City Hall - June 20, 2011 by City Hall News

BILL THOMPSON, below, spies an opening in 2013 (Page 6), CITY PARK ENFORCEMENT is out of whack (Page 10)

Vol. 5, No. 12

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June 20, 2011

and ROBERT LIMANDRI, left, above, is braced for a labor standoff (Page 23).

Out Of The Picture What the 2013 mayor's race looks like without Anthony Weiner pg. 12

UPFRONT

A Sterne Look City’s rookie chief digital officer charts new course

achel Sterne, the city’s freshfaced chief digital officer, joined the Bloomberg administration five months ago and already has big plans for the city’s digital future. The city unveiled a digital road map last month, and Sterne shared with City Hall how she’ll reach its goals.

around: How is the user using the website? We’re going to use common information about search terms and search queries and the paths people use. Really, when you look at something like 311, which has been so pivotal in revolutionizing the customer-service experience of navigating New York City government, it’s going to be more and more in line with that concept.

What is your mission? Our mission really is to improve the way the government interacts and serves and engages New Yorkers, using digital technology. The first step in shaping that strategy, and in building on the foundations that the city already has, is to conduct this assessment that grew into a road map for the digital city, which had three parts: first, looking at where are we today; then, saying where can we improve; and finally, what’s our plan to get there?

$43,623

What will a revamped nyc.gov look like? Essentially it would be more driven by user search. It’s all geared

2002

How much power do you have? It is a mayoral priority, and that is a great driving factor in terms of supporting and driving more participation. This is happening across the country, and at every level of government. People are realizing that the way the people communicate with one ANDREW SCHWARTZ another, and get and find and share information, is completely changing. It’s inevitable that as a responsive, effective government we need to be recognizing that. The interest in

digital is almost the opposite. It’s being able to manage all the incoming queries, and every day there’s more agencies wondering strategically: How should we launch our presence? How can we develop new tools or smart phone applications?—and things like that. What is the role of social media? It’s these third-party platforms, especially as there’s this real-time appetite for content and information, so these platforms allow you to be more nimble. Bringing these other platforms up to speed, and making them more dynamic in real time, is a long-term strategy. —Jon Lentz jlentz@cityhallnews.com

New York City Budget (in millions)

$120,000

New York City’s spending has risen 60 percent in a decade, but its debt has shot up 90 percent.

$100,729 $92,618

Outstanding Debt $70,490 $61,326

$63,454

$74,584

$85,567

$68,038

$47,042

$51,830

$53,141

$70,047

$63,416

$62,887

$60,560

$44,240

$90,000

$77,833

$67,690

$55,340

$105,145

$60,000

$56,100

$30,000

Annual Operating Expenditure

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

Source: Citizens Budget Commission

Calendar (June 20–July 17) President Obama and Whoopi Goldberg host Sister Act fund-raiser (June 23)

Manhattan Democratic Chair/Assemblyman Keith Wright hosts Harlem gay pride event

NYC Director of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability David Bragdon’s birthday

Councilman Brad Lander’s birthday

Fund-raiser for potential mayoral candidate Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries Independence Day holiday

City Council stated meeting

Fund-raiser for Councilwoman Jessica Lappin

Assemblyman Michael DenDekker’s birthday

Former Bloomberg operations chief Jeff Kay’s birthday

Deadline for new city budget Brooklyn Federal Court status hearing for indicted former Sen. Pedro Espada

Mayoral candidate Bill Thompson’s birthday

20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

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UPFRONT

So Long, Old Foe… Weiner’s exit removes a thorn in Bloomberg’s side, and a sparring partner

ayor Michael Bloomberg and Anthony Weiner’s yearslong war of words likely won’t completely end with the disgraced congressman’s resignation last week. But it will certainly dry up for the time being. What better time, then, to remember the best jibes, quips and below-the-belt zingers in Bloomberg-vs.-Weiner history? Bloomberg on Weiner’s arguments against congestion pricing, Feb. 25, 2008: “He was opposed to it before he even heard what it was about. I assume he won’t remain a candidate with that kind— with that in-depth analysis for very long.” Bloomberg on Weiner’s arguments

against congestion pricing, March 19, 2008: “Forget the fact that he’s one of the congressmen who’s supposed to get the money for us. The Democrats control— his party controls Congress—what’s he talking about? Number two, by that argument, we should cut all the taxes, which some people would like, and then just sit here and wait to give us all the money back. Are you kidding? It’s insanity.” Weiner on Bloomberg extending term limits, Oct. 15, 2008: “Never again can the speaker and the mayor talk about their desire to reform government, talk about their desire to get backroom deals out of City Hall, when this has become the mother of all back-

room deals. I think this debate is going to be the lead Wikipedia citation of both Mike Bloomberg and Christine Quinn if they keep going on their path.” Weiner, in a speech at Citizens Union breakfast, Jan. 12, 2009: Bloomberg “seems to be controlled by the elite and the powerful,” and the deal that gave him the right to seek a third term was the product of “the business elite, together with major publishers, who became virtual arms of City Hall.” Bloomberg responds later that day, Jan 12, 2009: “If you want to waste your question, you’ve just done it.... The answer is, I’ve got to worry about the next 350-odd days and I’m not going to respond.… I’ve got enough things to read. I’ve got a pile on my desk this big [gestures indicating quantity] every day.” Weiner reflects on the race he skipped, Feb. 4, 2010: “I would have beaten him like a rented mule.”

Bad-News Aides

The City Council softball team swings for the fences

ot all city-government softball teams are created equal. The Human Resources Administration’s Metros, for instance, were a clear favorite to win last week’s Wednesday league game against the City Council Central Staffers—even before the game started. The Metros had shiny navy uniforms with yellow lettering. They had cleats. The City Council Central Staff team, while certainly not lacking in spirit, were all clad in their own tees and sneakers with Yankees caps sprinkled among team members. There was nary a piece of Mets paraphernalia in sight. Council Staffers team leader Nivardo Lopez looked through the chain link in Brooklyn’s McCarren Park at the Metros, warming up with an intimidating clapping chant. “Supposedly they’re good,” he said. “This looks pretty serious.” In a city where the Bloomberg administration operates with incredible

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power and the City Council has limited resources to fight back, even a friendly softball game among the young and enthusiastic foot soldiers of government can be freighted with significance. Lopez and Joe Mero, another Council Staffer, organize more than a dozen people every Wednesday for what has proven to be an uphill battle in this season’s league play. They claim they “killed” against the Department of Finance in early June, though that was one shining moment in what had been a 1–3 season. It was about to get worse. In the first inning, the Metros and their team captain, Juan Ripoll, lived up to their looks. The Council was fielding, and the Metros hit three runs—one grounder past third and two long balls that sailed past the agreed-upon field edges into a neighboring game. Were the Metros doping? At the bottom of the first, the Council Staffers batted three times, and were out just as quickly.

EDITORIAL Editor: Adam Lisberg alisberg@cityhallnews.com Managing Editor: Andrew J. Hawkins ahawkins@cityhallnews.com Reporters: Chris Bragg cbragg@cityhallnews.com Laura Nahmias lnahmias@cityhallnews.com Jon Lentz jlentz@cityhallnews.com Photography Editor: Andrew Schwartz Intern: Jeff Jacobson

“Just concentrate on chipping away!” Mero shouted. The best players were Jonathan Chung, chief of staff to Councilman Peter Vallone—“good arm, good at grounders,” said one teammate—and Anthony Brito, a financial analyst for the Council. “This is the wrong game for you to be writing about,” said Bret Collazzi, deputy chief of staff to Councilman Jimmy Vacca, doubling as pitcher. “You’re going to make us look bad.” The Council is led by a woman, and is

Weiner, at a private Gracie Mansion dinner with Bloomberg, according to The New York Times, June 2010: “When I become mayor, you know what I’m going to spend my first year doing? I’m going to have a bunch of ribbon cuttings tearing out your f---ing bike lanes.” Bloomberg watches the scandal unfold, according to The New York Post, June 7, 2011: “Notice, nobody’s defended Anthony. Like Spitzer, he had no friends.” Bloomberg, at the New York Press Club, June 13, 2011: “And who could forget [Press Club president Glenn Schuck’s] performance as the Naked Cowboy at the Inner Circle show a couple of years ago? It’s a great example of how posing with your shirt off doesn’t necessarily hurt your chances for reelection.”

known for its aggressive attention to promoting equal rights. Inexplicably, however, the game’s overseers decided to keep a runaway game on track by limiting at-bats to “two or three for girls.” Three or four women show up to play on a typical day; the women there were naturally offended. It didn’t really matter. The game limped along, past the official 8 p.m. ANDREW SCHWARTZ deadline, when they were supposed to relinquish the field, but most of the staffers on both teams live in the outer boroughs and felt no need to rush home. The score was trending for another unflattering finish, but the Council Staffers didn’t seem upset about it. “We play from April to August,” said Lopez, as the other players chewed sunflower seeds and looked toward the sun setting over the East River. “Plus we get that nice breeze off the water.” —Laura Nahmias lnahmias@cityhallnews.com

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Andrew SchwArtz

cases the attorney general clears such proposed sales, and his recommendations carry significant weight in court. Terry Lynam, a spokesman for North Shore–LIJ, declined to comment about the potential involvement of the AG’s office, but noted that opponents were being unrealistic, as no one else had come forward to replace the hospital. “Certainly we recognize that many of the local residents there are upset about the fact that a hospital that has been in their community 160 years is closing,” Lynam said. “What they’re advocating is all or nothing. The costs of establishing a new, full-service hospital [are] totally prohibitive. It’s never going to happen.” The plans include a 24-hour smallerscale health center, which would have no hospital beds but would serve an estimated 30,000 emergency patients a year. St. Vincent’s Hospital served 50,000 to 60,000 emergency patients a year. “It’s just terrible health policy, and it’s terrible preparedness policy, not to have a full-fledged ER with hospital support on the West Side of Manhattan below 60th Street,” said former City Councilman Alan Gerson.

St. Vincent’s Hospital closed last year, but Attorney General Eric Schneiderman still may weigh in on its sale.

Losing St. Vincent’s Coalition looks to attorney general for a full-scale hospital in Greenwich Village By Jon Lentz

n early June, a small band of activists strode through the ornate marble entryway of the Equitable Building to deliver a message to Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who they say is their best chance for reviving a fullservice hospital at the site of the former St. Vincent’s Hospital. To bolster their case, they brought a bundle of more than 7,500 petitions from local residents opposed to the current replacement plan, a joint proposal from Rudin Management and North Shore– Long Island Jewish Health System for luxury housing and a smaller emergencycare center at the site. “We’re hoping that the attorney general, who has come out in support of having a hospital on the Lower West Side of Manhattan, will use this as [the] opportunity he needs to stand up to the powerful real estate lobby, [that] has been pushing forward with this Rudin deal, that would in essence put luxury condominiums on what we believe to be public assets, namely a not-for-profit charitable hospital,” said Yetta Kurland, a civil rights attorney. St. Vincent’s closed its doors in April 2010 after its board, unable to deal with

JUNE 20, 2011

more than $1 billion of debt, filed for bankruptcy. A year later, a federal bankruptcy judge approved the sale of the campus to Rudin and North Shore–LIJ. Even if the odds are against them, Kurland and a half-dozen fellow activists are spearheading a last-ditch effort to convince Schneiderman to take up their cause. Kurland declined to comment on communication between her coalition and the attorney general’s office, but said she is cautiously hopeful he will intervene. A spokesman for the attorney general’s office declined to comment. The potential role of the attorney general stems from the state’s unusually strong not-for-profit corporation law, which requires an opinion from the AG’s office on the sale of a large portion of real estate by a charitable institution. The office weighs whether a sale continues an institution’s charitable mission, and whether the price is fair. The sale must also be cleared by the State Supreme Court. In 1999, for example, then Attorney General Eliot Spitzer argued that the sale of the Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital to a real estate developer should not go forward. The court ultimately agreed with Spitzer.

But the same situation may not apply to St. Vincent’s. “It always depends on the circumstances of what’s going on in a particular case, as to whether there will be some issue under the law,” said Scott Himes, an attorney who represented hospital physicians in the 1999 case. “Typically there’s not. In the case we did ten years ago, there was an issue. What we had years ago was unusual, and the circumstances were extreme.” Unlike the 1999 case, this one involves a federal bankruptcy ruling, which means federal bankruptcy court could have oversight over any final approval instead of the state court. Additionally, the case centers on a hospital that has already closed down, which further limits any potential intervention. As a result, it is unclear whether Schneiderman is still obligated to issue an opinion on the sale of property at the St. Vincent’s site. But Kurland said the attorney general still must take a side. “The bankruptcy court actions in no way increase or decrease the obligations to act on behalf of the public,” she said. “What it does do is potentially call into question whether or not the action happens in New York Supreme Court or whether the determination is made in bankruptcy court.” If Schneiderman does issue an opinion, the odds are also against him siding with the opponents of the Rudin plan. In most

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“The costs of establishing a new, fullservice hospital [are] totally prohibitive. It’s never going to happen.” “When you think about it, that’s just crazy.” The fight comes as emergency rooms are shutting down in New York City, raising concerns about longer waits and larger demands on patients. The decline in the city mirrors a broader nationwide trend. The number of hospital emergency departments in urban and suburban areas fell by more than a quarter between 1990 and 2009, a recent study in The Journal of the American Medical Association found. Dr. David Seaberg, president-elect of the American College of Emergency Physicians, said the biggest problem with the plan to replace St. Vincent’s with a new comprehensive-care center is the loss of hospital beds. Another controversial aspect of the new plan is that some patients will have to be stabilized and shipped to other hospitals for treatment for more serious conditions like heart attacks, which could add to the time lag and further harm patients’ health. But Seaberg said any time delay is less of a concern, thanks to lifesaving drugs that stabilize patients, and agreements to transfer patients to full-scale hospitals. “The citizens of New York will still get excellent emergency care,” Dr. Seaberg said. “That’s not going to be the problem. But taking beds out of the system— unless there’s ways to deal with that, it can impact the health of individuals.” jlentz@cityhallnews.com

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Breach Of Contract

assistance on M/WBE proposals, more feedback on failed bids, help obtaining performance bonds on construction projects, and new short-term loans and mentorship programs. The city is also requiring city agencies to post all solicitations to the online City Record. “I’ve seen the proposal, and I think it’s actually pretty good,” Williams said. “ParticIn 2007, just 1.3 percent of the city’s ularly the focus on fixing the problem with contract spending was awarded to M/ the bonding, the workshops; making sure WBEs. That figure rose to 4.6 percent in that vendors are meeting, and bidders are 2009 but fell back to 3 percent in 2010. meeting, the agencies that have this money; The city’s Department of Small Busimaking sure they clearly underness Services (SBS), which overstand the process and why they sees the M/WBE program, is only (as a percentage of total government-contract dollars) did not get the funding.” responsible for contracts under $1 New York State New York City New York City Other steps aim to demand million. The share of spending on (total) (contracts under $1 million) more accountability from city the smaller contracts going to M/ 2001 7.3% agencies and prime contracWBEs rose from 8.1 percent in 2007 2002 7.4% tors, which subcontract with to 12.4 percent a year ago. 5.0% smaller M/WBE firms. Agency An SBS spokeswoman said that the 2003 5.0% staff will undergo training first few years were spent developing 2004 5.1% and meet more often with and staffing the program, and that 2005 M/WBE firms, and contrac2011 is the first year out of the ramp-up 2006 3.9% tors will be required to phase. Results were also better in areas 2007 1.3%* 8.1%* 6.7% certify they are meeting their where the city had more flexibility and 2008 1.9% 8.1% 7.7% M/WBE goals, or face tougher discretion to award contracts, the 2009 4.6% 10.2% 9.2% consequences. spokeswoman said. 2010 3.0% 12.4% 10.3% Len Britton, managing Yet critics point out that the figures director of the New York are still nowhere close to matching the * First year of city’s M/WBE program SOURCES: NYC DEPARTMENT OF SMALL BUSINESS SERVICES, NYS EMPIRE STATE DEVELOPMENT State Association of Minority diversity of the city, which has a population that is more than half minority citizens. skills and talents that we have,” Liu said Contractors, applauded the initiatives, Whites make up 44.7 percent of the city’s in an email. “It represents a continuing which have been successful elsewhere. “It’s a very useful tool to develop and residents, according to recent census figures. systematic bias in the way we do business.” But even some opponents say the improve minority businesses,” Britton said. “We’ve gone from the place where we needed to shock the heart of the patient Bloomberg administration’s new initiatives, “Give it some time, and then you’ll know the success of it. Let’s give it a chance.” to now, [where] the patient has a weak announced in late May, could change that. jlentz@cityhallnews.com Bloomberg’s latest steps include more pulse,” said Councilman James Sanders,

City takes steps to boost minority and women contracting amid sharp criticism BY JON LENTZ

o City Councilman Jumaane Williams, the city’s plans to better help minority and female business owners get city contracts look pretty good. But Williams said he felt just as upbeat about New York’s minority- and womenowned business enterprise (M/WBE) program when it was getting off the ground five years ago—and now he says that those results have been “abysmal.” “I think it is a great step forward, but I also thought that Local Law 129 was a great step forward,” Williams said of the legislation behind the city’s M/WBE program. “People didn’t follow that, and there were no consequences.” As Mayor Michael Bloomberg makes another push to spur diversity in city contracting, his record of results has critics skeptical of how much will change. “I think they’re trying to step it up a little bit because there’s so much focus on the paucity of M/WBEs that get contracts with New York,” City Councilwoman Letitia James said of the Bloomberg administration. “It’s a small step forward at the end of his administration.”

who sponsored the 2005 M/WBE law. “But if you’re remembering that this is a city that is 80 percent women and people of color, then we are not ready yet to call a victory.” One of the toughest critics has been City Comptroller John Liu, who has issued a stream of critical reports and posted an online M/WBE report card tracking the city’s progress. Liu said that the $400 million in M/WBE contracts was a tiny fraction of the city’s more than $18 billion total in 2010. “To me, that in no way represents the

M/WBE Contracts

GETTING INVOLVED IN PUBLIC CONSTRUCTION

3rd Annual Special Forum Featuring Construction Opportunities On New York’s Largest Public Construction and Development Projects Thursday, June 23, 2011 | 8:30 am – 10:30 am SHERATON | 811 SEVENTH AVENUE | NEW YORK, NY 10019

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FEATURING OFFICIALS FROM:

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City of New York Deputy Mayor for Operations

For more information, contact: Richard Weiss at 212-452-9427 or Joe Cestaro at (212) 452-9303 or by email at jcestaro@gnylecet.net Please RSVP to: Joel Park at (212) 450-7300 or by email at jpark@bermangrp.com REGISTRATION IS COMPLIMENTARY Greater New York LECET is a jointly managed trust fund for the Mason Tenders District Council and its 1500 signatory contractors. Our mission is to generate business opportunities for union contractors and job opportunities for LIUNA members. To accomplish its mission, Greater New York LECET focuses its resources and efforts in four key areas: Research & Business Development, Industry Promotion, Legislative & Government Affairs and Responsible & Fair Contracting.

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JUNE 20, 2011

Lessons in inequality

Back In The Game Bill Thompson is back for some unfinished business

By Michael Mulgrew President of the United Federation of Teachers

By AdAm LisBerg

Six decades after the landmark Supreme Court ruling on educational equality, Brown v. Board of Education, it is outrageous that thousands of New York City children get a graphic lesson in inequality every day when they walk through the doors of their schools. These are students – from Harlem to Brooklyn, from the South Bronx to Manhattan’s East Village -- who attend co-located schools in buildings where a district school is housed alongside a charter school. In too many cases, there are smart boards, freshly painted walls and small class sizes in the charter school while in the public school there are broken blackboards, crumbling facilities and overcrowded classrooms. Separate and unequal. In some cases, charter students get disproportionate access to shared facilities like the cafeteria or the gym. In one case in Brooklyn, parents at PS 9 raised funds to have a library built and then watched as the Department of Education proposed co-locating a charter school in their building and giving the 160 charter students 6.75 hours in the library per week while the 550 to 610 PS 9 students were to get 4.75 hours. It is not the charter schools that are to blame for this injustice, but the DOE. It is the DOE that comes up with co-location plans and it is the DOE that is responsible for making sure those plans are fair and in compliance with the state’s charter law, which requires an “equitable allocation” of shared facilities. It is the DOE that is fostering inequality in our school system, directly harming children’s education. That is why the UFT, the NAACP and others sued the DOE to end the practice of co-locations that treat district school students as secondclass citizens. Our lawsuit also seeks to stop the closing of 22 schools because again, the issue at stake is equality for our city’s most vulnerable students. Fifteen of the 22 schools were on the list of closing schools last year as well, and after we sued to stop their closure in 2010, we worked with the DOE to come up with a plan to provide extra support to these struggling schools. But the DOE walked away from every promise it made to these schools and never provid-

ed any of the help it said it would. Instead, it cynically declared the schools were performing poorly and moved to close them again in 2011. It’s another lesson in inequality. These are schools with large numbers of high-needs learners and some of the most disadvantaged students in our city. These students are as entitled to an education as any other students, yet the DOE refuses to provide the resources and support needed to teach them, and instead moves to close their schools and push them further to the margins. Universal public education is one of the foundations of a democratic society, an idea pioneered by Americans in the last century and under attack now by “reformers” who think education should be run as a competitive marketplace rather than treated as a universal right. That is why we, as educators, fight for educational equality — we fight for all of our students and all of the children of our city. It is why we are fighting for all children to have equal access to school facilities and why we are fighting to stop the DOE from simply abandoning struggling schools and disadvantaged students. It is why we care not just about teacher layoffs that would devastate education inside the classroom, but also about child care cuts that would push already struggling families into crisis; why we think closing libraries is bad and giving another tax break to the rich is unconscionable. It’s why 20,000 people turned out on May 12 to protest the mayor’s budget and why we will continue to do whatever it takes to pass a city budget that’s fair to all of our students and the citizens of our city.

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JUNE 20, 2011

eople have a history of not believing what Bill Thompson says. Two years ago the political know-it-alls smiled politely when Thompson pursued what looked like political suicide by challenging Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s reelection machine. Even as pundits called it hopeless, Thompson insisted there was a groundswell of New Yorkers angry about tax hikes, school changes and term limits. He turned out to be right, shocking the city by coming within five points of unseating Bloomberg. Soon after his loss, Thompson said he was ready for another try. Then he went silent for more than a year—raising questions about whether he really had the fight for another campaign—as rivals raised money and marched in parades. Now, Thompson says, he’s back, and in the running again. “I’ve been moving around. I haven’t sat idle,” he said. “I’ve been talking to New Yorkers, looking at the problems all over New York City.” He has been popping up at civic groups and political dinners unannounced. He has held small fund-raising events to start replenishing an empty campaign account. And he recently appeared at a rally with firefighters protesting Bloomberg’s planned closure of 20 fire companies. “One of the things I need to do a better job of right now is that when I do things, to notify a few people in the press,” Thompson said. “I haven’t been invisible.” After his 2009 loss, then Gov. David Paterson named Thompson chairman of the Battery Park City Authority, an unpaid post that kept him active in city affairs. He brought along three key aides—former deputy comptrollers Gayle Horwitz and Phyllis Taylor, as well as former campaign spokeswoman Anne Fenton. Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who endorsed Thompson in 2009, appointed him this month to chair a state commission to study judges’ pay. And after eight years on a government salary as city comptroller, Thompson was hired to be chief administrative officer for the investment bank Siebert Brandford Shank—earning him a private-sector paycheck. It was a comfortable existence. And while rivals like Comptroller John Liu and Public Advocate Bill de Blasio were attacking Bloomberg policies and hitting every Democratic club dinner in town, Thompson stayed quiet. “There were obviously people walking around saying ‘Thompson’s not running,’” said Eduardo Castell, who managed

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Andrew SchwArtz

Bill Thompson says he’s firing up his next campaign for mayor. Thompson’s 2009 campaign and is overseeing the ramp-up now. Thompson brings enormous name recognition to the race, and as the only African-American candidate, he can expect to pull black voters to the polls. Latino voters tilted his way in 2009, and with no Latino running in 2013, he hopes to catch their eye as well. “He’s a guy who’s never run as an African-American candidate, but he’s always held his base,” Castell said. “He is in a runoff. He’s the only guy with a straight face who can sit there and say, ‘I know how to get into a runoff.’ ” Thompson’s last campaign was at times hobbled by poor organization— phone calls not returned, schedules not followed, events not organized—even though it was his third time running for a citywide office. A field of rivals working against him in the primary will force him to be tougher, earlier—but at least he doesn’t have to worry any more about an outspoken, well-known and well-funded challenger in Rep. Anthony Weiner. “You’re clearly the front-runner,” Castell said. “It was a different race with Weiner in it.” Consultant Hank Sheinkopf, who long worked with Thompson before Bloomberg hired him away in 2009, believes his former client is still the man to beat in 2013. “Thompson has the best profile,” Sheinkopf said. “He’s black, and he’s from the outer boroughs, and he has relationships of forty years in those outer boroughs.” Thompson’s challenge now is to raise that profile, raise millions of dollars and show New Yorkers that he’s back asking for their vote—just like the first time he said he’d be their next mayor. “There was some disillusionment with Mike Bloomberg, but the majority of it was a pro-Thompson vote,” he said. “I don’t think the pitch changes. I never talked about other candidates. I will be the best-qualified candidate.” alisberg@cityhallnews.com

CITY HALL

Even as speculation has centered on the opening of Walmart’s first New York City location, the store may have to open dozens more to meet its goals.

Unions see dozens of small Walmarts in the works with shift in business strategy By Chris Bragg

he hysteria over the possibility of a single Walmart opening its doors in New York misses the bigger picture, opponents of the Arkansas retail giant say. After all, in retail-friendly New York City, a number of “as-of-right” sites are available where Walmart could break ground at any time. And that is exactly what the retail giant is planning on. Walmart opponents say speculation about whether a first location will open in East New York, Bensonhurst or the Bronx ignores the fact that Walmart will need to open dozens of stores in New York City to be successful. “We know that they can’t simply open one or two stores in the city and then move on,” said Pat Purcell, political director of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1500. The growing belief among union officials that they are in a protracted, longterm fight with Walmart has helped shape much of their strategy around the issue. Purcell points to Walmart’s shifting

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business model. In early June, the company rolled out its first “Urban Express” store in Gentry, Ark., a smallformat convenience store aimed at serving rural and urban areas without nearby grocery stores. The stores are a key component of the company’s plan to revitalize U.S. sales, which have stagnated as rural markets have become saturated with giant Walmarts. In its 2011 annual report, the company’s president and CEO, Bill Simon, writes that he is “simply not satisfied” with Walmart’s net sales in the United States, and that he sees Walmart Express stores as a key part of their revitalization. In Chicago, for instance, Walmart opened one megastore in 2006 but now plans to open dozens more Express stores. With opportunities in New York City to build Walmart supercenters somewhat limited—for instance, Councilman Domenic Recchia recently said building one on the Bensonhurst waterfront would cause too many traffic problems— Walmart may have to open “hundreds” of these smaller stores in New York City, according to John Marshall, a senior

Walmart

Boxed In

capital markets analyst with the United Food and Commercial Workers. The store’s profit margins are smaller than the megastores, meaning that a slew of stores would have to open in order for Walmart to meet its goal of growing sales in the United States, Marshall says. He also believes that because Walmart relies on low profit margins and high product turnover, many stores will have to be built in order to offset the cost of supplying them. “Because of their small size—less than one-tenth the size of a supercenter—it would take many of them to equal the sales of a single supercenter,” Marshall said. “Because of Walmart’s need for scale, I think they would need to open a large number of these stores in New York to make it profitable.” The belief that Walmart will need to open a slew of stores has shaped a strategy for the UFCW and other unions— one that involves making the long-term conditions for Walmart in New York City as unfriendly as possible. Purcell makes clear that his union would not only put each new store under the microscope but would be on hand to protest each and every ribbon cutting. He also believes that at some point Walmart will be forced to deal with an unfriendly City Council on land-use matters because the number of locations is likely to rise so much. And both Local 1500 and the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union have made it clear they will make life difficult for any developer who assists Walmart’s entrée into the city. Walmart representatives acknowledge they are interested in opening far more than one store in New York City. In

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a multimillion-dollar campaign, Walmart has tried to sway public opinion toward the company as it looks to set up shop around the five boroughs. And a recent

“Because of Walmart’s need for scale, I think they would need to open a large number of these stores in New York to make it profitable.” Quinnipiac University poll showed a slim majority of New Yorkers would be in favor of a Walmart opening in their neighborhoods. Steve Restivo, a Walmart spokesman, disputed the idea that the City Council would have a major role in whether Walmart would be able to build new locations, since so many as-of-right locations are available. Walmart has only five stores in Los Angeles and four in Philadelphia, Restivo said, so large stores are still likely to be a part of the company’s mix in New York. But he expects a warm welcome from New Yorkers, saying any opposition to Walmart will dissipate quickly once the company breaks ground on initial locations. “If we open a store in the five boroughs where no one wants to shop, and no one wants to get hired, or submits job applications, we’ll really know something about New York City,” Restivo said. “I just know that neither of those things is going to happen.” cbragg@cityhallnews.com JUNE 20, 2011

Ready To Walk Out Builders fear widespread shutdown if construction unions strike BY ADAM LISBERG

he question is no longer whether New York City construction workers will go on strike next week, say people involved in the talks—it’s how long they’ll stay out. Among the union, real estate, construction and government officials monitoring the negotiations, almost everyone expects at least some of the 16 construction unions will walk off the job after their contracts expire June 30. Most likely to strike, they say, are Operating Engineers locals 14 and 15, which are in developers’ sights because of their extraordinarily lucrative contracts. Builders say the old labor pacts require dozens of engineers on complex sites, each guaranteed six-figure salaries and overtime for crane jobs that require literally no work. The engineer locals, which have a history of Mafia involvement, did not return calls for comment. It remains unclear, however, whether other unions will also join them on the picket lines or cut last-minute agreements. “Most of them will go right down to the wire,” said Louis Coletti, president of the Building Trades Employers’ Association, which has been pushing since last year to reduce costs in the next round of contracts. “We really felt that this was and is a real threshold moment.” The Bloomberg administration has said it will not intervene in a private labor dispute, but several agencies are preparing for the worst. The Buildings Department, the Office of Emergency Management and the NYPD have all joined planning meetings to make sure complicated construction sites remain

Hard Hat Countdown

hese construction unions have contracts that expire June 30, and a strike by any one of them could cripple complex building sites across New York City:

New York City District Council of Carpenters Bricklayers/Stonesetters Local 1 Cement Masons Local 780 Operating Engineers Local 14 Operating Engineers Local 15 Concrete Workers Local 6A Concrete Workers Local 18A Concrete Workers Local 20 Mason Tenders District Council Carpenters Local 1456 (Dockbuilders) Carpenters Local 1536 (Timbermen) Carpenters Local 2287 (Floor Coverers) Local 638 (Steamﬁtters) Teamsters Local 282 Teamsters Local 813 Roofers & Waterproofers Local 8 Source: Regional Plan Association

safe in the face of picket lines, walkouts or deliberate sabotage. Officials in other unions hope a walkout would be quick: long enough for workers to vent their frustration but short enough that it would simply extend the three-day July 4 weekend a little longer. Across the table, though, developers fear a walkout would turn into a costly stalemate, as rhetoric hardens on both sides. “What this strike is going to be about is

ANDREW SCHWARTZ

The World Trade Center may be the only major New York construction site still operating by a July 1 strike deadline.

JUNE 20, 2011

the unwillingness of the unions to give up what everyone agrees are quarter-milliondollar no-work jobs,” said one frustrated real estate official. “Because they won’t give up those jobs, a $60,000-a-year carpenter is going to have a prolonged summer of unemployment.” Major developers and their highly skilled union workforce have long had a productive relationship in New York, where real estate families have been willing to pay for broad benefit packages and put up with aggravating work rules in exchange for labor peace and top-flight quality. That relationship was tested after the 2008 market crash, when financing dried up and construction stalled. Hard hats suddenly faced double-digit unemployment, while developers said they needed to cut labor costs 20 percent—and threatened to start using nonunion crews on tall buildings in Manhattan. Many unions are already operating under project labor agreements, which offered temporary concessions in exchange for getting particular construction projects working after the economy stalled. Some of them involved pay and benefits, but others covered what builders called inefficient work rules, such as staggered start times

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for different trades and time wasted getting to upper-story work sites. Unions balked at permanently locking those benefit and work-rule givebacks into new contracts, and were irked when contractors launched a subway ad campaign to sell the idea to workers— bypassing union leaders. Those agreements require unions to keep coming to work even without a contract, but nobody knows whether strong-willed hard hats will do so on every job site—or whether there will be anything to do without engineers to operate the cranes. “No one knows the answer,” Coletti said. “There really hasn’t been a major strike in this industry in forty, fifty years.” Some contractors have begun stockpiling supplies on job sites, hoping that trades that stay on the job will be able to keep working even if operating engineers leave their tower cranes unoccupied. Developers, meanwhile, have pushed for a more brash solution. New York City uses a city-specific exam to license crane operators, instead of a national licensing standard, which forces builders to hire the high-priced operating engineers. The Buildings Department has scheduled a meeting June 23 to discuss switching to a national standard some time in the future—but developers believe if it happens on an emergency basis by June 30, they could work around an engineer strike by hiring replacements from outside the city. Deputy Mayor Stephen Goldsmith, in charge of the city’s response, threw cold water on that idea. “I don’t think it’s good for the city to address this issue artificially quickly in order to influence the labor negotiations,” he said. “We view it as a very complicated issue involving private parties.” One of the city’s largest construction sites, ironically, will likely be unaffected by a labor stoppage, Goldsmith said. Unions working at the World Trade Center site are under a project labor agreement with a no-strike pledge, and though the operating engineers did not sign any agreements, people privy to the talks expect they will stay on the job there so they won’t be seen as blocking America’s recovery from the 9/11 attacks. “It’s just unimaginable that folks would not show up for work at such a critical and symbolic site,” Goldsmith said. The Real Estate Board of New York has used the towers, transportation hub and memorial under construction there as an example of the operating engineers’ largesse, saying members of those two locals will reap almost $100 million in no-work jobs over the next three years. “There’s no way the unions strike the World Trade Center,” said someone involved in the process. “Somebody’s got to soften up the rhetoric so they can gracefully accede to some changes in work rules.” alisberg@cityhallnews.com

CITY HALL

Unsweetened

Barred from using own consultant, city unions cite enormous backlog on sweetener bills By Chris Bragg

reform measure to more accurately gauge the cost of socalled “pension sweetener” bills has instead made it virtually impossible to pass them, according to several city union officials. Until 2008, public sector unions would pay private consultants to estimate the cost of pension sweetener bills introduced at their request that added benefits for their members. But that same year, scandal erupted when The New York Times revealed that Jonathan Schwartz—a former city actuary paid by city public sector unions to produce fiscal notes—had underestimated the bills’ price tags by hundreds of millions of dollars, compared with analyses by the independent city actuary’s office. The revelation raised new concerns about the coziness of public sector labor and the Assembly. As a result, Speaker Sheldon Silver implemented a new rule: Only pension bills with fiscal notes attached by Robert North, chief actuary for the New York City Employees’ Retirement System (NYCERS) and the city’s four other pension funds, would be considered for passage. Unable to use union-funded analysts like Schwartz, union officials say that because North’s office takes too long to produce fiscal notes, their bills are hardly worth introducing. One lobbyist put the average time lag between the introduction and production of a fiscal note at a year or more. “It’s an office that’s not designed to be preparing fiscal notes for every single one of the pension bills,” the lobbyist said. “It’s become nearly impossible to get them.” But North’s office provides the most accurate and comprehensive fiscal notes, said Elizabeth Lynam of the Citizens Budget Commission, who hopes another independent office will be set up to measure the cost of pension bills outside New York City. “We love to see NYCERS bills, because they score them in a consistent way and transparent way,” Lynam said. “So many of the bills that get introduced have little or no empirical basis, and that’s really not a good way of realistically and accurately scoring them.” Typically North’s office will analyze fewer than half of the perhaps 100 pension sweetener bills brought to it annually. The pension bills are often drafted imprecisely, and North, known for extreme thoroughness, will often issue lengthy memos explaining that bills need to be reworded before his office can possibly know how much they would cost.

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The actuary’s office, with a staff of about 35, has widely expansive duties beyond scoring pension sweetener bills— including, most recently, rushing to score Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s proposal for a sixth pension tier for city workers. Many of the sweetener bills have little chance of passing, especially since Cuomo has promised to veto any passed by the Legis-

“So many of the bills that get introduced have little or no empirical basis, and that’s really not a good way of realistically and accurately scoring them.” lature this year. As a result, people who work with the office say North’s staff tends to prioritize more time-sensitive and viable proposals. Union officials look back wistfully to the days when Schwartz was scoring the bills, noting that while his estimates were often lower than North’s, they were rarely out of the range of possibility. Some have broached the idea of City Comptroller John Liu’s office scoring pension bills in order to relieve the backlog. “Private guys can’t submit a bill any more, so we’ve been in discussions to try and get the comptroller’s office to do it,” said Harry Nespoli, who heads the sanitation workers’ union and the Municipal Labor Committee, which serves as an umbrella group for city public sector unions. That would require setting up an entirely new, competing actuary’s office within Liu’s office. A Liu spokeswoman said that adding this function to the office would be unlikely. North said that he generally had a good relationship with unions, and that his office was getting through the work as fast as it could while accurately scoring them. The reason his office was so thorough was simple, North said: He wants not only an accurate cost but clear guidance for the people in charge of administering the law about how to implement the bills. “Sometimes the preambles to my fiscal notes are not appreciated,” North said. “However, in order to effectively administer a new law, it is important to have legislation that is technically correct and clear in its intent.” cbragg@cityhallnews.com

Our Perspective Macy’s Workers Win as City Fights For Its Working Class Soul By Stuart Appelbaum, President, Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, RWDSU, UFCW

n June 16, after intense negotiations, Macy’s workers in New York City won a strong new contract that raised wages and protected benefits. The contract for more than 4,000 workers at the flagship Manhattan store in Herald Square and at three stores in the Bronx, Queens, and Westchester comes at a time when the quality of retail jobs are under attack as part of a corporate-initiated race to the bottom. Across the country, profitable corporations are pushing for lower pay, lower benefits, and less freedom for their employees, all to line their pockets as executive compensation packages rise ever higher. So what happened at Macy’s? Why were the workers there able to win improvements while their counterparts in New York City and beyond continue to get squeezed by their bosses? The answer is simple: Macy’s workers — RWDSU Local 1-S members — weren’t alone. They had the power of a strong union, and a collective voice that allowed them to demand that Macy’s jobs remained good jobs that workers can depend upon to support themselves and their families. New York City is battling for its working class soul. The economy is adding jobs as it recovers from The Great Recession, but the majority of these jobs are low-wage jobs. Retail is the fastest-growing low-wage sector of the New York City economy, but they are the second lowest paying jobs in the city, paying 52 percent less than the citywide average. Yet, thanks to the fact that they had a union, Macy’s workers were able to move forward and avoid becoming part of the race to the bottom. Since 1858, shopping at Macy’s has been a quintessential New York City experience. Locals shop there, and tourists flock there to be part of the department store that helped start it all. The men and women who work there have always been the true magic behind Macy’s. And now, thanks to their new contract and their membership in the RWDSU, Macy’s will continue to live up to its reputation as a great place to shop and a great place to work. Macy’s will continue to show that retail work can help build lives, families, and communities. The workers at Macy’s are sending a clear message to working people throughout this country: when people join together in strong unions, they can fight back and win. While working people throughout this state and country have been under assault, the unionized workers at Macy’s have been able to make impressive gains. It is a lesson that working people everywhere need to understand.

Visit us on the web at

www.rwdsu.org

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JUNE 20, 2011

Publicly funded parks officers by borough Nine parks in Manhattan and Brooklyn employ an additional 78 privately funded parks officers.

Kavanagh said the distribution of officers “is based on public use,” and that the privately funded officers help the city by taking those busy parks off their radar. “I don’t see that as having a disparate impact,” he said. But while Kavanagh sees no disparity, others do. Queens Community Board 7 chair Eugene Kelty, who represents part of Flushing Meadows Park, said he felt the 1,225-acre park “doesn’t get the attention it really deserves.” “We’re never going to compete with Manhattan, because that’s the profile borough,” he said. “I would love to see more parks enforcement people, but we just never get the funding for it.… We generate a lot of people going through Flushing Meadows, especially in the summertime, but I don’t think we get the kickback that goes with it, at the enforcement end.” Councilwoman Melissa Mark-Viverito, who chairs the parks committee, held a hearing on the issue in April, and has been told since of rock-bottom patrol numbers. “I think in the Bronx sometimes they have, like, two officers patrolling all of the borough,” she said. “That’s crazy.” DC 37 Local 983 vice president Joe Puleo, who repre-

Bronx

West Harlem Piers

Manhattan

Riverside Park South

Washington Square Park

Queens

Madison Square Park Hudson River Park

Union Square Park

Battery Park

McCarren Park

Brooklyn

“They give false hope to the public, because they promise an officer will be posted at a park to handle conditions, and it’s absolutely not true.”

Brooklyn Bridge Park

Staten Island

JOEY CAROLINO

Second-Class Parks Despite hiring freeze, privately funded parks get more attention BY DAVID SIMS

n any given day, about 700 acres of New York City parkland—almost all of them in Manhattan—are patrolled by 78 parks enforcement officers, close to half of the parks department’s manpower. The remaining 86 officers are left to cover the other 28,000-plus acres. The difference in staffing levels comes down to who’s footing the bill: the city or private parks conservancies. As staffing for the city’s Parks Enforcement Patrol plummets due to an ongoing hiring freeze, a two-tiered system that favors affluent neighborhoods is being thrown into sharp relief. Hudson River Park, Brooklyn Bridge Park, Washington Square Park and others are always well staffed, because private associations—not taxpayers—hire PEP officers. While Battery Park has some 30 officers, the entire borough of the Bronx has only 15—and officers say that official figure is higher than the reality. “Right now there’s three sergeants and two officers,”

JUNE 20, 2011

said one Bronx PEP officer, who declined to be named for fear of reprisals, adding that only five officers cover the day shift. “Because we’re so short-staffed, there’s only one eight-hour tour,” the officer said, “and we respond to the whole borough.” PEP officers, who are unarmed but can make arrests, respond to both crime and quality-of-life issues, from unruly park-goers to dogs running off-leash to smoking, recently banned in all city parks and beaches. But staff shortages mean that officers in the outer boroughs drive from park to park dealing with complaints assigned by a central office. “They give false hope to the public,” the Bronx worker said, “because they promise an officer will be posted at a park to handle conditions, and it’s absolutely not true.” Parks first deputy commissioner Liam Kavanagh attributes the sharp drop in “tax-levied” PEP officers—from around 450 in the mid-1990s to fewer than 100 today—to the hiring freeze put in place in 2009. “Because the parks enforcement staff tend to be younger and tend to be interested in careers in law enforcement, in general the attrition has been higher within those ranks,” he said.

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sents the PEP officers, said his members were struggling to keep their heads above water. “What they are doing presently is going to locations and trying to put a quick fix to a problem,” he said. “If there’s graffiti, if they’re lucky they can catch the guy. But they know that nobody’s going to be there on a dayto-day basis.” All PEP officers go through the same civil service hiring process and are paid the same wages and benefits, whether they serve in a marquee privately funded park or a publicly funded outer-borough park. But in the field, understaffed parks are clearly the ones that need more enforcement, according to one worker who patrolled Hudson River Park for two years and now works in Queens. “It’s a totally different animal,” the worker said. “Those contract parks have their own issues, but they’re not as severe as the borough issues. It’s 90 percent qualityof-life stuff. You may get a mugging or two here and there, but not as much as in the outer boroughs.” With the smoking ban signed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg in February, PEP officers could help generate revenue with tickets. But Kavanagh said there’s no chance of that spurring new hiring. “We issued roughly 8,000 summonses last year for quality-of-life infractions,” he said. “At an average of about $50 a ticket, it would generate $40,000—nothing to sneeze at, but it’s not a revenue stream.” Geoffrey Croft, president of the New York City Park Advocates and a vocal critic of the disparity, thinks the problem is only going to increase. “I don’t think anyone is against private funding, helping or subsidizing. But that’s not what’s happening,” he said. “The government is abdicating its responsibilities, which is forcing the public to fund these operations.” Mark-Viverito shares the sentiment. “It’s not a fair system, unless the intent of the parks department is to try to privatize every park. Not to be cynical, but there’s a level of truth to it, too. That can’t be the solution.” editor@cityhallnews.com

CITY HALL

date to carry all three minority blocs (black, Hispanic and Asian) by landslide margins while driving an explosion of Asian turnout. De Blasio reestablished the potency of a white ethnic candidate who could sweep the minority vote. In the new math of New York City politics, a candidate with strong white support would need 40 percent of the

NYC racial makeup in 2010 census:

Asian 1,028,119

13%

Biracial 226,739

White 2,722,904

“In the new math of New York City politics, a candidate with strong white support would need 40 percent of the minority vote to be elected mayor, while a candidate heading a unified minority coalition would need to crack 30 percent of the white vote to be elected mayor.”

33%

Hispanic 2,336,076

29%

Black 1,861,295

23%

JOEY CAROLINO

Minority Rules Growing minority vote means next mayor must build bridges to a multiracial coalition BY BRUCE N. GYORY

Mayor Michael Bloomberg nipped Mark Green by garnering a quarter of the black vote and just shy of half of the Hispanic vote while carrying the Asian vote. Bill Thompson’s narrow defeat in 2009, which shocked pundits, should not have come as any surprise. Thompson, after all, carried blacks by almost a 4–1 margin, won Hispanics at slightly less than a 2–1 margin and narrowly carried Asian voters. In 2009, Comptroller John Liu and Public Advocate Bill de Blasio also showed the potency of multiracial coalitions. Liu became the first citywide candi-

foreign-born citizens. The 2010 census data reveals a population trend line moving even faster than he early punditry on the 2013 mayoral race has not given the political demographics: 67 percent nearly enough attention to the of New York City residents are people of color. When you overlay changes in the makeup of the two trends—actual voting the electorate that will select and the growing pipeline of the next mayor of New York. minority voters—a projection In 2013, at least 56 of 57 percent for the minority percent—and perhaps as vote in 2013 is a conservative high as 58 percent—of the estimate. votes in both a Democratic What does all this primary and a general elecBruce Gyory mean for 2013? First, tion will be cast by people candidates need to mobiof color—the aggregate of Black 23–28% black, Hispanic, Asian and biracial voters. lize their base to be able to get in In the 2008 and 2009 general elec- a runoff, especially if five or more Hispanic 21–27% tions, exit polls showed the aggregate candidates enter a Democratic Jewish 16–19% minority vote in NYC stood at 54 percent. primary. Second and most imporExit polling also reveals that the white tant, the next mayor must be able “New Class” 15–18% share of the general-election vote in New to build bridges to a multiracial York City mayoral elections has declined coalition. No longer can any single White Catholic 9–13% from 56 percent in 1989 to 46 percent in or even duo of racial, ethnic or reli2009. Professor John Mollenkopf of the gious blocs elect a mayor on their Asian 3–10% City University of New York long ago own. (“New Class” includes secular, gay and lesbian, highly Third, no one can be elected established that the greatest registration educated, often upscale white voters predominant in gains have been coming from New York’s mayor without gathering a large brownstone Brooklyn and Manhattan below 120th Street) minority communities, especially among swath of minority voters. In 2001,

minority vote to be elected mayor, while a candidate heading a unified minority coalition would need to crack 30 percent of the white vote to be elected mayor. Given the growing size of this new minority majority, unlike in 1973 and 2001, if a minority candidate had a united base, he or she would be the favorite rather than the underdog in either a Democratic runoff or the general election. In 1973, Abe Beame’s campaign played the race card and beat opponent Herman Badillo by a landslide in the Democratic runoff. In 2001, Mark Green’s campaign was the beneficiary of the race card played against Fernando Ferrer, winning the runoff by a whisker. In fact, if either the 1993 Giuliani–Dinkins rematch or the 2001 Green–Ferrer runoff were rerun today, and every group broke by exactly the same percentages but the weight of each bloc were adjusted to reflect the growth of the minority votes in the current electorate, both Dinkins and Ferrer would now win, not lose, those contests. Diversity is no longer just a discussion of white and minority voters but an important data point within each minority bloc, given the surging ranks of voters whose ancestry is Afro-Caribbean, Dominican, South American, Korean and from the Indian subcontinent. I don’t know who will be elected mayor in 2013, but I would urge all of us to keep our eyes wide open to watch for which candidate pours the most solid foundation and whose bridge-building has the strongest ramps to the largest electoral expanses.

Projected 2013 electorate:

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Bruce N. Gyory is a political consultant at Corning Place Consulting in Albany and an adjunct professor of political science at SUNY Albany. JUNE 20, 2011

ANDREW SCHWARTZ

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JUNE 20, 2011

Out Of The Picture What the 2013 mayor’s race looks like without Anthony Weiner By Adam Lisberg and Andrew J. Hawkins

he shortest fuse now has the longest odds. Until a single misdirected tweet turned his reputation to ashes, Rep. Anthony Weiner was a leading contender for the mayor’s office in 2013. He would have been the most outspoken but also the most likely to erupt; he would have barnstormed through Brooklyn and Queens, dominated the Jewish vote and spent the largest pile of cash. When he resigned from Congress last week, Weiner did not sound like a man entirely closing the door on a political future. And in a state where a disgraced governor is mentioned as a future candidate, the two years between now and 2013 may be enough time for Weiner to wash through the cycle of public redemption. [See pgs. 14–15 for some consultants’ ideas on how he could relaunch his dream.] But as Weiner fell from head of the pack to punchline, he lost the support of the Democratic establishment along with his congressional seat. Now the elements he spent years nurturing—the voting blocs, the lead issues, the endorsements, the funders—are fair game for his rivals to poach without worrying that a short-

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tempered hockey player would soon dump his $4 million campaign fund into negative ads against them. “There’s no question Weiner was the loudest voice,” said one of his rivals. “I thought that was his biggest strength, but it was also his biggest weakness.” So who feasts on his carcass? In the 2005 Democratic primary— which he lost to Freddy Ferrer—Weiner scored well in South Brooklyn and Queens, his congressional home turf, where former comptroller Bill Thompson can now hope to pick up votes. Weiner’s best performance was in white-dominated neighborhoods like Forest Hills and Rego Park, although he also found significant support from Asian voters. Now Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer sees a void for a Jewish candidate, and may jump in. Weiner had a foothold in some of the city’s more liberal enclaves as well, where his fiery rhetoric and frat-boy aggressiveness toward Republicans energized Democrats. Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, whose job is solely to be a platform for a liberal city, could sweep into that empty space. Weiner would tell supporters he wanted to be a “champion of the middle class,” like Ed Koch was in 1977. And since his first stab at citywide office, he

CITY HALL

ANDREW SCHWARTZ

The Candidates:

Weiner’s parting gifts: “Classic New York” liberals

Brooklyn voters

Outer-borough white ethnics

Queens voters

Jewish voters

Bill de Blasio

Bill Thompson

Christine Quinn

John Liu

Scott Stringer

Campaign cash: $229,641 Position: Public Advocate Home base: Brooklyn

Campaign cash: $0 Position: Battery Park City Authority chair, bond underwriter, former mayoral candidate Home base: Brooklyn and Manhattan

Campaign cash: $3.1 million Position: City Council Speaker Home base: Manhattan

Campaign cash: $83,900 Position: City Comptroller Home base: Queens

Campaign cash: $903,354 Position: Manhattan Borough President Home base: Manhattan

Voting blocs: Brooklyn, outer-borough whites, Manhattan liberals Cash: Real estate, smalldollar liberals Issues: Middle-class empowerment, ethics and campaign finance reform Without Weiner, Bill de Blasio is the only white, ethnic, Brooklyn-based candidate in the race (assuming Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz opts not to run). His main obstacle is the limitations imposed on him by his office. “It’s hard to get elevated from the public advocate’s office,” said one Democratic operative. “It hasn’t proven to be much of a springboard office.” Much like Weiner, the public advocate is positioning himself as a “champion of the middle class.” But he is also moving behind-the-scenes to secure support and cash in the real estate community.

Voting blocs: Outer-borough voters, Brooklyn Bill Thompson’s name should pop on the ballot as the most recognizable for many voters, who twice elected him city comptroller and narrowly rejected him against Bloomberg in 2009. As the only candidate with the cojones to take on the mayor’s $100 million-plus juggernaut, he has earned bragging rights for 2013—and stands to gain big from the disappearance of a top rival. “Bill Thompson is much better positioned than anybody else,” said Hank Sheinkopf, a Democratic strategist who worked against Thompson in 2009. “He’s black, he’s from the outer boroughs, he has relationships with people that some of the others don’t.”

has staked out strong positions on issues like health care and small-business aid, which City Council Speaker Christine Quinn has tried to make a centerpiece of her time in office. Lately, Weiner had taken aim at how Bloomberg runs the city, calling for tax increases on the rich and opposing bike lanes and congestion pricing—which means Comptroller John Liu’s frequent attacks on Bloomberg’s policies will have less competition.

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Voting blocs: Queens, outerborough whites, Manhattan liberals, Staten Island Catholics, LGBT voters Cash: Wall Street, real estate Issues: Middle class, small businesses “Quinn is a white ethnic outer-borough Catholic male politician who happens to be a Manhattan lesbian,” said one leading city political operative. The Council speaker can expect to get support from both Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former Mayor Ed Koch, and has a good chance of getting The Daily News and The New York Post endorsements. But the biggest boost to Quinn from Weiner’s withdrawal is the loss of a name-recognition rival who fights hard and dirty. And county party bosses, like Joe Crowley from Queens and Vito Lopez from Brooklyn, who both may have gone with Weiner, could also end up siding with Quinn, though this is far from a sure thing.

What else is up for grabs? His donor base, mainly big money from real estate and Wall Street, and his campaign staff, a mix of hometown loyalists and D.C.-based pros. Congressional colleagues who may have made a few campaign appearances with Weiner (more out of professional courtesy than any real loyalty) are now available to endorse his rivals and offer their political troops. And the sudden disappearance of a strong candidate could entice one of

Voting blocs: Queens, Asians, Manhattan liberals Cash: Small-dollar liberals Issues: Anti-Bloomberg, transportation, economy If Liu ran, he would likely pick up almost all the Asian voters who went Weiner’s way in 2005. And certainly the Queens Democratic machine would look favorably on their hometown son. Liu’s biggest benefit from Weiner’s downfall, though, could be the absence of a loud, liberal voice in the race. “I would suspect if people are looking for a more combative, more confrontational tone, they might go to John Liu,” said David Birdsell, dean of Baruch College’s School of Public Affairs. “Liu doesn’t have the same kind of belligerent presentation that you often saw from Weiner, but he has more of that enforcement muscularity in his rhetoric and his policy positions.”

the outliers to step into a quieter field. Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, Brooklyn Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries and Brooklyn Sen. Eric Adams are looking even more closely at whether they could become firsttier candidates. And all the improbable names that have been floated—from Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and rival former commissioner Bill Bratton to Eliot Spitzer and Richard Grasso, Diana Taylor and Alec Baldwin—must at least

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Voting blocs: Manhattan liberals, Jewish voters Cash: Wall Street, real estate Issues: Israel, middle class Weiner’s downfall has left a hole in the race for a white, Jewish candidate with ties to wealthy Manhattan liberals. Stringer obviously fits the bill. “If you’re going just by tribal politics, you would think Scott Stringer could pick up some of the Jewish vote in Forest Hills, in Rego Park,” said political consultant George Arzt. Stringer would go head-tohead with Quinn for wealthy liberal Manhattan voters, but could certainly pick up some of the donors who have been funneling cash into Weiner’s accounts.

be recalculating the odds. “I think one of the big things, before you think about who benefits, is what the character of the race looks like,” said David Birdsell, dean of the Baruch College’s School of Public Affairs. “I think you’ll see a less noisy Democratic primary as a result of his absence.” Based on conversations with candidates, consultants and longtime politicos, here’s a thumbnail guide to where Weiner’s political legacy may go next. JUNE 20, 2011

What If…? A deadly serious look at “Weiner 2013”

f Eliot Spitzer is seen as eligible for mayor in 2013, why not Anthony Weiner? After all, 2013 is eons away. And much can happen between now and then. He has already resigned, which will allow him to disappear from the headlines and the media glare. After a few months, maybe a year, he can return, leaner, cleareyed, with his wife and young child at his side, more subdued, more humbled, but still ready to fight the good fight. But any campaign he chose to mount would be wholly dependent on what sort of image he presents to the public. And that’s where the city’s political ad wizards and image-makers come in. City Hall asked four consulting firms to envision a “Weiner 2013” campaign. No “certitude” jokes. No Twitter references. Just straight talk from a politician who once prided himself on holding nothing back.

“Weathered” Sherman Jewett, managing partner, says: “Even without any further wince-inducing revelations regarding Weiner’s conduct, a political resuscitation that could support a mayoral run would be tantamount to successful head-reattachment surgery. With that caveat, what might ‘Weiner 2013’ look like? “First, he would all but certainly run as a party outsider, there being little stomach for his candidacy within the Democratic establishment. Second, he would likely attempt to assemble the same coalition of middle-class outerborough ethnics and new Americans that would have formed his 2013 base before Weinergate. And he would likely need to address his 2011 scandal head-on before being able to pivot to a message highlighting his strengths, namely resuming the mantle of unabashed progressive champion. “We chose the Statue of Liberty as a metaphor for Weiner’s hypothetical comeback. When constructed in the 1880s, she was copper-colored, only to oxidize over the next several decades into her current green patina. Initially thought undesirable, there was even a movement to paint over her verdigris exterior. “We sought a tone that was humble and avoided a full-on headshot of the overexposed Weiner. Rather than running away from social media, we created an arms-length ‘Campaign for the Forgotten NY.’ Finally, the piece makes a number of highly hypothetical assumptions, some whimsical—not the least of which is the continued support of his spouse.”

“Courage” Gerry O’Brien, a veteran political consultant, describes how a more comprehensive ad campaign would run on television, in three stages: “Stage 1: Weiner is neither seen nor heard in the commercial, where an anonymous narrator describes the problems facing NYC, and suggests that one man has the best skills to turn things around and get the job done for the people. Only at the very end of the spot do you see a photo and/or campaign logo for Weiner. “Stage 2: Weiner is not seen, but he narrates a spot where he talks about how his experience in Congress is what the city needs right now. His photo and logo appear only in the final frames. “Stage 3: Weiner is seen and heard, talking about the problems facing our city, and how he would deal with them.”

JUNE 20, 2011

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“The Truth” Kevin Wardally, senior vice president for political and government affairs at Bill Lynch Associates, presents the following ad for television: [Fade from black to Weiner directly facing camera, sitting, in business-casual clothes.] Weiner: Hello. It’s been two years to the day since I resigned from my congressional seat for the good of the community. In my absence, I’ve taken marriage counseling, received treatment and experienced a spiritual cleansing at my place of worship. During this period I’ve had a chance to reevaluate my values and think over what’s really important in life. Needless to say, I’ve had a lot of learning to do. [Slowly zooming in to his face:]

The Total Package Just like New York, Anthony Weiner has been through his ups and downs. He’s made mistakes, but with honesty and hard work, he’s coming back to serve New York. And Anthony Weiner always remained true to his Democratic values, the people he represents and the City he calls home. Now, with New York City facing tough times some people would choose to give up. But Anthony Weiner knows that this is the time to rise up. As Mayor, Anthony Weiner will stand firm to fight for better schools, good jobs and a City we can all be proud of.

Anthony Weiner for Mayor Authentic. Strong. Nothing to Hide.

But I think I grew the most on the day my daughter was born. When I look in her eyes, I know right from wrong. When I hold her, I want nothing but the best for her and her generation. And when my extraordinary wife, Huma, sees us together, she knows that I’m a changed man. And so, after two years out of the public eye, I’d like to reintroduce myself. My name is Anthony Weiner. I was born and raised in this town. I’m a proud husband, father, and I raise my family here. And I’m running for Mayor of the City of New York. Frankly, the futures of our children and our city hang in the balance, and I will not sit on the sidelines with the stakes this high. When I say that I will work tirelessly to make good jobs for our neighbors, a cleaner city for our families and a quality education for our kids, you know that I’m telling the truth.

“Total Package” Doug Forand of Red Horse Strategies explains: “The point of this, although it is intentionally tongue-in-cheek, is that he can’t run away from the reality of the situation that forced him from Congress. Weiner has to completely own his own situation, or he ends up playing constant defense for his entire campaign (which is an unwinnable scenario). Without trying to defend his actions, he needs to acknowledge them, own his mistakes and put them into a broader context. And ultimately he needs to do this in a way that injects some of his brash, in-your-face persona into the piece—because, scandal or no, that is his personality, and it’s going to show throughout the campaign. If he is anything less than the real Anthony Weiner, warts and all, he’ll come across looking dishonest and artificial.”

Weiner’s Exit: A Study In Contrasts As Anthony Weiner strode to the podium for the final time in his congressional career, he looked for all the world like a man readying for a comeback. Gone were the bags under his eyes, so prominent two weeks earlier during his disastrous press conference at the Sheraton Hotel. The visibly gnawing guilt was replaced by a confident glow. The hotel’s darkly lit conference room had been replaced by a white-walled room in a senior center in South Brooklyn, with plastic yellow butterflies hanging from the ceiling and dozens of elderly residents waiting patiently to see the man many knew simply as “Anthony.” “That must be Helen Thomas’ older sister,” quipped one reporter, referencing the long-serving White House reporter, as an octogenarian with a cane pushed her way

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through to the front row. Cheers broke out among the seniors when Weiner entered the room (“We love you!”), followed by surprised groans when Weiner said he had decided to resign. The soon-to-be ex-congressman gave what could have passed for a campaign speech. He thanked his family. He talked about his experience championing causes for his outer-borough constituents. “They’re hardworking; they’re patriotic; they’re opinionated; they are authentic,” Weiner said. “They represent the same middle-class story as mine.… The middleclass story of New York is my story.” Of course, there are complications to a comeback— most notably that Weiner is still a local and national punching bag. Weiner had barely begun to speak when Benjy Bronk of the Howard Stern show began heckling

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him. (“I just want to meet chicks,” Bronk explained to reporters afterward.) Bronk, who also yelled obscene questions at the Sheraton, was one common thread between the two otherwise contrasting press conferences. The need to screen press, even after Andrew Breitbart had taken over Weiner’s first press conference, was one lesson forgotten. There was a time when this would have been of no concern, when Weiner would denounce Tea Party hecklers with an effortless rhetorical flip. At his swan song, Weiner stuck to the script. The disruption may have at least had one positive benefit for the former congressman, if and when he tries to return to public life: Even the press, lied to by Weiner for weeks and hungry for revenge, seemed a little bit sorry for the shamed ex-congressman, as he quietly slunk out the back door and out of the spotlight. —Chris Bragg cbragg@cityhallnews.com JUNE 20, 2011

John Federspiel, President Hudson Valley Hospital Center Cortlandt Manor, New York

NEW YORK BUSINESS DEPENDS ON OUR POSITIVE ENERGY Should a New York hospital president feel positive about nuclear energy and the Indian Point Energy Center? John Federspiel sure does. “When it comes to saving lives, there’s no room for error. Or power outages. We know we can count on Indian Point for the clean, reliable power it takes to keep our hospital running 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.” Businesses in New York thrive on our positive energy. Up to 35 percent of our power downstate comes from Indian Point. Find out more about why Indian Point is Right For New York,at www.rightfornewyork.com

Indian Point Energy Center

WE’RE RIGHT FOR NEW YORK

ISSUESPOTLIGHT

Energy

ndian Point. Article X. Rate hikes. Blackouts. Retrofits. White roofs. Energy policy in New York is complicated, expensive and regulated at every turn—but has a profound impact on the economy, the environment and the future of our city. To that end, City Hall has devoted the following pages to understanding the energy issues facing New York. We look at the ongoing debate over the Indian Point nuclear plant [page 22] and one City councilman’s quest to reduce energy consumption in his district [page 24]. We let advocates from all sides give their perspective on the issues [page 22], and, below, we consult with three leading experts on the energy challenges facing the city. James Gennaro, chair of City Council Environmental Protection Committee

Expert Roundtable

Q: What are the biggest challenges facing New York City’s energy grid? James Gennaro: It’s old, but it’s in the midst of being updated. It’s old, but it is reliable. But because it’s old, it has to be upgraded in a way that would allow us to do innovative things. Con Ed is doing much in that regard. They’re doing this whole smart-grid initiative. In order to do the energy initiatives of the future—making allowances for things like real-time metering, two-way energy flow, where people can put power back into the grid—these are high-tech developments that have to be made possible. And also, generally speaking, the grid is reliable, which is good. The short answer to your question: taking the grid and updating it in order to allow for the high-tech we’ll need—like real-time metering and two-way energy flow.

Q: How can the city reduce carbon emissions while promoting economic growth?

JG: When you look at the city of the future, the city of 2030, the city that will exist in 2030—about 85 percent of the buildings that will exist in 2030 are already built. So the challenge for having true environmental sustainability is to green the current stock of buildings. The most forward-thinking thing to do is to have policies and laws to induce

people to green the current building stock; and since most of the energy use—about 75 percent—and therefore carbon emissions, come from buildings, that’s the place to go to make the greatest impact. When you make the current stock of buildings greener, what are you doing? You’re putting new kinds of energy systems; you’re doing installation; you’re doing retrofits; you’re doing something called “retrocommissioning,” to make sure that the systems that were put in place when the building was built are at least operating at the level that they’re intended to.

Q: Other than closing Indian Point, what should the state do to address concerns surrounding safety at the nuclear facility?

JG: I think I’m going to surprise you with this one. I’m not nearly as concerned about the so-called threats from Indian Point as people think I would be. The State of New York’s current policy, as articulated by the governor, is that he wants the plant shut down. If the governor is calling for the shutdown of the plant, is utility going to make all kinds of long-term investments in the safety of the plant? I just don’t know that that’s a terribly productive posture, to call for the closure of the plant. What I do think a more productive posture—I think that at the core of the governor’s call to close the plant is concern about safety, obviously, and that’s why he’s saying that. If there was a real, working, cooperative relationship between the Cuomo administration and the federal government regarding legitimate safety concerns that the state has—they would like to see the federal government mandate some level of additional, concrete safety precautions that should be enacted—I think that would get a warmer reception, and be more productive.

Garry Brown,

David Bragdon,

chairman of New York State Public Service Commission

director of NYC Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability

Q: Which alternate energy source has the most promise? Garry Brown: The Commission has approved a special renewable-energy incentive program specifically for New York City for large-scale photovoltaic [solar power] and biogas power initiatives. NYSERDA, the program’s administrator, is investing $150 million over the next five years in the program, and will award up to $30 million a year, of which $25 million is targeted for New York City or Southern Westchester County. This will promote more clean-energy production in a part of the state that traditionally has been a large consumer of fossil fuels.

Q: What are the biggest challenges facing New York City’s energy grid? David Bragdon: The biggest challenge for us is the existing owner infrastructure in the case of the building stock. Our biggest challenge as a city government is the retrofitting of existing buildings to reduce the demand on the grid. The grid is privately owned by Con Ed, so as the city government our biggest challenge is the demand-reduction side.

Q: What more can be done to reduce the burden of high-cost energy rates on NYC consumers? GB: Last month Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced legislation that prevented a massive rate hike on New York City energy customers, which was promptly passed by the Legislature. The measure allowed the city to guarantee property tax abatements to power plants. The Commission recently approved a program for Con Edison providing up to $100 million over four years to install energy-efficiency measures that defer or avoid transmission and distribution capital expenditures. The goal is a 100-megawatt reduction of permanent load.

Q: How can the city reduce carbon emissions while promoting economic growth? DB: We do both of those simultaneously by retrofitting existing buildings, which does reduce consumption of electricity and therefore carbon emissions. It also creates jobs through the retrofitting. Q: Which alternate energy source has the most promise?

Q: Other than closing Indian Point, what should the state do to address concerns surDB: There’s no one single answer in the renewable field. We’re making a

rounding safety at the nuclear facility?

GB: New York has been, and will continue to be, actively involved in issues surrounding Indian Point and the other nuclear generating stations within our border. This includes coordinating with the NRC for inspections conducted at Indian Point, and reviewing emergency preparedness and response regarding the power plants. Following the events in Japan, the governor sent a state delegation to the NRC to discuss ongoing seismic risk analyses at Indian Point, and the NRC agreed to make Indian Point its top priority.

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lot of strides with solar here, through some of the things we’ve done with abatements and streamlining some of the permitting, as well as the mapping we’ve done that indicates where the best sites are for solar. There’s definitely potential there, but then there’s pretty good wind offshore here as well. I’d say currently there’s more happening with solar with the steps we’ve taken. We think there’s potential for conversion of solid waste into energy as well. JUNE 20, 2011

S U N DB I T E S Ken Baer, former chair of the New York City chapter of the Sierra Club

The Indian Point nuclear plant has come under intense scrutiny since the nuclear crisis in Japan.

Experts Expect Indian Point To Keep The Lights On BY JON LENTZ

ne protester showed up in a bikini, a translucent jumpsuit and a hard hat. Another sported a metallic hat as “radioactive protective gear.” And two bands of “raging grannies” serenaded the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s inspectors with songs condemning the Indian Point nuclear plant. For the all the antics, the hundreds of residents and advocates who attended the NRC hearing in early June share a serious belief the power plant’s days should be numbered—and did so even before Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster made the risks real. They complained about leaks at Indian Point, the risk of earthquakes and terrorist attacks, and inadequate evacuation plans for millions of residents, many in New York City, who could be affected by an accident. But with one reactor up for relicensing in 2013 and the other in 2015—and with no replacement sources for its 2,000 megawatts of power on the horizon— several observers said the plant must stay open to satisfy New York’s energy needs. “Ultimately we think the plant is an important enough asset for New York State—and even more specifically for New York City—that regulators and Entergy and the other parties will come to some agreement to keep the plants running,” said Travis Miller, an analyst with Morningstar, Inc. Indian Point provides 30 percent of the power used by New York City and Westchester County, where Gov. Andrew Cuomo lives. He has long called for shutting the plant down for safety reasons, and has rejected the idea that an unsafe plant should stay open because there are no easy alternatives for the power it provides. The state has issued permits for 1,000 megawatts of new power sources, and Cuomo believes 3,000 more megawatts could be permitted to accommodate growth. The NRC has renewed the licenses

JUNE 20, 2011

of more than half of the nuclear power plants in operation in the U.S., and it has yet to reject an extension. Dale Klein, a former NRC chairman, said in an email he saw no reason the license extension process should not move forward. Whether the NRC recommends a relicensing for 20 years will be based on a rigorous, well-established technical evaluation, he said. “It seems like several people misunderstand what a license extension means,” Klein said. “If there is a safety issue that the NRC believes is very serious, they still have the option to shut the plant down at any time, and the NRC still performs a rigorous inspection each year and still has resident inspectors in place.” Apart from federal approval, the plant must also obtain a fresh-water permit from Cuomo’s state Department of Environmental Conservation, because the plant discharges into the Hudson River. “My sense is if the state doesn’t issue the permit, it’s going to be challenged in court,” said Jerry Kremer of the New York Affordable Reliable Electricity Alliance. “The state is still definitely playing a role. Their only hook is the freshwater permits.” Kremer also warned that the state has no new energy projects in the pipeline. “The fact of the matter is, this is a state that’s never had a real, true master plan for providing energy sources,” Kremer said. “It’s not that easy for people to be cavalier and say, ‘Shut it down.’ It doesn’t work.” Assemblyman Thomas Abinanti, a Westchester County Democrat, said rising energy prices would encourage the creation of other power sources available to New York utilities at a comparable cost if Indian Point closed. Given the potential impact of an accident, he said, the costs easily outweigh the benefits. “This is like an old car. You can keep it running only so long,” Abinanti said. “An old car, the worst that can happen is, it breaks down and collapses on the side of the road. If this breaks down, it takes the entire region with it.” jlentz@cityhallnews.com

The most pressing energy issue in [New York City]? It is essential that the Spectra gas pipeline that would go through Greenwich Village be blocked. Reducing carbon emissions while promoting economic growth? Concentrating on maximum energy efﬁciency in new construction and older buildings, as well as vigorously getting more renewables on line.

Donna DeCostanzo, senior attorney, National Resources Defense Council

We must begin to move from an old system and technologies to newer ones that meet our energy needs in a cleaner, smarter and more efficient way—and that address energy demand and supply in an integrated manner. The cheapest, easiest and fastest thing we can do to reduce our carbon emissions while promoting economic growth is retrofit our existing buildings to be more energyefficient. Doing so will not only result in significant local job creation but will also reduce New Yorkers’ energy costs, improve conditions in the buildings in which we live and work, increase our grid reliability and reduce air pollution.

John Banks, vice president of government relations, Con Edison

The most pressing energy issue facing New Yorkers is: How can New Yorkers conserve more energy? Energy conservation saves our customers money and helps us deliver the energy they use safely and reliably. Energy conservation can help achieve both goals [of reducing carbon emissions and promoting economic growth]. By conserving energy, you lower carbon emissions by not burning fuel to produce electricity, and you allow both our residential and business customers to save money.

Eddie Bautista, executive director, NYC Environmental Justice Alliance

The troubling openness to gasiﬁcation and other thermal “waste-to-energy” processes (aka incineration) expressed by the Bloomberg Administration [is the biggest challenge facing the city’s energy grid]. These technologies— which, given NYC zoning and waterfront-siting policies, would most likely only be sited in low-income communities of color—have only really partially worked as parts of more robust solid-waste-management systems in European countries, whose recycling rates far exceed the city’s. The lack of a clear and environmentally just power-plant siting law in New York State [is another challenge]. Ever since the 2003 expiration of the Article X siting law, NYCEJA has pressed for legislation with a lower-threshold review trigger, legal support and local air-emissions reduction mandates for environmental justice communities proposed for power-plant sitings (as can be realized via repowerings). The environmental justice community supports carbon reduction programs, but is concerned that government’s current zeal for reducing our carbon footprint may result in a diminishment of concern over other local air pollutants that tend to disproportionately impact our communities.

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Reduce The Use Lander’s district competition one of many aimed at energy conservation BY JON LENTZ

ast year, City Councilman Brad Lander challenged his constituents to see who could cut back the most on energy consumption. He got scores of residents to sign on, but he hasn’t exactly been leading the pack so far. “A lot of other people are doing better than me,” Lander admitted. “Some of that is that my daughter got some fish. But now the fish died, sadly, so maybe I’ll get back on the right track.” His yearlong “Reduce the Use” campaign, which started in August, has nonetheless engaged about 150 residents in Park Slope, Cobble Hill and other neighborhoods in his Brooklyn district in a race to conserve the most energy. At least one resident in his district installed solar panels, while others have taken smaller steps like turning off lights and air conditioners whenever possible. Lander got in the habit of unplugging cell-phone chargers and using appliances

less often. He also picked up a couple of power strips. One makes it easier to turn off the TV, VCR and cable box all at once, and another does the same for his computer and printer. The competition is designed to show that conservation is not just a matter of personal virtue or lowering bills but a vital part of how the city reduces its carbon footprint, Lander said, citing Mayor Bloomberg’s PlaNYC sustainability campaign and his push to get schools to install more efficient lights. “You need policy, but then you also need people to learn, get educated and change behaviors at a micro level,” he added. “This is one contribution to that. There need to be a lot of others also.” His contest isn’t the only one to encourage energy savings. The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) has launched several initiatives, including last year’s competition to encourage New Yorkers to switch to more efficient compact fluorescent light bulbs. The competition was part of

ers and others to encourage all of the people in New York State to think about saving energy. It’s cumulative, and it does add up.” It doesn’t just benefit the environment, either. Joy Faber, a spokeswoman for Con Edison, said her company benefits when residents clean their air conditioners, run appliances early in the morning or late in the evening and use a microwave instead of an oven. “We do know that during the summer months there is an increased usage of air conditioning, and that does put a City Councilman Brad Lander strain on our system,” Faber said. “So we urge our customNYSERDA’s campaign to save more than one million megawatt hours of electricity, ers to use their energy wisely.” Lander said he’s not sure if he’ll hold enough to power 165,000 homes a year, any more contests, but he expects to by installing 16.9 million light bulbs. NYSERDA has also held competitions encourage other grassroots conservation between neighborhoods, in classrooms initiatives. For now he’s focusing on the and in homes. One program teaches kids current competition, even if he’s lagging how to read their family’s utility bill and behind. “I’m tempted to argue that it’s helpful, track energy use. “It’s an ongoing process, and it’s that it’s a good motivator for a lot of peoreally a person-by-person process,” said ple to beat the councilman,” Lander said. Dayle Zatlin, a NYSERDA spokeswom- “Either that or just blame it on the fish.” jlentz@cityhallnews.com an. “We work with individual homeown-

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Clockwise from left: Reporters inspect an annex dug for power cables; a fissure grows in the City Hall basement ceiling; a worker restores a bas-relief atop the Council chamber; workers with scaffolding in the hallways; renovations to the main chamber are scheduled to be complete by March 2012. P D s. b hotos by

aniel

urnstein

City Overhaul Top-to-bottom $119 million renovation prepares City Hall for 200 more years By Laura Nahmias

wenty-five feet below the City Hall floorboards, a pack of reporters in white hard hats inspected the foundations of the city’s seat of government, now in its 18th month of renovation. The building’s demise wasn’t exactly “imminent,” architects said, but it had begun to crumble in ways annoying to the city’s Council members. Eventually it would have collapsed. “Every time I testified before the Council, members would complain there were bits of plaster falling on them,” said David Burney, commissioner of the Department of Design and Construction. As he led a recent tour through the building’s intestines, Burney explained in his native Liverpudlian accent how costs for

JUNE 20, 2011

the project had jumped from an expected $75 million to $119 million as the architects uncovered evidence of deep structural damage. The building had begun to bow, literally, to the pressures of water damage, rot and time, said Philip Kelly, the city’s director of facilities and operations. “This is all hand-hewn brownstone, hand-hewn wood. It’s a handmade piece of furniture,” Kelly said of the building. “It just needs some TLC.” The work, once expected to be complete by July of this year, is now scheduled to be done by March 2012. Work also has slowed as renovators find historical artifacts. “Mostly pottery,” said Richard Southwick, the historical preservation expert hired to oversee the project. Southwick, whose previous work includes restorations of Grand Central Terminal and Ellis Island, said the team

had found more than 10,000 pieces, now being stored at Brooklyn College. The coolest ones (cups! spoons! a British bayonet!) will be displayed for the public at some point in the future. “Any human bones?” a reporter wanted to know as the hard hats walked along the corridors past tiny hand-cut bricks and decorative metal grates. “No,” said Southwick, clearly elated,

paper sign covering the intricate leaf frame bordering the ceiling alerted the clumsy to watch for “wet gold.” “It’s gold paint,” Kelly said. “Not real gold.” The five murals that once adorned the Council chamber ceiling are gone. They have been unstuck, rolled up and shipped to Great Falls, Va., where former Smithsonian chief conservator David Olin is

“Every time I testified before the Council, members would complain there were bits of plaster falling on them.” “but plenty of animal ones.” On the last leg of the tour, the pack climbed three harrowing stories of scaffolding to the Council chamber ceiling, which was curved like a horizon and spotted with plaster-cast rosettes and stars. In each corner, bas-relief of the city’s seal featured a Lenape Indian and a Dutch settler. New rosettes and stars to replace the ones that had fallen off had been epoxied onto the ceiling. A template with possible paint colors (pale neutral, wheatfield, wheeling neutral and York Harbor yellow, all from Benjamin Moore) stood nearby. A

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restoring them. That work is being funded through private donations, the architects pointed out. “Compared to other buildings of the era, is this one well built?” a reporter wanted to know. “It’s been able to withstand 200 years of abuse,” Southwick said, not elaborating on whether the abuse was visited on the building or the people inside it. He pointed to a steel reinforcement beam holding up a brick arch. “With this,” he noted casually, “it’ll be good for the next couple hundred years.” lnahmias@cityhallnews.com

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BACK & F O R T H

Building the Future

City Hall: What have you accomplished in the last three years? Robert LiMandri: 2008 was one of those years where all of a sudden every New Yorker looked at this industry, and looked at this agency, with a very critical eye. We’ve stepped it up on everything from making sure that I know where my guys are with GPS, to making sure that the people on the job site are held accountable on everything from smoking to making sure that we’re fair and even and write the proper violations. CH: How do you balance promoting development with safety? RL: You have to be there to regulate, but you also have to be there for business to thrive. Sometimes it’s about the City Council raising the standards on different types of legislation on [the] regulatory side, and enforcement. Just this month we started a program called Get It Done Together. We’ve got six regulators in one room at night every night for the month of May. How many times have you heard, “Well, the fire department says this and you say that and what’s my answer?” In the past we’ve been kicking it back and forth between those agencies. CH: Are there signs of a turnaround? RL: If you look at the smallest jobs, such as moving walls and commercial office [space], we are past the high for 2005 for the first quarter of this year, which says to me we’re at 15,000 permits citywide, versus 14,000 or so. So that’s a clear sign that people are doing business in a very small way. The second thing is that you look at demolitions. A demolition executive said to me, “I’m the first one to go down, and I’m the first one to come out of the hole in development.” He’s seeing a lot of movement, and I’ve seen the numbers to prove it. In 2011, this year, this first quarter, we’ve seen the dip. Last year was the lowest first quarter in the last six years, and we’re up. The third thing is you look at stalled sites. In the stalled sites to date we’ve seen 520 or so jobs come back, actually get restarted, that are off of that list, and about 140 of them have actually been completed. So these are all signs that things are starting to change. CH: What about accidents and safety? RL: Accidents are down, even over last year. Everyone says construction is down. Well, yeah, it is. But we’re down in accidents 56 percent this year over last. Fatalities remain low. These are all things that are not just done by this department. Insurance companies, executives at development companies, contractors, they know our middle name, which is: You need to do it safely first. CH: How is the department dealing with stalled sites? RL: My staff sees that their neighbors are out of work. They understand that the economy is hurting. Normally the guy that used to sit in front of you used to have 20 jobs, and he was working on 20, so it was a balancing

CITY HALL

“Sabotage is certainly, I’m sure, at the top of every construction manager’s mind, but make no mistake about it: This city is not going to tolerate that kind of behavior.” act. So if you said No on one and said Yes on the other, everything was okay. But now he only has three. So guess what happens? Everything becomes that much more important. So it’s a cultural change, and it’s a work in progress. This Get It Done program that I mentioned, last night we actually did 38 approvals in three hours in Brooklyn alone. We’re hoping we will adopt this globally every day of the week. CH: That means operating among five different systems. RL: You don’t want to say, Let’s just get rid of all the regulations, though I know some of you would like that. One of the things you could do is, it’s all about putting people in the room. Having the slowdown, I don’t think we could have ever tried this before. CH: Are you bracing for potential showdowns between construction unions and employers? RL: It’s never our job to intervene in a union dispute between labor and management. Our job is to make sure things are safe, that we have a workforce that can actually do the job and that there’s plenty of those people. Certainly as we get closer we will go on high alert. We’ll come up with a plan. We may have to interface with buildings differently if there are picket lines and all of that. That’s certainly planning for the worst, and if that happens, we’ll have to do that. Sabotage is certainly, I’m sure, at the top of every construction manager’s mind, but make no mistake about it: This city is not going to tolerate that kind of behavior. CH: On illegal conversions, what can you do to improve regulator access? RL: You have to have a good reason to basically enter and look into someone’s apartment or someone’s house. We have to go to court and we have to show them why we have reasonable cause to believe there’s an illegal conversion there. That’s a difficult case to get from a judge. Over the years we have seen landlords get really creative about not having the doorbells, making sure the garbage cans are away, all the indicia to prove to a judge that we know there’s something going on there. Last year we did this Craigslist sting and we got into apartments for rent and we posed undercover and we have video. We’d get in and realize the conditions are pretty bad. Other than enforcement, it’s important to make sure people understand they’re making a choice. Here

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Andrew SchwArtz

ommissioner Robert LiMandri has steered the Buildings Department through the construction industry’s low points to what could be a nascent recovery. The department is doing what it can to help, LiMandri said at a City Hall breakfast last month. In an hourlong conversation, he described how the department is partnering with other city agencies and working after hours to get construction projects back on track, while also pushing for increased safety measures like revamped tests for crane operators and undercover investigations of illegally subdivided apartments. What follows is an edited transcript.

are the red flags you should be wary about: I don’t pay for my own electric; I don’t have two ways to get out of my own apartment; I’m not allowed to accept mail. A lot of people in New York don’t realize, and think, “I need a place to live, and the guy’s going to pay for electric; what a great deal.” But he or she doesn’t realize that they’re putting their life at risk. CH: Could zoning changes help? RL: I am a large proponent of figuring out a better way to deal with this. You have to deal with zoning first. I say you solve for the answer first, which is: How many people do you need on that zoning lot to make the rent affordable? And then back into that number. If you do that, that will tell you what the zoning should be and what code changes you could make—and then of course what the housing advocates will be okay with. CH: What has been done since two cranes collapsed in recent years? RL: We were notified that the test for the smallest crane operators may have been compromised. We went forward and chose the federal standard. Those tests are up-to-date, and they stay current. As a regulator, we want the most and the best-qualified...whatever we’re talking about—plumbers, technicians, crane operators in this city. Now we have this other category for the larger cranes, and we are looking at a way to do it for those, as well. We have to do it by 2014, anyway. CH: Have you reduced the corruption behind the licensing exam problem? RL: You consistently have to work at this. This is big business. This is big industry. We are going to do everything we can. For my own people, I make every inspection transparent and I have GPS on every one of my inspectors. These are what I call “corruption inhibitors.” We scan every document that you file with us as a private entity. They don’t get lost any more. I’m building the paper trail to make sure that if I go to court, I have the documents. This is a work in progress. We are much better off than we were, but we still have more to do. One of the things I didn’t talk about was, we are coming out with a searchable database for every interpretation that we do. When there’s some clarification that we do today, it’s between us and that developer or architect. Just that architect or lawyer knows about it. What we want to do is level the playing field, make those searchable, and then this will become the library for all to view. —Jon Lentz jlentz@cityhallnews.com JUNE 20, 2011

HPD IS BUILDING A WEB OF BAD CONTRACTORS HPD’S “PRE-APPROVED” CONTRACTORS INCLUDE: • Lettire Construction Corp. Cited in an order seeking debarment for alleged prevailing wage violations

• Reliant Electrical Contracting

HPD:

(subcontractor to Lettire)

WHY ARE YOU PERPETUATING THESE IRRESPONSIBLE CONTRACTORS?

Cited in an order seeking three-year debarment for willful violations

• C.J.L. Construction Inc. (subcontractor to Lettire) Failure to pay prevailing wages

• Artec Construction & Development Hired Reliant and C.J.L. Construction Inc. as subcontractors for their HPD projects!

NEW YORK TAXPAYERS AND RESIDENTS DESERVE BETTER! Quality • Safety • Opportunity BUILDITUNION.COM