PERSPECTIVES NICOLE GELINAS
QUINN’S FISCAL CRUNCH When Mayor Bloomberg gave his final budget speech last month, for the fiscal year that started July 1, he didn’t hog the stage. He ceded most of his time to the woman standing to his left: New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn. Standing outside City Hall on Sunday, June 23, Bloomberg praised Quinn, noting her “effective leadership.” On dealing with the motley crew of Council members Quinn leads, he commiserated: “Chris, it is never easy,” he said. “We owe you a debt of gratitude.” Quinn was happy to return the nice words, telling the mayor: “We want to thank you … for being a great partner for us.” Quinn may hope that her position as Bloomberg’s fiscal partner helps her with voters worried about spending and taxes, but Bloomberg’s fiscal inheritance is as much a liability as it is an asset. Following the speech, Quinn did what she does every year. She took political credit for protecting daycare slots, firehouses and library hours. In this year’s budget, the mayor gave her a particularly valuable primary-season gift: $71 million for public housing. Quinn said that by winning back those dollars, the New York City Housing Authority would “avert 325 layoffs” and “avoid the closures of nearly 60 senior and community
centers.” The money may help Quinn plug a political deficit on the left. As a former tenant activist, she has made “affordable”—government-subsidized—housing a key campaign issue. Yet she has endured boos at mayoral forums from advocates who don’t think she’s done enough. Now she’s brought home some bacon—while avoiding the fact that the average public-housing rent—$436 monthly—can’t cover aging buildings’ upkeep. Quinn went further, though, and embraced all aspects of the mayor’s budgeting. She sounded just like Bloomberg. “Other cities in the country are still suffering badly,” she said, because of the 2008 recession. But “the forward-thinking decisions we made … in the boom years … allowed us to avoid the more painful layoffs and cuts. … We put money aside in my early term as speaker.” Noting that the budget “does not rely on one-shots,” she concluded: “We’re not leaving the next council and the next administration on bad financial footing.” This is stock Bloomberg—but wrong. New York’s fiscal problems have little to do with the 2008 crash. The city needs a permanent Wall Street bubble to spend what it does. Since Quinn became Speaker, city spending has risen 39.3 percent (inflation has risen 19.3 percent), to $53.4 billion. Most of that extra spending has gone toward two things—public-worker pension and healthcare benefits. They’ve risen 59.8 percent, from $10.6 billion to $17 billion annually. Quinn’s reference to the pre-2008 budget surplus, too, is incorrect. True, the city built up $8 billion. But that was mostly to start prefunding about $88 billion in future
payments the city owes for retiree healthcare, as the city already pre-funds pensions. Now, that surplus is gone. But we haven’t pared down healthcare promises. Plus: what to do about retroactive raises for union workers, whose contracts are expired? Raises would cost nearly $8 billion, yet Quinn hasn’t said if she’d approve them as mayor. She should tell primary voters that by signing off on eight budgets with no money set aside for such raises, she’s implicitly said “no.” Quinn could have used her time to gently warn New Yorkers of the permanent fiscal crunch (even the mayor sometimes does this). Chronic budget woes are the reason the NYPD has lost more than 5,000 officers over Bloomberg’s years. Instead, she’s chosen to own next year’s—and the next mayor’s—$2 billion deficit. She leaves herself open to criticism. Sure, candidates like Comptroller John Liu and Public Advocate Bill de Blasio hit City Hall’s latest budget from the left—for not spending enough. But former Congressman Anthony Weiner and his GOP counterpart, former MTA chief Joe Lhota, are hitting from the middle. Both men say that city workers should have to pay some of their healthcare premiums. Lhota has disavowed retroactive raises. Weiner is ahead in polls—whereas Liu and de Blasio haven’t gained traction. The budget may be one reason why Quinn has lost her frontrunner status.
voters. EPIC, with a compromise on generic substitution acceptable to the Republican Senate, passed in a postelection special session. In light of that example, Andrew Cuomo might have grounds for optimism. Let’s take campaign finance. After the indictments of legislators started flowing, the wind seemed to lift the sails of those recommending campaign finance reform, but the convictions in the New York City case centering around Oliver Pan’s role in John Liu’s campaign were effectively used by opponents of public financing to blunt the push for the public financing of elections. The governor will be appointing a Moreland Act Commission. If this Moreland Commission does its job, it could put persuasive proposals before the public, which the governor could use to mobilize public opinion behind broad campaign finance reform. City & State recently published an exposé on apparent fundraising abuses by the local GOP in Nassau County. Whether, and how Nassau County’s voters react, should that controversy heat up, could prove persuasive to Long Island’s Republican senators, creating a point of movement for campaign finance. On the codification of Roe v. Wade, the governor made a tactical mistake by waiting so long to put forth his language on this provision. The Catholic Conference and their allies did a masterful job of lobbying against what they feared the provisions would be. The delay left prochoice advocates hamstrung, not being able to counter with proof of what the bill would actually accomplish. In that lobbying scrum, pro-life advocates were able to lock down adamant GOP opposition in the Senate to moving the abortion part of the bill—the 10th plank of the
WEA. Nevertheless, a political reality could emerge to break the logjam on this Roe v. Wade codification. Over the last three decades, when you distill the polling data, the prolife share of the New York State electorate has dwindled from roughly 40 percent to about a 25 percent share. When your numbers dip that low politically, you can lose the leverage to provide the critical mass of opposition necessary to accomplish your legislative agenda. The choice issue remains a perilous one for Senate Republicans. It is enormously divisive within Republican primaries. Meanwhile, the swing suburban districts, chock-full of highly educated and relatively affluent voters, are now overwhelmingly pro-choice. Republican women especially are pro-choice in these districts. Heading into 2014, the GOP’s conundrum on choice in swing districts will be to find a way to steer between primaries tilting pro-life and general elections, which are decisively pro-choice. Consequently, it is too early to accurately handicap the future prospects for campaign finance reform and the codifying of Roe v. Wade. Positions are deeply held, especially given the moral dimension underlying both sides of the abortion question. But the proponents of change may have multiple cards to play as the 2014 cycle heats up and a governor in Andrew Cuomo, who is skilled in both building political pressure and enacting legislative compromise.
Nicole Gelinas (@nicolegelinas on Twitter) is a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal.
BRUCE N. GYORY
FROM THE JAWS OF DEFEAT: CUOMO’S AGENDA COULD COME ROARING BACK
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uch of the early punditry has branded the failure to pass campaign finance reform and the codification of Roe v. Wade as a part of the Women’s Equality Act (WEA) as a complete defeat, especially for the governor. I would like to enter a dissent to that interpretation. A more accurate analysis might be to gauge how and why the politics underlying both issues could lead the Senate to change its mind down the road. A precedent from 1986 is instructive. Back then Gov. Mario Cuomo added a controversial change in the generic substitution law to his proposal to enact the overwhelmingly popular EPIC program—the senior citizen drug program. The GOP Senate would have passed EPIC in a heartbeat, but they opposed the generic drug proposal. The regular session ended in 1986 without EPIC passing. However, as Mario Cuomo campaigned for re-election, the EPIC compromise gained steam with 28
JULY 8, 2013 | www.cityandstateny.com
Bruce N. Gyory is a political consultant with Corning Place Communications and an adjunct professor of political science at SUNY Albany.
CITY&STATE