acid. The bill mandates that sellers of etching acid view the customer’s photo identification and record the buyer’s name, address, type of identification, purchase date and the quantity of acid sold. The intent is to deter vandals who use etching acid for “scratchiti,” a type of graffiti done on glass panels such as subway cars, bus shelters and windows.

My Pick

By Rep. Nydia Velázquez (D-Brooklyn/Queens/Manhattan) I love music, I love to listen to music. I love everything, really. I could dance to any kind of music, even hip-hop. Oh, tango. It’s life. It’s vibrant. It’s passion. It’s philosophy. It’s life.

Tango is the form of music in Argentina and it’s a dance. It’s musical.

Look, if you listen to just the sound of music that you know is tango, you’d love it.

I have it on the tip of my tongue … I can see his face but I can’t remember his name. He’s Argentinean.

It’s profound. He really is able to sing to life experiences. And it’s about love and about struggle—life.

This originated in the barrios, the poor, poor communities. It became more refined. Now it’s played and listened to by everyone.

The new rule has left a few store owners scratching their heads.

“It’s used as a beautiful way to etch glass without a sandblaster,” said Dinah Rengel, store manager of Pearl Paint, which stocks Armour Etch. “When it’s used for good, it’s a beautiful product.”

Armour Etch, which is sold in art and hardware stores, is the only commercially available etching acid. Although two kinds of etching acid traditionally used by print makers—nitric acid and ferric chloride—technically fall under the bill’s definition of etching acid, they are not sold in stores, and print shops usually order them from suppliers.

The main market for Armour Etch is home hobbyists, as professional artists like Gardega tend to use a sandblaster. For example, the “Project Corner” section of Etchworld.com, a Web site owned by Armour Etch, is filled with glass craft projects ranging from the classy to the kitschy: frosted glass candleholders, a snowflake-etched glass vase, a “We Love Grandpa” glass photo frame and “Etched Ornament Cards of Love.”

The bill’s sponsor, Council Member Peter Vallone, Jr. (D-Queens), has a history of fighting against graffiti that has helped him make headlines, even scoring him a cameo on The Colbert Report. His first etching acid bill in 2006, which would have licensed the possession of etching acid, got much less support than this one.

“The mayor’s side was very opposed to that sort of regulation,” he said. “We were at an impasse for a long time.”

Then, while buying Sudafed at a drugstore across the street from his office, the clerk asked Vallone for identification.

“I thought, ‘Hey, this would be a good compromise with the administration,’” Vallone said. “Why not hand ID over and keep a log of the purchases of etching acid?”

The legislation passed 49-2, with only Council Members Melissa Mark Viverito (D-Manhattan) and Charles Barron (D-Brooklyn) voting no.

Mark-Viverito said she voted against the bill because she was worried about how the collected information would be accessed and used by police, she said.

“I am concerned about how this information could lead to overreaching on the part of the authorities as

they attempt to track down culprits,” she wrote in an e-mail.

Even this so-called compromise bill goes too far, said Robert Perry, legislative director of the New York Civil Liberties Union.

“We think it’s really misguided legislation,” he said. “It deputizes merchants to police the sale of etching acid, and mandates that these merchants collect in-store personal identification that is susceptible to unauthorized release and abuse.”

Under the legislation, the city will fine stores that do not collect the required information.

Perry said the bill was unlikely to deter vandals, who would quickly learn not to purchase etching acid in the neighborhood where they planned to use it.

“If you want to prevent subway graffiti, prosecute the defenders, identify the time and graffiti patterns and focus the law enforcement patterns,” he said. “That seems to me a reasonable approach, not setting up some kind of data collection obligation for merchants.”

Art stores and suppliers are already aware of the non-artistic uses of Armour Etch.

“If you look like you’re going to be up to no good, we try not to sell it,” said Rengel, the Pearl Paint store manager. “We bend over backwards to sell it to the right people.”

New York Central Art Supply stopped selling etching acid three years ago.

“When they find out you have it, they try to steal it,” said owner Steve Steinberg.

Even New Jersey-based Armour Products, the manufacturer of Armor Etch, has worked closely with the New York City Police Department to prevent graffiti, said Armour Products president Sydney St. James.

Gardega, the glass artist, said he had mixed feelings about the new legislation.

“I’m really on the fence about this because I’m very anti-nanny state,” he said. “But it’s really obnoxious and wrong to ruin someone’s window.”

—Corinne Ramey

“I’m really on the fence about this because I’m very anti-nanny state,” said artist Alex Gardega. “But it’s really obnoxious and wrong to ruin someone’s window.”

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CITY HALL

Classifieds CASEWORKER/ CONSTITUENT SERVICES LIAISON THE OFFICE OF US CONGRESSMAN JERROLD NADLER The Office of US Congressman Jerrold Nadler seeks a full-time Caseworker/Constituent Services Liaison for his Manhattan District Office.

Responsibilities include responding to constituent inquiries regarding public benefits, landlord/tenant and consumer issues; acting as the Congressman’s liaison to tenant associations and affordable housing advocacy groups; representing his interests and advising him on appropriate actions; and drafting testimony, correspondence and talking points. B.A. required. Excellent writing, interpersonal and problem-solving skills essential. Interest in and familiarity with social welfare policy and, in particular, governmentsubsidized/sponsored housing programs and rent regulation laws strongly preferred. Competitive salary and excellent benefits. Position reports to the Director of Constituent Services and begins immediately. Please fax or e-mail resume and cover letter to: “Caseworker/Constituent Services Liaison” at (212) 367-7356 or ny08job@mail. house.gov by June 1, 2009. NO PHONE CALLS PLEASE.

CHIEF OF STAFF NYS ASSEMBLY Assemblymember seeks innovative and highly motivated person to serve as Chief-of-Staff to manage all aspects of the District Office.

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MAY 25, 2009

Requirements include: excellent writing skills, experience in government, ability to work flexible hours, strong communication and organizational skills and ability to work well under pressure. Qualified candidates should submit a resume and cover letter to nysassemblycos@ gmail.com

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DIRECTOR THE OFFICE OF US CONGRESSMAN JERROLD NADLER The Office of US Congressman Jerrold Nadler seeks full-time Manhattan Director to serve as his principal community relations liaison for the Manhattan portion of his district. Responsibilities include: acting as the Congressman’s lead Manhattan liaison to community boards, organizations and governmental agencies; representing his interests and advising him on appropriate actions; writing and speaking on his behalf; serving as a member of the Senior Staff team and managing staff. B.A. or advanced degree required. Excellent written, verbal and interpersonal skills essential. Interest in urban policy, familiarity with NYC political environment, and background in land use issues preferred. Competitive salary and excellent benefits. Position reports to the District Director and begins immediately. Please fax or e-mail resume and cover letter to: “Manhattan Director” at (212) 367-7356 or ny08job@mail.house.gov by June 1, 2009. NO PHONE CALLS PLEASE.

ADVERTISING SALES EXECUTIVES CAPITOL PUBLISHING LLC Earn up to $80,000 in the first year representing City Hall and The Capitol, two fast-growing political newspapers that covers policy, politics and personalities in New York City and New York State government for government decision-makers and people who do business with government. Salary plus commission, health, 401k, dental, paid holidays and sick days.

Our awarding-winning group is looking for self-starters with outside sales experience, good communication skills, attention to detail and good computer skills. Knowledge of New York City and State politics a plus. Experience in newspaper real estate sales a strong plus.

To apply, please call Steven Blank at 212.894.5412 or email your resume and cover letter to sblank@manhattanmedia.com.

Payment: Check: Credit Card: Name on Card: Expiration Date Category: ❑ Help Wanted ❑ Employment Wanted ❑ Real Estate ❑ Business Opportunity Dates to Run:

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MAY 25, 2009

21

A Critical Moment In Environment, Health Care And 2009 Thinking

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City Hall: Has Congress been moving in a different direction since the ’08 election than what you expected?

AW: It’s been entirely different than I imagined. I would not have imagined that we would pass the $760 billion dollar economic stimulus bill without a single Republican vote. I just wouldn’t imagine that that would be the type of economic challenge that a country faces after a presidential election where, to some degree, there was a national decision to change direction. I wouldn’t think that, still, 45 percent of the Congress would say complete no. I was surprised, I’m still surprised that here we are, we are having a debate this week, starting actually this afternoon, on energy reform and energy independence, global climate change.

And the Republicans on the Energy and Commerce Committee said, “Not only are we not going to give a single vote, but we are going to do everything possible to make it impossible to have a vote on the bill.” They said they are going to ask that the entire 900-page bill be read before any amendments are offered. So that is a different environment than what I thought we were going to be in. You know, presidential elections I thought meant, to some degree, the national expression of our aspiration—and clearly every fight is going to be a tough one.

CH: What do you think the city needs to do to take advantage of what is going on in Washington with regards to clean fuel and green jobs?

AW: Think about the skill set that we have in New York City: we are a technological center, we are an economic and finance center, we are a creative center, we are an academic center. All of those things, all of those codes in the economic engine

are going to be firing with the necessity of figuring out a way to transition us. It is estimated that if we have a 25-percent improvement in our energy efficiency and how we create electricity, for example, that will create five million new jobs. That’s enormous, the amount of new jobs that were created with the Internet revolution. Particularly the model we are moving towards, which is this carpentry model, which is allowing the market place to decide how to allocate credits for energy efficiency. One thing we know in New York is markets.

CH: You’ve advocated for increased transparency in government through websites like MixedInk. How do we avoid getting bogged down with following every second of constituents’ responses?

AW: What you’re referring to is the fundamental discussion that’s going on about our democracy since its beginning. First of all, just let me clarify what Mixed Inc does. It doesn’t allow me and my staff to go through and pick out ideas. It allows readers to contribute what they want, other readers to rank the comments and the form of the positions, and then build upon it so you have something approaching consensus.

I think that health care is one of those issues that all of us have profound personal experiences dealing with it. Yes, there is some necessity for expertise, but I think health care is something we all look at through a lens of experience and can offer input. It’s particularly true in New York City, where so much of our economy is health care economy. You’ve got the biggest base of teaching hospitals here, you’ve got the largest public hospital center here. You have enormous numbers of small businesses here trying to provide insurance for their workers.

So I don’t find anything to fear.

ANDREW SCHWARTZ

ith anticipation at its height over whether or not he will enter the 2009 mayor’s race, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-Brooklyn/ Queens) was the featured speaker at the May 18 On/Off the Record breakfast held at City Hall restaurant. Among the topics: creating green jobs, improving health care, and how Weiner’s thoughts on running against Michael Bloomberg vary as he wakes up each morning.

CH: So when do you think we’ll see the “Weiner Healthcare Act of 2009” signed into law by the president?

AW: We’re going to try and get it out of

Comings and

preside over commission meetings and act as the commission’s sole spokesperson. She was recently appointed to the commission by Gov. David Paterson (D) to serve a term that expires March 31, 2013.

Former Chief Judge Judith Kaye was elected to be the new chair of the New York State Commission on Judicial Nomination. Kaye will

Former Brooklyn Council Member Ken Fisher has joined the law firm of Cozen O’Connor, a corporate and regulatory firm. Fisher once chaired the Council’s Land Use

Goings

Congress before the summer recess and we’re going to hopefully get it done by the end of the year.

CH: What makes you think you would be a better mayor than Michael Bloomberg?

AW: Well, look, I’ve also said throughout this process and, to some degree, we who are political insiders sometimes fail to recognize that a cigar is just a cigar, this really is what we’ve been talking about up to now. … So the combination of having a lot of work to do and just having a sense of fatigue, I felt that being in Washington doing my job was not only the right thing to do, subsequently, but I think it was the right thing to do politically. No one was coming up to me going, “You know, I wish you were doing two more campaign rallies and going to more Democratic clubs asking for endorsements.” They were saying, “How are you going to fix our health care system?”

Subcommittee on Landmarks, Public Siting and Maritime Uses. David Bronston has joined there as well.

Jamie van Bramer, candidate for Eric Gioia’s opening Council seat, has named Brian Fritsch as his campaign manager.

If you’d like to have something listed in Comings and Goings, E-mail your submission (with photos if possible) to editor@cityhallnews.com.

CH: You can’t be completely undecided all the time. You must be pulled in different directions about running depending on how it goes.

AW: Well, it’s a good question.

I think to some degree I have a similar firing of synapses that a lot of New Yorkers have. That they walk through their daily life like I do, like many of us do, and think, “You know what? If I were in charge, I would change A, B, or C. You know, if I were in charge, I would not be closing Broadway and converting all the traffic onto 7th Avenue starting next week.” I mean, now that’s just a regular New Yorker thinking about a thing we see and saying, “That ain’t so smart …” Now to some degree that’s the way the thinking goes on and I find myself thinking, “Now, are the things I’m trying to fix for my city in Washington, or are they here in New York City?” And in the past it hasn’t even been that close of a call. You know, being mayor, with a telephone call you can say, “You know what? I think it’s a crazy policy that we fingerprint women that are trying to get food stamps in this city, when no other major city does that!” It’s just wrong. It’s wrong because it criminalizes them and it’s also wrong because it requires a fundamental pitch point that makes it difficult for people to get food stamps in different places around the city, because they have to go get fingerprinted. Now, when you’re mayor, you pick up the phone and say, “We’re doing away with this regulation, we’re taking advantage of a waiver here that exists that every other mayor has taken advantage of and we’re getting rid of that.” But there are moments, this year and since the election, that so many of them are, boy, we can do, we can put a billion dollars for the cops program in the stimulus bill. We can repair the elevators for the public housing projects in the stimulus bill. We can get a revolving loan fund for builders to do energy efficiency things in the energy bill. We can save the New York City health economy in the health care bill, and these things are by and large in Washington. So that’s the thing that’s different. Just about whether everything I look at through the lens of the challenges we’re trying to face, you say New York is the better place to be? Or the better place to be is in Washington?

And day by day, to some degree, it changes, but I don’t go into this Zen-like place and speak to myself and see where I want to go. I’m thinking about how to solve the problems, and where the best place is to do that.

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MAY 25, 2009

Stopping By To Say Hello

background during a party at the Brooklyn home of Alex McCord and Simon van Kempen, two of the show’s stars.

McCord and van Kempen threw the party to celebrate their newly renovated brownstone and invited Markowitz, who apparently has a taste for “Bordello” red, the defining color of the couple’s new digs.

The Brooklyn Beep was not interviewed, but did appear to have a rather fancy drink in his hand.

Markowitz joins Gov. David Paterson (D) and former Gov. Eliot Spitzer (D) on the list of New York politicos who have made cameos on the show, though— uncharacteristically for the Beep—he did so with considerably less fanfare.

ANDREW SCHWARTZ

So Easy A 12-Year-Old Can Use It … And Did

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton returned to New York to receive the Barnard Medal of Distinction and address graduates of the college May 18. Clinton urged the outgoing students to all join her in her diplomatic work by using the connectivity of the Internet to become “special envoys” for idealistic causes that help women worldwide. “No matter what you’re doing, you can be a citizen activist and a citizen diplomat,” she said.

No Democratic Ticket—Yet Rep. Charles Rangel (D-Manhattan) gathered his three picks for citywide office in Windows on Harlem, on the third floor of the Harlem State Office building May 16. But while Comptroller

Bill Thompson (D), who is running for mayor, Council Member John Liu (DQueens), who is running for comptroller, and Council Member Bill de Blasio (D-Brooklyn), who is running for public advocate, looked like the kind of multiethnic tableau that political consultants like to dream up when talking about tickets, they resisted the idea that their joint appearance to collect Rangel’s endorsement was the start of a collective

CITY HALL

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effort for their nominations.

Rangel pled ignorance as well.

“I don’t know, and I didn’t ask,” he said.

“I think we’re here to be endorsed,” Thompson said, while Liu and de Blasio stood on the other side of Rangel, careful not to make any indication either way.

Rangel stepped back in to save them from the moment.

“Let’s leave that alone,” Rangel said. “Hey, they got their own platforms, they got their own things to do.

I wouldn’t dare ask, and I would not want anyone to ask me. And we’re just so privileged that they accepted.”

Marty’s Reality TV Debut Add Marty Markowitz (D) to the list of New York politicians who have had their reality television debut on the Bravo show Real Housewives of New York City.

Markowitz, the Brooklyn Borough President, could be seen on an April 28 episode of the show milling around in the

Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s emergency alert pilot program, Notify NYC, is going citywide this month, and one of its key features is usability.

Anyone can sign up to receive alerts on their cell phones, home phones or in their inboxes about emergencies or changes to city services.

All the system requires is a name and contact information, and residents can sign up online. Which is exactly what one precocious 12-year-old apparently did.

Catherine McVay Hughes, the vicechair of Community Board 1, joined Bloomberg and members of the City Council for the May 18 announcement at Battery Park, and mentioned that the system was so easy to use, her son had signed up online.

Bloomberg quickly stressed that it was perhaps out of the ordinary.

“This 12-year-old happens to be brilliant,” he joked, to some laughter.

The line prompted a serious question about whether children should be allowed to use cell phones in schools, which the mayor opposes. Bloomberg promptly dismissed the reporter and moved on.

No word on which alerts the 12-yearold signed up for, though as speculation in the crowd had it, “school closings” was a likely candidate for first on the list.

Schumer Loves The Smell Of Sheepshead Bay In The Morning Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-Brooklyn/ Queens) and Sen. Charles Schumer (D) were in good spirits May 8, when news broke that they had finally been successful in their petitions to reopen the Statue of Liberty crown.

Perhaps it was something in the air— at least for Schumer who smiled wide as he took the podium for their press conference on the water’s edge in Battery Park.

“Smells good. Smells like Sheepshead Bay,” the senior senator said, breathing in the briny air. “The ultimate compliment.”

Paterson Helps Duane With His Diet How many calories are in a double

cheeseburger, piece of carrot cake or a fried chicken sandwich?

This was the question posed recently

by Gov. David Paterson (D) at a Capitol press conference rolling out his plan to post the caloric values of menu items at restaurants statewide.

Standing next to a poster bearing the greasy looking items, State Health Commissioner Richard Daines ripped pieces of cardboard off revealing the answers.

By far the most calories were in the piece of carrot cake, which had more calories than the other two items combined.

“1,500 calories!” exclaimed Paterson.

“Even though it’s a vegetable! Sen. [Tom] Duane [D-Manhattan] is standing here in stunned disbelief!”

“This bill will be very much of a help to me in continuing to lose my ‘Senate weight,’” Duane commented, joking about the pounds he has put on since first heading to Albany 10 years ago.

Stringer’s Challenger Does Not Want The Job Determined not to leave Borough President Scott Stringer (D-Manhattan) unchallenged, local GOP stalwart David Casavis said he has filed with the city’s Campaign Finance Board to run against the incumbent this November.

Unlike other Manhattan GOP candidates, Casavis will be more than a name on the ballot, even if he has only one campaign message: to eliminate the office of the borough president.

“The only person who can do this is me; the only one willing to say, ‘That’s it.

Enough,’” said Casavis.

Casavis, who ran against Assembly Member Jonathan Bing [D-Manhattan] last year, said eliminating all five borough president offices will be his sole goal.

“If I can get elected, it is one step in getting rid of this job,” Casavis explained.

Casavis will follow in the footsteps of 2005 Republican borough president candidate Barry Popik, who received nearly 41,000 votes against Stringer’s 200,152. Popik also ran on a platform of eliminating the Manhattan borough president position.

“There’s no purpose,” Casavis said.

“It’s having a captain of the ship with no ship.”

—by Chris Bragg, Edward-Isaac Dovere, Sal Gentile and Dan Rivoli

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: Principal Principles s president of the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators (CSA), Ernest Logan represents the interests of over 6,100 principals, assistant principals and other administrators in New York City schools. That has made Logan a key figure in the debate over mayoral control. Sitting in his office at 16 Court Street, Logan discussed the fourthgrade teacher who inspired him to become an educator, how his unions’ interests differ from those of the United Federation of Teachers and what he thinks of Chancellor Joel Klein.

What follows is an edited transcript.

A

this, and vouching for the scores, independent, then there would be no discussion. Because no matter what [the mayor’s office] comes up with, people are always spinning it the other way. That’s the problem: It takes our focus off of what we are really doing. Can we focus on educating kids, and then you get the other crap out of the way?

That’s what we’re not getting.

ANDREW SCHWARTZ

CH: How are the interests of your union different from those of the United Federation of Teachers?

EL: Boy, oh boy. I truly believe as a core value that it’s first about the children in our city. Not truly about City Hall: Growing up, was education the adults. I am also a union leader something that was stressed in your and I understand that my members’ household? interests are important because Ernest Logan: I was born in Harlem, raised in the projects of East New York. CSA President Ernest Logan is pushing for different reforms on mayoral control. that’s why they elected me. But I’ve said to my members, “When I’m number 11 of 13 children. My father died when I was eight years old, and my mother was left to a lot more autonomy. But they also seem to have a lot the children of this city do well, we can do well.” I can’t raise quite a few children on her own. My father insisted more work sent to them that used to be done by other speak to whether the UFT always has had that or not. I always on an education for his children. He had a college people. Before, part of the resources in the schools were know sometimes, being very honest, that some people degree from the South, in the early 1900s. When he came provided by the superintendents in the district office. are not ready to make the change that we’ve made to here, he worked as a bellman, as an elevator operator. That does not exist anymore. Everything is pushed onto really hold people accountable. Some of my members, He never really had a chance to practice his bachelor’s the school. So whether it’s an issue about facilities, or when they really push an educational agenda, they are in engineering, as a trained engineer. I was really the first school lunches, that is all there at the school level. So attacked. And sometimes, totally unfairly. But I would in my family, number eleven, to get a college degree. I that then takes the principal and his team away from the never question someone else’s motivations. was a project kid, growing up on government assistance. focus on education.

CH: What do you think about this debate revolving And back in the day, you didn’t go to the supermarket so much around Joel Klein? and buy food like everybody else. You stood in a line and CH: So what kinds of changes would you like to see? you got surplus. That’s what they did. It was humiliating: EL: I need to have the community school superintendents EL: Again, they made it about personality, instead of what’s You stood there, they gave you cheese and flower and back in their districts doing their statutory duties and best for the system. Look, I don’t always agree with Joel dried milk. Part of my role as one of the kids, I had to responsibilities. If you need it as a school, fine, if you Klein. I know that he is totally driven sometimes, in the go get the food. And kids going to school would see me don’t need it, that’s fine also. But you need to know that stuff that he is doing. If he would just stop and take pause, he would not have as many problems as he has. But that standing in line with a shopping cart, and I used to say to it’s there. you’re driven—and I’m probably accused of that—but my mother, “Boy, this is so embarrassing.” And she said, when you push towards something, when you see that this “Other people are doing it also. But you know what? This CH: You’re also supportive of the mayoral control? is how you move through it at this point. If you want to EL: Absolutely. I believe that the mayor should be allowed is the way you want to go, sometimes you would knock to appoint the majority of panel members. I talk about down trains to get there. The problem that he has is that be better, then you’ve got to go to school.” seven [as opposed to nine currently]. And then there he is so driven that sometimes he’s not as thoughtful in considering what other people think. And, would be one from each borough CH: How did you decide to become a teacher?

I think he believes that if he stops to listen to EL: My fourth-grade teacher, who I stay in contact with president and one from the City them—to take time for all of what they have to right now, encouraged me to go into teaching. What’s Council. Seven and six. They say—he’s still going to get to the same place. unique is that this June, it will be 40 years since I spoke would have a fixed term. The term But he just doesn’t want to take the detour. And at my elementary school. I was on my way to college and would not last past the person that I’m a firm believer in stopping to listen. my elementary school teacher asked me to come back appointed them. It would allow and speak. And now the principal of the school asked for conversations to occur that we CH: You are president of a union full me to come back and speak at this year’s graduation. It’s didn’t get last time. So you would of principals, people generally used to a story. It’s a story of a project kid that can do well in now have an opportunity for the running the show. Is that a difficult group this city, which is why I don’t allow anyone to give me mayor to explain to people what to coordinate? excuses about how we can’t educate kids in this city. you’re doing.

EL: It is probably the most invigorating position My members or anyone else. Because we can educate CH: Do you believe the high test scores that the to ever have. Because you know you don’t always have anyone in this city that we choose to. the answers. That’s why you have to talk to people. mayor’s office released were valid?

CH: At various points, you have been a teacher, a EL: The scores that came out? They’re phenomenal. Leadership is not about knowing it all. Leadership is curriculum writer, an education administrator and Now, I’m going to be very selfish: My members are going about listening to other people, filtering out what’s an assistant principal. How was it different working to do extremely well, because they have a performance best, finding the common piece, setting up your vision in those jobs under the old system, versus under matrix. I’m happy. My members are making money. But and then going forward, bringing people to understand if you ask me, “Do I believe in those scores?” I just say, your vision. There are people on the left, people on the mayoral control?

EL: As a teacher, as an education administrator, you “I have no idea.” Because I can’t tell you exactly what right, people who are in the middle. There will always be probably don’t notice it as much. As an assistant those scores show. I don’t have the ability to say, “Well, someone who doesn’t particularly like something. But principal, you realize there were a lot of other influences these are really what the scores are, or these really they’ll understand why we’re doing it. on what was happening in schools, school board aren’t what the scores are.” I can only tell what other —Chris Bragg influences. Today, my members say, yes, that they have people have given me. And if somebody was looking at cbragg@cityhallnews.com

“I believe that the panel should allow the mayor to appoint the majority of members.”

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MIKE BLOOMBERG’S FIVE BOROUGH PLAN New York City Firefighters do more than just respond to fires. Firefighters are the first responders for all New Yorkers. Whenever disaster strikes, be it natural or man-made New York City Firefighters will be there to answer the call.

But We Can’t Respond From Closed Firehouses!

According to the City of New York, the FDNY has just completed four consecutive years that were the busiest in its 140-year history, including 437,335 Emergency Responses in 2008.

What will happen to our communities in all 5-boroughs after Mayor Bloomberg closes another 16 fire companies on top of the 7 he already shut? One was just closed in January; 4 more will close in July; and 12 more will cease operations following Election Day.

These Communities Have Already Lost Their Firehouses: MANHATTAN:

BRONX:

BROOKLYN:

Harlem City Island Governors Island South Street Seaport

QUEENS:

Bedford Stuyvesant Long Island City Cobble Hill Williamsburg Sunset Park

STATEN ISLAND: South Beach

Bushwick

ACCORDING TO THE FDNY’S CRITERIA FOR CLOSURES THESE COMMUNITIES COULD BE NEXT: MANHATTAN: Tribeca East Village Chinatown Murray Hill Harlem Upper West Side Washington Heights East Harlem Midtown Upper East Side

BRONX: Throgs Neck Hunts Point Bathgate Riverdale Melrose Soundview Williamsbridge Tremont Section Fordham Mott Haven

BROOKLYN: Borough Park Marine Park Park Slope Bensonhurst Canarsie Midwood East New York Brownsville Red Hook Crown Heights

QUEENS: STATEN ISLAND: Flushing West Brighton Jamaica Stapleton St. Albans Port Richmond Whitestone Great Kills Woodside Tottenville Rockaway Parkhill Far Rockaway Rossville Long Island City New Springville Queens Village Annadale Springfield Gardens Prince’s Bay

Mayor Bloomberg: This is Not About Having a Fire House on Every Corner, but About Keeping Existing Neighborhood Fire Houses Open!

For more information visit: Uniformed Firefighters Association

WWW.UFANYC.ORG