city hall - january 12, 2009

MARTY!The Brooklyn

BP on being overlooked,

and what he plans to do

about it

www.cityhallnews.comVol. 3, No. 8 January 2009

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

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

www.cityhallnews.com� January 2009 CITY HALL

By CounCil MeMBer JaMes Gennaro

As Chairman of the City Council’s Environmental Protection Committee, I’m

addressing two critical energy-related sustainability issues that we must pay attention to for both immediate and long-term reasons. One is a serious threat by a revenue-starved state government and natural gas companies to the drinking water for half of the State of New York, including all of New York City. The other is our ability right now—if we show the leadership and the will—to lower New York City’s greenhouse gas emissions significantly with the use of certain biofuels.

If we act wisely on both of these issues, we can not only protect and improve today’s economy, but lay the foundations for an environmentally and economically sustainable future as well.

About 100 miles north of New York City, in the watershed where the residents of New York City get their drinking water, energy companies are lining up to use an environmentally disastrous technique called “hydraulic fracturing” that has been recently facilitated with the passage of a new state law.

The process, also called “hydrofracking,” forces a three-to-nine-million-gallon slurry of water, sand and toxic chemicals into each drilling site thousands of feet underground and has been decried for its impact on water supplies around the country. As a trained geologist and environmental policymaker who has worked to protect our unfiltered water supply from development, I believe that opening the city’s drinking water supply watershed to hydrofracking will degrade our water supply and ultimately require the city to filter the water from this watershed. The construction of such a plant could cost city taxpayers $20 billion.

For this reason, I have been calling for a ban on hydrofracking within the New York City drinking water supply watershed. The NYS Department of Environmental Conservation, acting on behalf of a state government eager to reap the monetary benefits of natural gas exploration, has so far refused to adopt such a ban. I will continue to fight for a ban until it is adopted.

Those advancing the “drill, baby, drill” mantra argue that we need to find clean, alternative, domestic sources of energy right now. I couldn’t agree more. That’s why I’m pushing, instead, for the passage

of City Council Intro. 594, my “Bioheat” bill.

For about two years now, New Yorkers have been led to believe that the worst thing they can do for the environment is drive their car. According to PlaNYC, cars and light trucks contribute approximately 17 percent of the city’s total carbon emissions, while a whopping 79 percent of New York City’s carbon dioxide emissions come from buildings. So, environmentally speaking, the worst thing we can do is wait any longer for meaningful building emissions reforms, such as the bioheat mandate outlined in Intro. 594.

The bill requires all heating oil used in New York City to be “B20 bioheat” by the year 2013. B20 bioheat is a mixture consisting of 80 percent standard heating oil and 20 percent biodiesel, which is essentially vegetable oil, made entirely from domestically produced, sustainable, renewable sources like soybeans or algae. Bioheat dramatically reduces carbon emissions and other air pollutants, reduces our dependence on foreign oil, creates green jobs right here in New York and costs the same or less that standard heating oil. We need to pass Intro. 594 and mandate bioheat now and start to clean our air and

reduce asthma, grow our green economy and reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

Both of these measures—convincing a cash-strapped state government to ban hydrofracking in our irreplaceable water supply and passing the bioheat legislation—will benefit New York both environmentally and fiscally, right now and for generations to come. C

James Gennaro, a Democrat who represents parts of Queens, is the chair of the Council Committee on Environmental Protection.

ISSUE FORUM: energy

By asseMBly MeMBer Kevin Cahill

new york State hasambitious goals for renewable power and energy conservation—

25 percent by 2013 and 15 percent below forecasted consumption by 2015, respectively. As impressive as those targets promise to be, particularly in comparison to other states, we should cast them aside to instead strive toward energy independence. Such a shift in focus will get policymakers to think in terms of how we can best use renewable power, energy efficiency and infrastructure enhancements to help satisfy our most pressing needs while addressing long-term energy security at the same time.

We can only head in the direction of energy independence by asking and completely answering the questions of what are New York’s challenges, opportunities, needs and attributes. That is why a top legislative priority of mine for the coming term will be the advancement of a new wide-ranging Energy Planning Law. Only a statutorily empowered and independent Energy Planning Board with broad representation from all stakeholders will have the ability to thoroughly examine current and future energy-related issues and frame them in both a regional and statewide context. A law creating a comprehensive, dynamic and permanent process will ensure that New York has a clear and enduring mechanism to lead us

to energy independence.A properly funded State Energy

Plan is a modest expenditure in view of the great potential, but it can provide the principled framework and moral authority for determining effective efficiencies, infrastructure enhancements and renewable energy initiatives. By identifying and prioritizing the steps needed to reach our goals, a comprehensive process will help guide both public and private development. Only a board that reaches beyond traditional bureaucracies can appropriately assess

impacts on the economy, public health and the environment. It can also reveal the context for the siting of new power plants and transmission facilities. In brief, planning can do what planning does: better prepare us.

President-elect Obama has identified investment in energy projects as essential to our economic recovery. With our stature as one of the foremost leaders in energy conservation and renewable energy already, with our diverse energy needs and with an unrivaled network of universities, transportation and manufacturing infrastructure, New York is perfectly positioned to seize this opportunity to be the nationwide model for energy independence.

To get there we need to better utilize the resources we already have. Mass transit and smart sustainable development have already made us one of the most energy-efficient states in the nation. Let’s repower our old hydro facilities and modernize our electric grid to make it smarter, more efficient and better equipped to handle clean distributed generation. Let’s put our unrivaled higher education system to the task by fostering university and industry partnerships. Together they can focus on the research, development and deployment of wind, solar, thermal, tidal, fuel cell and combined-heat-and-power technology that can significantly fill the carbon fuel gap. The safe and

environmentally sound extraction of our abundant native natural gas reserves can also help. Still, the fastest and most responsible step we can take is through the greening and weatherizing of our buildings.

Energy independence is right for New York in so many ways. It will create new jobs at every level from entry to executive, from unskilled to highly technical. By meeting our energy needs in New York State we will be shielded from the volatility of the global energy market. By reducing consumption we will lower energy costs, improve air quality and help combat climate change. It seems like one of those “slap the forehead” no-brainers.

Working with Governor David Paterson, himself an expert in the field of energy, and the State Senate, over the coming weeks and months, I intend to help the New York State Assembly meet that challenge by starting with an energy planning board empowered with the resources and authority to show us the way.

As we have so many times before, New York has the potential to lead the nation to a new brighter future. This time it’s about energy and energy independence. Can we do it? Yes we can. C

Kevin Cahill, a Democrat represent-ing Ulster and Dutchess counties, is the chair of the Assembly Energy Com-mittee.

No to ‘Drill, Baby, Drill,’ Yes to Bioheat

Energy Independence Will Allow for New 21st-Century Thinking

WE’RE RIGHT FOR NEW YORK

Indian Point Energy Center

MOMS DEPEND ONOUR POSITIVE ENERGYCan a devoted Mom feel positive about nuclear energy? Yes. Because there’s a lot of positive energy at the Indian Point Energy Center.

Want your children to inherit a cleaner planet? Indian Point produces none of the greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming. The National Academy of Sciences, an independent assessment group of scientific experts, said that without Indian Point, high carbon fossil fuel replacement plants would dump millions of tons of pollutants into New York’s air. Thanks to Indian Point, you, and your children, can breathe easier.

Kids (and Moms) thrive on our positive energy. For more of it, visit our website at www.rightfornewyork.com


ISSUE FORUM: energy

By State Sen. Kevin ParKer

As governor Paterson saidin his 2009 State of the State address, energy really is now our

new rate of exchange, and we are going to have to make New York a more energy-efficient and more energy-independent state to ensure our near-term and long-term competitiveness.

Our current and future energy challenges will require a three-pronged approach. First, we have to increase the efficiency and cleanliness of our existing energy supply and transmission systems. Second, we must commit to energy conservation—in government, business and in the home. Third, we must make a significant and generational commitment to the exploration and development of new energy sources in ways that lower costs to consumers and lessen the damage to our environment.

Policy makers must confront these challenges even as we seek to kick-start our economy back into gear. We cannot tax or borrow our way out of the energy crisis, just as we cannot drill or pump our way out of this crisis. We are going to have to increase efficiency, conserve and innovate our way to an energy-efficient and environmentally responsible future.

As the new chair of the State Senate’s Energy and Telecommunications Committee, I have been aiming for a long time to conceive ways to protect our environment, while still affording New Yorkers the opportunity to live a decent life, pay our bills, while still leaving behind a better place for our children. Though our economic outlook is bleak and energy conservation remains an issue for all of us, there is still hope if we all pull together.

Up to two-thirds of potential energy is lost when traditional energy systems extract oil, coal and gas from the earth and transport them over long distances for refining and delivery or generation and transmission to consumers. Our energy generation and transmission infrastructure is antiquated, and simply by increasing efficiency we can save and create jobs while reducing costs to suppliers and to consumers. The state and federal governments should incentivize the upgrading of our energy infrastructure.

Even though the global economic slowdown has temporarily lowered energy costs, the reality is that with a rebounding economy, global demand for oil, coal and natural gas will only increase, and costs for consumers and taxpayers will rise.

While there are many things anyone can do to conserve energy, the single most effective way is to use public transportation or purchase a fuel-efficient

car, including ones with the new hybrid engines. Currently, New York consumes the least amount of energy per capita than any other state in the nation, in large part due to our heavily used public transportation systems.

We must keep public transportation affordable, pursue smart and fair traffic reduction regimes that improve air quality, and continue to raise emissions standards for transportation, manufacturing and farming through incentives and encouraging voluntary action.

Renewable energy provides stable fuel prices while creating a large number of high-skilled jobs in many sectors, and accessible renewable resources can deliver six times more energy than all the people on this planet use every day. The sun and wind will not increase in price, and technology will become cheaper as the market grows.

We must also consider advances in engineering and technology that should give us greater confidence in nuclear power, and continue to monitor promising developments in tidal energy generation in a state with several powerful rivers and hundreds of miles of coastline on our ocean and the Great Lakes.

We need a global transition to clean, green energy that reduces climate chaos, provides greater energy security for communities and nations, skilled jobs in cities and rural areas and sustainable economies with stable fuel prices. New York must lead the way in this new energy age, through efficiency, conservation and innovation. C

Kevin Parker, a Democrat represent-ing parts of Brooklyn, is the chair of the Senate Energy and Telecommunications Committee.

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By DaviD FreeDlanDer

Ed Towns reached thepinnacle of a longcareer last month when he became chairman of the prestigious House Oversight Committee in

Washington.So, naturally, the jockeying to replace him began to

heat up back in Brooklyn.Most of the early speculation around who would replace

the 74-year-old, 14-term Towns has centered around a pair of Assembly members from neighboring districts: Towns’ son Darryl, a 16-year veteran of the Legislature who has slowly been climbing the ranks in Albany, and Hakeem Jeffries, a 38-year-old former attorney at the outset of his second term whose future in politics has been the subject of intense speculation for years.

Beyond those of timing, and whether there might be a special election precipitated by early retirement, there are the questions about whether Darryl Towns even wants the seat. The power of dynasty politics being what it is, Towns would be at an advantage in a race to succeed his father, but so far he has not indicated that he prefers the life of a freshman Congressman to that of a senior member of the Assembly.

“The congressman wants his son in there, but Darryl is more of a reluctant warrior,” said Rock Hackshaw, a longtime area political operative. “I don’t think he’s ever been that gung-ho about Congress.”

Also at stake is a question of the state of local black politics, with Jeffries and Towns representing a study in contrasts. Jeffries was roommates with Washington, D.C., mayor Adrian Fenty while both were working towards graduate degrees at Georgetown, and is considered part of the next wave of “post-racial” black leadership, young elected leaders who are educated at top-tier schools and who consciously have distanced themselves from some of the old lions—and their children—of the Civil Rights Movement. Including Newark Mayor Cory Booker and Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, and, of course, President-elect Barack Obama, the group is distinguished not just for glittering academic pedigrees, but for having the kind of crossover appeal that allows them to attract a broad swath of white support.

Jeffries is acutely aware of what sets these politicians apart.

“There is a distinction between legacy politicians and emerging leaders,” he said. “There are certain legacy politicians who come into office following their parents, either into an office specifically or into politics in general, and the door is open to them a little wider because of their parents. Then you have a group of emerging leaders who don’t have a familiar connection to politics and have challenged the existing Democratic machine and broke through the doors and have risen to leadership. A lot of the younger elected officials in Brooklyn, the ones who backed Barack Obama all the way back in the summer of 2007, were those who were elected without establishment support. We weren’t beholden to political figures like Charlie Rangel and others leading the way for Senator Hillary Clinton.”

The younger Towns, meanwhile, represents something of an in-between place within the media narrative of dueling generations of Civil Rights politics. A veteran of the Air Force, Towns graduated from North Carolina A&T, a historically black college. Though only 48, he has already served a decade and a half in Albany, gaining seniority that has made him chair of the powerful Banking committee

as well as head of the state legislature’s Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic and Asian caucus.

He dismisses talk of a new, different generation of black political leaders.

“Why isn’t Jesse Jackson, Jr. included in that?” Towns asked. “Because he went to the same college I did, a historically black college? I don’t think we need to label people that you are an elite black, you are an ordinary black as long as we are working towards the same goal.”

The looming congressional race, however, could be shaped just as much by traditional party politics. Darryl Towns is a critic of Brooklyn county leader Vito Lopez, who happens to have taken an early interest in Jeffries.

“He represents a plurality of Democrats,” Towns said, criticizing Lopez’s approach to the job. “He could represent a majority, but I’m not sure he wants that.”

While Lopez did not pledge to back Jeffries should he decide to run for Congress, the county leader stressed that he was in Jeffries’ corner.

“I’ve been supportive of Hakeem on almost everything he’s done,” Lopez said. “If and when he runs, I have a responsibility to look at who he is running against. If it was a vacant seat for Congress, it would be very hard for me not to support him.”

But though Towns and Jeffries may have their differences, they have been united in supporting the elder Towns, despite the many who fault the congressman for what they see as a less-than-energetic tenure and for supporting CAFTA, the free trade agreement which opponents claim hits working class residents of areas like Brooklyn especially hard. Though he has survived both, the dissatisfaction with him in the district has attracted vigorous primary challengers for the past two cycles: in 2006, when he eked out 47 percent of the vote as fiery Council Member Charles Barron and then-Assembly Member Roger Green split the anti-incumbent; and in 2008, when he ultimately cruised to victory over former MTV star Kevin Powell.

Nonetheless, Towns’ vulnerability remains a hot topic in Brooklyn. With the right candidate, many expect, he would easily fall in a primary.

“If there was a halfway decent candidate like Hakeem Jeffries, then Towns would be in mortal danger,” said one veteran of several area campaigns.

Local political observers have been expecting Towns to retire for years now (and point to the fact that he has not as key evidence that his son is not interested in the seat). But with his new chairmanship in D.C., many now believe he will seek re-election in 2010. His office confirmed that he would.

That could put another wrinkle in a prospective congressional race: Jeffries has insisted he will not run against Towns, and if he and Darryl Towns continue to defer while the number of voters frustrated with Towns

continues to grow, both could miss their chance. Barron (D-Brooklyn) has already announced his plans to

run for the seat in 2010. The current project, he said, is to work out a deal with Powell to prevent another split vote. But Barron’s candidacy could still be a long shot, given his inability so far to garner support outside of the black, working-class areas that put him in the Council. Middle-class whites have been moving into the area in droves in recent years and could make up as much as 25 percent of the electorate in the next cycle—enough that some have speculated that the right white candidate could in fact win the seat, especially if they are able to make inroads with Hispanic voters and the Hasidic Jews who live in the district’s northern end.

In the meantime, speculation has erupted about the Congressional ambitions of Council Member Letitia James, who would be the only woman in the race. One of the most vocal opponents of Atlantic Yards, her profile has continued to rise in recent months through her leadership of opponents to the term limit extension. However, she is thought to lack the depth of a base in the black community that Barron has, the middle-class base that Jeffries has, or the name

recognition of Towns. Ironically, in yet another twist, if James and Barron are both in the race challenging Towns, Barron’s effort to dissuade Powell from entering could hurt him since many believe Powell and James would compete for the same votes in neighborhoods like Clinton Hill and Fort Greene. James herself denied any interest in the seat—which, notably, she could run for without giving up her current job, as Darryl Towns and Jeffries could not.

Regardless of what James decides, some of Jeffries’ supporters fret that Barron could be a thorn in Jeffries’ side, needling him for exactly the reason that so many find him attractive: his crossover appeal to both black and white voters.

In an interview, Barron was relentless in his criticism of Jeffries.

“I was hoping younger people like him would be a more refreshing, independent voice. He has taken some positive positions on the issues, but to me he is still a puppet for the Towns and Vito Lopez machine—and that’s what we need to break up. I lack a lot of respect for him.”

Barron also dismissed the notion that the future of the seat belongs to anyone.

“Heir apparent?” he said. “There ain’t no heir apparent as long as I’m in the race.” C

[email protected]

“Towns is in a very precarious position,”

said one observer. “If there was a halfway

decent candidate like Hakeem Jeffries, then

Towns would be in mortal danger.”

Big Egos and Ambitions Set To Collide in Prospective Race To Succeed Towns In changing district, changing calculus about who will run and who can win

www.cityhallnews.comCITY HALL January 2009 �

By Sal Gentile

Though opponents of the term limits extension have brought their case to court, they

are already pursuing other channels to advance challenges to the charter change signed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg (Ind.) into law in November.

A coalition of progressive, minority and labor organizations plans on submitting documentation to the federal Justice Department opposing the city’s application for “pre-clearance,” which is required under Section 5 of the federal Voting Rights Act.

The groups—including the NAACP, the Center for Law and Social Justice, the Independence Party and the Working Families Party—hope to demonstrate that the law disenfranchises minority voting rights. They point to at least two districts—Council Member Lew Fidler’s (D) district in Brooklyn and Alan Gerson’s (D) in Lower Manhattan—where white incumbents would serve third terms despite increasing numbers of black, Latino and Asian voters.

But even though the groups have been preparing those documents for months, they have not been able to file them since the administration has yet to initiate the federal review process, despite the more than two months that have passed since the law was signed.

Jeffrey Freedlander, first assistant corporation counsel, said through a spokesperson that the city was planning on submitting its application to the Justice Department “very shortly.” The spokesperson explained that the office has been especially busy during the last two months, and that several of the attorneys, including corporation counsel Michael Cardozo, had been on vacation during some of that time.

The administration has also been collecting letters of support from black and Latino Council members who supported the extension, such as Joel Rivera and Diana Reyna, in order to bolster its contention that the law does not disenfranchise minority representation, according to a person who has seen the letters.

There is a mandatory 90-day review period once the law is delivered to the Justice Department. The need for the federal government to have ample time to review the charter change in advance of the scheduled elections in November was one of the rationales expressed by extension supporters who defended the extremely rapid speed at which the bill moved through Council, as well as by opponents of calling a referendum for February.

Richard Emery, a civil rights lawyer who opposed the term limits extension but supports the mayor’s bid for a third term anyway, called the delay “mysterious”

and said “it raises red flags,” with the lack of other explanations leading him to speculate that the presidential transition might be a factor.

“I think that has to be one thought, that they do not want to submit this to the Bush Justice Department,” he said. “They want this in the Obama Justice Department because they’re afraid of retaliation against Bloomberg for declining to remain a Republican.”

The Justice Department under the Bush administration has regularly been characterized as highly politicized, according to reports issued by the inspector general and investigations conducted by Congress. The pre-clearance process is fairly informal, Emery said, and administration lawyers may have gotten the sense from the Bush Justice Department that federal approval was not assured.

Opponents of the extension have taken heart in that decision, pointing out that Obama’s choice for attorney general, Eric Holder, is both black and a New York City native. They said they expect his Justice Department to be sympathetic to their claims.

“The fact that term limits have to be approved by a Justice Department under the Obama administration, and since Mr. Holder is someone who I know … I believe he’s sensitive to these issues,” said Council Member Letitia James(D-Brooklyn), who has been a leader of

the opposition. “And I believe that he would heed an application from members of the NAACP and other organizations who have opposed the extension of term limits by legislative fiat.”

As they wait for the pre-clearance process to end—which may not happen now until March at the earliest—opponents of the term limits bill have also moved forward in Albany, with a bill that would mandate a public referendum before term limits could be extended anywhere in the state.

The primary sponsors of the bill, Assembly Member Hakeem Jeffries(D-Brooklyn) and State Sen. Kevin Parker (D-Brooklyn), say they are moving the bill forward in both chambers and that they will make it one of their highest priorities for the new legislative session. Jeffries said he plans on speaking directly with Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver(D-Manhattan) about the bill in the first week of the session. Parker has already secured a public commitment from new Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith (D-Queens) to allow a vote on the bill, a commitment Parker said Smith has reiterated in private conversations.

“I think a vote is possible,” said Jeffries, who has gathered more than 20 co-sponsors, including several from outside the city. “It would be a serious challenge [to the mayor], but the Assembly Democratic majority in particular has stood up to the mayor on other issues.”

Both Jeffries and Parker admitted that the success of the bill hinged on whether it could pass the Senate, with its slim two-seat Democratic majority. Though its prospects are improved now that the Democrats control the chamber, Parker put the odds of getting enough votes to pass it at 50-50.

“It is actually one of my major priorities, beyond dealing with the budget,” Parker said. “The question is, ‘is this just a one-house bill?’ And I’m saying no, it’s not a one-house bill. I can successfully maneuver this bill” and get a vote on the floor.

Both said the timetable for passage of the bill was especially urgent. In order to get a public referendum under way in time for the 2009 elections, Jeffries said the Assembly would have to pass his bill by the Legislature’s winter recess in February; Parker put the deadline for passage in the Senate at March 1.

In either case, they will have to compete with a crushing fiscal crisis that has consumed everyone’s attention.

“The fiscal crisis has obviously shifted the focus of some of my colleagues toward budgetary issues,” Jeffries said. “We have the ability to multitask, particularly when it relates to important issues like the preservation of the democratic process.” C

[email protected]

The court challenge to the term limits extension is just one of the several avenues opponents are still pursu-ing to stop the signed law from taking effect.

Term Limits Extension Opponents Still See Hope in Washington, AlbanyDelay in seeking approval gives Eric Holder or Silver and Smith chance to intervene

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By Andrew J. HAwkins

When the early afternoon quiet atHarlem Success Academy is interrupted by a pack of shrieking third graders, Eva

Moskowitz swoops in to restore order.“In the classroom, now!” she says, herding the children

into a nearby empty room. The former Council Education Committee chair known for her sharp tongue and often uncompromising approach, Moskowitz is now in charge of this and three other Harlem charter schools.

But she still wants to run for mayor someday. And she hopes honing her abilities to take charge of situations even like these will benefit those plans.

In the classroom, with a firmness her old Council colleagues would no doubt recognize, Moskowitz chides the third graders about noise in the hallways, and sends them on their way. There are even a few warnings saved for the teacher who Moskowitz says should have been keeping watch.

“Turn your back on them for a second,” she says, watching as the students now silently navigate the halls, “and you have trouble.”

In many ways, Moskowitz is still the hard-charging wheeler-and-dealer she was while in office. The same tools of the trade—cell phone and Blackberry—are strapped to her waist like a utility belt. And even though she spends her day far from City Hall, she still talks

openly and frequently about her political ambitions, rattling off statistics and talking points in rapid fire, an on-message politician pushing an agenda.

For now, the focus is her schools. At Harlem Success Academy, she knows practically every child’s name (and they know her as “Ms. M.”). She wants to open 36 more schools over 10 years, all while exploring a possible run in 2013. That in itself may prove difficult: if she follows through, she will have the difficult task of simultaneously overseeing several schools, opening dozens more and running a citywide campaign, with all the fundraising, phone-calling and glad-handing that entails.

The question she faces, however, is not only whether she is ready to re-enter the world of politics, but whether the world of politics is ready to have her back. As chair of the Education Committee, she regularly sparred with city officials, jockeyed for the media spotlight with other Council members and went toe-to-toe with the powerful teachers union, which she skewered for perceived labor abuses in the public schools.

“Clearly she pissed a lot of people off,” said Council Member Robert Jackson (D-Manhattan), who took over the committee after Moskowitz left the Council in 2005, opting for a Manhattan borough president run instead of re-election.

Her chairmanship was marked by several memorable

moments. She held hearings on the lack of both toilet paper in public schools and a decent science education for the city’s school children. She subpoenaed Department of Education officials who refused to appear before her committee, occasionally brought her own children into the Council chambers during hearings and rarely would allow other Council members time to ask their own questions.

“By the time we’d get a chance to ask,” said Jackson, “half hour, 40 minutes later, [the witnesses] were out of there.”

Dennis Walcott, the deputy mayor for education, recalled working closely with Moskowitz during Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s (Ind.) campaign to win control of the public school system in 2002. Bloomberg made the rare move to testify before her committee, even though the State Legislature would ultimately decide on mayoral control.

“Eva was a very adamant person when it came to trying to make sure we had all the information before her and her committee,” said Walcott, who was often at the receiving end of Moskowitz’s criticisms during education hearings.

Should she re-enter politics, Walcott said, most of the scrutiny will be on what she has done since leaving the Council, both as a school administrator and as an advocate for education reform.

“She has very big ambitions,” Walcott said. “But there’s nothing wrong with big ambitions.”

Eva Moskowitz Weighs a New Course: Ms. M for MayorFormer Council firebrand, now charter school chief, keeps an eye on 2013

For four years, Eva Moskowitz has been running an expanding chain of charter schools, but a return to politics is still very much on her mind.

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www.cityhallnews.comCITY HALL January 2009 �But after her run for borough president, many were

left wondering whether Moskowitz would ever return to politics.

George Arzt, a longtime political consultant who advised Moskowitz’s rival, Scott Stringer (D), during the race, criticized Moskowitz for running a single-issue campaign and predicted that it would be difficult for her to corral supporters should she decide to run again.

“She wasn’t a very popular figure with her colleagues in the City Council,” Arzt said. “Unless she’s changed radically, her outreach to those officials will not bear fruit, in my judgment.”

Arzt added that Moskowitz might be better suited to

run for public advocate than mayor. But while she had once entertained the idea of running for comptroller—and was planning a 2005 campaign before Bill Thompson opted for re-election rather than a mayoral run—Moskowitz said that at this point, her only interest is in running for mayor. Besides, 2013 is far off, she said, and there is still a lot of soul-searching to do. She admits that the extension of term limits threw her plans into question, but she is regrouping. She has yet to have any discussions with the city’s political elite about a future campaign.

“Lots and lots of people know, because I said that was an interest of mine,” she said. “I’ve been saying that for many years now, that I would consider it a privilege to

serve the city in the capacity of mayor.”She dismissed the one-issue criticism, calling

education a gateway to other pertinent citywide issues. After all, Moskowitz said, schooling represents about 45 percent of the city budget and a huge chunk of the workforce, adding that there is a clear connection between a successful school system and keeping the city competitive in the global economy.

“I care about everything from garbage collection to schooling to tax policy,” Moskowitz said. “I do think having someone who has a deep understanding of the challenges of educating a very diverse student population would provide some insight.”

If she runs citywide, Moskowitz will have to reach beyond her base of supporters, which includes parents, education reformers and constituents from her old district on the east side of Manhattan, to re-build her political foundation.

Council Member Gale Brewer (D-Manhattan) said she

is already seeing some evidence of this in fundraising letters for Harlem Success Academy being sent around the city.

“She’s obviously building a base,” said Council Member Gale Brewer (D-Manhattan), who has received several of Moskowitz’s fundraising solicitations sent to her Upper West Side district office.

But Moskowitz said that she is careful to keep her charter school business separate from anything remotely political.

“They’re different universes,” she said. “The political givers are very specific subset. They’re not the same universe of people.”

Moskowitz has almost as many powerful friends as

she does enemies. She cut her political teeth working for Rep. Carolyn Maloney’s (D-Manhattan/Queens) re-election campaign in 1996, and she and Christine Quinn (D-Manhattan) were both key members of the team that got Gifford Miller elected speaker in 2002. But Maloney endorsed Stringer in the borough president run, and a mayoral run in 2013 could put her at odds with Quinn, who has deferred her own plans to run for mayor since term limits were extended.

There is also the question of how her acrimonious relationship with the teachers union will affect any future political move she makes. Moskowitz says the union has the right to win the best deal for its members, just as she has the right to oppose any labor move she sees as detrimental to the well-being of school children.

“I believe that once unions go beyond wages and benefits and start dictating how the work is done, if they get it wrong, you can’t change it, other than collective bargaining,” Moskowitz said. “And that is going to make our city and our country a far less successful society.”

But for now, she is focused on her charter schools. Walking from classroom to classroom, she watches her students—so far only first-, second- and third-graders, most of them African-American—conduct science experiments, take art classes and play spirited games of chess. And though they are years away from middle school, Moskowitz said they talk frequently about going to college. They know the benefit of long-term planning, she says.

“It’s not about going to,” she said. “It’s about graduating from.”

But those who know her say Moskowitz is planning her own future as well.

“I don’t think Eva likes to do anything for a very long time,” Brewer said. “I think she likes to keep moving.”C

[email protected]

The question she faces, however, is not only whether she is ready to

re-enter the world of politics, but whether the world of politics is

ready to have her back.

No one but the densest politicalobserver could fail to see theulterior—if it can even be called

ulterior—motive behind MichaelBloomberg’s 12-hour trip to Israel on Jan. 4.Ray Kelly and Gary Ackerman in tow, themayor walked into the middle of a warzone, there to show support and solidari-ty to the residents of Sderot andAshkelon.

The mayor is entitled to his opinion oninternational affairs. Many New Yorkers,in fact, have grown accustomed over theyears to seeing their chief executive as anopinion leader on matters that go farbeyond the five boroughs. He is entitled aswell to practice politics as he seeks thethird term for which he is now eligible andwhich he hopes the city’s many reliableJewish voters will help him win. But inthis time of deep trouble for the city, stateand country, this is not what the mayorneeds to be doing.

Officially, he was there to make a state-ment.

“If the terrorists can win in one place,they will be emboldened and attack useveryplace,” he told CNN. “We have tomake sure terrorists understand we’reunited to stop them from attacking inno-cent people and killing them.”

That is a sentiment with merit. Butdumping himself in the middle of the fight-ing to express it is more than a little odd.

There are easy ways to criticize him formaking this trip, from pointing out theirony of his preaching security in Israelwhile proposing police budget cuts backhome to questioning at what point hisenvironmentalism gave way to green-lighting the carbon emissions generated

by flying for as much time each way as hespent on the ground. But the bigger prob-lem is that he is concentrating any efforton stunts like these.

Leave aside that his presence requiredat least some diversion of resources fromthe fighting underway. Sure, he lucked outwith the politically golden footage of hisrunning into a shelter during a rocketattack, but this raises a natural question:what if he had been hurt? What if he hadeven been killed? Though Hamas couldnot reasonably have been aiming for him,sticking himself within range of theiractive weaponry seems an unnecessaryrisk.

The mayor’s private time is his todetermine, but his priority is to this city,to serving and leading the citizens here,in Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn,Queens and Staten Island. Especiallyafter pushing to extend term limits on theargument that the city needed his expert-ise to survive the economic crisis. We arein an emergency, and candidate for re-election or not, the mayor should bedirecting his attention to the problemsthat face the city government over whichhe presides.

He is far from alone. Anthony Weinermade his own trip to the Middle East inDecember, accompanying DavidPaterson for official reasons that weremuch more far-fetched thanBloomberg’s. Congress may have beenout of session, but presumably therewere things that Paterson could havebeen doing to work on the budget, or togive himself more time to deliberateover the choices for our new chief judgeand senator. But though the overseas

flights involved seem to highlight theegregiousness, they are hardly differentfrom any of the other campaign stuntswhich New Yorkers will be exposed toover the course of this election year.Necessarily, every campaign includes atleast a few. But those who are seriousabout governing—in other words, thosewho deserve to be re-elected—will limitthem. In times like these, we cannotspare the cost, the attention or the timethat they demand. C

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www.cityhallnews.com10 JANUARY 2008 CITY HALL

Stunted Government

Not Just LocalDiplomas Are RisingTo the Editor:

Norm Fruchter and April Humphreywrongly claimed that “almost all theincrease” in New York City’s graduationrate in recent years “is in local diplomasawarded” (“Why Mayoral Control NeedsReform,” op-ed, Dec. 2008). To the con-trary, most of the increase in the gradua-tion rate has come from students earningthe more rigorous Regents diploma.

Between 2002 and 2007 (the mostrecent year for which data is available),the city’s four-year graduation rate rosefrom 51 percent to 62 percent. Duringthat same period, the percentage of stu-dents graduating with a Regents diplomain four years rose from 18 percent to 41percent, while the percentage of stu-dents graduating with a local diplomafell from 31 percent to 18 percent.

ANDREW JACOB

DEPUTY PRESS SECRETARY

NEW YORK CITY DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

You know how toughgetting a job inpolitics can be.

Submit job listings (175 words maximum) to:[email protected].

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LETTERS

CITY HALL JANUARY 2008 11www.cityhallnews.com

BY ALFRED E. SMITH IVAND HENRY AMOROSO

For the sake of the economy,Congress has been asked to bailout a lot of private businesses—

banks, insurance companies and the autoindustry. Each has come to Congress hatin hand seeking billions.

There is no denying the need or thefar-reaching effect their failure mighthave. But most of the 50 states are suffer-ing even more and their trouble affectseveryone. If Congress does not act, stateswill be forced to make draconian cutsaffecting hospitals, nursing homes, homecare agencies and many other areas ofhealth care. Some services will disap-pear. Some programs, like maternity careor pediatrics, will be cut. Everyone willfeel the impact.

When New York Gov. Paterson pro-posed $15.4 billion in budget cuts and tar-geted increased revenue for the next fis-cal year to close an ever-widening deficit,health care cuts were particularly deep:$3.5 billion. These cutbacks come on topof the more than $1 billion in reductionsthat health care has endured through two

rounds of budget cuts during 2008.Many other governors with similar

holes in their budgets have proposed sim-ilar deep cuts in health care. Health carethrough the Medicaid insurance programfor the poor is a large part of state budg-ets and so a likely place to cut. But it isshort-sighted to cut back on those pro-grams now, because they arepart of the solution to solvestates’ short-term budget issueswith temporary relief.

Plans are moving forward inCongress with backing of manygovernors to put a greater bur-den on the federal governmentfor health care, at least tem-porarily. If these plans do notsucceed, many hospitals throughout NewYork and other states could face cuts inservices, bankruptcy or the possibility ofclosing altogether.

The cost of Medicaid to the State ofNew York is about $45 billion. New Yorkpays half the total cost in its budget andthe federal government pays half. Inother states, depending on their income,the federal government may pay up to 75percent of Medicaid costs. The formula

for this is called the Federal MedicalAssistance Percentage, or FMAP.

Gov. Paterson has proposed in testi-mony before Congress that the FMAP beincreased 5 percent for the next twoyears, meaning that the federal govern-ment would increase its reimbursementrate by five percent. Under this proposal,

New York would gain about $4.3 billion ayear—not enough to cover all the cuts inthe governor’s proposed budget, but asignificant savings. Gov. Paterson and thelegislature would have the final word, butpart of the money could offset $6.4 bil-lion in Medicaid cuts to hospitals, homehealth agencies, doctors and nursinghomes proposed over the next two years.

Increasing FMAP reimbursement is areasoned and careful response to an

emergency situation and one that hasbeen used before. The FMAP reimburse-ments were increased temporarily afterthe recession that followed the Sept. 11attacks to help offset losses in statebudgets.

Congress can block or reverse otherchanges in Medicaid that will cut hun-

dreds of millions of dollars to hospi-tals throughout the nation. Amongthese devastating changes are cutsto teaching hospitals and cuts inMedicaid payments for outpatientcare.

Medicaid is more than a means tosettle state budgets. It helps realpeople gain access to the health caresystem and pays for services that all

people use, including emergency care.Every dollar paid by Medicaid helps topreserve services in hospitals and otherhealth care facilities.

Moreover, as policymakers discussproposals to “give a shot in the arm to theeconomy,” imposing significant cuts inhealth care would undoubtedly mean joblosses. Not only would there be layoffs athealth care facilities, but the ripple effectwould mean job losses in other sectorsthat support health care. Cuts to healthcare would only seem to hurt the econo-my at a time when we should be trying topreserve as many jobs as possible.

Which brings us back to New York’sproposed cuts. If any Medicaid cuts gointo effect now, before Congress can act,New York will lose $2 for every $1 it cuts.Those cuts will likely stay in place, evenif Congress increases Medicaid reim-bursement. It is in everyone’s interestthat New York and other states delay cutsas long as possible to give Congress timeto act.

Cuts in health care services usuallyare permanent. An increase in federalreimbursement would only be temporary.But it would be an investment in both ourphysical and fiscal well-being. C

Alfred E. Smith IV is chairman of the

board and Henry Amoroso is president

of Saint Vincent Catholic Medical

Centers.

OP-EDCutting Reasonably, Keeping the Budget and the State Healthy

BY STATE SEN. JEFFREY KLEIN

With the state facing a $14 billiondeficit, we need to get seriousabout solutions and find cre-

ative ways to close the budget hole whileimproving the lives of New Yorkers.Currently, Medicaid accounts for $23.4billion, or 18 percent of the state budgetexpenditures. By default, Medicaid hasbecome the primary source of long-termcare funding. For the 2008-09 fiscal year,Medicaid spending on nursing home andhome care is projected to be $12.5 bil-lion, or 27 percent of total Medicaidexpenditures, estimated at $45 billion.With nearly $1 in $5 of the budget alreadyspent on Medicaid, we can ill afford tofurther burden taxpayers with the long-term care expenses needed by the grow-ing senior population.

In November, I released a report whichproposed to save New York State an esti-mated $1.1 billion in Medicaid dollars overfive years. The report, An Impending

Crisis: The Rising Cost of Medicaid &

Expanding Funding Options for Long-

Term Care, found that long-term careinsurance in New York is prohibitivelyexpensive and often insufficient to coverthe actual cost of care. In response, I haveproposed legislation which would enablepolicy holders to accelerate the death ben-efit of their life insurance for long-termcare, allowing New Yorkers to tap into anadditional reserve of funding.

As the baby boomers age, over 2 mil-lion New Yorkers will need services rang-ing from home health care to nursinghome care by 2015. However, most NewYorkers can’t afford long-term care insur-ance, and are forced to spend down theirsavings and go broke to qualify forMedicaid to pay for their long-term care.Private long-term care insurance is cost-ly. The average premium in 2007 was$2,862, yet it doesn’t even cover the $263average statewide cost of care ($308 inNew York City), providing only an aver-age daily benefit of $177.

According to the state Department ofHealth, over 3.2 million New Yorkers, or17 percent of the state’s population, areover the age of 60, while 44 percent ofseniors will need some form of long-termcare—and 28 percent of women and 11percent of men will need long-term carefor more than five years. Clearly, there isdemand for a more integrated and effec-tive model of long-term care insurance.Allowing individuals to accelerate thedeath benefit of their life insurance forlong-term care costs would allow peopleto take greater advantage of theirresources and have more options, ratherthan simply spending down their savings.

Certain companies currently offersuch an option, but they are few. Thereare only 10 companies, of the 135 lifeinsurance companies licensed to transactbusiness in New York, that offer acceler-ated death benefits for riders for long-

term care. However, as of 2006 only400,000 New Yorkers owned long-termcare insurance, while a whopping 9 mil-lion had life insurance. If the industrywere to merge life and long-term careinsurance into a single product, it wouldreduce the cost to the individual as wellas the state. In the past, the insuranceindustry has argued that life insuranceand long-term care insurance are no moresimilar than apples and oranges. Yet,democracy is about flexibility and free-dom, and when it is within our power toreduce waste and improve options for asizeable population, we must seize it. Atmy request, an insurance company devel-oped a model based on my proposal,revealing that it is viable and not undulyburdensome to the industry.

We need to move New York State for-ward through the worst fiscal crisis sincethe Great Depression. The Legislaturemust curtail spending and take responsi-bility for the needs of all New Yorkers. Itis a scandal that seniors who need long-term care should be forced to go intopoverty in order to get the care they needand deserve. My proposal is a legitimatesolution to a problem which we haveboth a financial and a moral obligation toaddress. The time to act is now. C

Jeffrey Klein, a Democrat represent-

ing parts of the Bronx and Westchester,

is the deputy majority leader of the

State Senate.

City Hallwelcomes

submissionsto the op-ed

page. A piece should bemaximum 650 words long,accompanied by the nameand address of the author,

and submitted via email [email protected]

to be considered.

If any Medicaid cuts gointo effect now, beforeCongress can act, New

York will lose $2 forevery $1 it cuts.

For a Healthier New York, Fix Long-Term Care Costs


Marty!Old Brooklyn, new Brooklyn. White Brooklyn, black Brooklyn.

Marty Markowitz has built a political career out of bridging the divides, appealing across the constituencies and, in the past seven years, promoting all that they and the borough have to offer across the country and around the world.

But he never learned much about hip-hop. Standing at the back of the theater at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on Jan. 8,

Markowitz alternated between constantly checking the cards of his speech and looking out with some wonder at the crowd gathered for the premiere of Notorious, the biopic about the life and death of Christopher Wallace, the rapper known as the Notorious B.I.G. “I must have missed this whole genre,” he says, almost to himself.

Nonetheless, the crowd is ecstatic to see him, shaking his hand and calling out to him as he waits to be called onto stage to read a proclamation honoring Wallace’s mother. When he is, the cheer that erupts from the almost entirely African-American audience is intense, as big as the one that greets Jesse Jackson minutes later when he arrives, and almost as big as the one for a mention of Barack Obama’s inauguration.

Time to perform.On the microphone, the borough president reads a few scripted lines about the rapper’s Brooklyn

roots, complete with canned jokes. He even takes a crack at hitting the notes of the rapper’s famous “It was all a dreeeeeam” line, but cuts himself short. Shrugging, he says, “I won’t quit my day job.”

Across the street and up a few blocks, the dream that for so long has consumed his day job remains unfi nished, barely started. If Markowitz is remembered for nothing else, he will be for Atlantic Yards, the multi-building project that is still scheduled to one day stand here, centered on an arena for the relocated Nets. Deservedly so: bringing a professional

basketball team to Brooklyn was an idea that Markowitz fi rst proposed on the campaign trail in 2001, and, the story goes, shortly after winning he convinced Bruce Ratner to buy the Nets for the purpose of moving them to a new home built over the old rail yards along Atlantic Avenue.

According to the original plans, the Nets were supposed to take the court in December 2006. This was then moved to October 2009, then 2010. A best-case estimate from Ratner last summer put the opening of the arena at mid-2011, but the economic situation has since led to more revisions.

Atlantic Yards is the biggest of the big developments Markowitz has shepherded through, and while this one may not be moving, others are. The borough is a drastically different place from when he fi rst took offi ce, as is the offi ce of the borough president itself. But the economic crisis has left the future of both uncertain: with city budget cuts looming, he worries, the borough presidency may become a victim of the recession as well.

“Everything is up in the air now,” he says about Atlantic Yards, while insisting he has neither given up on what originally drew him to the idea nor on his hopes it will happen.

But as with the city budget process, he is powerless to do anything more. He is clearly annoyed by the people who fought the project through the fl ush years when construction would have been easier, and stands by the old talking points—that it would spur economic development, bring pride to Brooklyn, create 1,000 units of affordable housing and be a home for events even as signifi cant as a Democratic Convention—which come to him as easily now as they ever did, though not with the same enthusiasm he once had.

At best, Atlantic Yards will be stalled and scaled back further. At worst, the blight which Markowitz and others decreed to help pave the way for eminent domain seizures will actually come to pass, an abandoned hole in the neighborhood without either the mega-project or the original businesses that were displaced.

Asked whether Atlantic Yards will actually happen, he sighs. “I don’t have doubts,” he says. “But listen, I’m not at the table.”

The Brooklyn BP on being overlooked,and what he plans to do about it

By Edward-Isaac Dovere

www.cityhallnews.comCITY HALL JANUARY 2009 13Sighing is unusual for Markowitz. Usually, he is the

cheery presence, the booster, promoter, advocate and, most of all, the cheerleader. The perfect Borscht Belt ham, schmaltz comes naturally to him, probably on the same gene that gives him his goofy smile and comic Brooklyn accent. Ask him to present an award and he yanks out anecdotes, interspersed with a few self-deprecating jokes, all in a Henny Youngman rhythm. Ask him to be in a photograph and he automatically holds out his hands for his standard showman’s pose, able to suspend his expression for minutes in what looks like mid-laugh.

In a business full of strong personalities, there are few stronger than Markowitz’s.

“Do you think any other politician could have taken on the CEO of Domino’s over Brooklyn-style pizza or say in a press release that it has fl imsy crust?” said Greg Atkins, his former chief of staff and an admirer. “He is able to get the attention of mayors and governors because of who he is.”

Markowitz says he enjoys performing, but more importantly, he enjoys the effectiveness this allows him. If he gets more attention than the powers of his stripped-down offi ce should rightfully provide, if he gets more people to spend their money in Brooklyn because they are drawn to the Brooklyn brand that he has almost single-handedly lodged in the greater consciousness, if he makes his constituents feel better about themselves, he believes he has done the job well—even that gets him written off as a clown.

Though he accepts that word too. “If I’m a clown,” he said, “then I’m doing it for

Brooklyn.”Still, as there is around many professional comedians,

a darkness hangs over him. There is a sensitivity as well, the kind that puts press aides of people who receive interview requests about him on edge, wary about having their bosses included without vetting the questions. Markowitz has a thin skin, one explains confi dentially, and he can be vindictive when crossed.

Markowitz denies this, but sitting in his offi ce at the outset of a year which should be a good one—with term limits extended, he gets to run for re-election to his dream job potentially unchallenged—he is far from jovial. There are no jokes. He says he is happy, but he seems sullen, almost depressed.

And he is angry. For all the positive coverage he receives, he has also been battered in the press, mostly over Atlantic Yards, but also over the private fundraising he has done on behalf of the nonprofi t run out of Borough Hall used to promote his Brooklyn agenda and for the famous summer concert series he has hosted since he was a state senator.

The attacks have gotten to him. A story circulated about his wife taking too many Takashi Murakami placemats from a party at the Brooklyn Museum of Art last April is “a crock of shit.” Claims that he misappropriated funds for his nonprofi ts are “bullshit.”

“If they got something, go to the district attorney,” he says. “But they make a story, they make it seem like, ‘Wow, there’s something devious going on, oh we got something.’”

The explanation, he believes, is pretty simple. “I just think that the press generally feels that the

borough president is, to use the Post’s word, ‘redundant.’ That’s it. It’s redundant, so why cover that?” he says, getting somewhat fl ustered.

He feels powerless to stop the attacks, he says, frustrated that he cannot get coverage for the substantive work he and his staff are doing. People want to dig into the fi nances of his nonprofi t, he says, but no one wants to look at what his nonprofi t does to promote initiatives in the borough, let alone focus on the economic

development that stems from admittedly cornball ideas like the Brooklyn Book Festival or Dine Out Brooklyn.

He is scared as well. He expects Mayor Michael Bloomberg (Ind.) to try starving his offi ce of resources, dropping his staff from 77 to 56 over the next four years, according to a document obtained which baselines the mayor’s budget team’s current plan. He has already laid off or not replaced close to 10. Sounding truly depressed, he explains that despite how well he has gotten along with Bloomberg in public, he has no seat at the mayor’s table either, no method of getting Bloomberg to listen. If the administration decides his offi ce’s needs are “immaterial,” as he interprets their view, Markowitz wonders if he will be able to convince the mayor otherwise.

He is not holding out hope. In 1955, Marty was Ernest Borgnine’s Oscar-winning

title character, a bachelor butcher who just wanted to be loved. In 2009, Marty is New York’s only one-named politician famous around the world. He wants love too. Also respect, and the money that comes with it.

But while his campaign to save the borough presidency will be diffi cult, his campaign to be re-elected borough president will be a cakewalk. Even with a list of strikes against him that could sink a lot of other politicians, Markowitz has no major opponent, nothing more than 2006 Congressional candidate Chris Owens considering a symbolic candidacy just for the sake of there being a challenge.

On the strength of his charm and his careful steps to avoid confl ict—aside from championing redevelopment and rezonings, he has not distinguished himself as an out-front leader on anything divisive in politics and policy—Markowitz presides over borough delegations of politicians who for the most part embrace him, or at least know that enough of their colleagues do to keep their gripes to themselves.

Nonetheless, Markowitz says he has yet to start crafting a specifi c agenda for a third term, though he believes his “sense of what we can accomplish together,” despite the ambiguity, in itself makes a compelling case for his re-election. He nods in the direction of a few ideas, like working with developers to bring supermarkets into empty spots in underserved neighborhoods and

continuing his effort to brand the area around Borough Hall as a center for law fi rms. He will also keep pushing the revitalization of Coney Island and City Point, near his beloved Junior’s.

Beyond pushing for these, and, of course, banging the drum for Atlantic Yards, he says it is too early to start thinking about specifi cs of what he will

do in his third term. He says his focus for the moment is creating jobs rather than campaigning. He says this, however, while waving a rolled-up stack of papers in his hand from a just-concluded meeting, with “Goals for Third Term” written in bold capital letters across the top of the front page and bullet-points about Atlantic Yards, Coney Island and several other key development projects typed out below.

The landscape has very quickly changed, admitted Council Member Bill de Blasio (D-Brooklyn). Just a few months ago, when he was in what was a race to succeed Markowitz, de Blasio had been planning to campaign in part on the platform that the borough president should be more resistant to helping big projects along.

“At the time, the expectation was continued development pressures,” de Blasio said, explaining that he had been planning to argue in his campaign that “we were going to have to go a step further in terms of pushing back.”

What happens in the leaner years ahead will be a test for Markowitz’s development philosophy, built on a

“If I’m a clown,” he said, “then

I’m doing it for Brooklyn.”

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Graham Reassumes Deputy Duties with Expanded Health Portfolio

Yvonne Graham may have abandoned her plans to run for what was to have been an open

race for Brooklyn borough president, but she is planning to spend the next four years in Borough Hall anyway, with her return to full duties as Marty Markowitz’s deputy borough president as of the beginning of the year.

Resuming as deputy after a year of campaigning, especially in less familiar parts of Brooklyn, has allowed her “to come back a more informed person to really work alongside Marty over the next four years.”

Graham, whom Markowitz had endorsed to succeed him, had been forced to scale back her responsibilities in February to comply with city cam-paign finance laws. Complete with a $17,500 pay cut and title change (she spent the better part of 2008 as a “spe-cial assistant” to Markowitz), Graham was barred from having a role in policy decisions while pursuing her candi-dacy.

“It was a little strange,” she said, of living within the diminished role.

Nonetheless, she said she was glad to have remained at Borough Hall, cit-ing the importance of being part of the administration, both when she was run-ning to succeed Markowitz and now that she has resumed her responsibilities.

“I wasn’t involved in what was being decided, but I was still aware of what was happening,” she said.

The arrangement, modeled on the one crafted by then-Brooklyn Borough President Howard Golden when he endorsed his own deputy, Jeanette Gadson, in the 2001 race, also had the benefit of keeping Markowitz from select-ing another deputy who would now have been in Graham’s place as Markowitz prepares for what will likely be a largely uncontested race for a third term.

Graham resumes as deputy borough president with an added title: director of the health and human services depart-ment, a role she said she plans to use to examine how to best leverage ever-scarcer resources to improve health care in the borough. Her 20 years of experi-ence in public health before entering government, she believes, will enable her not just to have an impact locally, but also on a wider scale if and when Barack Obama and his cabinet begin substantive health care reform efforts.

Calling Brooklyn “a microcosm of America,” Graham said the many ranges of diversity in the borough means “we can come up with some health care models that can be repli-cated across the country.”

Markowitz’s chief of staff Carlo Scissura, who gave Graham the addi-tional assignment in part as a cost-cut-ting measure, said that this may not be the only additional assignment she is asked to handle over the years ahead.

“As we look toward additional bud-get cuts and additional restructuring

because of those budget cuts, I think Yvonne’s portfolio will con-tinue to grow, but it’s too early to say,” he said.

In the meantime, the possibility of a 2013 campaign now awaits, though Graham said her support-ers are more ready to start plan-ning that run than she is herself.

“The reaction is people saying, ‘Okay, now you can prepare for the next four years,’” she said. “And I’m saying, ‘Wait, I’m not looking so far ahead.’” C

—[email protected]

Deputy Borough President Yvonne Graham has resumed her full duties at Borough Hall.

feeling that Brooklyn is still on the edge, that the borough needs big projects like these to keep the local economic engine going, even as others insisted that he is operating on an outdated concept of cities that did not adequately account for urban renewal and the constant overfl ow from Manhattan on which Brooklyn can now rely.

During the relatively boom times that coincided with his borough presidency until now, this was a theoretical dispute. The hotel boom, the massive activity in downtown Brooklyn, the opening of the cruise-ship terminal in Red Hook—arguably, these were easy when the city was fl ush and demand outstripped supply in Manhattan. How much impact Markowitz can have in a recession, especially on continuing to drive downtown Brooklyn toward his goal of its becoming a second fully fl edged city center alongside midtown Manhattan, remains unclear. From Atlantic Yards to the new core of law fi rms he hopes to attract, as money for development dries up, so much is in the balance—which is why now, more than ever, Downtown

Brooklyn Partnership president Joe Chan said, he believes in the power of Markowitz’s continuing promotion of the Brooklyn brand.

“Playing that role as advocate is going to be really critical,” Chan said. “There’s a lot more retail growth that can happen

once the market starts to correct itself. We’re going to need Marty out there in front for downtown Brooklyn.”

Markowitz is criticized by Brooklynites outside of downtown Brooklyn who complain about the disproportional investment and attention he has given to

the neighborhood. He rejects this point. “That’s bunk,” he said, defending his

record, as he often does, not by answering the charges exactly but by pointing to how many people know him and like him. “I think we can take a walk through any of the other neighborhoods and let’s see if the residents in those areas know me. That’s part of government. They recognize the borough president, they call, they write. And I’m always advocating for every part of this borough.”

More businesses mean more jobs and money for the whole borough, he explains, citing his ability to understand this from his perch at Borough Hall as the main reason why the city needs to preserve borough presidents: unlike legislators who get caught up in their own parochial concerns, they can take a wider perspective, seeing what benefi ts the whole borough.

If he had an opponent, this might be a point of contention, along with the kinds of things which have received support from his discretionary budget over the years. Though Markowitz has a knack for grand thinking—Brooklyn as an international tourist destination? Astroland retooled for the 21st century?—his capital expenditures have been decidedly small-bore. Unlike

Adolfo Carrión in the Bronx, who directed much of his capital money toward creating affordable housing, Markowitz has spent less than $9.5 million over seven years on this construction, lacking any identifi able emphasis toward this or anything else for his capital investments. In disbursements rarely higher than $1 million and generally much less, Markowitz has spread the money around to things like adding street planters and buying new equipment for community centers. To his critics, this is evidence of an inability and unwillingness to fl ex the full power of the offi ce, though to defenders like Council Member Lew Fidler (D-Brooklyn), the hundreds of thousands of dollars the borough president has been pouring in to renovating school playgrounds in recent years is “not a small thing if it’s your playground.”

But no one seems ready to take the bait. Even Council Member Charles Barron

(D-Brooklyn), who has regularly attacked Markowitz and was also planning to run to succeed him before the term limits extension, admits that beating the incumbent would be diffi cult. He believes he could decisively make the case that Markowitz has ignored poorer neighborhoods and lacks substance. But countering the benefi ts of incumbency, he said, would require him to resign from the Council immediately and concentrate fully on the campaign, which he will not do.

“My momma didn’t born no fool,” Barron said. “I’m not going to get so caught up in my disagreement with him that I’ll get in.”

Before term limits were extended, Markowitz led every prospective primary poll for this year’s mayor’s race, though he never mounted

anything resembling a campaign—a fact that his circle consistently mentions as proof of his political signifi cance. A year ago, Marist clocked him at 18 percent, compared to 13 percent for Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-Brooklyn/Queens), who was far along in planning his second mayoral campaign, and 9 percent for Comptroller William Thompson, the only one of the group who has so far won a citywide race. Twice.

Meanwhile, Queens Council Member Tony Avella, who has been putting together his campaign for mayor since 2006, could not even get himself included as an option.

Markowitz hemmed and hawed about jumping into the race for years. He says he could have made an excellent mayor, insisting that the only thing which kept him out was the prospect of fundraising and campaigning.

A 2013 mayoral campaign might happen, he said, but hardly in the adamantly non-committal words typical to politicians who expect to be candidates.

“In this profession, you never say ‘never,’” he said, “but keep this in mind: I’ll be almost 69. While that’s not old—69 sounds like a baby to me—you know what? Let’s see what happens.”

Markowitz expects Bloomberg to try starving

his office of resources, dropping his staff from 77 to 56 over the next

four years, according to a document obtained which

baselines the mayor’s budget team’s current plan.

www.cityhallnews.comCITY HALL JANUARY 2009 15

Death by a Thousand Cuts Ahead, BPs Fear

More than anyone else in the post-Board of Estimate era, Markowitz has defined the idea of the borough presidency to politicos

and voters alike, his rah-rah promotion of Brooklyn combined with a stereotypical face and accent that make him the embodiment of his borough, and what the office can be.

“As Borough President I will make sure that Brooklyn never takes a back seat to Manhattan or any other part of New York City,” he wrote in his statement for the Campaign Finance Board’s voter guide in 2001, and indeed, admits his opponent in that race, Ken Fisher, “Marty has been exactly the borough president that he promised he would be—a very visible symbol and face of a borough on the rise.”

What he has not been is a leader on any major policy initiative or distinct focus besides new building projects and the economic development which has flowed from these as well as the various events and promotions he has sponsored. Nor has Markowitz ever been much interested in overseeing a policy shop churning out the kind of data-driven reports which have become a specialty for Scott Stringer’s office and helped the Manhattan borough president create another distinct model for the posi-tion.

Those wondering which has greater resonance will have to wait another four years: had the two-term limit remained in place, 2009 would have featured at least four, and possibly five, open races for borough president, effectively creating a referen-dum on the Markowitz and Stringer models among both candidates and voters. But in the Bronx, where Adolfo Carrión (D) is set to join the Obama adminis-tration, Assembly Member Ruben Diaz, Jr. (D-Bronx) said he has already been studying the Markowitz and Stringer models as he begins the campaign to succeed Carrión in earnest.

“I would not only like to have the spirit change for how people in the Bronx see themselves, but I want the rest of the world to know how great it has become,” Diaz said. “Marty Markowitz does that right.”

However, Diaz said he has been paying just as close attention to the Stringer model, especially the efforts to reform community boards as a way of strengthening their influences on land use.

But the borough presidency of whoever wins the Bronx race may have more to do with Mayor Michael Bloomberg (Ind.) than Markowitz or Stringer. If Bloomberg wins, and probably if he does not, many expect that a charter commission will be convened soon after the election to weigh in on the question of term limits and their extension. While

they are at it, commission members may very well take another stab at configuring the various offices in city politics, potentially scrapping the borough presidents altogether. Stripped of most of their power after the Supreme Court found the Board of Estimate to be unconstitutional, the positions squeaked through the 1989 changes, though aside from pro-tecting the politicians who occupied them then, few saw a reason why. After two decades of existing with their wings clipped, this may prove the moment when they are finally eliminated.

On the contrary, Markowitz said, the charter com-mission should expand the powers of the borough presidents. The decision to remove them entirely from the budget process was a failure of the 1989 commission, he believes, arguing that the 2010 com-mission should remedy that, along with giving the borough presidents a greater role on land use and education. Most importantly, he called for the com-mission to create mandated budgets for the offices so that the borough presidents (and the public advo-cate) are not dependent on the whims of the mayor and the Council for their operating expenses.

“We’re not at the table. We are like this—” he says, holding his hand away from him and shaking it—“dangling out there. We’re out here. The public advocate’s out here, and borough presidents are out here. Dangling because we’re part of government and we’re almost not part of government.”

He slammed the proposal circulating among Bloomberg’s budget staff to slash funding to his and the other borough presidents’ offices.

“What’s on the table would destroy these posi-tions,” he said. “Do I think the city could function? Of course the city would function. The city would function without a City Council, too. The city could function without a comptroller too, by the way. But the bottom line is that the city functions better on a borough level because of the job of borough presi-dents.”

Markowitz believes that these cuts are Bloomberg’s attempt to pre-empt the charter com-mission by reducing the roles as much as he can. And he is not alone: Stringer, who calls the budget cuts coming down on the borough presidents “an excuse to cut democracy,” says he expects the other borough presidents to join the fight.

“The question is: what’s the tipping point when the fiscal crisis is used to disable elected offices? And that’s what we cannot allow to happen,” Stringer said. “This cannot be used as a way of limiting dis-sent.” C

—[email protected]

These days, the real looming political question for him is about the race he did not enter. He was the highest-ranking Democrat to cross party lines in 2005 for Bloomberg, even going so far as to record a campaign commercial for him declaring his support. This was an unusual move for the proud Democrat, who until that point had only broken ranks for John Lindsay, Jacob Javits and Sal Albanese.

He says he does not yet know whether he would back Bloomberg again.

“Let me just say this: he’s been a great mayor in many ways and an excellent manager,” he said. “This city is not dependent on one person. We have a wealth of talent, and I believe the mayor would agree that this city will not be dependent on one person for its future.”

So far, Markowitz said only Thompson has courted his support, and only informally at that. He expects the other candidates will reach out as well, only complicating a decision about which he is openly torn.

In 2005, he said, the decision was easy: he was confi dent Bloomberg stood “head-and-shoulders above” his opponents. Asked whether Weiner has gained any stature in his eyes in the four years since his fi rst run or how Thompson measured up, Markowitz deferred, keeping uncharacteristically tight-lipped.

“Every four years, all of us, including me, have to take stock of, do they want the same person serving them, or do they feel it’s time for a change? That’s the right,” he said. “So we’ll see.”

His position, he said, is clear: he wants the kind of government that wants him, as the borough president, to be a part of the government.

“All I know is I give respect and I expect respect back,” he said. “Respect to me is providing the resources to this offi ce so that I and other elected offi cials can do the work that we were elected to do. Period. That’s all I ask. I don’t ask for anything more than that.” C

[email protected]

The New York Affordable Reliable ElectricityAlliance (New York AREA) is a diverse group

of business, labor, environmental, and commu-nity leaders working together for clean,

low-cost and reliable electricity solutions thatfoster prosperity and jobs for the Empire State.

S P E C I A L S P O N S O R E D S E C T I O N

InfrastructureInvestments Crucialto New York State

By Arthur (Jerry) Kremer

New York State is facing some tough times. Families are closingthe purse strings and feeling the weight of the economy.In Albany, officials are considering the best way to revive ourstruggling economy.

History demonstrates that one of the best places to invest capitalduring tough times is on infrastructure improvements. One ofthe great successes of the New Deal was F.D.R.’s ability to createnew jobs while making much needed repairs to infrastructureacross the country. It was a short term fix as well as a long terminvestment.

Unfortunately, much of our energy and transportationinfrastructure is a vestige of times gone by, especially in the caseof New York State. Each year we spend tax dollars merely doingtemporary fixes and avoiding real progress.

The Obama Administration will have the opportunity to fix someof our current ills, but New York State must lead on its own,focusing on energy infrastructure. New construction projects oflarge size will in the short term provide jobs and an influx ofcapital to local economies and in the long term, help secureNew York’s energy needs.

In New York no new power plants of any major size have beenconstructed for almost five years due to the lapse of Article X,our power plant siting law. This past summer we once againexperienced record demand for electricity, yet no new generationis planned and the additional stress on our electric grid puts us inan untenable position. The lack of a siting law discouragesinvestors from doing business in the state and spending largeamounts of capital.

We need to keep all energy options on the table; determinewhere it’s appropriate to drill in the Marcellus Shale field; wherewe can site new power plants, and where new transmission linescan be built to bring power to our homes and businesses, whilemaintaining all current sources of baseload power.

Reliable electricity generation and transmission capability arecritical for every economy, and in New York State it’s nodifferent. Our solutions today must prepare us for tomorrow.

Arthur (Jerry) Kremer is Chairman of the New York Affordable

Reliable Electricity Alliance and a co-author the Article X Power Plant

Siting Law. He served in the State Legislature for 23 years, 12 as

Assembly Ways and Means Chair.

W W W . A R E A - A L L I A N C E . O R G

www.cityhallnews.com16 January 2009 CITY HALL


Last year, two of Bill Lynch’stop political clients were the lieutenant governor and Senate

minority leader. Now that David Paterson is governor and Malcolm Smith is the Senate majority leader, the long-time Harlem political guru has the ears of two of the “three men in a room.”

Or, as Lynch puts it, “We’ve had a good year.”

Persistent rumors of a fallout between the firm and Paterson notwithstanding, Lynch and his staff insist that though they have scaled back their business relationship with the governor since he was elevated last March, they still have strong ties.

According to Lynch, this will enable him and his team to help mediate if Paterson and Smith devolve into the combative relationship that history has shown awaits governors and the legislative leaders in Albany.

For now, though, things remain amiable.

“If they asked, we would help mediate things,” Lynch said, adding, “But they haven’t asked us yet.”

Lynch and Paterson are not as close as they once were. Paterson was reportedly upset that several of the state’s influential Democrats—Lynch included—claimed to

have special access to him in the midst of the wild week when he suddenly became governor. Their relationship cooled even further after Lynch orchestrated the rollout of Paterson’s confession to the press about his extramarital affair.

Lynch Associates’ president, Luther Smith, managed Paterson’s lieutenant governor campaign and was initially slated to join Paterson’s administration for the transition. When he bowed out at the last second, speculation erupted that this was the result of the new governor’s anger at Lynch—though Smith said that he reconsidered the gig himself, deciding that he did not want to return to the public sector, especially with his wedding on the horizon.

The firm is still on the governor’s good side, said political and government operations director Kevin Wardally, even though they are not doing as much

political work for him as they once did.“We aren’t necessarily so focused

on the governor,” Wardally said. “The governor is a friend of the house, and if he asks Mr. Lynch, we will of course provide assistance.”

Wardally admitted that Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-Manhattan/Queens) may have been banking on a bit more when she hired Lynch to represent her in the public relations war over Hillary Clinton’s Senate seat.

“It doesn’t hurt that we have a good relationship with Paterson,” he said. “She reached out to a firm that could help her.”

But, Wardally noted, Maloney’s quest for the seat was helped more by the firm’s

extensive political connections across the state.

They also have a near-direct line to Barack Obama, given the new president’s

choice of former 1199 operative and Lynch protégé Patrick Gaspard for the post of political director.

But while this past election has changed everything, Lynch said he is already thinking about the next vote.

“We can’t sit back on our laurels,” Lynch said, sitting in one of his new, state-of-the-art conference rooms, complete with a flat-screen monitor and a two-way mirror along one wall, which they use for market research. “We have to work even harder to take advantage of these available opportunities.”

This year’s races will also keep the firm busy. Council Member John Liu(D-Queens) just picked them to manage his public advocate run, and they have already put together a focus group for Comptroller William Thompson, Jr. (D) to help him better understand the concerns of the city’s Caribbean-American community as he starts his mayoral campaign. But going forward, Lynch said there will be particular focus on three Democrats very close to their Harlem home: Council Member Inez Dickens, who is expected to eventually make a bid for speaker; Assembly Member Keith Wright, who is running to be the new Manhattan Democratic county chair; and Rep. Charles Rangel, who is hoping to solidify his standing despite being dogged by tax and conflict-of-interest problems.

Meanwhile, they have been reaping the benefits of their connections in the lobbying side of the business: between 2007 and 2008, the firm took in at least $1 million lobbying for over a dozen different organizations, according to city records. Clients ranged from Black Veterans for Social Justice (which paid the firm $12,000) to the Industrial and Technology Assistance Corporation ($50,000) to trustees of Columbia University ($427,950).

And though the 66-year-old Lynch has begun to walk with a cane and show some signs of slowing down, he is confident that the firm will continue to remain strong with Wardally and Smith taking the lead. And while the firm is no longer in the basement of Lynch’s brownstone and a new generation is on the rise within its ranks, they still rely on their roots in the neighborhood.

“The David Dinkenses, the Charlie Rangels, the Percy Suttons, the Denny

Farrells, the Basil Patersons,” Smith said, “they’ve all been bricks in this building.”

Lynch said he wants his firm to be the place where a new generation of Harlem activists can come when they are ready to step into the political arena.“They don’t have to go downtown,”

Lynch said. “They can stay up here in Harlem.” C

[email protected]

“The house of cards that they’re building,” Lynch said of Democrats in

Albany, “it has not stopped being built.”

Bill Lynch, center, says his own house is on much firmer ground since moving from the basement of his brownstone to a high-tech third-floor office in the heart of Harlem.

Old Friends in New Places and New Friends in Old Places Boost Lynch AssociatesFor growing firm, a Harlem renaissance a long time coming

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www.cityhallnews.comCITY HALL January 2009 17

By Betwa Sharma

The number of South Asians in New York City has more than doubled over the last decade to 250,000, but the number of South

Asians in local elected office remains the same: zero.Swaranjit Singh, a 55-year-old Sikh from Bellerose,

is hoping to change that.The real estate broker is running for the Council seat

currently held by David Weprin (D-Queens) under the slogan, “Fresh Face, New Voice.”

Like other Sikhs, Singh wears a turban and has a beard, which, he said, leads many people to confuse him for a Muslim. The confusion, according to him, is because South Asians are still the new immigrants on the block and voters still know little about the community—and that makes winning an election even more difficult.

“The intolerance towards Muslims is very troubling,” Singh said. “But if anything, Barack Obama’s example has taught us that an election is won on the issues.”

Singh received early backing from his fellow Sikhs, but in a problem that plagues many potential South Asian candidates, most of his early financial support-ers were from Richmond Hill, which lies outside his Council district, making their donations ineligible for matching funds.

Candidates naturally rely on their own ethnic group for their base of support, but for South Asians often the same support is not extended to a different ethnic group within the larger community. Ethnic divisions, geographi-cal dispersion, the general adjustment problems of immi-grants and a relatively short history in the United States leave the community politically frail, and the kind of nec-essary cohesion hard to achieve.

All these factors played a part in Rene Lobo’s unsuc-cessful Council runs in 2001 and then again in 2005, when she and her Bangladeshi opponent split the vote of the Hillside Avenue Bangladeshis in their race against James Gennaro (D-Queens).

An Indian immigrant and a community board member, Lobo rattled through the hurdles of running for office as a young South Asian woman: “You’re a minority within a minority,” she said, recalling the difficulty of getting sup-port from Bangladeshi mosques. “They would ask me, ‘Why are you in the mosque?’ It was so demoralizing.”

The South Asians are a relatively small and dispersed group, and prone to increased fragmentation when neigh-borhoods are carved into voting districts. But the main problem is the prevailing apathy in the community to-wards electoral participation.

“People don’t realize how important it is to vote,” said Lobo.

An Asian community expert at Queens College, Mad-hulika Khandelwal, attributes this indifference to an out-look prevalent in the South Asian community that keeps them from seeing their long-term future in the city.

“Many people see the city as a stepping stone to a bet-ter life,” Khandelwal said of the community. “The goal is to suburbanize.”

Because of this, Khandelwal said, relatively few South Asians buy homes in the city, leaving them without a stake in the future of their neighborhoods. There are few specifically tailored organizations that focus predomi-nantly on voter registration and electoral participation, especially on the local level.

In an effort to change that, Gurpal Singh, 32, and Ali Najmi, 24, friends who met at CUNY law school, launched Desis Vote, a voter registration drive. Working with a few volunteers they organized countless voter registration drives throughout last year and got 836 “Desis,” or South Asian immigrants, registered.

After discovering the deep divide between Sikhs and the Guyanese population in Richmond Hill, Singh and Najmi created the South Asian and West Indian Leader-ship Cabinet Committee (SAWI) to build bridges between these two groups. Among other activities, SAWI orga-nized an intense debate between Serphin Maltese (R) and Joseph Addabbo (D), along with a town hall meeting to address common concerns.

“Our goal is to transform the South Asian community in Richmond Hill into a powerful voting block,” Najmi said.

Singh and Najmi confess that galvanizing the rest of Queens and eventually the entire city will take years of community organizing. The plan for 2009 is to conduct more voter registration drives, awareness campaigns and candidate forums, as well as to concentrate on the fund-raising necessary to support their efforts.

But Najmi and Singh said they are not fixated on get-ting a South Asian elected. Instead, they see Desis Vote’s focus as generating sustained electoral participation which will enable them to create a voting block which will be able to influence all local elected officials. While seeing one of their own on the Council or in the Legisla-ture would be welcome, they say, more important will be getting their voices heard by everyone in the Council and Legislature.

“It is not who represents you,” Singh explained, “but how you are represented.”C

Direct letters to the editor [email protected]

Numbers Growing, South Asians Take New Approach to Political Organizing New generation aims to overcome factionalism and fear blamed for past losses

CUNY law students Gurpal Singh and Ali Najmi and friends have launched Desis Vote, a voter registration drive geared toward increasing political participation among South Asians.

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New York AREA’s membership includes someof the state’s most vital business, labor andcommunity organizations including: ThePartnership for NY City, Business Council ofNY State, NY Building Congress, NYSRestaurant Association, the Teamsters,Carpenters, IBEW and many more.

WWW. A R E A - A L L I A N C E . O R G

Creating anEnvironment forJob CreationBy Lenny Caro

Wall Street got its bailout, so did the big banks and Detroit’s

automakers, but what about NewYork’s small to mid sized

businesses, the backbone of our local economy? What can be

done in Albany and City Hall to keep them providing the jobs we

so sorely need?

Too often these thousands of local employers are overlooked, but

these business owners worry about the rising cost of energy and

the negative impact it causes their businesses. Collectively we

wonder why electricity in NewYork cost 2 ½ times more than in

Pennsylvania, less than 100 miles away? Just what makes New

York’s power so much more special that it costs more than in 48

of the 50 states in the nation?

The answer—it’s virtually impossible to build a new power plant

in NewYork since Albany allowed the Article X power plant

siting law to expire December 31, 2002. The state’s energy

prices fell victim to the laws of supply and demand that deter-

mine market price. As a result, The Bronx has not only been

afflicted with high energy costs but also suffered losses in local

tourism, namely at the Bronx Zoo, The Botanical Garden and

Wave Hill.

It is vital to the Bronx economy for small businesses to stay

afloat. Small businesses and families are struggling and need

our elected leaders to get proactive and help bring down costs by

reinstituting Article X to help increase electricity supply, while

maintaining important clean sources of energy generation like

Indian Point.

I speak for 600 members of the Bronx Chamber of Commerce,

responsible for 45,000 jobs and the 45,000 families those

incomes house, feed and support, when I say that to realistically

drive down the cost of electricity we need more supply and clean

electricity generation.

The Bronx has the talent to lead, so long as we have laws to keep

our area competitive and retain area jobs and businesses.

Lenny Caro is a member of the New York Affordable Reliable Electricity

Alliance and CEO of the Bronx Chamber of Commerce, representing

over 600 Bronx employers. The Chamber promotes business and oppor-

tunity within the borough to enhance and stimulate the marketing of

Bronx-based employment, products and services.


www.cityhallnews.com18 January 2009 CITY HALL


Elizabeth Crowley’s first day in the City Council was blustery and brutally cold. As she

made her way up the steps of City Hall, the last stop on a journey that she has tried to make three times in the last eight years, an icy wind nearly blew her back down.

Her umbrella did not make it.“These are the steps of City Hall,” she

calmly explained to her two sons, Owen and Dennis, as the rain beat down on them.

The Queens Democrat first ran for the seat in 2001, losing to Dennis Gallagher. She lost the special election to Anthony Como last June. Along the way, she was criticized as inexperienced, dogged by campaign finance violations and labeled

a cog in the Queens Democratic machine, which is run by her cousin, Rep. Joseph Crowley.

But in November, buoyed by the turnout from the presidential election and the State Senate race between Serphin Maltese and Joseph Addabbo in the overlapping district, she picked up the seat that had been in Republican hands for two decades.

“You got what you asked for,” said one lobbyist, holding out a card to her as she strode into the Council’s second- floor committee room filled with family, friends, lobbyists and well-wishers.

“Third time’s the charm,” Crowley retorted, pocketing it.

Not that coming to the Council is a stretch for Crowley: in 1984, Crowley’s father, Walter Crowley, was appointed to finish out Thomas Manton’s term in

the Council. Before he could run for re-election, he died of cancer and his wife, Mary Childs Crowley, was appointed to his seat.

The elder, now wheelchair-bound Crowley sat off to the side at her daughter’s pre-stated meeting reception,

still full of memories from her own time in office.

“City Hall has changed so much,” she added. “There used to be a big parking lot right out front. Now we get frisked on the way in!”

Several Council members cycled

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After a Long Road, Elizabeth Crowley Finally Gets Her DayFirst day at City Hall is ripe with symbolism for daughter of former Council members

Council Member Daniel Garodnick shows his new colleague the ropes.


through (perhaps lured by the catered potato salad and paper-wrapped sandwiches) to welcome Crowley. Queens Council members David Weprin and Eric Gioia both said they were ecstatic that their borough’s conference was now one Democrat larger.

“We’re a new generation of politicians,” Gioia said to his new colleague.

Crowley is one of 15 siblings—13 sisters and two

brothers. Her mother, she said, has 47 grandchildren. With so many of them running circles around Crowley and her supporters that day, City Hall almost resembled a day care center.

“I’m a judge!” screamed one small girl, sitting at the committee table and wielding the bendable microphone in front of her like a joystick.

A little after 1 p.m., Crowley was officially sworn in as a member of the Council. After some sustained applause, she thanked her family and supporters for sticking with her throughout her long journey to elected office.

“It was an uphill battle with all the elections,” she said.

In accepting the resignation of former Council member-now Rep. Michael McMahon (D-Staten Island), Speaker Christine Quinn (D-Manhattan) joked that she was relieved to add a member of Irish descent to the Council.

“Otherwise the Irish caucus is just me,” she said.Crowley voted twice (“aye” for land use call-ups,

“aye” on all items on the general order calendar), both of which triggered applause from her family. Throughout the hour-long, uneventful meeting, Crowley let her gaze drift around the Council chamber, a barely suppressed smile on her face.

After the meeting, Council Member Larry Seabrook (D-Bronx) offered Crowley a few kind words about her cousin Joe, with whom

he once served in the Assembly.Then came the family photo ops, and a celebratory

lunch at the Woolworth Kitchen. Her treat.Despite the pageantry and press for attention

from lobbyists and union representatives, Crowley admitted the next day that her first official day on the job did not feel all that different from the day that followed or those that preceded it.

“Today I was at a school that needs an extension and tomorrow I have a meeting on the five-year capital plan,” Crowley said. “I feel like I’ve been working since I was elected.” C

[email protected]

For all the obstacles along the way, Elizabeth Crowley’s first day in office had all the hall-marks of a family reunion.

“Third time’s the charm,” Crowley said, pocketing a

lobbyist’s business card.

To learn more about New York AREA advocacy,educational programs, events, membership or

sponsorship opportunities, contact us at212-683-1203, [email protected] visit us at www.area-alliance.org

WWW. A R E A - A L L I A N C E . O R G

Prime the Pumpfor our EnergyFutureBy Robert A. Ledwith

Change has finally come to America, and not a moment toosoon.

With a decaying national infrastructure, a weakened economyand challenges large and small dominating the thoughts of NewYork’s working families, there is no question that PresidentObama has a bevy of challenges awaiting his action startingJanuary 20.

The President and his team campaigned and won on a promiseto “prime the pump,” and inject capital into our depressed econ-omy through direct investment in our crumbling infrastructure.No matter how you phrase it, this wise action will put ournation back to work.

I am pleased to see the support this has generated in New Yorkfrom leaders across the political and ideological spectrum.Working families on Main Street will certainly be the benefici-aries of this wise action.

However, our leaders cannot neglect our aging energyinfrastructure during this critical period in our nation’s history.New York State faces serious energy challenges over the nextdecade. An aging electricity infrastructure, an out-dated grid,a lack of a comprehensive power plant siting law, and the risingdemand for reliable, low-cost electricity are only some of themany energy-related issues dominating Albany’s legislativedeliberations.

Additionally, there are those who desire to close the IndianPoint Energy Center. This offers disastrous implications forNew York’s working families – including higher electricitycosts, rolling brownouts and service interruptions, amongothers. Indian Point also employs more than one thousandworkers; many of whom are union members.

A comprehensive statewide energy policy that uses UnionBuilding Trades labor, protects existing baseload powerresources, invests in a modernized electricity infrastructure,and supports a new power plant siting law will speed NewYork’s journey from recession to recovery.

Priming the pump for our energy future is the right stepfor New York’s hard-pressed working families.

Robert A. Ledwith is a member of the New York Affordable ReliableElectricity Alliance, and Business Manager, FinancialSecretary/Treasurer of Metallic Lathers Union and ReinforcingIronworkers Local 46.


www.cityhallnews.com

Where Culture &Politics

Meet

In Foley Square, under a cloudy sky, the Man-hattan district attorney holds a press confer-ence to announce what charges he will seek in a recent, high-profi le case. But despite the controversial nature of the charges, the ques-

tions eventually turn to a much hotter topic: whether the DA will run for re-election this year or not.

“Should you run,” one reporter shouts, “why should New Yorkers support your bid for another term as their district attorney?”

“Watch what I do,” the DA says, side-stepping the question while fi xing her with a steely gaze. “That’s your answer.”

This is the world of Law & Order, one that argu-ably has done as much to defi ne the offi ce of the Manhattan district attorney for New Yorkers as the exploits of its real occupant, Robert Morgenthau (D), whose campaign for a ninth term this year would put him in offi ce for 40 years.

For almost half that time, Law & Order has portrayed the Manhattan district attorney and his staff of righteous prosecutors as crime-busting crusaders. But some of the more recent epi-sodes have begun to get into the politics that surround the district attorney.

The timing could not have been better.

Sam Waterston’s character Jack McCoy himself was an as-sistant district attorney for most of his time on the show, but was promoted to the top spot after Fred Thompson’s character left the show so that Thompson could run for president. That made Waterston the fourth DA since the show’s premiere in 1990—a stark differ-ence to the real world, of course, in which Morgen-thau has remained fi rmly in the same spot since he was fi rst elected in 1973.

Whether he will have an easier time remaining there than his fi ctional counterpart, played for the last 14 seasons by Waterston, is anyone’s guess. Waterston’s own allegiance, however, is clear: he donated $5,000 to Morgenthau’s 2005 campaign.

On the show, McCoy remains, well, coy about politics, dodging questions from the media and even his own staff about his own re-election.

But that does not mean that the show will be safe from campaigning: several recent episodes have dealt

with political themes new to the drama. And just as in the last race, the show could once again fi nd itself dragged into the real life campaign for district attorney.

Leslie Crocker Snyder, a former assistant dis-trict attorney and judge who served as a technical adviser for the show (and occasionally appeared onscreen as Judge Rebecca Logan), built one of her 2005 campaign ads around the show.

“Even on Law & Order, the Manhattan district at-torney changed three times in 17 years,” Snyder said to the camera. “In real life, the Manhattan district attorney has been there over 30 years. It’s time for a change.”

Snyder would not say whether she intended to make any more Law & Order references in her 2009 campaign. But one way or another, she knows that Dick Wolf’s drama has largely defi ned the way many voters perceive the job she wants, given the show’s popularity, longevity and perpetual winking refer-ences to real life events.

“Subliminally, the program’s had a huge effect,” she said. “People honestly will

say to you, ‘I’m familiar with the process. I saw it on Law & Order.’”

Morgenthau’s supporters like to use the show to high-light his record in reducing crime. They point out that in 1974, the year that Morgen-thau took offi ce, there were 648 homicides in Manhattan. In 2008, there were only 68 murders, well below the 83 which occurred between the fl agship Law & Order and its spin-offs during their 2007-2008 seasons.

“The show’s murder rate is far higher than the real murder rate here in Manhat-tan,” said Dan Castleman, Morgenthau’s longtime chief

of investigations, who was a technical adviser and bit player on The Sopranos but has yet to be cast by NBC.

“It’s murder that captures the attention,” Castle-man continued. “There’s a reason that in the original show, every case is a murder case.”

The show’s writers say they take great pains to make the action as believable and true-to-life as possible.

Marc Guggenheim, who wrote over a dozen epi-sodes between 2001 and 2004, said he took a tour of City Hall in order to get a sense of the layout when writing an episode that echoed the 2003 shooting of Council Member James Davis (D-Brooklyn).

In the middle of his tour, Guggenheim bumped into occasional guest star Mayor Michael Bloomberg (Ind.), who made a few requests.

“He made it clear, in not uncertain terms, that he

would really prefer us not to do the episode, because he didn’t really want to draw any more attention to the shooting at City Hall,” Guggenheim recalled. “But of course it’s Law & Order. We’re almost obligated to do the episode.”

Much as for Morgenthau, who went 20 years without a major opponent, Law & Order’s fi ctional district attorneys never had to think much of cam-paigning. But when Thompson left the show to launch his short-lived presidential campaign, produc-ers called around to various district attorneys’ offi ces to fi nd out how to keep the show close to reality as they waded into the political storyline of McCoy suc-ceeding Thompson’s character.

“They were having a hard time fi nding out how this worked,” said William Smith, communications director for Staten Island DA Dan Donovan (R), who was among those contacted. “Because this was kind of uncharted territory.”

That may not be the only television contact for Donovan, for whom Smith is currently trying to land a cameo on the upcoming FX cop drama Staten Island, to be centered on a local police chief.

Morgenthau himself has admitted to being a Law & Order fan, although when asked about it in the middle of the 2005 campaign, he said there had started to be too many episodes for him to follow.

“I think they do a good job,” Morgenthau said. “It’s in the public’s interest to understand how the DA’s offi ce works.”

The show’s fi rst DA, played by Steven Hill, was modeled on Morgenthau, who joked that he once volunteered to take over the part.

“I heard he was getting $25,000 an episode. I told him I wanted him to let me know when he was retir-ing,” Morgenthau said. “He didn’t let me know.”

Three DAs later, Jack McCoy is fi ghting to hold onto the job. Recent episodes have featured a New York governor, shockingly, caught up in both a prostitution scandal and a state trooper scandal. But rather than resign in disgrace, Gov. Donald Shalvoy (played by Tom Everett Scott) stays in offi ce, becoming a constant thorn in moralistic McCoy’s side.

In one recent episode, Shalvoy tries to needle McCoy about running for re-election, saying that his indecision makes him look more like Hamlet than a district attorney.

In the end, the governor’s misdeeds persuade Mc-Coy to offi cially announce his candidacy. He asks his chief assistant to be the fi rst to sign his petition.

“I need 10,000 signatures,” McCoy says. “I’m too old to play Hamlet.”

Waterston himself played Hamlet in Shakespeare in the Park in 1975, halfway through Morgenthau’s fi rst term. Last summer, in his fi rst role outside of Law & Order in years, he played Polonius.

[email protected]

20 JANUARY 2009 CITY HALL

The Following Story Is Fictional and Does Not Depict Any Actual Person or Event. Sort of.

This year, Jack McCoy is running for re-elec-tion, just like Robert Morgenthau.

By Andrew J. Hawkins

The show’s fi rst DA was modeled on Morgenthau, who joked that he once volunteered to take over the part.“I heard he was getting $25,000 an episode. I told him I wanted him to let me know when he was retiring,” Morgenthau said. “He didn’t let me know.”

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www.cityhallnews.comCITY HALL JANUARY 2009 21

Popcorn Politics: Best Movie Mayors

Mayor Michael Bloomberg (Ind.) has made his fair share of television cameos, from 30 Rock to A Muppet

Christmas. He has even joined the Screen Actors Guild, though he donates his earnings to charity. The silver screen, however, has not been so kind to the mayor. His big screen debut, a scene he shot for the Sex and the City movie, ended up on the cutting room fl oor, and Focus, the movie he produced just before get-ting into the 2001 mayor’s race, tanked with the critics and at the box offi ce. Not that moviegoers have lacked for fi ctional New York City mayors. Some of the classics:

I love public art and monumen-tal sculpture. At the moment I’m particularly thrilled with the memorial to Harriet Tubman by Alison Saar that’s on 122nd

Street and Fredrick Douglas Bou-levard. Alison happens to be one of my favorite artists. I think she does an incredible job being both abstract and extremely emotional. And I think the work is a real powerful portrait. The skirt in-cludes roots that basically dig into the pavement. They have a whole symbolic program.

The piece is incredibly pow-erful visually to adults, but it’s also playful in a way that would appeal to children. The fact that it was commissioned as part of the Department of Cultural Affairs’ Percent for Art program makes me extra pleased. But I think in terms of how it redefi nes what portrait sculpture is, what monu-mental sculpture is, who it is that we chose to memorialize on our streets, I just think it’s a fabu-lous project. I also think it helps redefi ne certain view corridors in that neighborhood in the way that really strong public art can do.

I think that it’s a great con-troversy [about the direction the statue is facing] because it shows that people really care and are pay-ing attention. I think the artist’s point of view is incredibly moving to me. Again, what she wanted to spotlight is that this was a person who went back. I think that’s one of the ways that public art and cul-ture in general make a difference that you can’t quantify. It engages people and makes them care about their surroundings in ways that are incredibly powerful. It’s beautiful aesthetically and it has a whole set of historical resonances. You could read three hundred pages of his-tory, but she’s laid it out in a way that is incredibly visceral as well.

Kate Levin is the commissioner of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.

My Pick

By CommissionerKate Levin

ayor Michael Bloomberg (Ind.) is just two years into his quarter-century proposal to make New York a greener city, but his achievements—and setbacks—are already on display in the halls of a

museum.The new exhibit, featured at the Museum of the City of

New York, offers a vision of PlaNYC, the mayor’s 127-point strategy to create what he has called “the fi rst environ-mentally sustainable 21st-century city.” Beyond samples of energy-effi cient spigots and scale models of green buildings, however, the exhibit is a progress report that refl ects the political challenges of implementing some of the mayor’s more contentious proposals.

“It’s really about the intersection of science and technol-ogy with politics, planning, community and the fabric of the city,” said Sarah Henry, a curator who worked on the proj-ect. “It’s important for people to think about not just what’s technologically possible, but what’s politically possible.”

The museum fi rst approached the city about the exhibit in October 2007, leading to a partnership involving more than a half-dozen agencies. City offi cials helped brainstorm ideas for displays, offered feedback on the exhibit’s lan-guage and provided updates on PlaNYC projects before they were circulated publicly.

The result of that effort is a guide to various proposals cov-ering water conservation, sustainable architecture and public transportation, among others. Each proposal is explained not only in terms of its goals, but also in terms of the challenges of implementation and its status. For example, a display on a water conservation program notes that nearly all of the initiative’s funding was cut from this year’s budget.

Perhaps the biggest elephant in the room is the mayor’s congestion pricing plan, which died in the Assembly last April. The setback is noted in the exhibit, which also con-tains the optimistic notion that the plan “may be reconsid-ered in light of the MTA capital defi cit.”

Curators said they wrote less than the city would have liked about the consequences of the plan’s collapse, includ-ing the loss of $354 million in federal assistance. The mayor emphasized that point himself when he attended the show’s opening in December.

“Striking the right tone that we used in describing con-gestion pricing was something we needed to navigate very carefully,” explained Maura Lout, the exhibit’s curator.

While planning the exhibit, the curators confronted a dilemma that Rohit A. Aggarwala of the mayor’s offi ce of sustainability said has also dogged his own staff: how to stress the urgent need for sustainability without resorting to scare tactics. When people are confronted with too much apocalyptic imagery, he said, they may be led to believe that the problem is unsolvable.

“Very early on in the show, we were thinking we would frame the whole thing in terms of screaming tabloid head-lines,” Henry recalled. “We ended up more worried that people would be too upset than that they wouldn’t be upset enough.”

The exhibit is scheduled to remain on display until April 12, though a spokesperson said its run will likely be ex-tended.

—Ross GoldbergDirect letters to the editor to [email protected]

PlaNYC Exhibit Addresses Political, Fiscal Challenges Ahead

M

Lee Wallace as the Mayor in The Taking of Pelham 123, 1974

Isaac Hayes as the Duke of New York in Escape from New York, 1981

David Margulies as Mayor Lenny Clotch in Ghost Busters, 1984

Ossie Davis as Da Mayor in Do the Right Thing, 1989

Al Pacino as Mayor John Pappas in City Hall, 1996

Michael Lerner as Mayor Ebert in Godzilla, 1998

Christian Burgess as The Mayor in Gangs of New York, 2002

Candice Bergen as Mayor Kate Hennings in Sweet Home Alabama, 2002

Peter Kybart as the Mayor in Inside Man, 2006

William Hurt as Mayor Schneer in Noise, 2007

The museum fi rst approached the city about the exhibit in October 2007, leading to a partnership involving more than a half-dozen agencies.


Liu Leaves Door Open for Comptroller Run—Just Not in 2009

Adolfo Carrión’s exit for Barack

Obama’s administration leaves a void in the city comptroller’s race and a cluster of potential candidates to fi ll it.

But Council Member John Liu

(D-Queens) still insists he is not among them, saying in an interview that his plans to run for public advocate remain fi rm, despite the sudden opening in a race in which he was once considered a potential heavyweight.

“I’ve thought about it very carefully, and I’m running for public advocate,” he said. “I haven’t changed my mind in any way. I have always been determined, in the last couple of years, to serve out my term in the City Council in the strongest way possible and to seek a citywide position in 2009.”

With Carrion’s departure from the race—assuming he survives the Obama vetting process—many turned to Liu, thinking he might opt into a suddenly less

crowded race for comptroller.But Liu said he’s heard that logic

before.“Just three months ago, people said

the exact same thing about the public advocate’s race, to me and in general: ‘the comptroller’s race is extremely crowded, the public advocate’s race seems to have not as many candidates and competition,’” he said. “Three months from now, who

knows? It could change once again.”But while he did swear off a run for comptroller in 2009, he made a point of leaving the door open in future years.

“Well, maybe four or eight years later,” he said. “I wouldn’t say ‘never.’”

Diaz’s Lyric InspirationRuben Diaz, Jr. (D-Bronx) says waiting

to fi nd out whether Adolfo Carrión will actually be headed to Washington to join Barack Obama’s administration has left him feeling like an expectant father, not quite sure when his own race for Bronx borough president will begin.

But he already has many ideas for the race. Discussing them, he summarized his goals in an inadvertent rhyme.

“The Bronx has gone from ruins to revitalization and now it’s time to lead the nation,” he said.

He laughed as he noticed his phrasing. “That’s my hip-hop side coming out,”

he said.

Weiner’s Burden: Convincing People to Let Him out of Congress

There might be a voter in the city who likes Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-Brooklyn/Queens) too much to vote him into Gracie Mansion.

During the Q&A portion of the Jan. 12 Citizens Union’s breakfast with Weiner, a man lauded Weiner’s tenure on Capitol Hill and suggested that staying in Washington, D.C., would benefi t the city.

“Isn’t it possible the city needs you and your seniority in Congress even more than City Hall?” the man posited.

Weiner explained that his mayoral aspirations lay in the office’s executive nature. Former Parks Commissioner Henry Stern later reminded the audience that the city’s great congressmen have a history of running for City Hall.

“Ed Koch was a congressman, John Lindsay was a congressman and Fiorello LaGuardia was a congressman before they were elected mayor,” Stern said. “And they did all right.”

Siegel’s New Gig: Defending a Popular Cause

In his campaigns for public advocate—including a third run this year—civil liberties lawyer Norman Siegel has often struggled to attract public attention, win support and raise money.

So when random New Yorkers recognize him on the street and thank him for his work, he says, he fi nds it a pretty unsettling experience.

“I travel throughout the city and people come over to me,” he said after a hearing earlier this month on a legal challenge to the Bloomberg administration’s successful bid to extend term limits. Siegel has partnered with former deputy mayor Randy Mastro, and Council Members Bill de Blasio (D-Brooklyn) and Letitia

James (D-Brooklyn), on the suit.“I’m usually representing unpopular

causes, and this situation, this is a very popular cause,” he joked. “It’s an usual situation for me. I’m trying to get comfortable with that.” C

By Edward-Isaac Dovere, Sal

Gentile and Dan Rivoli

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Hillary Clinton and her husband joined Michael Bloomberg to drop the ball on Times Square, celebrating the end of 2008 and her time as senator.

www.cityhallnews.com

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Last Dance



Former Metropolitan Transportation Au-thority chair Richard Ravitch’s plan to pull the MTA out of its billion-dollar bud-

get hole, which includes tolling the East River and Harlem River bridges, is facing some tough opposition from outer-borough politi-cians, but immediately won the endorsement of both Mayor Michael Bloomberg (Ind.) and Gov. David Paterson (D).

Ravitch talked about how the current tran-sit crisis differs from the one 30 years ago, why state lawmakers are so adverse to bridge tolls and what he is doing to push his plan through Albany.

What follows is an edited transcript.

City Hall: The state came to you in the late 1970s to rescue the MTA. Here they are again asking you to do the same thing. What’s dif-ferent this time?Richard Ravitch: I was the chairman of the MTA back then. There’s a big difference. This time they’ve asked me to chair a commission to make recommendations.

CH: But what’s different about the MTA’s fi-nancial situation?RR: First of all, the physical condition of the sys-tem was in dreadful shape back then, severely neglected, years starved for capital, becoming increasingly dysfunctional, unsafe, and the pub-lic knew this. Ironically, that was very helpful to me because I didn’t have to bang the drums to convince people the system was in a gross state of disrepair that it was. It was obvious to every-one that used it all the time. So, when I made a series of recommendation to start investing again in capital refurbishing of the system, the Legislature and the governor accepted the ideas. Today, the problem is they have humungous defi-cits after being on this program of spending four to five billion a year. To restore it to a state of good re-pair, they now have no money and no prospect of money, which is what led to the recommendations of our com-mission.

CH: The fact that the subways are in a better state than they were back then will make it a more diffi-cult sell. How do you intend to approach that?RR: First of all, you have to understand that normally when somebody is asked to make recommendations and

write a report, as a citizen you do so. And then you tend to fade away. I don’t intend to fade away as long as there are people who will listen. Because I spent 40 years of

my life getting the MTA on the path of reconstruction and expansion and I care a lot about it. Therefore I’m going to do whatever I can to persuade the Legislature to adapt the recommendations.CH: One of your proposals is to toll the East River and Harlem River bridges, which state lawmakers appear unwilling to approve. Why are they so aller-gic to this plan?RR: I wouldn’t make the judgment that it’s about to die on the vine just because there’s a lot of noise being made

against it. The world’s a very different place. There’s a whole generation of people who care a lot about the quality of the air, the health of their children, the economic and environmental cost to heavy traffic, who care deeply about becoming less dependent on Mideast oil. We spent a good part of that last century with our focus on the automobile. Now we have to shift our focus and deal with things that are more energy-efficient and environmentally safer. Therefore every member of this commission, unani-

mously—we all come from different worlds and different places—that the automobile driver bear some share of the cost of maintaining the public transportation system.

CH: Outer borough politicians have spo-ken out against this proposal.RR: Hopefully there will be people who will think a little bit more about the future and the quality of life here. Certainly the easiest path for a politician to take is to say, “I’m against tolls.”

CH: With the economic crisis, do you think the bailout plan can be finalized before the March deadline?RR: I certainly hope so. I think the governor and the Legislature would like to do that. But I can’t tell you at this point that I know that it can be done in a timely fashion.

CH: Do you feel that the extension of term limits has complicated the pas-sage of the bailout plan?RR: I can’t see inside the mayor’s mind. I think he’s always been pretty straightfor-ward, call the shots on the merits. He sup-ported things that were not popular and got re-elected the last time. I hope that since this is totally consistent with his plan of congestion pricing, that he would continue to be very supportive of it.

CH: Why was congestion pricing not in-cluded in your recommendations?RR: We concluded that tolling the bridges would accomplish many of the same vir-tues, that the revenue stream would be more severe and it wouldn’t affect the people who traveled within Manhattan like congestion pricing would have.

CH: You’ve said there would be no co-ordinated lobbying effort behind your

plan. What are you doing to make sure this gets in front of lawmakers?RR: I’m talking to legislators. And there are other people, the Regional Planning Associa-

tion, environmental groups. There are a lot of advocates. I run into people every day who come up to me who I don’t even know and tell me that it’s the right plan and what can they do to help. I think there’s a lot of sup-port for it. The problem is that the media writes about it at the time it’s made public but then doesn’t adopt it as a cause. I’m not saying that they should, but they do occasionally with certain issues. So it’s really up to the people who think this is the right public policy to try to educate the public as best as they can. Ultimately it’s a question of political leadership.

CH: What do you think of Ted Kheel’s plan to make mass transit absolutely free?RR: I think in an abstract world there’s a lot to be said for it. But it’s so beyond the financial capacity of the govern-ment at this point in time to even contemplate it, sadly, it shouldn’t be an object of a lot of advocacy because there’s no way that it’s going to happen. At this moment in time, too utopian.

CH: Given your past political aspirations, do you see any future in politics for yourself?RR: It was a wonderful experience. But I have no inten-tion of trying it again. C

[email protected]

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For Whom the Bridge Tolls

“Normally when somebody is asked to make recommenda-

tions and write a report, as a citizen you do so. And then

you tend to fade away. I don’t intend to fade away.”

Former MTA chair Richard Ravitch may keep the door to his of-fice closed when he smokes, but he knows saving the city’s tran-sit system has as much to do with improving air quality in the city as it does with moving people from place to place.

Last Dance

Visit www.cuny.edu or call 1-800-CUNY-YES and watch CUNY-TV Channel 75.

Aurora AlmendralHunter CollegeFulbright Scholarship, 2007 Louise AndersonCUNY Baccalaureate,John Jay CollegeThurgood MarshallScholarship, 2007Alice MichelleAugustineLehman CollegePaul & Daisy SorosFellowship for NewAmericans, 2006 Rafat AzadQueens CollegeFulbright Scholarship, 2007 Suzanne BarnettHunter CollegeJacob Javits Fellowship, 2004Itamar BelishaCUNY Baccalaureate,The City College of New YorkBarry M. GoldwaterScholarship, 2007 Christopher BellBaruch CollegeFulbright Scholarship, 2007 Mitsy Chanel-BlotMacaulay Honors Collegeat Hunter CollegeNational Science FoundationGraduate ResearchFellowship, 2008 Vanessa CrevecoeurYork CollegeUNCF-Merck UndergraduateScience Research Award,2006Christine CurellaMacaulay Honors Collegeat Hunter CollegeHarry S. TrumanScholarship, 2007

Riki DroriHunter CollegeJack Kent Cooke FoundationGraduate Scholarship, 2004Holly EckerHunter CollegeFulbright Scholarship, 2005Moses FeasterBrooklyn CollegeNational Science FoundationGraduate ResearchFellowship, 2006 Miriam GinzbergQueens CollegeBarry M. GoldwaterScholarship, 2007 RicardoGonzalez RubioThe City College of New YorkPaul & Daisy SorosFellowship for NewAmericans, 2007 Kate Hirschmann-LevyHunter CollegeFulbright Scholarship, 2007 Joseph HirshMacaulay Honors Collegeat Queens CollegeNational Science FoundationGraduate ResearchFellowship, 2008 James JacksonHunter CollegeFulbright Scholarship, 2005Tennessee JonesCUNY Baccalaureate,Hunter CollegeJacob Javits Fellowship, 2008Matthew MacLeanBrooklyn CollegeFulbright Scholarship, 2006

William McCaigCUNY Baccalaureate,Hunter CollegeNSF Graduate ResearchFellowship, 2005Ryan MerolaMacaulay Honors Collegeat Brooklyn CollegeHarry S. TrumanScholarship, 2006 Carla MinamiHunter CollegeFulbright Scholarship, 2006April MojicaCUNY Baccalaureate,Medgar Evers CollegeThurgood MarshallScholarship, 2005Jocelyn MuhleisenBaruch CollegeFulbright Scholarship, 2007 Philipa NjauThe City College of New YorkFulbright Scholarship andBarry M. GoldwaterScholarship, 2005Sarah OsewaitHunter CollegeFulbright Scholarship, 2006Ianna OwenMacaulay Honors Collegeat Hunter CollegeFord FoundationPre-doctoral Fellowship, 2008

Margaret ParkHunter CollegeFulbright Scholarship, 2008Yeshey PelzomLaGuardia CommunityCollegeJack Kent Cooke FoundationTransfer Scholarship, 2006and Graduate Scholarship,2008Julia RafalLehman CollegeBritish Marshall Scholarship,2006Alex RodriguezMacaulay Honors Collegeat Hunter CollegeFulbright Scholarship, 2008 Yisa RumalaYork CollegeNational Science FoundationGraduate ResearchFellowship, 2006Rachel SchnurQueens CollegeBarry M. GoldwaterScholarship, 2006 Aida SehovicHunter CollegeJacob Javits Fellowship, 2007 Erica SeppalaHunter CollegeFulbright Scholarship, 2006Eugene ShenderovBrooklyn CollegeRhodes Scholarship, 2005Claudio SimpkinsMacaulay Honors Collegeat The City Collegeof New YorkHarry S. TrumanScholarship, 2005

Mark A. SmileyBaruch CollegeJack Kent Cooke FoundationGraduate Scholarship, 2007Corey E. SullivanThe City College of New YorkFulbright Scholarship, 2008Priya SuryaMacaulay Honors Collegeat Queens CollegeFulbright Scholarship, 2007Lev Alexander SviridovThe City College of New YorkRhodes Scholarship andBarry M. GoldwaterScholarship, 2005Sean TalismanQueens CollegeJack Kent Cooke FoundationGraduate Scholarship, 2006 Jessica TibbetsThe City College of New YorkFulbright Scholarship, 2007Keisha TomsCUNY Baccalaureate,Medgar Evers CollegeFulbright Scholarship andThurgood MarshallScholarship, 2005Van TranHunter CollegePaul & Daisy SorosFellowship for NewAmericans, 2004Kojo WallaceBronx Community CollegeJack Kent Cooke FoundationTransfer Scholarship, 2008 Deborah M. WolfMacaulay Honors Collegeat The City Collegeof New YorkJacob Javits Fellowship, 2006

BENNO C. SCHMIDT, JR.Chairperson, Board of Trustees

MATTHEW GOLDSTEINChancellor

DAVID L.V. BAUERCUNY’S NEWEST RHODES SCHOLAR• 2008 RHODES SCHOLAR • 2008 HARRY S. TRUMAN SCHOLARSHIP FOR PUBLIC SERVICE• 2007 BARRY M. GOLDWATER SCHOLARSHIP • 2005 INTEL SCIENCE TALENT SEARCHMacaulay Honors College at City College 2009, Hunter College High School 2005

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