City & State Magazine, November 14, 2014

SPOTLIGHT: INFRASTRUCTURE November 17, 2014

HIGH STAKES

Albany leaders. Tenant groups. Landlord lobbyists.

And an ironclad deadline for key housing laws.

By JARRETT MURPHY

CIT YANDSTATENY.COM

@CIT YANDSTATENY

Louis J. Coletti President & CEO

The Building Trades Employers’ Association represents 27 union contractor trade associations made up of 2,000 union construction managers, general contractors and speciality trade contractors in New York City

Building Tomorrow’s opportunity Today A diverse workforce for All New Yorkers BTEA Contractors working with Building Trade Unions are changing the face of union construction in NYC. of 8,000 permanent union apprentice jobs today:

65% ArE AfriCAN-AMEriCAN,

75% LivE iN NEw York CiTY

LATiNo ANd AsiAN

Source: The NYS Department of Labor

Source: The NYS Department of Labor

BTEA Union Jobs: Best Path to the Middle Class Title

Average Annual Entry Level wage

BTEA Contractors provide the Building Trade Union construction jobs that are the best route to a middle class life in New York City.

There is no better way to address income inequality in our City than to increase opportunities to peruse union construction employment”.

Source: NYSDOL, “Analysis of New York State’s 2010-2020 Occupational Projections and Wagesby Education Level,” Appendix2: NY State DOL “Long Term Occupational Employment Projections: 2010-2020,” NYSDOL Occupational Wages ranked by total job openings 2010-2020.

Building Trades Employers’ Association | 1430 Broadway | suite 1106 | New York, NY 10018 | 212.704.9745 | www.bteany.com

20.

The Must-Read in NY Politics Since 2006 See how it all started.

launches in 2008

City Hall + The Capitol

merge in Dec. 2011 to become

2011

City & State

The Way To Reach Elected Officials For advertising information, please contact Jim Katocin at 212.284.9714 or Jkatocin@cityandstateny.com

2008

The Capitol

2009

2006

launches in 2006

After the success of City Hall News,

2010

City Hall News

Jan. 2014: magazine arrives!

NYSNA: Caring for ALL New Yorkers

Here in New York City and throughout our state, nurses are uniting to improve care for our patients.

We’re working together to end healthcare inequality and to raise standards so that every New Yorker has access to quality care. Through our union, the New York State Nurses Association, we’re creating a better future for nurses and our patients:

Æ Safe RN Staffing. Having enough nurses at the bedside is key to safe patient care.

In our union contracts and in the legislature, we’re working to ensure that every patient has access to the care of a nurse whenever they need it.

Æ Community Voices. We believe that our communities should have a voice in decisions that

impact their access to care. Healthcare decisions should be based on community needs, not on the bottom line. That’s why we’re advocating to strengthen community voices in care.

Æ Quality Care for ALL. Every patient deserves equal access to quality care regardless of

income, borough, or insurance coverage. We’re working with fellow healthcare unions, patients, community leaders, and elected allies to stop the devastating tide of hospital cuts and closures in underserved communities.

www.nysna.org

nynurses

@nynurses

CONTENT S

November 17, 2014

12.......

CITY

Beyond the Law: Where Fines Can Be Ignored

By Bob Hennelly

STATE

Five Takeaways from Election Day

By Jon Lentz

13....... Policy and Personality in NY-24

By Susan Arbetter

15.......

16......

BUFFALO

Rochester Leads on Lead While Buffalo Dallies

By Dan Telvock from Investigative Post

HIGH STAKES

The Looming Battle Over Housing in Albany

By Jarrett Murphy from City Limits

20......

SPOTLIGHT: INFRASTRUCTURE

22...... Rethinking Upstate Cities’ Urban Design

By Ashley Hupfl

24...... Next in Line for Takeoff: Cuomo’s Fledgling Vision for NYC’s Aiports

By Wilder Fleming

26......

SCORECARD

28......

ROUNDTABLE

30...... How to Fill the MTA’s Budget Gap

By Charles Brecher

32...... Congestion Pricing Is Inevitable

By Nicole Gelinas

35...... Learning from the Disaster in My District

By Robert J. Rodriguez

36......

PERSPECTIVES

Michael Benjamin looks ahead at Cuomo’s second term

38...... A Q & A with New York Giants great Tiki Barber

61 Broadway, Suite 2825 New York, NY 10006 Editorial (212) 894-5417 General (646) 517-2740 Advertising (212) 284-9712 advertising@cityandstateny.com

CITY AND STATE, LLC Chairman Steve Farbman President/CEO Tom Allon tallon@cityandstateny.com

PUBLISHING Publisher Andrew A. Holt aholt@cityandstateny.com Vice President of Advertising Jim Katocin jkatocin@cityandstateny.com Chief of Staff Jasmin Freeman jfreeman@cityandstateny.com Business Development Scott Augustine saugustine@cityandstateny.com Director of Marketing Samantha Diliberti sdiliberti@cityandstateny.com Office Administrator Kyle Renwick krenwick@cityandstateny.com Distribution Czar Dylan Forsberg EDITORIAL Editor-in-Chief Morgan Pehme mpehme@cityandstateny.com Managing Editor Michael Johnson mjohnson@cityandstateny.com Albany Bureau Chief Jon Lentz jlentz@cityandstateny.com Albany Reporter Ashley Hupfl ahupfl@cityandstateny.com Buffalo Reporter Chris Thompson cthompson@cityandstateny.com Policy Reporter Wilder Fleming wfleming@cityandstateny.com Associate Editor Helen Eisenbach Columnists Alexis Grenell, Nicole Gelinas, Michael Benjamin, Seth Barron, Jim Heaney, Gerson Borrero, Susan Arbetter PRODUCTION Art Director Guillaume Federighi gfederighi@cityandstateny.com

SPOTLIGHT: INFRASTRUCTURE November 17, 2014

Graphic Designer Michelle Yang myang@cityandstateny.com

HIGH STAKES

Albany leaders. Tenant groups. Landlord lobbyists.

And an ironclad deadline for key housing laws.

By JARRETT MURPHY

CIT YANDSTATENY.COM

@CIT YANDSTATENY

cit yandstateny.com

Marketing Graphic Designer Charles Flores, cflores@cityandstateny.com Cover: Illustrated by Larry Nadolsky

3

Web Manager Lydia Eck, leck@cityandstateny.com Illustrator Danilo Agutoli

city & state — Nobember 17, 2014

8........

Letters to the

Editor

PLAYING RETAIL

N

city & state — November 17, 2014

4

ow that I am an honorary sanjuanero by decree of Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz Soto, please indulge me a moment to sing the praises of my new mayor. At City & State’s reception earlier this month in San Juan in conjunction with the

By Morgan Pehme Editor-in-Chief SOMOS conference, the mayor, whose city co-sponsored the event, stood by the door of the museum that served as the venue and greeted every attendee as they arrived. Her welcome was no mere perfunctory handshake; it was a respectful overture that made everyone who stopped to engage with her feel as if they were a distinguished guest.

So generous was Yulín with her time that it took considerable effort by City & State’s tremendous events team to lure her to the stage to deliver her opening remarks. Suffice it to say, her speech was dazzling, keeping the attention of hundreds of people used to chattering through these formalities—as they did when Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver spoke at his own party a few hours earlier—but it was her performance following the main festivities that really remains with me. After the place had mostly thinned out, the mayor joined the band to sing several numbers (quite well, not politician-level) before drifting into the crowd and accepting the arms—some visibly sweaty—of anyone who wished to dance with her.

One could not help but contrast Carmen Yulín’s comportment with that of my other mayor, Bill de Blasio, who hosted a reception two nights later in the capital city. After professing his and the First Lady’s long love of Puerto Rico in a short speech, de Blasio and la primera dama bolted from the scene and were promptly whisked away by their security detail, hardly stopping on the way out to interact with the puertorriqueños—not to mention neoyorquinos—of whom they are allegedly so fond.

I draw this parallel not to hold up Yulín as a politician of rare gifts—though that she is—but to wonder why it is that the bulk of our elected officials in New York are so inept at the retail side of their profession? Is it that they consider it beneath them

to mingle with the masses they represent? Do they simply not like pressing the flesh when there are no votes or checks to be wrung out of the exchange? Are they worried about contracting disease?

I am so befuddled by this artlessness that I hesitate to hazard an explanation; I imagine that each of these clods has his or her own reasons for demonstrating disdain for the people whom they are supposed to be enchanting. What is so remarkable to me is that these men and women of such great ambition are so painfully unaware that it would only be to their benefit to excel at connecting with everyone they encounter, poor and rich alike—even if it’s just for show. Do they not see that those with the greatest talent for retail politics more often than not are those who reach the highest rungs of the electoral ladder—like Bill and Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer and Cory Booker, to name some of the standouts I have personally seen in action?

To a degree, I suppose, television, and now microtargeted advertising and social media are to blame, since a politician can set up camp in your home without bothering to actually step inside of it. Still, though John F. Kennedy was the first president to owe his victory, at least in part, to his small screen charisma, he also was a first-rate practitioner of faceto-face showmanship. How incredible it is today in light of how far our politicians have distanced themselves from us to see JFK, RFK and Jackie O in the 1960 documentary Primary standing in a receiving line following a campaign event in Wisconsin, shaking hands with literally every single person as they file out of the hall. Today, only Iowans and maybe New Hampshirites have even an inkling of what this type of attention from national candidates is like firsthand.

The fact that so many of our local officeholders and seekers already think they’re past this type of personalized contact is all the more unforgivable.

When one’s district is small enough that it is possible to touch every occupant, not striving to do so is tantamount to political malpractice.

As one New York City councilman, who is no slouch at retail politics himself, marveled to me about Yulín, her adeptness at relating to people clearly is natural. And yet that does not excuse those who have not been so blessed from trying as hard as they possibly can to compensate for their deficiency.

Dear politicians, even if you secretly loathe us common folk, your job is to grin and fake it.

In City & State’s special issue dedicated to Latino politics in New York, Puerto Rico and beyond, Juan Cartegena, the president and general counsel of LatinoJustice PRLDEF, wrote an op-ed urging this year’s SOMOS conference in San Juan to “be a watershed moment in securing a fairer future for Latino youth.”

In response to Juan Cartagena’s editorial, it should be noted that the state Legislature has a history of supporting leadership programs for Latino and Hispanic youth across New York State. 2015 marks the 25th anniversary of the Angelo Del Toro Puerto Rican/Hispanic Youth Leadership Institute (PR/HYLI)—a state-funded program named after the assemblyman who died in 1994.

This statewide program, sponsored by the New York State Senate/Assembly Puerto Rican and Hispanic Task Force, is specifically designed to promote leadership development in Latino and Hispanic high school students. PR/HYLI students participate in local training sessions with staff and volunteers from BOCES, districts and universities. Students identify and research legislative bills, learn parliamentary procedure and study the legislative process. More important, they gain a better understanding of responsible citizenship, interact with positive role models, and talk to leaders about the issues affecting them and their communities. PR/HYLI’s culminating event takes place in Albany each March or April. Here, more than 200 students from across the state get an up-close look at the legislative process.

This three-day program includes team-building exercises, college/career development workshops and a student recognition dinner where scholarship winners are announced. Additionally, students have the opportunity to meet members of the State Legislature, local representatives and state Education Department officials. The culmination of the weekend program is a mock legislative session where student delegates debate actual bills impacting their communities. Past bills have included the Common Core Learning Standards, immigration reform and the need for prescriptions to be translated into other languages.

I have been part of this program for the past 20 years.

Working together across school districts and party lines, we have impacted thousands of Latino and Hispanic youth across the state and supported their efforts to become leaders in their high schools, colleges, communities and beyond. PR/HYLI is an example of state politics supporting our youth and a model for impacting more students across the state.

For more information on the Angelo Del Toro Puerto Rican Hispanic Youth Leadership Institute visit www.prhyli.org.

—Gladys I. Cruz, Statewide Coordinator, PR/HYLI, Deputy Superintendent/Chief Operating Officer, Questar III BOCES, Castleton, N.Y.

To have your letter to the editor considered for publication, leave a comment at www.cityandstateny.com, tweet us @CityAndStateNY, email editor@cityandstateny.com or write to 61 Broadway, Suite 2825, New York, NY 10006.

Letters may be edited for clarity or length. cit yandstateny.com

Every Public School Deserves Public Funding for Space.

Yet, Charters Divert

$118 million

Out of the Classroom to Pay Rent in Private Facilities.

IT’S SIMPLY NOT FAIR.

#BuildingEqualityNow

STARRY NIGHT

Fêting C&S’s 2014 Class of 40 Under 40 NYC Rising Stars On the evening of Oct. 29 City & State hosted a reception, which was co-sponsored by NYSTLA, IBM, Airbnb and Allied Barton, at City Hall Restaurant in Manhattan for our most diverse class of 40 Under 40 New York City Rising Stars ever. This year’s honorees included a mix of up-and-coming government staffers, lobbyists, union officials, activists, journalists and communications professions.

6 Rising Stars Josie Duffy and Rachel Lauter

Steve Sacchetti and Caress Kennedy from Allied Barton

city & state — November 17, 2014

Rising Star Jason Banrey

IBM’s Vanessa Hunt

Airbnb’s Wrede Petersmeyer

Rising Star Brian Fallon

Rising Stars Dan Slippen (left), Shadawn Nicole Smith (right) with 2013 Rising Star Rose Christ cit yandstateny.com

“My employees are healthier, and so is my business.”

NYC WORKS BETTER

with

PAID SICK LEAVE

Contact 311 or visit nyc.gov/PaidSickLeave for information.

Employers can get the required Notice of Employee Rights and an information sheet in multiple languages, Frequently Asked Questions, Sick Leave Timekeeping Tools, Event Calendar, and training presentations.

@NYCDCA

CITY

BEYOND THE LAW

WHERE FINES CAN BE IGNORED AND RULES NEGOTIATED

By BOB HENNELLY

N

city & state — November 17, 2014

8

ew York City landlords and small business owners know all too well just how strict the city’s army of inspectors can be.

Over the 12 years of the Bloomberg administration’s rule, the city’s take from levying fines spiked from $479 million to well over $800 million.

In fact, providing relief from the wave of hyper-enforcement was a major campaign issue for mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio.

Yet in a parallel universe in the very same city, owners of hundreds of buildings that belong to foreign governments and other levels of our government—even the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey—don’t have to worry about city fines for non-compliance. In some cases they are not even subject to the city’s codes and regulations. For this rarefied class, what for everybody else is black letter law is subject to negotiation.

These owners are protected by sovereign immunity, a legal concept that has its roots in the divine right of kings embedded in English Common Law. “Besides the attribute of sovereignty, the law ascribes to the king, in his political capacity, absolute perfection,” wrote 18th century English jurist and legal scholar William Blackstone. “The king can do no wrong.”

That New York City’s diplomatic corps has racked up $16 million in unpaid parking tickets has been widely reported. Yet it appears the city does not have a solid number for the unpaid fines related to the violations issued for consular buildings by the Environmental Control Board. And while globe-trotting parking scofflaws might make for great tabloid fodder, the issue of building code enforcement can be of much greater consequence to New Yorkers.

Appeals affirmed the finding.

An examination of New York City’s official website—which tracks all recorded violations on all properties—seems to indicate that on Dec. 15, 2008, Department of Buildings inspectors wrote up the collapse as a Class-1 violation, meaning “immediately hazardous.”

The infraction is described “as failure to safeguard persons/property affected by construction operation.” Yet the ECB violation is listed as “dismissed,” and no penalty was assessed on that visit.

THREE STRIKES AND IT DOES NOT MATTER

Then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg actually threatened to suspend class trips to the United Nations unless the international body incorporated the advice of city code enforcement officials.

THE NAMIBIAN CONSULATE AND THE CONCRETE POUR THAT GOT AWAY

C

onsider the case of Dr. Robert Adelman, whose 133 East 36th Street townhouse suffered almost $400,000 dollars in structural damage back on Dec. 15, 2008. Contractors working on a major remodeling job at the Namibian mission to the United Nations, next door to Dr. Adelman’s residence at 135 East 36th Street, poured concrete for an interior wall, only to accidentally collapse an adjacent wall, undermining the support beams of Adelman’s townhouse.

Adelman’s insurance company paid the claim following the incident.

In April 2010, however, the insurer brought suit in federal court against Namibia and the contractors the African nation had hired. According to

court papers, the suit alleged that the Namibian government “had violated” the building code by failing to shore up the wall critical to the stability of Dr. Adelman’s townhouse.

In July 2010 the Namibian government moved for dismissal of the suit, on the grounds that the federal district court lacked jurisdiction over the mission because it was entitled to sovereign immunity under the Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act passed by Congress and signed into law by President Gerald Ford in 1976.

Yet the district court found that there are exceptions even to sovereign immunity when it comes to the responsibilities incumbent on all property owners, including foreign governments, and concluded that the “alleged failure of the [Namibian] mission to protect the party wall was a breach of the duty imposed upon it by the building code.” The U.S. Court of

A

ccording to city records, DOB inspectors must have known the location well: In the 24-month period before Dr. Adelman’s townhouse was badly damaged, they had been to the site five times to issue violations, some listed as “hazardous.” On three of those occasions, the city levied fines for a total of $4,500. To this day, those fines remain uncollected—along with the nearly $50,000 since amassed by the Namibian government in penalties.

The city’s Independent Budget Office reviewed the city’s books back in 2011 for the years 2007–09 and found at least $200 million dollars in outstanding DOB violations that had been registered with the Environmental Control Board. A spokesperson for the city’s Department of Finance confirms that agency is now in the process of getting a more granular view of precisely who owes what and triaging which violations levied on properties such as the Namibian mission are actually collectable.

The Namibian mission did not respond to an email sent to it cit yandstateny.com

POST 9-11 EFFORTS AT TRANSPARENCY AND A DEAL AT THE UN

A

fter the attacks on New York on Sept. 11, 2001, city officials tried to zero in on how best to get compliance from foreign governments as to essentials such as their building and fire codes.

Although foreign missions could be potential targets for terrorism or even sources for credible threats, city inspectors could not take for granted that they would have easy access to any premises covered under sovereign immunity. “We just needed to know what the risks were,” recalled one former official who was part of the post-9/11 municipal response associated with several hundred buildings for which the city could be denied entry and code enforcement.

The responsibility of managing how the myriad municipal agencies interface with the 180 various nations that have a physical presence here in New York City and with the United Nations, falls upon the city’s Mayor’s Office for International Affairs. “The City of New York follows one mantra: They have to comply with building and fire codes,” says Deputy Commissioner Bradford Billet. “The goal is public safety. We are not concerned about the fine; we want compliance.”

Billet says the art of persuasion can be important to get access to confirm that compliance. In cases where the city has suspected something could be an emergent problem, he insists that they have always gotten access. “Some countries don’t see it in their best interest. We have to take their word they are compliant. But we have never not been able to get access when we thought there was a problem.”

The process can be frustrating.

Years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the U.N. reportedly took nine months to permit the FDNY to enter its headquarters to conduct an inspection.

With the U.N. undertaking a billiondollar once-in-a-lifetime makeover, municipal officials considered their input essential. Indeed, once inside the building, inspectors flagged more than 800 fire code violations. Then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg actually threatened cit yandstateny.com

their shoulder. But ultimately it is going to be first responders from the same local government that are going to have to respond if there is a fire.

That local code should be the law.”

SOVEREIGN IMMUNITY AND THE PORT AUTHORITY

F

or Corbett there is no better example of an instance where the conferring of the status of sovereign immunity on a facility puts public safety in jeopardy than the Port Authority and its new One World Trade Center complex. Expert analyses following two attacks on the site revealed serious flaws in the Authority’s fire safety preparedness and response on both occasions.

Today’s sprawling Port Authority is a vast network of bridges, tunnels, airports and commercial spaces such as the One World Trade tower.

Created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1921, the bi-state agency has evolved into a city-state governed by its own rules and regulations—not unlike the Vatican—with its own police force.

For years politicians from both parties and both states have clamored for the agency’s reform. Now, thanks to the Bridgegate scandal, it is the subject of a Department of Justice criminal probe, one that has already sidelined its previous chairman.

Historically the Authority has always been playing catch-up as to fire safety, according to Corbett, who served on the U.S. Department

of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology expert panel, which conducted an exhaustive analysis of the World Trade Center’s fire and collapse. “Had the Port Authority’s twin towers been built anywhere else, where adherence to the city fire and building code was mandatory,” says Corbett, “there [would] have been four stair towers for an emergency exit in both of those towers, not three.”

The tension between the FDNY and the Port Authority over standards of safety has been well-documented over the years. Authors James Glanz and Eric Lipton recount in City in the Sky: The Rise and Fall of the World Trade Center the largely lost history of a Feb. 13, 1975 fire that broke out on the 11th floor of the North Tower.

The building’s inferior construction allowed the blaze to quickly jump to other floors, escalating the inferno into a three-alarm event that took 132 firefighters three hours to extinguish.

At the time Fire Commissioner John O’Hagan faulted both the tower’s construction and the lack of sprinklers.

“After assuring the New York City Fire Department that the fire protection systems in the twin towers were firstrate, the Port Authority had to contend with the clear evidence they were not,” wrote Glance and Lipton.

The ’75 fire—alongside the pop culture impact of the then–recently released blockbuster movie The Towering Inferno—added to pressure on the Authority to spend $14 million

Tension between the FDNY and the Port Authority, which oversees One World Trade, over standards of safety has been well-documented over the years.

CITY

to suspend class trips to the United Nations unless the international body incorporated the advice of city code enforcement officials. Bloomberg’s gambit worked; the city and the U.N. reached a consensus.

Since then, says Deputy Commissioner Billet, “our coordination with the United Nations has improved dramatically. The Fire Department visits there monthly; they have done drills together and the U.N. is directly wired into the Fire Department.”

Thanks to the collaboration between the U.N. and the city, Billet says, response times will improve.

“When a fire alarm goes off, there is an automatic notification that goes directly to the FDNY. Prior to our intervention that link did not exist.

The U.N. did just the opposite. They used to send someone to first check out what tripped their alarm and then call the Fire Department.”

But some feel that in a post-9/11 world, there should be one system not subject to negotiations or exemptions.

“Whether it be a federal facility like the Statue of Liberty, the Port Authority or these embassies, there should be a universal building and fire code,” says Glenn Corbett, an associate professor of fire science at the City University of New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

“It is all a matter of dollars and cents, and there are real operational advantages for these entities to not having local inspectors looking over

9

city & state — November 17, 2014

following the instruction of a staffer who answered the mission’s phone.

Richard Adam Hubell, the attorney representing Dr. Adelman, told City & State he would have to get clearance from his client before discussing the status of the litigation.

Let

Plan Your Next Event

Whether you’re planning a half-day conference, cocktail reception, awards ceremony or industry panel discussion, City & State can offer all the services you’re looking for-- and all within reasonably priced packages to fit your budget.

City & State Event Packages come with unique collateral advertising opportunities in City & State Newsmagazine, our First Read and Last Read e-newsletters and at www.cityandstateny.com

We Specialize In: • • • •

Promotion to our Engaged Audience Strategic Speaker Selection Securing Venues and Caterers On-Site Logistics

• • • •

Moderating Panel Discussions Photography and Videography Entertainment Packaged Event Takeaways & Much More!

For more information on our unique and customizable packages, please call Jasmin Freeman at 646.442.1662 or email jfreeman@cityandstateny.com

cit yandstateny.com

Bob Hennelly is an investigative reporter and contributor to City & State. Follow him on Twitter @stucknation. Aspiring whistleblowers are welcome to write him at rhennelly@yahoo.com.

Our Perspective Our Perspective

CITY

in a statement. “The Department of Buildings retains an MOU [Memorandum of Understanding] with the PA World Trade Center site that maintains construction will meet or exceed standards set out in the New York City Building Code. We disagree with the premise of this question [i.e., that a decision against proper fire protections was made] and stand by our determination that the Port Authority’s design of their structure met or exceeded the NYC fire resistance ratings requirements.”

Responding to a query that raised the issues brought up in WABC’s 2011 report, the FDNY said it was not in the loop on DOB’s decision. “The FDNY was never requested to render any opinion or approval regarding any level or levels of fire protection involving the Transportation HUB at the World Trade Center,” it said in a statement.

“This is not an FDNY function [Fire Code] but a DOB function [Building Code].”

In 1993, four Port Authority employees lost their lives in the first World Trade Center bombing. On Sept.

11, 2001, 37 Port Authority officers were killed, along with 47 civilian Authority employees.

In 2005 a New York State civil trial jury held the Port Authority 68 percent liable for the damages done in that first WTC attack in 1993, when terrorists successfully parked and detonated an explosive-packed truck in the World Trade Center’s underground garage. Jurors were troubled by Port Authority officials’ decision to reject the recommendations of a 1985 report done by a Port Authority mechanical engineer who advised the garage be closed because it left the “most attractive terrorist target” wide open for just such an attack. In those halcyon years before the first terror attack and the catastrophic collapse, it is likely that commercial considerations trumped security concerns.

In 2011 a closely divided New York State Court of Appeals panel overturned the lower court ruling, which had held the Port Authority liable, as the private landlord of what was primarily a commercial building.

The state’s highest court ruling countered that the Port Authority was shielded from liability by sovereign immunity.

Labor and the Labor and the 2014 Elections 2014 Elections

By Stuart Appelbaum, President, Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union,

By Stuart Appelbaum, President, RWDSU, UFCW Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, RWDSU, UFCW he results of this year’s elections throughout the country were not what we in the labor he results of this year’s elections throughout movement had hoped for. There’s no the country were not what we in the labor sugarcoating that reality. movement had hoped for. There’s no And yet, I remain optimistic; maybe more so sugarcoating that reality. than ever before. The Democratic Party didn’t And yet, I remain optimistic; maybe more so create the labor movement, and what we need to do than ever before. The Democratic Party didn’t today is no different than before the elections. create the labor movement, and what we need to do Working people are under siege like never today is no different than before the elections. before. The labor movement as a whole is shrinking.

Working people are under siege like never We live in a time defined by obscene wealth and growing ranks before. The labor movement as a whole is shrinking. of working poor Americans, increasingly concentrated power and We live in a time defined by obscene wealth and growing ranks indifference to the disenfranchised. The of working poor Americans, increasingly concentrated power and nation’s wealth is being redirected from indifference to the disenfranchised. The Unions are as relevant working and middle-income families to nation’s wealth is being redirected from and necessary today as the pockets of a small group of Unions are as relevant working and middle-income families to at any time in our history. billionaires and millionaires. and necessary today as the pockets of a small group of Just look at the Walton family, at any time in our history. billionaires and millionaires. which owns much of Wal-Mart. This one family – six individuals – owns Just look at the Walton family, as much wealth as 130 million Americans combined. which owns much of Wal-Mart. This one family – six individuals – owns The only response to this rampant inequality is for working as much wealth as 130 million Americans combined. people to come together with a collective voice, to take collective action, The only response to this rampant inequality is for working and to form new alliances that build stronger coalitions in our people to come together with a collective voice, to take collective action, communities. and to form new alliances that build stronger coalitions in our That’s what the labor movement going forward communities.

Our strength must be about. We have to continue to fight. We That’s what the labor movement going forward draws from a have no other choice.

Our strength must be about. We have to continue to fight. We deep well of Unions are as relevant and necessary today as draws from a have no other choice. moral conviction. at any time in our history. Laws alone can’t deep well of Unions are as relevant and necessary today as protect us, and well-meaning elected officials moral conviction. at any time in our history. Laws alone can’t can only do so much. It has been and will always be about power – protect us, and well-meaning elected officials about organizing people workplace by workplace and community by can only do so much. It has been and will always be about power – community into a national movement. about organizing people workplace by workplace and community by And if working people are denied the power that strong unions community into a national movement. provide, we will always be relegated to bickering over the crumbs that And if working people are denied the power that strong unions fall from the masters’ tables. This cannot be the legacy that we leave. provide, we will always be relegated to bickering over the crumbs that So I am confident – even optimistic – that we are poised to fall from the masters’ tables. This cannot be the legacy that we leave. come out swinging. Because our strength draws from a deep well of So I am confident – even optimistic – that we are poised to moral conviction. Our beliefs and values inform what we do; and come out swinging. Because our strength draws from a deep well of together we all serve a greater purpose. moral conviction. Our beliefs and values inform what we do; and Dr. King said it best: “The labor movement was the principal together we all serve a greater purpose. force that transformed misery and despair into hope and progress.”

Dr. King said it best: “The labor movement was the principal We in labor are the people Dr. King spoke about. We are the force that transformed misery and despair into hope and progress.” ones who stand up against injustice, fight for the weak, give voice to the We in labor are the people Dr. King spoke about. We are the voiceless, and offer hope to those who would despair. We have the guts, ones who stand up against injustice, fight for the weak, give voice to the we have the courage, and we have the strength to make a difference. voiceless, and offer hope to those who would despair. We have the guts, Join us. we have the courage, and we have the strength to make a difference.

Join us.

T T

For more information, visit For more information, visit www.rwdsu.org

www.rwdsu.org

11

city & state — November 17, 2014

for additional fire doors and emergency communication equipment. Still, even after a raging conflagration, the agency was paralyzed by sticker shock when it came to installing the sprinklers.

Glance and Lipton recount that the “estimated $43 million it would cost to install fire sprinklers,” in the words of late Port Authority Board Chairman William J. Ronan, was a “figure that at this time is not feasible.”

It would not be until March of 1981 that the Authority would finally commit to spending the now– $45 million necessary to install sprinklers, a project estimated to require three to five years to complete.

Today the standing memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the city and the Authority leaves too much room for standards to be weakened through negotiation, believes Corbett, who is concerned history may be repeating itself. He cites a 2011 WABC-TV report revealing that the Port Authority had convinced the city’s Department of Buildings to let it cut $25 million worth of fireproofing it had initially planned to apply to the World Trade Center Transportation Hub. The Port Authority backed up its application for the waiver, says Corbett, with an outside engineering study asserting that thanks to the sheer size of the space, and the strength of the steel being used, the site could withstand a blaze created by a car fire involving two or three vehicles. “Given the fact that this is such a large building, and [it] is a terrorist target,” Corbett told WABC at the time, “a small fire in this building is not something I’d be planning for—I’d be planning for much larger worst-case scenario.”

The issue of cost overruns trumping safety concerns has plagued the Authority in the years since Sept. 11, 2001. In a 2009 press release, the agency announced a new transparency initiative for code compliance: “Under the new initiative, the Port Authority—which has a long-standing policy to meet or exceed New York City building and fire code standards—will publish an annual report documenting its code conformance efforts and facility inspection records.” Contacted for this article, Peter Zipf, the Port Authority’s chief engineer, responded to Corbett’s critique with virtually the same words: “The Port Authority’s policy is to meet or exceed New York City code that has been in place for years.”

The DOB also voiced its support for the agency, echoing this sentiment

S TAT E

FIVE TAKEAWAYS FROM ELECTION DAY

By JON LENTZ

city & state — November 17, 2014

12

1. CUOMO’S VICTORY Gov. Andrew Cuomo won re-election, but it was not the landslide some had expected earlier on in his first term. By several measures, in fact, his showing was remarkably poor: The 1.95 million votes cast for the governor were nearly a million fewer than he won four years ago. As The Buffalo News pointed out, it was the fewest votes won by a New York gubernatorial candidate since Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1930, and Cuomo’s final tally was less than either Attorney General Eric Schneiderman (1.96 million votes) or Comptroller Tom DiNapoli (2.11 million) garnered in their respective re-election bids. On the plus side, even though Cuomo pledged to push for a Democratic majority in the state Senate, the fact that Republicans won control outright could pave the way for the governor to continue positioning himself as a fiscally conservative centrist. But when it comes to issues like the Women’s Equality Act, campaign finance reform and the DREAM Act, it is not clear how Cuomo will be able to get these measures passed—or whether he will try very hard to do so.

2. PARTY TIME One quirk of New York elections is its third parties, and their ranks grew this year with the addition of the Women’s Equality Party, a creation of Cuomo’s, and the Stop Common Core line, which was launched by Republican gubernatorial candidate Rob Astorino. Voters also shook up the ranking of the third parties, which is based on the number of votes cast for them in the governor’s race. The Conservative Party, which backed Astorino, held onto Row C, while the Working Families Party was bumped down by the Green Party, which seized Row D behind the candidacy of Howie Hawkins, who won 5 percent of the vote. The Greens could have a significant impact on the electoral landscape for the next four years.

Unlike most other third parties in New York State the party does not cross-

would easily have been the state’s biggest upset, Democratic Rep. Louise Slaughter, who no one foresaw having troubles, eked past Republican Mark Assini by a mere 869 votes. Rep. Steve Israel of Long Island, who ran the congressional Democrats’ election efforts nationally, has already stepped aside as chair of the DCCC, although he had planned to do so before Election Day.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo fell short of his father’s first re-election total. endorse Democrats or Republicans, instead choosing to recruit and run its own candidates, and some observers wonder if it will take votes away from upstate Democrats in coming years. Also making the ballot was the ideologically flexible Independence Party, which ran Cuomo on its line.

3. THE REPUBLICAN SENATE So much for the much ballyhooed plan to reunite the Senate Independent Democratic Conference (IDC) with their fellow Democrats in the state Senate. Despite a coalition including Cuomo, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and a number of key labor unions that came together this summer to pledge to secure a Democratic majority, the Republicans were able to pick up a few battleground seats and fend off a number of challenges to win an outright majority. State Sen. Jeff Klein and his IDC, which shared power with the GOP over the past two years, is suddenly more expendable, although indications are that the partnership will continue on some level, albeit with less power for Klein. Republicans want to push for more tax cuts and less burdensome business regulations, while Democratic lawmakers—as well as de Blasio—will have a harder time getting progressive bills passed.

4. SEEING RED IN CONGRESS The most riveting story line on a national scale was the transfer of power in the U.S. Senate, a shift that gives Republicans control of both houses of Congress.

Democrats in the House took a hit too, and New York’s huge Democratic enrollment advantage didn’t shield it from the Republican landslide. Three GOP candidates—John Katko, Elise Stefanik and Lee Zeldin—flipped seats that had been Democratic. Meanwhile, in what

5. PROPOSITIONS PASS Voters approved all three propositions on the ballot in New York. The most controversial was Proposition 1, which established a new redistricting process but divided good-government groups. Citizens Union supported the change, noting that it would bring outsiders into the process of drawing district lines and codify the criteria in state law, while Common Cause NY opposed the plan, arguing that those in the majority in the state Legislature will retain control over the maps despite a veneer of independence. Proposition 2 allows the state to pass legislation without physically printing bills. And the passage of Proposition 3, unveiled by Cuomo earlier this year, authorizes a $2 billion bond act to provide technology upgrades in schools.

LOOKING PRESIDENTIAL? Gov. Andrew Cuomo won 54 percent of the vote this year, well short of his 2010 mark of 63 percent and the 64 percent his father, Mario Cuomo, amassed in his first re-election bid in 1986. Like his father, Andrew Cuomo has been mentioned as a potential presidential candidate. So where does he stack up against other governors who aspired—or still aspire—to move into the White House?

FIRST RUN FOR RE-ELECTION Year State Vote Ronald Reagan * Bill Clinton George W. Bush Jeb Bush Bobby Jindal Chris Christie Scott Walker

1970 1980 1998 2002 2011 2013 2014

California Arkansas Texas Florida Louisiana New Jersey Wisconsin

53% 48% 69% 56% 66% 60% 52%

* Clinton narrowly lost his first re-election bid but regained the governorship two years later.

cit yandstateny.com

STATE

S TAT E

POLICY & PERSONALITY IN NY-24

SUSAN ARBETTER

R

The 24th Congressional District in the central part of New York State includes Wayne, Cayuga and cit yandstateny.com

Republican John Katko defeated Democratic Rep. Dan Maffei by almost 20 points, despite trailing in the polls late into the race.

Onondaga counties, as well as parts of Oswego County. The population centers are Syracuse, Auburn, Fulton and Oswego. It’s a rough mix of rural, urban and suburban, with all the problems that come with each designation: urban poverty, sky-high property taxes, both failing and exceptional schools, and an anemic economy dependent on agriculture, military contracts, higher education

and hospitals.

It is considered a swing district, something Maffei deeply understands; he has been swinging from the winner’s to the loser’s column every two years since 2008.

Democrats have a slight enrollment edge here, but the almost 114,000 unaffiliated voters make or break campaigns. Those voters helped Maffei after longtime Rep. Jim Walsh,

a Republican, opted not to run in 2008. Those same voters turned to Republican Ann Marie Buerkle in 2010, a midterm election year. In 2012 they returned Maffei to power during the Obama wave.

That tenuous grasp on power was acknowledged by the Democratic congressional leadership. According to Ballotpedia, Maffei was a member of the Democratic Congressional

city & state — November 17, 2014

THE DISTRICT

13

SARAH JEAN CONDON/THE CITIZEN

epublican challenger John Katko cut a distinguished figure as he strode confidently into WCNY’s Green Room, hand extended to introduce himself to the debate moderators. Handshakes, eye contact. “I’ve heard a lot about you,” Katko said, smiling.

It was about five minutes before we took our places in the studio for the only live television debate of the campaign for New York’s 24th Congressional District.

Katko’s opponent, Democratic Rep. Dan Maffei, was also in the building but alternately on his cell phone or behind closed doors, unavailable.

It was a snapshot of what central New Yorkers saw during this campaign: an outgoing, self-assured former assistant U.S. Attorney in Katko versus a reticent Maffei, who looks like an unmade bed and struggles to make small talk.

It didn’t help that Maffei prefers to campaign in small, controlled settings and, according to the Syracuse Post-Standard, “is painfully unable to connect with constituents.”

THE ISSUES

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2014

New York Institute of Technology Auditorium 1871 Broadway, New York, NY 10023

BRIEF:

City & State convenes leaders in State and City government to discuss the tech trajectory of New York City.

THEMES

14

• Tech Town: How is New York City using technology and data for large scale projects such as Universal Pre-K, Municipal Identification, and large public construction projects managed by city entities and agencies?

• Tech in Education: How is New York ensuring technology literacy of students? How can New York make better use of technology solutions to improve how we teach and learn?

AGENDA

8:00am Registration and Breakfast 9:00am Opening Remarks by City & State and Co-Hosting Sponsor Representative 9:30am City & State interviews Manhattan Borough President, Gale Brewer 9:45am City & State moderates a panel of leaders in government and business on the most pressing issues facing NYC’s tech community.

city & state — November 17, 2014

INVITED PANELISTS:

Rachel Haot, Chief Digital Officer, NYS Eric Gertler, EVP and Managing Director of the Center for Economic Transformation, NYC Economic Development Corp.

Dr. Katepalli R. Sreenivasan, Dean, NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering Anne Roest, Commissioner, NYC Department of Information Technology & Telecommunications*

* Confirmation Pending For more information on programming and sponsorship contact Jasmin Freeman at 646.442.1662 or Jfreeman@CityandStateNY.com

events.CityandStateNY.com

Maffei was not supposed to lose.

He had campaign cash and name recognition. Up until two weeks before Election Day, he was leading Katko in the polls. Political luminaries such as Bill Clinton and Joe Biden traveled to Syracuse to stump for him.

Maffei also seemed to have a better grasp of the issues than his challenger, something he was able to showcase during a series of television and radio debates.

When questioned, for example, about how they would ensure the viability of Social Security, Katko responded, “You can’t tax your way out of every problem.” Instead, he argued, a “bipartisan coalition of lawmakers and businessmen and leaders from all over the country” needs to sit down and hammer out a solution. “We have 20 years,” Katko said, “a whole generation to do that.”

Maffei, on the other hand, had a very specific solution: allowing Social Security to be taxed on incomes over $117,000 dollars. When Katko countered that the idea would hurt the middle class, Maffei responded that the tax could “click back in” at a higher salary so the “rich pay their fair share.”

When asked what they would do to create jobs in rural Wayne County, Katko reminisced about visits to his wife’s father’s potato farm. Maffei cited specific companies he has assisted in the past, such as Motts in Williamson.

While neither candidate gave a great answer, Maffei’s response was more substantive.

The most notable takeaway from the series of candidate debates was that they shared common ground on several important issues, including fixing the Affordable Care Act, creating jobs and immigration reform.

THE CANDIDATES Maffei’s background is impressive.

After graduating from Brown and Columbia, he received a master’s in public policy from Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

He worked for Sens. Bill Bradley and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and served as a senior staffer on the House Ways

and Means Committee. He knows how the unseen levers of power work in Washington. Unfortunately for him, that hasn’t translated into passing legislation, something Katko continually pointed out on the campaign trail.

What Katko lacks in policy chops, he makes up in good old-fashioned likability. That’s not to say he can’t point to his own string of accomplishments. Katko earned a law degree from Syracuse and has a solid 20 years of experience at the U.S. Department of Justice, first as a special assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia and then with the DOJ’s Criminal Division, Narcotic & Dangerous Drug Section.

But this was Maffei’s race to lose, and he lost. Though, to be fair, his candidacy and that of other New York Democrats was hampered by the national mood.

“Low turnout no doubt helped the Republicans pick up three House seats, so that the House delegation from New York State now is Democrats 18 and the Republicans 9,” explained political strategist Bruce Gyory of Manatt, Phelps & Phillips. “Lee Zeldin defeated Tim Bishop in Suffolk; Elise Stefanik defeated Aaron Woolf in the open seat in the North Country and Katko defeated Maffei handily in the Greater Onondaga County region district.”

Also, since Democrats benefit from voter turnout, the barrage of negative ads from both camps may have poisoned the well, keeping some voters home and hurting Maffei.

THE UPSHOT According to the Post-Standard, the choice that voters were asked to make in the 24th “was less about policy positions and more about confidence in the candidate’s ability to forcefully represent our region and lead it into a new era of prosperity.”

It is an assessment that John Katko apparently agreed with.

Shortly after his win, he told Liz Benjamin of Capital Tonight: “In the end, it boiled down to who [voters] thought could go to Washington and get the job done more.”

After three tries, it was clear that Dan Maffei was not that guy.

Susan Arbetter (@sarbetter on Twitter) is the Emmy award-winning news director for WCNY Syracuse PBS/ NPR, and producer/host of the Capitol Pressroom syndicated radio program. cit yandstateny.com

S TAT E

STATE

Campaign Committee’s Frontline Program, designed to help protect vulnerable Democratic incumbents during the 2014 election cycle.

It didn’t help. The incumbent lost by 20 percentage points to challenger Katko, a political newcomer.

B U F FA LO

ROCHESTER LEADS ON LEAD WHILE BUFFALO DALLIES

By DAN TELVOCK from INVESTIGATIVE POST

cit yandstateny.com

complains to the city, owner-occupied singles and doubles are exempt from regular interior lead inspections.

The city can still use building code regulations to cite these homes for exterior peeling paint, like in Buffalo.

“Lead poisoning is a health problem with a housing solution,” said Katrina Korfmacher, associate professor for the Department of Environmental Medicine at University of Rochester Medical Center.

Code enforcers in both Buffalo and Rochester inspect mixed-use and multi-unit buildings every three years. Buffalo, however, does not have provisions to inspect the interiors of one- and two-family rental units unless there is a complaint and the owner or occupant grants access.

In Rochester, one- and two-family rentals are inspected every six years.

When inspectors find an interior lead hazard in a property located in the designated high-risk zones, and the property owner uses a temporary measure to control it, they return every three years. Rochester officials also built a public database of leadsafe properties to let renters and home buyers know where it is safe to live.

“The lead poisoning monster is able to really hide, so we have to be constantly working toward eliminating that monster,” Spezio said.

Buffalo lacks similar policies. And not one of the city’s 39 inspectors is certified to detect lead hazards. Instead the Erie County Health Department conducts inspections for lead hazards.

That effort results in about 2,000 inspections a year, versus more than 14,000 in Rochester. And Erie County inspectors gain entry inside houses less

than half the time they attempt to do so.

The number of children testing positive for elevated blood lead levels in Monroe County, including Rochester, has dropped by more than 70 percent since 2005. “I attribute this to an approach here in Rochester and Monroe County that includes all the players at the table to help deal with the problem,” said Dr. Stanley Schaffer, director of the Western New York Lead Poisoning Resource Center in Rochester. “It’s a public health problem for everybody.”

While rates have also dropped in Buffalo and Erie County, children in these areas tested positive at nearly double the rate of Rochester and Monroe County, according to the

state’s most recent health data. That is 1.86 percent of the children tested positive in Erie County compared with 1.03 percent in Monroe County.

David Hahn-Baker, a Buffalo environmental activist who has studied the lead problem for 30 years, said Rochester’s efforts prove that proactive policies make a difference.

“We actually looked at Rochester as a model to build around and it’s led to some of the good things we’ve done— but it’s not been enough, because we haven’t had the leadership from our public officials,” he said.

“If they can do it in Rochester, why can’t we do it here in Buffalo?”

15

Dan Telvock is Investigative Post’s environmental reporter.

The Erie County Department of Health is sponsoring a campaign to make parents aware of the dangers of lead.

city & state — November October 28,17,2014 2014

PHOTO COMPOSITION BY CITY & STATE

R

ochester used to have a lead problem at least as bad as Buffalo’s.

But officials in Rochester got serious a decade ago and developed a program that is considered a national model, which some think Buffalo should emulate.

Ralph Spezio, principal of an inner city elementary school, was Rochester’s catalyst for change.

Fifteen years ago he overheard two nurses talking about a pupil’s high blood lead level. “Then the other one said, ‘They are all lead-poisoned,’ ” Spezio said.

Alarmed, he wanted to know more. After signing a confidentiality agreement with the Monroe County Health Department, he obtained lead test results for his youngest pupils.

What Spezio discovered was shocking: 4 in 10 of his pupils—hundreds of youngsters—had lead poisoning.

“I called a press conference, and I called childhood lead poisoning the silent and invisible monster that’s devouring our children right before our eyes,” he said. “If you steal someone’s IQ, you have stolen their future.”

Spezio co-founded the Coalition to Prevent Lead Poisoning and spurred a movement that led the city to pass landmark legislation in 2005. The law provides a mechanism for city code enforcers to inspect all rental units for lead. Similar to Buffalo, 60 percent of Rochester’s housing is renteroccupied, and research shows these residences have the most lead hazards.

Rentals in high-risk neighborhoods are subject to more stringent testing even after passing an initial visual inspection. Unless the owner or renter

16

HIGH STAKES Albany leaders. Tenant groups. Landlord lobbyists.

And an ironclad deadline for key housing laws.

By JARRETT MURPHY

city & state — November 17, 2014

The sunsetting on June 15 of New York City’s rent regulation laws is certain to set off a major battle in the state Legislature.

M

ayor Bill de Blasio’s battle to build or preserve 200,000 units of affordable housing—the ambitious, $41.1 billion goal he announced in May that will likely be the signature policy initiative of his administration—will be fought over the next decade, neighborhood by neighborhood, even lot by lot.

Yet a more important battle will take place much sooner, 140 miles

north.

On June 15, New York’s rent regulation laws and other key real estate measures are due to sunset. The revised laws that emerge will shape the market in which de Blasio’s housing initiatives play out and determine whether the city’s new housing truly adds to the stock of affordable apartments or merely replaces rentstabilized units leaving the system.

During the run-up to Election Day, tenant groups responded to that looming deadline by sending volunteers to upstate Senate races, while lobbyists representing landlords cut massive campaign checks to party accounts. Now the fight moves to Albany, where Republican control of the Senate changes the drama, but doesn’t end it. The issue of who won control of the upper house on Nov. 4

does not alter the essential questions facing tenant advocates: Can the Assembly be counted on to push hard for stronger regulations? What role, if any, will Gov. Andrew Cuomo play?

And does de Blasio have any leverage left for this all-important lift in the State Capitol?

What is certain is this: Years down the road, experts will look back on what happened in Albany in the late spring cit yandstateny.com

J

of 2015 as a hugely important—maybe even deciding—factor in determining whether New York carves out a place for the working class, or permits lower- and moderate-income people to continue getting priced out of the five boroughs.

Shoring up the rent laws is “absolutely essential to the future of affordable housing in New York City,” said Benjamin Dulchin, cit yandstateny.com

ust over two-thirds of New York City’s 3 million housing units are rentals, and 46 percent of those—some 960,000—are rent stabilized, collectively home to 2.3 million people. Among the poorest 40 percent of city residents, nearly half live in stabilized housing.

Restrictions on rents began in New York City amid a housing shortage during World War I. That system, known as “rent control,” would wax and wane over the next 50 years, eventually covering more than 1 million units. In 1969 the city enacted a separate system of rent stabilization to cover newer apartments. Both of these rounds of regulations were weakened during the 1970s by a measure that allowed vacant units to be deregulated.

Then, in 1974, the laws were again strengthened when the Emergency Tenant Protection Act ended so-called vacancy decontrol.

Two decades later, rent regulations would swing dramatically in landlords’ favor. Legislators in 1993 instituted what is known as high-rent vacancy decontrol, allowing property owners to take an apartment off the regulated list once it reached a legal rent of $2,000 or more and went vacant. They also approved high-income decontrol, which permitted landlords to remove an occupied unit from stabilization if it surpassed the $2,000 rent threshold and its tenants’ income was $250,000 or more.

Again taking on rent regulations, in 1997 Albany saw what one analysis characterized as “one of the most bitter state legislative battles of the 20th century.” The Legislature briefly let rent laws expire, then gutted the rules, lowering the threshold for high-income decontrol, making highrent decontrol easier and creating a “vacancy bonus” that permits landlords to jack up rent 20 percent when a stabilized tenant leaves.

Another round of changes in 2003 further strengthened the landlords’ hand—though in 2011 tenants won stricter limits on which apartments could be deregulated.

The net effect of these shifts has been a considerable decline in the number of regulated apartments.

From 1994 to 2003, the city lost a net

50,000 regulated units. In the past 10 years, a net 54,000 units have left the system—slightly more than the number of new affordable units built over that period under Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s affordable housing initiative.

O

f course, not every deregulated apartment can be considered “affordable.” An apartment renting at $2,500, the current threshold for vacancy decontrol, would only be deemed affordable for households earning $100,000 or more. Indeed, vacancy bonuses, and other changes that permit landlords to raise rents beyond the annual increases approved by the city’s Rent Guidelines Board, can push an apartment out of affordability even if it remains in the stabilization system. Owners can raise rents to cover buildingwide expenses through major capital improvements (MCIs), or pass on the cost of unit-specific repairs to renters through “individual apartment improvements.” Each increase moves an apartment closer to the exit door.

And that, tenants say, is the root of the problem. The option of vacancy decontrol creates an extra incentive for landlords to use those other mechanisms to push rents higher. “What they want is vacancy decontrol,” said Dulchin of the landlords’ motivations. “The individual apartment improvements are the way to get there.”

The Rent Stabilization Association (RSA), which represents landlords, argues that MCIs and individual apartment improvements reflect the real costs property owners face.

Compelling owners to eat those costs while dealing with the record-low 1 percent one-year rent hike approved in June by the Rent Guidelines Board only

encourages them to defer maintenance, RSA argues. “It’s just this myth that you’re going to preserve those units at that level,” said RSA’s director of government affairs, Frank Ricci. “It’s an artificial preservation.” Better to have well-maintained units with rising rents than to let the housing stock deteriorate, Ricci contends. After all, he notes, affordable housing programs may produce tens of thousands of units, but rent stabilization encompasses hundreds of thousands.

“Nothing’s going to limit increases in water and sewer charges, which together account for about a third of your operating costs,” said RSA vice president Jack Freund. Pointing out that about a quarter of rent-stabilized units rent for less than their legal rent, Freund sees a growing tension between bare-bones costs and what tenants can afford. “If wages and incomes don’t increase, you can’t collect more from your tenants to counter those increases in operating costs. Somewhere down the road, if those trends keep on track, there’s real trouble brewing.”

Kathryn Wylde, president and CEO of the Partnership for New York City, wonders if the rent laws fight might become linked with the growing debate over the structure of city property taxes. Some research indicates property taxes disproportionately burden multifamily buildings, adding to the costs landlords face regardless of what rent regulations look like.

Tenant leaders acknowledge that income is part—but only part—of the affordability problem, and insist that stronger rent laws are essential to alleviating it.

C

17

ity Hall draws a distinction between the rent regulations battle in Albany and the

“[Mayor Bill de Blasio] is not going to achieve his goal of a more affordable city unless he is effective at strengthening rent regulations,” says Benjamin Dulchin of the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development.

city & state — November 17, 2014

executive director of the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development. “The mayor is not going to achieve his goal of a more affordable city unless he is effective at strengthening rent regulations. It’s the thing that matters most.”

Chair of the Assembly’s Housing Committee Keith Wright acknowledged that the rent fight is a high-risk affair this year.

city & state — November 17, 2014

18

affordable housing plan taking shape in the Big Apple. “In terms of our specific goal of 200,000 units built and preserved, reauthorization [of rent regulations] doesn’t necessarily impact our ability to reach that figure,” a spokesperson said. “But obviously what we shed in terms of affordability over the next 10 years has a very consequential impact on the affordability of the city and the lives of families, so that matters to us in and of itself.”

Tenant advocates, however, see the looming fight in very stark terms.

“If things keep going the way that they’re going and we don’t close these loopholes and repeal vacancy deregulation, in five or 10 years there will be nothing left,” said Delsenia Glover, campaign manager of Alliance for Tenant Power. “As far as rentregulated housing is concerned, this is a crisis situation. This year is pretty much do-or-die.”

Glover and her allies are pushing for a transformative set of changes.

They want to end vacancy bonuses, turn MCIs into temporary surcharges rather than permanent bumps in rent and require more oversight of individual apartment increases. They are also pressing to align rent increases for the rent control system—which now covers only 38,000 apartments— with the hikes the RGB approves for stabilized units.

Preferential rents present another issue. When landlords charge less than the legal rent on a stabilized apartment, the fact that they can impose the legal rent on a new lease creates an opportunity for massive one-time rent increases, a possibility

tenant advocates want to curtail.

One item conspicuously absent from the tenant organizations’ wish list is repeal of the Urstadt Law, which prevents the city from running its own rent-regulation system. De Blasio has called for scrapping the measure. But for tenant proponents, repeal—which is highly unlikely—is “not a priority,” according to Katie Goldstein, executive director of the advocacy group Tenants & Neighbors.

Landlords have their own priorities, including pushing back at the regulations imposed by the state Division of Housing and Community Renewal after the 2011 rent law renewal, which they say impose onerous burdens on owners. The RSA’s Ricci is also concerned about a “lack of standards” for Gov. Cuomo’s Tenant Protection Unit, which Ricci said pursues landlords arbitrarily and has failed to make clear what it expects of property owners.

But while each side has its wish list, vacancy decontrol is what most concerns both. The RSA wants to preserve or even extend decontrol, lowering the threshold at which apartments leave the system. Anyone who can afford $2,500 a month does not need stabilization, they argue. Tenant groups want to repeal vacancy decontrol and reregulate units lost to vacancy deregulation.

Tenants PAC treasurer Michael McKee said he and his allies are still researching legal constraints on how far back in time the reregulation mechanism could go.

As the debate over rent regulations accelerates, developers and advocates will also be keeping an eye on other

laws that expire either with the rent regulations or later in 2015. June 15 is also the sunset date for the 421-a tax break, a property tax abatement given to residential developers. Critics say 421-a is enormously expensive and ineffective at producing affordable housing. Meanwhile, the J-51 tax exemption, which gives owners who are renovating their properties a tax break if they enroll in rent stabilization, sunsets June 29, while the co-op and condo tax abatement, which allows owners of those properties a rebate on their property taxes, needs to be renewed by June 30. Reform and renewal of these programs could get linked to rent stabilization.

It should be a busy spring.

I

n fact, the city’s housing advocates are already busy.

Tenants & Neighbors’ Goldstein said the group has been meeting with allies in the housing movement and the Legislature for months. It has also held preliminary discussions with upstate affordable housing organizations on banding together to increase pressure on legislators. Even if every New York City-based legislator backed the tenant position, advocates would not be able to get their agenda passed without help from suburban or upstate districts.

The city is currently experiencing a reinvigorated tenant movement, according to Goldstein, who said the successful campaign last spring to get the RGB to hold down rent increases for stabilized units helped to energize people who are increasingly concerned about affordability. “This is translating into more of a citywide movement.

In neighborhoods in the West Bronx,

in Elmhurst in Queens, in Crown Heights, in Bushwick—all of these neighborhoods that actually weren’t getting anywhere close to the vacancy decontrol threshold are now hovering right around it,” she said. Median stabilized rents in the outer boroughs may still be well shy of the decontrol threshold, but the outer-borough share of units lost to vacancy decontrol has doubled in the past 10 years.

As for the landlords’ side, RSA PAC spent about $422,500 from January through Election Day on campaign donations, much of it in huge contributions to the Senate Republicans and the Independence Party. McKee’s Tenants PAC reported $47,550 in spending, primarily directed to six key state Senate races.

Historically dominated by upstate Republicans, the Senate tends to be a landlord ally in fights over rent regulations. In 1997 Republican Majority Leader Joe Bruno gave Democratic Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver a choice between letting the rent regulations die altogether or accepting a slew of pro-landlord changes. To preserve the stabilization system, Silver swallowed the expansion of decontrol, along with other bitter pills.

Four years later Bruno quietly passed a bill at the end of the legislative session that further eroded regulations—then left town, again forcing Silver to choose between a sunset or a rather gloomy dawn. The Speaker picked daylight.

Over the years the Assembly has consistently supported pro-tenant legislation. Recently, however, the RSA feels it has been gaining more traction in the lower house. “Over the past couple years what we’ve noticed is, yeah, whatever the Speaker’s agenda is ultimately going to pass,” said Ricci. “But the votes are much, much closer because a lot of Democrats in the Assembly realize that when you start talking about MCIs or individual apartment improvements, these are jobs for people who actually live in their districts and vote for them.”

Speaking with City & State on the sidelines of the SOMOS conference earlier this month in Puerto Rico, Assemblyman Keith Wright of Harlem, the chair of the Assembly’s Housing Committee, said the Assembly had always stood up for tenants. But he acknowledged that this year the rent fight is a high-risk affair.

“Housing advocates should always have a degree of trepidation.

We should all have a degree of trepidation,” Wright said. “And we cit yandstateny.com

A

ny way you slice it, however, the Senate is the house that really matters in the rent regulations fight. If the Democrats had won control of the chamber, McKee was planning to push to get the Senate to pass Tenants PAC’s bills early in the year to ease the way toward favorable negotiations with the Assembly and governor. A Republican victory, McKee said in late October, would mean “we need to activate 15 or 20 of Shelly Silver’s members to put pressure on him to actually deliver something.” Otherwise Silver might be too likely to compromise, he said.

The strategy will shift now that advocates know who is in charge—but they insist the goal will not. Goldstein said last month that regardless of who controlled the Senate, her group would still push for full repeal of vacancy decontrol.

The fact is, even in a Democratic Senate, stiffer rent regs were not going to be a “gimme.” “It’s an issue that even in the best of circumstances will still be a hell of a fight,” Dulchin said.

And while it is less likely that tenants will get what they want from a Republican Senate, tenants find hope in the fact that almost all Albany endings involve horse-trading among the Assembly, Senate and governor. In the end, what happens when the three men enter the room might be more important than whose caucus is bigger.

One area of confusion in the wake of Election Day is whether the Independent Democratic Caucus will still wield clout on this issue. Two IDC members, state Sens. Diane Savino and Tony Avella, are considered allies by tenant groups, but tenant advocates do not trust Sen. Jeff Klein. A Klein spokeswoman said he “has a strong voting record on tenants’ rights.”

Yet when asked about repealing the Urstadt Law during a debate this summer, Klein punted. “I will weigh every issue as [it comes],” hedged Klein, according to The New York Observer. “I support rent stabilization, I support everything that protects tenants. I think we need to take a good hard look at the MCI law. There’s a lot of things that are out there.”

There is no doubt that the governor’s position is now an even more critical variable, however. cit yandstateny.com

Cuomo received enormous sums from real estate interests for his re-election campaign. But the 2011 rent laws renewal occurred on his watch, delivering the first strengthening of regs since the ’70s. The Cuomo administration would go on to promulgate new tenant-friendly rules for administering rent stabilization, launch the Tenant Protection Unit, which has served subpoenas on landlords and management companies, and reregulate at least 25,000 units that had illegally been taken off the stabilization rolls.

Those changes infuriated landlords, who found hypocritical the move to push the threshold for highincome decontrol from $175,000 to $200,000. “At the same time you’re hearing all these invocations of affordable housing,” laments RSA general counsel Mitch Posilkin, “they turned around and they protected the wealthiest, which is really kind of striking.”

Yet vacancy decontrol, vacancy bonuses and other elements of the three previous rounds of rent law renewals were left unchanged in 2011.

Tenant organizations were hoping then—and hope now—for more.

“This is a real test for him,” said Goldstein of Cuomo. “This year, we want something a lot bigger.”

S

ome wonder if de Blasio’s affordable housing aims have left him between a rock and a hard place. He wants stronger rent

regulations to preserve existing affordability, but he also needs to create new affordable housing by leveraging private sector money, and investors might see permanent rent regulations as a disincentive to committing equity to projects.

Nonetheless, City Hall says in addition to seeking repeal of the Urstadt Law—so unlikely as to be a meaningless goal—the mayor supports repealing vacancy decontrol. But can a mayor who struggled to get Albany to deliver progressive policies last winter expect to fare better now that the Democrats are an outright minority and Cuomo is safely re-elected? Can de Blasio and tenant advocates even win a defensive battle to prevent further weakening of the rent laws?

One school of thought among political insiders is that, for all the dramatic talk, little is going to change in June—that a closely divided upper chamber is unlikely to deliver big wins for either tenants or landlords. In light of Republicans gaining an outright majority in the Senate, Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer told City & State in an interview at SOMOS, “We all hope to have vacancy decontrol done away with.” But she adds: “I am realistic. I think we are just going to be able to get a continuation of the current rent regulations—let’s hope to God we get that—over a million units are at stake.”

Even as a best-case scenario, the status quo, with vacancy decontrol still in place, is troubling to tenant

advocates. Still, these groups may have reason to hope they will find a more receptive audience in Albany than they have in the past—not because they have great political cards to play but because of the underlying policy reality.

“I think that the mayor’s arguments for preservation of affordable units are going to be compelling, on both sides of the aisle, just because of their understanding of how deep the housing crisis runs in the city just now,” Wylde said. “I think the housing crisis is such that there’s going to be a broad constituency looking to protect and expand rent laws and regulations.”

With homeless shelter numbers approaching 60,000, rising concern over housing the city’s aging population, and Section 8 and public housing under constant pressure, there is ample public clamor de Blasio can leverage in Albany to help make his case.

“You assume the real estate industry is going to call in its chits, that the tenants will be active and aggressive. But ultimately [elected officials] are going to be looking to editorial coverage, press coverage, what the broad sentiment seems to be,” said Wylde. “It depends, at the point in time next spring [when the renewal vote occurs], where the pressure points are. It’s not something that can be orchestrated.”

“Ultimately,” she said, “it’s going to depend on the crisis.”

19

Jarrett Murphy is executive editor and publisher of City Limits.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo could find themselves at odds over housing policy in the upcoming session.

city & state — November 17, 2014

should all go into that room knowing that we are fighting for our lives at this moment—and the lives of the middle class and the lives of working people and the lives of low-income New Yorkers who are just trying to live in New York City.”

S P OT L I G H T: I N F R A S T R U C T U R E

SPOTLIGHT:

INFRASTRUCTURE

22

30

RETHINKING UPSTATE CITIES’ URBAN DESIGN

HOW TO FILL THE MTA’S BUDGET GAP

BY ASHLEY HUPFL

20

24 NEXT IN LINE FOR TAKEOFF

city & state — November 17, 2014

BY WILDER FLEMING

26 ROUNDTABLE

BY CHARLES BRECHER OF CITIZENS BUDGET COMMISSION

32 CONGESTION PRICING IS INEVITABLE

BY NICOLE GELINAS

35 LEARNING FROM THE DISASTER IN MY DISTRICT

BY ROBERT J. RODRIGUEZ

cit yandstateny.com

SPOTLIGHT: INFRASTRUCTURE city & state — November 17, 2014

22

BREAKING DOWN BARRIERS UPSTATE NEW YORK CITIES SEEK MORE LIVABLE TRANSPORTATION NETWORKS

By ASHLEY HUPFL

I

n the 1950s, residents of cities all across the country began to decamp to the suburbs. Roads and highways were built to cater to those commuting back into the city for work.

Now several upstate New York cities are aiming to reverse that trend by changing their man-made landscapes in an effort to entice people and businesses to return to these urban centers. But local officials are confronted with the fact that commuter-friendly infrastructure— and the huge removal or restructuring costs—are a roadblock to revitalization.

In Rochester, Syracuse and Albany, major pieces of infrastructure physically divide parts of the cities, which officials say makes them less livable, walkable and enjoyable.

The structures take up acres of city land that could be redeveloped into stores, restaurants and other taxable property, and generate growth, these officials argue.

“Many of the [upstate] cities are isolated, literally and figuratively,” Lawrence Levy, executive dean for the National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University, said. “I think the bottom line is, while we make upstate cities places where people want to live—exciting, even edgy and filled with new promise—we also have to make them accessible, and that means infrastructure in the new and old sense.”

In Rochester, the Inner Loop Expressway surrounds the city’s central business district, cutting off a downtown business area that is in the process of being revived from surrounding neighborhoods. The city recently received state and federal funding to bring a below-grade portion of the expressway up to ground level.

The project, which will begin this month, will open up about eight acres

of developable land.

“We’ll be able to connect the neighborhood with downtown, and make it a more livable, walkable sort of environment,” Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren said. “The fact of the matter is, when you look across the state, when you look at Buffalo and Rochester, you see a number of people that are moving back to the city. A lot of ‘empty-nesters’ are moving back to cities. You have a number of young professionals [who] want to live in a city.”

Another project in the works would transform a portion of Interstate 81, which stretches 855 miles from Knoxville, Tenn., to the Canadian border. In Syracuse, a 1.4-mile viaduct carries I-81 traffic through downtown.

“I-81 cuts off our two vibrant centers of economic development,” Syracuse Mayor Stephanie Miner said. “If we were able to combine the two, we would have tremendous exponential growth. There is a dead zone around I-81 of land that just can’t be developed, because who wants to develop with a huge concrete scar behind you?”

The viaduct will reach the end of its functional life in 2017, and the city is now going through a federally mandated process to determine the future of the viaduct and the land around it. Two proposals under discussion are either building a new viaduct or replacing the old one with a boulevard.

“Here’s a particular upstate

mind-set: We don’t have traffic congestion—not like Long Island or Westchester or other places—that’s part of why we live here, because we like that quality of life,” Miner said.

“But we have also seen a tremendous downturn in our economy in the past 50 years, and so we have got to focus on economic growth, and these major transportation decisions are one very proven way that we can do that.”

In Albany, Interstate 787 is a raised highway that runs along the Hudson River, blocking downtown Albany from the river. Some local officials have called for it to be brought to ground level.

“It takes up a tremendous amount of valuable riverfront property,” Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan said. “I

Syracuse Mayor Stephanie Miner says I-81 cuts off two of the city’s vibrant centers of economic development.

cit yandstateny.com

ways to redirect traffic and make the waterfront more accessible.

“You’re not going to get rid of I-787—let’s face it,” McCoy said. “I don’t care how many studies that come back. The money to either move it or dig it is not going to be there. We’re just not in a position to do that. My thing would be to incorporate it into how we can utilize it to the best of our abilities.”

It is possible some extra money could go to funding similar infrastructure projects in New York, but it is unclear whether any money would go to these upstate cities. The state is expecting a more than $5 billion windfall from bank settlements, including from the French bank BNP Paribas. Many officials and advocates have called for the state to invest the settlement money, at least in part, into improving the state’s infrastructure.

“I think there’s a consensus, an understanding even, in places far removed like Long Island, that upstate has serious and unique problems that are going to require everybody in the state pitching in and contributing,” Levy said.

SPOTLIGHT: INFRASTRUCTURE

would love to see it brought down to grade and boulevarded. It’s certainly overbuilt as a highway, and it cuts off access not just physically but visually from our waterfront.”

Sheehan also noted that commuters bring fewer benefits to the city because many of them are working in state property, which is tax-exempt.

“Because wealth has really spread out to the suburbs, you have this real equity issue around asking some of the most economically challenged families in a region to support an infrastructure that’s designed to benefit people who live outside that center city. … This conversation can’t get lost in the noise about adding 10 minutes to someone’s commute,” Sheehan said. “There’s a convenience factor associated with I-787.”

Cost is always a factor, however.

Albany County Executive Dan McCoy said he would like to see I-787 taken down, but he does not think it is a realistic possibility from a financial standpoint. In the 2000s, there was a debate about tearing down I-787, but no real progress was made. McCoy believes officials should explore

Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan wants to see I-787 brought down to grade and boulevarded.

Upstate cities, Levy said, are unique because unlike larger cities, they are often in the same county as suburban and rural areas. This dynamic can create either a problem or an opportunity for county leaders depending on how it is approached.

“Too often political campaigns upstate and downstate are designed to

draw wedges between urban, suburban and rural voters,” Levy said. “The politicians who have been spending a lot of time dividing them have to show the leadership—and perhaps the courage— to bring them together. Because without the urban-suburban cooperation, without the entire region being on the same page, you don’t have a chance.”

New York’s infrastructure is CRUMBLING.

23

According to the New York State Comptroller, we need $8.76 billion annually for roads, bridges and mass transit.

Every New York driver spends an average of $1,500 a year in added costs because of poorly maintained roads.

Jobs. Safety. Infrastructure.

www.rebuildnynow.com

cit yandstateny.com

city & state — November 17, 2014

We can’t afford to wait.

www.balconynewyork.com

New York Needs an Infrastructure Bond Act

By Joyce Miller, President and CEO, Tier One Public Strategies

As we in New York recently marked the second anniversary of Hurricane Sandy, the storm that wreaked havoc on the State and cost billions in repairs – much of which is still ongoing – BALCONY believes this is an appropriate time to readdress the critical state of our State’s infrastructure. Sandy was the second costliest storm in U.S. history and exposed how unprepared our State and the nation’s infrastructure systems are to meet the new demands which will be placed on them by climate change and rising sea levels.

Even more immediately, New York’s infrastructure is woefully inadequate to meet current demands, presents a danger to its citizens, and inhibits our economic growth.

According to the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) 2013 report, 4,718 New York State bridges are functionally obsolete, 60% of our major roads are in poor or mediocre condition and 2,169 are structurally deficient. Our schools need $2.1 billion in infrastructure funding. In New York City, according to a recent report by the Center for an Urban Future, the average age of our sewer mains is 84 years old, our water mains average 69 years, resulting in more than 400 leaks in almost every year since 1998, and the loss of 24% of the water piped into the City. Additionally, 60% of Con Edison gas mains are made of outmoded and leak-prone materials, 37% of our subway signal systems have exceeded their 50-year useful life and 26% are more than 70 years old.

Even our vaunted hospitals are, on average, 57 years old.

24

The reason for this dismal state of affairs is not hard to find. In New York, local government capital spending on infrastructure has been steadily declining since 2010 according to a report issued by New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli. According to the report, New York’s municipalities annually spend less than a third of what is necessary to keep their infrastructure in a state of good repair.

Our failure to maintain our infrastructure - transportation systems, water and sewage systems, schools and hospitals – costs New Yorkers money, whether they pay it in taxes and fare increases, or indirectly through decreased safety, lost time and large repair bills.

More broadly, our failure to repair and modernize our infrastructure makes New York a less desirable place to do business.

This is an unsustainable model with unacceptable consequences.

In a recent example of just how tenuous funding for infrastructure in New York State is, it was discovered that a $511 million dollar federal EPA loan to be used to fund the rebuilding of the Tappan Zee Bridge – New York’s largest current infrastructure project ($3.8 billion) and a signature initiative of the Cuomo administration - was disqualified by the federal agency, resulting in a critical financing shortfall.

While the Cuomo administration plans to appeal the EPA’s decision, the larger underlying point is that New York has failed to adequately prepare to fund major infrastructure projects and has therefore been forced to resort to unconventional and impractical means of funding essential initiatives.

The federal government is paralyzed and unable to provide adequate financing for America’s infrastructure. We cannot rely on federal assistance. BALCONY believes it is time for New Yorkers to take matters into their own hands.

city & state — November 17, 2014

BALCONY, therefore, calls on Governor Cuomo and the state legislature to introduce an infrastructure bond act which would ensure our safety and bring us into the 21st century.

Joyce L. Miller, President and CEO of Tier One Public Strategies, consults on a wide range of issues at the intersection of finance and government. She is a Director of the New York State Empire State Development Corp. and the New York State Housing Finance Agency.

The Business and Labor Coalition of New York- BALCONY is a public policy organization that seeks to find common ground between business and labor in New York.

BALCONY is a 501(c)(4) non-profit. Contributions are not tax deductible and BALCONY makes no political endorsements nor campaign contributions.

BALCONY 4 West 43rd St., Suite 405, New York, NY 10036 (212) 219-7777

NEXT IN LINE FOR TAKEOFF CUOMO’S FLEDGLING VISION FOR NEW YORK CITY’S AIRPORTS

By WILDER FLEMING

W

ith Vice President Joe Biden, at his side, Gov. Andrew Cuomo in October announced a design competition to solicit ideas for how best to upgrade LaGuardia and John F. Kennedy airports—the first concrete steps he has taken since declaring his intention earlier this year to take the lead in overhauling New York City’s airports, which are consistently ranked among the most delay-ridden in the nation.

While regional planners and advocates have applauded the governor for calling attention to the need for an overhaul, they say his plan is short on details when it comes to time lines and funding—a concern amplified by the fact that the Port Authority is already several months behind schedule in choosing one of three finalists to build a new $3.6 billion central terminal at LaGuardia—an airport Biden famously compared earlier in the year to a “Third World country.”

“It’s great to have focus on the airports and how you can envision them over the coming decades, but what’s most important to us is keeping the projects that are in the pipeline moving forward and not having to see them delayed,” said Stephen Sigmund, executive director of the Global Gateway Alliance. The airport advocacy group, chaired by real estate magnate Joseph Sitt, was founded last year amid concern that the dismal state of New York City’s airports was taking a toll on the region’s economy.

Cuomo, who has said that the Port Authority is not moving quickly enough to revamp the area’s major airports

under its control, also indicated that the renovation of LaGuardia’s central terminal would not be halted because of his plans. But he did say there was a possibility that a new proposal could alter the shape of the overhaul.

(The Port Authority is allocating $8 billion over the next decade for capital projects at its five regional airports.)

Financing for the new design competition, slated to begin in late November, will be secured only after one to three finalists per airport are selected. Up to $500,000 will be awarded for each of the chosen candidates to flesh out their designs, but no further funding has been announced.

“The governor’s scheme, from what I understand, is to look at—aside from the central terminal building— what else physically would you do at LaGuardia?” said Richard Barone, director of transportation programs at the Regional Plan Association. “It’s important not to just consider the cosmetic aspects of the terminals. We need to look at access to the airports on the ground, and look at addressing airside capacity—especially at JFK. We have a problem at Newark, too, but that’s outside of the governor’s purview.”

The “airside capacity” at New York’s airports—runways, airspace and other infrastructure related to aircraft operations—becomes maxed out at certain peak hours of the day, contributing to the notorious delays.

For years, the need for better transportation to and from the city’s airports has been a subject of discussion.

The Port Authority has already cit yandstateny.com

allocated funding for an extension of PATH service that will connect Newark with Manhattan. Over a decade ago community opposition shot down a proposed Astoria line subway extension at LaGuardia, which is particularly isolated from public transit; current possibilities include an extension of the Long Island Rail Road, a light-rail service similar to JKF’s AirTrain or ramping up of Select Bus Service. None of these alternatives has been floated as a definite plan, however.

Cuomo has also talked about unlocking the potential of two other state-controlled airports—Long Island’s Republic Airport, owned by the Department of Transportation, and the Port Authority’s Stewart International Airport, located about 70 miles north of New York City’s center—an hour and a half by car.

Of the two, Stewart is viewed as being the most underutilized— and having the most potential for expansion. A former Air Force base, it boasts a massive runway, but is also underdeveloped, with hilly terrain. For passengers headed to New York City, Barone sees the distance as excessive, if not prohibitive, and notes that

development of the property would be expensive.

The media has touted Stewart as a promising cargo port, but the airport suffers from a market constraint, according to Sigmund.

“Stewart does have a great cargo airport for bringing stuff in, because you have these big runways and real quick access to the interstates,” he said. “But you have to solve the problem of trucks going up empty first. The shipping companies want to go up with a full container and drop it off and then pick up a container from the airport. … But there isn’t a big consumer economy up there. There’s nothing much to bring.”

While Sigmund thinks Stewart presents an opportunity, he says refashioning the airport would “take a while” and must involve a “smart strategy.”

According to Howard Glaser, who resigned as director of state operations and senior policy advisor to Gov. Cuomo in June to become executive vice president of OTG, a firm in charge of renovating airport terminals, the governor’s initiative is just what the airports need.

“Much like with the new Tappan Zee Bridge, which had been discussed in transportation circles for a decade and a half, nothing really happened until the executive office took greater control—and the results are a bridge that has actually begun to rise from the water,” said Glaser.

“What the governor has said for the first time is, ‘Let’s develop

a plan that looks at all of the airport resources throughout the metropolitan region and see how each works in concert with the other.

What role does Stewart play? What role does Republic play? What role does JFK and LaGuardia play?’ Until now the airports have been looked at in isolation. That’s what’s exciting about the governor’s plan.”

25

New York’s success was built on a transportation system that was fast, safe and fair.

New York wouldn’t be New York without a first-rate transportation network. Good roads, subways, bridges and tunnels are what get us where we need to go.

But now our infrastructure is aging. Our roads are a mess. Transit options are often inadequate. Ridership, population and commuter expenses are on the rise, yet we continue to suffer the consequences of reduced bus and subway service, crumbling infrastructure and mounting debt.

cit yandstateny.com

It’s time for some new thinking. Move NY has a comprehensive plan that provides sustainable revenue to maintain and improve our vital transportation network. And it’s fair for everyone. It slashes tolls where they are too high, reduces gridlock, provides for more transit options in underserved neighborhoods and creates 30,000 new jobs.

Learn more at move-ny.org

city & state — November 17, 2014

It’s time to return to those principles.

SPOTLIGHT: INFRASTRUCTURE

SCORECARD Tri-State Transportation Campaign, and Regional Plan Association President Robert Yaro, sit on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Reinvention Commission, which is chaired by former U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and former Federal Aviation Administration Administrator Jane Garvey.

NYPIRG’s Gene Russianoff has also been a longtime advocate for subway riders, heading up the organization’s Straphangers’ Campaign. Klaus Jacob, a professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, studies how climate change will effect the region and what must be done to prepare for it.

THE PLAYERS

THE STATE

city & state — November 17, 2014

26

Gov. Andrew Cuomo recently secured $1.9 billion in post-Superstorm Sandy resiliency funding from the Federal Transit Administration, and led with the decision to build a new Tappan Zee Bridge as well. Sen. Joseph Robach chairs the Senate Transportation Committee, while David Gantt chairs its counterpart in the Assembly. Joan McDonald is commissioner of the state Department of Transportation, while Chairman Tom Prendergast heads the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The Thruway Authority, responsible for the state’s highways and construction of the new Tappan Zee, among other things, is chaired

by Howard Milstein and directed

by Tom Madison. Patrick Foye is executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which is responsible for the major downstate airports, some bridges and tunnels, and bus and PATH terminals.

THE CITY Under Mayor Bill de Blasio, the performance of New York City’s Build It Back program—designed to help homeowners recover from Sandy—has improved markedly.

Councilmen Ydanis Rodriguez and Dan Garodnick, who chair, respectively, the Transportation and

Economic Development committees of the City Council, have called for fresh investment in the city’s transportation infrastructure, while Department of Transportation Commissioner Polly Trottenberg says city agencies will have to work together to handle the anticipated influx of 500,000 to 2 million residents expected in the next 25 years. The mayor’s Senior Advisor Bill Goldstein, Director of the Mayor’s Office of Recovery and Resiliency Daniel Zarrilli and Housing Recovery Director Amy Peterson are responsible for Sandy recovery and for preparing the city in the face of future climate change.

Department of Buildings commissioner Rick Chandler is responsible for vetting contractors for the city’s Build It Back program and enforcing the mayor’s One City, Built to Last plan— which involves drastically reducing carbon emissions in city buildings.

Deputy Mayor for Housing and Economic Development Alicia Glen is spearheading the mayor’s 10-year affordable housing plan.

THE ADVOCATES Global Gateway Alliance founder and Chairman Joseph Sitt, along with Executive Director Stephen Sigmund, advocate for improvements to the region’s airports. Veronica Vanterpool, executive director of the

THE ISSUES

BRIDGES, TUNNELS AND ROADS Many of New York’s bridges, tunnels and roadways are in need of repairs or replacement. The New York State Department of Transportation, which is responsible for the inspection of 94 percent of the state’s 17,000plus bridges, reckons that some 27 percent of them are “functionally

obsolete” (unable to meet current standards for managing traffic volume) and 11.91 percent are “structurally deficient” (corrective maintenance or rehabilitation needed). According to TRIP—a national transportation research group—45 percent of New York’s local and state-maintained major roads are in poor or mediocre condition. And Amtrak recently announced that the century-old commuter tunnels running under the Hudson River from New York to New Jersey will be taken out of service in a phased process for repairs starting in 2015. New York City Council members and city Department of Transportation officials at a recent hearing said fresh investment is needed to ensure the city’s infrastructure is safe, sound and able to foster economic growth.

Many politicians and analysts have called for the state’s recent windfall from settlements with major banks— now calculated at over $5 billion—to pay for infrastructure improvements around New York. cit yandstateny.com

SPOTLIGHT: INFRASTRUCTURE

Build a Better Hunts Point. New York City’s 438page 2013 report “A Stronger and More Resilient New York” outlines 257 coastal resiliency plans in all—each neighborhood-specific—but it is far from clear how and when all of these measures will be realized. On Long Island, the state recently announced $383 million for Suffolk County sewer upgrades to mitigate nitrogen pollution, which harms natural coastal defenses, and $97 million to modernize Nassau County’s Bay Park sewage treatment plant.

Business Climate

STORM HARDENING

cit yandstateny.com

An Agenda for New York’s Future n Protect

New York’s assets by adequately funding critical infrastructure needs: Make capital investments exempt from the property tax cap; allow use of pension funds to support infrastructure improvements

27

n Support

NY Works and job creation: Pass mandate relief measures that will free up funds for public works and put New Yorkers back to work

BROADBAND ACCESS Both Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio have characterized highspeed internet as a basic economic necessity, much like highways and telephones. Without it, they say, households, businesses and communities cannot compete in the global marketplace. De Blasio has said creating universal, affordable broadband access for all New York City residents is a goal of his administration; and Cuomo, during the recent campaign, proposed for the state to invest $500 million—along with matching private sector funds—to lay 6,000 miles of new wiring, mostly upstate. While some 30 percent of all New York residents have declined to adopt broadband, either by choice or because they deem the cost to be too high, around 1.1 million live in homes where even the minimum broadband speed isn’t physically an option.

n Implement

Public-Private Partnerships (P3s) and Design-build: Accelerate infrastructure projects, leverage public dollars and reduce costs

n Extend

Qualifications-Based Selection (QBS): Allow public authorities and public benefit corporations to use QBS to achieve higher quality design and lower project life-cycle costs

n Deliver

infrastructure projects cost effectively: Increase use of private design firms

n Indemnify

design professionals: Ensure that design professionals are responsible only for the work they perform

Leaders in the business of engineering www.acecny.org

city & state — November 17, 2014

For New York City and Long Island, the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy has meant torturous delays in recovery aid for many homeowners and others living in the flood path of the storm. But Sandy also precipitated acknowledgment at all levels of government that the region’s transportation, power and coastal infrastructure must be hardened and revamped in order to prepare for the effects of climate change. As a result, Con Edison is in the midst of a fouryear, $1 billion storm-hardening initiative, not only raising protective walls around their facilities but also investing in micro-grid technologies and line switches that work to isolate outages and damage caused by storms. While the MTA is close to restoring its subway tunnels to preSandy conditions, the comprehensive flood-proofing of vulnerable stations, tunnels and equipment will take years to realize and ingenuity to pay for, as the Authority’s $15 billion funding gap in its capital plan shows. So too will plans resulting from a federal design competition to build the so-called “Big U” project—envisioned as a 10-mile system of parklike berms and other protections encircling Manhattan’s vulnerable lower half. The federal government has awarded $335 million toward the cost of the project’s overall $1.2 billion initial phase along the East Side, and construction will hopefully begin in 2017. Federal funding for similar coastal protection projects was also allocated for Staten Island (a series of living reefs to be installed along the island’s South Shore) and the Bronx’s

SPOTLIGHT: INFRASTRUCTURE

THE ROUNDTABLE

DAN ZARRILLI Director of the Mayor’s Office of Recovery and Resiliency and Acting Director of the Office of Long Term Planning and Sustainability

city & state — November 17, 2014

28

Q: Mayor Bill de Blasio recently announced his plan to reduce New York City’s greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent below 2005 levels by the year 2050, starting with reductions from the city’s buildings. Can you explain the rationale behind this starting point?

DZ: Buildings make up nearly three-quarters of New York City’s emissions, so investing over $1 billion in energy efficiency and retrofits for the 3,000 or so city-owned buildings that have significant energy use— that’s a major lever that we can pull to make sure we’re advancing this plan.

On the private buildings side we’ll be advancing our retrofit accelerator and aligning the technical knowhow, the incentives and the financing together in a package to help building owners—some of whom own smaller buildings and will need that extra help to get through the programs and align with the incentives. It’s a way that we can leverage a relatively small public investment into a major investment across the city’s private building stock.

There are also a number of other things we’re going to be doing— expanding and better enforcing our energy code. Expansion of solar: 100 new megawatts on public buildings; 250 megawatts on private buildings.

These are near-term goals that will get us on that pathway.

Q: What must be done in order to achieve this ambitious goal in the long term?

DZ: There are other sectors that play a role here: Transportation, solid waste

and energy supply primarily make up the remaining puzzle pieces. We’re going to be looking at those in the spring with our updated climate action plan, but we’re focusing on buildings first because they have the outsize impact.

We will also be keeping an eye out in the long term for some of the technologies that may not exist yet. We’re working to expand our clean tech incubator, and to support entrepreneurs and research and development for those future technologies that are ultimately going to be needed to achieve this goal.

Q: Would you say the mayor’s plan is a natural extension of Bloomberg’s original 2007 PlaNYC initiative?

DZ: I think it’s a big acceleration, in fact. If you look at some of the things we did in the last administration— setting a 30-by-2030 goal and a lot of the great work on sustainability— this is really taking it much, much further. One of the things we learned is that if we’re simply on the 30-by30 pathway, we’ll never get to 80-by50, because when you acknowledge the first benchmark, you start making certain technological decisions and building things to certain emissions standards. You lock in those standards, and it becomes almost impossible to accelerate beyond that point. So we needed to set interim targets for what is actually going to accelerate us beyond that 30-by-30 pathway. On the public buildings side we’ve made some commitments that we really want to achieve: from public buildings a 35 percent reduction by 2025, and a 30 percent reduction from private buildings by 2025.

Q: Can you go over some of the activities of the Office of Recovery and Resiliency?

DZ: It’s a major commitment that the mayor has made towards preparing our city for a future with climate change.

We’re working with the Army Corps [of Engineers] and using other funding sources to put in place the city’s first coastal protection plan for the city’s five boroughs. It’s a $3.7 billion plan that’s nearly half-funded at this point.

We’ve already taken steps to make the city safer post-Sandy. We’ve passed 16 new construction codes to make sure that our buildings are

safer in the face of new risks. One of the key things we’ve done is to adopt the most recent flood hazard maps into the code—even before they are official for insurance purposes. We’re building to those standards already.

We’re also incentivizing building owners to make sustainability a priority in their buildings—this is where the sustainability-resiliency link is strong—and we’re working with FEMA to secure funds for our NYCHA campuses. There was an announcement just last month of $108 million for resiliency and sustainability investment at the Coney Island Houses.

We’re also doing a lot on the infrastructure side with Con Edison and the transportation providers to make sure that all the services in the city are accounting for climate change in their planning and implementation processes. And then there are nonphysical things like flood insurance reform, which we’ve played a key role in and which is part of a nationwide movement to make sure that insurance remains affordable and available.

SEN. JOSEPH ROBACH Chair of the State Senate Transportation Committee Q: What are the reasons for the MTA’s $15.2 billion budget gap, and how should the issue be addressed?

JR: Transportation needs for New Yorkers are critically important for so many people and industries, including business, commerce, tourism and economic development. Certainly the MTA has a plan moving forward, but there are many reasons it is in this position, first and foremost being a decline in funding and support from the federal government.

My job as Senate Transportation Committee chairman is to make

sure that the transportation needs of downstate and upstate New York are met and balanced, and I do not think this budget gap is solely an MTA issue—it is a statewide issue.

There are many other public transit agencies throughout the state that have infrastructure needs that cannot be forgotten. For instance, the RochesterGenesee Regional Transportation Authority has many aging buses and facilities in need of repair. Looking forward, I think capital plans need to be developed for all municipal transportation agencies, including the MTA. Q: Many of New York’s roads, bridges and tunnels are in serious need of repair or replacement.

What should be done to address this problem?

JR: We need to do our best to keep New Yorkers moving, not only by improving our roads, bridges and highways but also by making sure that our airports, trains and other transportation infrastructure are sufficient for residents and visitors alike. One of my top priorities as Senate Transportation Committee chairman has been striking a regional balance and making sure that public transportation systems from all regions of the state receive proper assistance to maintain and improve infrastructure.

Repairing that infrastructure is critically important to ensuring safe and reliable transportation for commuters.

I certainly think a portion of the funds received from New York State’s settlement with BNP Paribas should be directed to various transportation projects across the state. This will not only help improve our roads and bridges, it will also help the state’s economy by creating good paying construction jobs for our local workforce.

Additionally, for the second consecutive year the 2014 state budget included a record amount of CHIPS funding, which is given directly to local and county governments to make road and bridge repairs during the construction season. We were also able to secure an additional $40 million in funding that went directly to pothole and other road repairs after last year’s harsh winter. This allowed local and county highway departments to direct their normal CHIPS funding to larger projects, not just potholes. cit yandstateny.com

Preparing New York for a Resilient Future ARCADIS is helping New York City make communities safe and ensure industries thrive in the face of flooding and storm surges caused by severe weather.

With an impressive global resiliency record and ongoing waterfront studies for New York City, we understand the issues facing city infrastructure and can help sustain its economic vitality.

Together we can do a world of good.

www.arcadis-us.com

Imagine the result

SPOTLIGHT: INFRASTRUCTURE

The Need for Statewide Transit Infrastructure Investment Carm Basile President, New York Public Transit Association CEO, Capital District Transportation Authority

HOW TO FILL THE MTA’S BUDGET GAP

Funding the infrastructure needs of New York State is a critical component in the economic revival of our communities. Better roads, bridges, rail and bus systems translate into success, growth and prosperity.

State leaders will soon be considering ways to fund the multi-year capital programs for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) and the New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT). New resources are needed to fully invest in the state’s transit and highway infrastructure, and the state budget windfall from recent insurance settlements can provide an important jumpstart to this process.

30

The over 100 transit systems that provide essential mobility services across New York State have aging infrastructure that requires new investments to reach a state of good repair and to provide safe, reliable service. We have older buses and rail cars that require normal replacement and transit facilities that badly need to be repaired or replaced. We have “shovel-ready” plans to implement new technology, like real-time travel information, smartcards and mobile fare payment, but in most cases lack the funding for these innovations that will improve customer service and increase ridership.

Unlike the MTA and the NYSDOT, the rest of the state’s transit systems lack a state supported multi-year capital program that provides predicable funding for infrastructure renewal. We rely almost exclusively on federal transit aid for capital improvements, and the outlook for increased federal resources is dim.

city & state — November 17, 2014

Transit systems have identified $1 billion in infrastructure investments needed over the next 5 years, in addition to the capital program proposed by the MTA, with available resources to fund only 43% of this need. Increasing investment in transit and funding this gap will have many benefits, including improved infrastructure conditions, better service reliability, reduced maintenance costs and the introduction of new technology that will make transit service easier to use.

Transit ridership is on the rise across the state, and service expansions are needed to meet new demand and support economic growth in our upstate and downstate communities. We look to state leaders to increase transit infrastructure investment and to develop a statewide capital funding program for all transit systems. The state’s transit systems are ready to work with the Governor and Legislature to improve our transit infrastructure – and to make New York an even better place to live and work.

LEARN MORE www.nytransit.org

CHARLES BRECHER

N

early six of every 10 of the 3.7 million people entering New York’s central business district each weekday rely on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s commuter rails, subways and buses. New York’s vibrant economy relies on the MTA’s services, and providing these services is expensive. The MTA will spend $13.5 billion in 2014, and it requires substantial additional capital funds to sustain and enhance its nearly $1 trillion in physical assets.

The MTA is now preparing its capital plan for 2015 to 2019. The plan determines the future condition of everything from subway cars to drainage pumps and ventilation fans, as well as any improvements or expansion to the system, such as new subway routes or commuter railroad stations.

The MTA Board approved an early version of the plan calling for $32 billion in investments, but it was vetoed by the Capital Plan Review Board—a body appointed by state elected officials. Two issues make the plan controversial: Would the money be spent on the right things? How would the money be raised?

MISPLACED PRIORITIES The MTA Board’s plan has been faulted by the Citizens Budget

Commission (CBC) on three grounds: 1. It does not make sufficient progress in bringing aged infrastructure to a state of good repair. Despite more than 30 years of investment, most MTA assets are not in a state of good repair. At New York City Transit, for instance, only two out of 14 categories of assets—subway cars and mainline track and switches—are rated 100 percent. Metro-North Railroad and the Long Island Rail Road also have major components falling short of good repair. The proposal leaves many features of these systems, such as stations and less visible power stations and pumps, in need of repairs and renovations. The consequence will be less reliable and less safe service than the public needs.

2. It does not make sufficient progress in modernizing the signal and communication systems in the subways. A long-standing MTA goal is to install Communications-Based Train Control (CBTC), a system that improves safety, permits greater capacity by reducing the time between trains, and promotes efficiency by requiring fewer operators on the trains.

The schedule for adopting CBTC is too slow: In the next five years work will begin on only two additional segments, leaving the vast majority of the system with outdated components for at least 20 years.

3. The proposed plan allocates $5.5 cit yandstateny.com

CLOSING THE FUNDING GAP The MTA’s plan requires $32 billion, but it identifies sources for less

than $17 billion. How to fill the $15 billion gap, and perhaps find more for additional worthwhile investments, is an open question.

The Citizens Budget Commission identifies three categories of revenue—tax subsidies, user fees and cross-subsidies—that would tie funding to those who benefit from public transportation.

Employers and the labor force benefit from the greater efficiency transit networks engender in the labor market. It is appropriate to have a public subsidy from taxes on regional residents and employers that covers one-quarter of the cost of these services.

Individual users benefit directly and should pay a price, typically a fare or a toll, but also indirect user fees such as auto registration fees and gasoline taxes. Mass transit fares should cover one-half the cost of these services.

Motorists’ user charges should pay for the bridges and tunnels they rely on, but also cover one quarter of the cost of mass transit services.

The cross-subsidy compensates for the negative effects of vehicle use on the environment and the benefits of

reduced road congestion made possible by mass transit.

This “25-50-25” approach provides the basis for funding the MTA. The exact amounts needed from each source will vary depending on the scale of the new capital program, but three broad implications are clear.

First, little or no new funding is needed from general tax subsidies.

The large increase (about $1.6 billion annually) in funding from the payroll mobility tax authorized in 2009 on top of existing dedicated taxes already provides the MTA more than 25 percent of its funding.

Second, modest fare increases are necessary. The planned increases in 2015 and 2017 will bring fares closer to the 50 percent target, but greater increases are needed to fund the new capital plan. A CBC study in 2012 projected that a single-ride subway fare should increase to $2.75 by 2016, but in constant dollars would cost just three cents more than in 1996.

Third, the biggest change is needed in the motor vehicle users’ crosssubsidy. This source would need to more than double to reach its 25 percent target. Fortunately, sensible

mechanisms for raising such large sums are available. Increases in existing tolls, license and registration fees, and the gasoline tax would not make New York uncompetitive with other states.

More innovative possibilities include the so-called Move New York plan proposed by former transportation commissioner Sam Schwartz, which alters and expands current bridge tolls and features a newly designed vehicle-miles-traveled tax that could potentially employ new technology to monitor and charge vehicles based on how much they use roads with varying levels of congestion. Motorists would face increased costs in the range of $167 to $293 annually; the charges would be consistent with those in other global metropolises and related to the benefits drivers derive from a well-functioning transportation system. Designing new ways to raise revenue from motor vehicle use is a key challenge for the future of all modes of transportation.

S P OT L I G H T: I N F R A S T R U C T U R E

billion, and implicitly commits even more in the future, to projects that would expand the network without sufficient planning or capacity for implementation. About $2.6 billion is for cost overruns on the East Side Access project that will bring the Long Island Rail Road into Grand Central Terminal. The remainder would be used to begin two new projects whose total costs have not been specified— extending the Second Avenue Subway from 96th Street to 125th Street and bringing the Metro-North Railroad into Pennsylvania Station as well as building three new Metro-North stations in the Bronx. MTA leaders have not demonstrated why these projects rank ahead of others, such as a new station at 10th Avenue on the 7 line, an extension of that line to Secaucus, or expansion of the Second Avenue Subway south. Better planning and greater transparency should precede investments in new expansions.

Charles Brecher is co-research director at the Citizens Budget Commission.

SIGN UP FOR

31

Last Read keeps its readers up-to-the minute on all the day’s top stories with an afternoon update that hits inboxes before 5 p.m. The afternoon email highlights newly released reports, crucial in-depth analysis pieces and long-form profiles, as well as calling attention to some of the day’s top tweets from city and state politicians and the reporters who cover them.

Be the first to know. www.cityandstateny.com/subscribe for more information.

cit yandstateny.com

city & state — November 17, 2014

The Must-Read Afternoon Roundup of New York Politics and Government

SPOTLIGHT: INFRASTRUCTURE

AVOIDING CONGESTION CHAOS?

NICOLE GELINAS

C

city & state — November 17, 2014

32

ongestion pricing is coming to New York. The question is whether it will come after an enlightened debate about what kind of transportation we want, and how to pay—or whether it will come amid the chaos of a fiscal emergency, with the money not going to transportation investment but to ever-higher labor costs. The Republican takeover of the state Senate on Election Day makes the latter outcome more likely—although Democrats have hardly helped push Albany in the right direction.

You don’t need a crystal ball to divine that some time in the next decade, Albany will enact a version of the congestion-pricing plan that thenMayor Michael Bloomberg saw die in 2008. Today’s improved plan, called Move New York, would toll currently free crossings into core Manhattan and levy charges on Manhattanites who drive or ride. Of the $2.2 billion raised annually, $770 million would go to reducing too-high tolls on the Verrazano and other expensive crossings far away from Manhattan.

The remaining $1.4 billion would go to transit and road investments, mostly transit.

Why is such a plan inevitable? It’s just the numbers. After 2018 the MTA has no way to balance its Operating budget—even with the money it gets from the 2009 payroll tax and from two planned fare hikes.

Why? “Health insurance, debt service, overtime and liability claims are all growing faster than revenues, and some long-term obligations are not well-funded.” That is the state comptroller talking. When he says obligations are “not well-funded,” he’s not kidding—the MTA owes

$20 billion in healthcare promises.

Beyond a $262 million budget deficit in 2018, the MTA has no way to pay for $15.2 billion of the $32.1 billion in long-term investments it needs to make over the next five years.

Some fiscal experts at a recent breakfast panel suggested that the MTA should borrow to fill this gap, since interest rates are so low. But the MTA already did that—it will soon owe $39 billion, more than double the level a decade ago, and it already plans to borrow $6.2 billion for the next capital plan.

And though it is reasonable for the Citizens Budget Commission to suggest that the MTA improve its planning process, it is not reasonable for the MTA to delay expansion projects. The MTA is not planning to expand that much. Of the proposed capital plan, only $1.1 billion a year— less than 1 percent of the general city and state budgets—will go to new projects. And these “new” projects are mostly progress on the Second Avenue Subway and bringing the Long Island Rail Road to the East Side.

Yes, yes, it is a good idea to invest money wisely, but no one ever suggests that the government stop education, military, or Medicare investment until it has controlled waste, fraud and abuse.

So the MTA needs a lot of money— and what possible untapped revenue is left?

Back in 2009, the last time the MTA needed a massive bailout, the only thing the state Legislature could come up with was a new tax on downstate payrolls.

Income, sales, real estate and everything else—already tapped out.

What Albany should be doing right

now is taking advantage of the lack of a crisis to figure out how to tweak the Move New York plan to suit everyone’s needs—where and how much to toll and which projects are most important.

Just as critically, Albany should be working on how to cut the MTA’s costs, both on its own payroll and its private construction contractors.

Alas, rational debate doesn’t look likely—judging by how the Republicans won the state Senate.

The GOP prevailed partly by running against the 2009 downstate payroll tax. In bidding for his majority, Senate Majority Co-Leader Dean Skelos reminded voters that “every single Democrat” voted for the “job-killing MTA payroll tax.” Like Skelos, upstarts who won new seats or incumbents who defended their old ones by running against this tax are from Long Island or the Hudson Valley. Tom Croci won in Suffolk County, for example, by campaigning against the payroll tax, saying that “our tax dollars are being sent to New York City.”

This rhetoric isn’t short-lived campaign stuff. Jack Martins won his seat four years ago—and kept it this November—by running against the payroll tax; Long Island’s Ken LaValle too defended his seat on a platform of “complete repeal.” Judy Rife of the Hudson Valley’s Times Herald-Record summed it up in writing that the payroll tax has “united the Hudson Valley and Long Island counties as never before.”

It would be one thing if the Senate Republicans were gunning for deep cuts in the MTA’s growing employee costs. But they are always quiet on the cost side. Long Island’s Lee Zeldin is

the poster child of this strategy. He won his state Senate seat four years ago by railing against the payroll tax. He leveraged his opposition this time around into a seat in the U.S. Congress—without saying which $1.5 billion of annual MTA spending he’d cut.

Blame the local media, too.

Community news outlets from Poughkeepsie to Sag Harbor are under the impression the payroll tax is temporary and still editorialize against it. Even a cursory look at the MTA’s budget shows that depiction to be an insane fantasy.

But lest you think it’s all the Republicans’ fault, consider that Gov. Andrew Cuomo recently told a Hudson Valley editorial board, “I’m against the tax.”

Yet he wasn’t against increasing the MTA’s costs by another $300 million a year—permanently—when he pushed the MTA to sign bad union agreements ahead of his re-election campaign. Those deals took away money the MTA could have used for $4.5 billion in capital investments.

And nearly a year into his own term, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio does not appear to have thought deeply about transit.

So the risk is that the MTA doesn’t get congestion pricing soon-ish to pay for long-term investments, but instead has to fall back on it later to pay for yet another fiscal crisis caused by skyrocketing employee costs, coming after it has already postponed its expansion projects.

Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal.

cit yandstateny.com

How do you harness the latest technology,

execute the most sophisticated designs,

and still meet a tight schedule?

BUILD UNION!

Local 46 Metallic Lathers & Reinforcing Ironworkers Business Manager: Terrence Moore Business Agents: Kevin Kelly, Ronnie Richardson, John Coffey and Michael Anderson President: John Skinner

1322 Third Avenue @ East 76th Street New York, NY 10021 • 212-737-0500 • www.ml46.org

Working With: • NY City Department of Transportation • NY City Metropolitan Transit Authority • Triboro Bridge and Tunnel Authority

• NY State Department of Transportation • The Port Authority of NY/NJ • NY State Bridge Authority

Kieran Ahern • President • Dan O’Connell • General Counsel

SPOTLIGHT: INFRASTRUCTURE

LEARNING FROM THE DISASTER IN MY DISTRICT

ROBERT J. RODRIGUEZ

cit yandstateny.com

For decades, our bridges, roads and transportation lines have been neglected in plain sight, as have our electrical lines, water mains and gas pipes. It is estimated that New York City alone will need $47 billion over the next five years to maintain a safe and functioning infrastructure. To address their own infrastructure deficits, legislators in New Jersey are discussing an increase to the gas tax, while a planning agency in Chicago has suggested increasing the sales tax. If we don’t take action in New York, we risk placing ourselves at a competitive disadvantage and threatening the longterm growth prospects of the state.

Now is the time to think big and turn around the decades of decline in New York’s infrastructure. On this issue there is support in Albany, including backing in July from Senate Republicans, and we have an innovative governor who is known for getting things done.

First, we should utilize some of the funds available from the $5.1 billion in bank settlements obtained by the state to address our most pressing infrastructure needs. We will be introducing legislation this upcoming session that dedicates 25 percent of settlement funds, present and future,

to a “lock box” infrastructure fund that will address a broad range of infrastructure needs. Decades of diverted dollars from the Highway and Bridge Trust Fund have left this infrastructure in peril and shown us the importance of safeguarding this money.

In addition, to keep New York economically competitive for new business investment, the state should use a portion of those funds to identify new sources of revenue and explore alternative financing methods. The expiration of the Design-Build Law at the end of this year provides us with an opportunity to review and strengthen that pilot program. Under a new Design-Build Law, we can develop and review approved projects, while also considering expansion to additional agencies and allowing for increased private sector and labor involvement.

Another issue is that of hidden infrastructure, such as the installation of broadband cables to equitably and responsibly provide highspeed Internet access to all of our communities and businesses. In terms of our gas pipelines, it is our obligation to guarantee the safety of our residents by pushing for the accelerated replacement of leak-prone

gas pipelines, and by reinforcing the stability of the energy grid.

New York should seriously consider creating its own infrastructure bank.

This is an issue the governor has supported as recently as last session.

The idea would be similar to the one proposed by President Barack Obama in 2011 when he was pushing for a $60 billion infrastructure bill, on which the U.S. Senate ultimately failed to vote. The fact that both New York Republicans and Democrats have voiced their support for addressing the negligent state of our infrastructure provides the climate necessary to evaluate this idea without partisan rancor.

Whatever we decide to do, we must do it now. Our crumbling infrastructure grows worse by the day, crippling our economic growth and raising the specter of more catastrophic events such as the one that occurred in my district earlier this year.

Robert J. Rodriguez represents the 68th Assembly District in Manhattan.

city & state — November 17, 2014

W

e are in the midst of an infrastructure crisis.

As the governor prepares the priorities of New York to be unveiled at the State of the State in January, rebuilding our infrastructure should be one of them.

In March we were reminded of the deadly consequences that can result from ignoring infrastructure when two buildings in my district were leveled by a gas-related explosion. Eight people died that day, dozens were injured, and the impact of the tragedy could be felt across New York City. We learned that the infrastructure beneath those buildings was alarmingly antiquated and deficient. On average, the gas pipes were laid nearly 60 years ago, while the water mains were from the age of President Franklin Roosevelt’s last term.

The prescient work of the Center for an Urban Future “Caution Ahead” report, released just days in advance of the gas explosion—not to mention reports from New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer, State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli and former Lt. Gov. Richard Ravitch— alerted us to just how pervasive the problem is.

And it is vast.

35

PERSPEC TIVES

WHO KNOWS THE FUTURE?

MICHAEL BENJAMIN

F

ans of the BBC adventure series Doctor Who like me know that “the Doctor always lies” about what the future holds. But we Whovians are also well aware that it isn’t just the good Doctor who lies about what is to come. As it stands, journalists and pollsters should understand by now that New York voters lie as well about what they are going to do.

How else do we explain the apparently stunning upsets in the state Senate races and the record-breaking

low voter turnout? Perhaps voters know that whomever they elect will do little to affect their individual fortunes (although Jerry Skurnik theorizes that upstate gun owners turned the tide for Buffalo Democrat Marc Panepinto as well as for Senate Republicans).

Maybe that explains why in New York and across the country upwards of 70 percent of enrolled and eligible voters voted with their feet and stayed away from the polls on Nov. 4.

Statewide 81,000 voters opted to leave their preference for governor blank. In Essex County a remarkable 5.5 percent of voters picked nobody over the choices on the ballot for governor. Were that category of voters a political party, it would have outpolled the total of the established Independence Party, as well as the two phony, selfserving ballot lines: Women’s Equality and Stop Common Core.

Choosing to stay away from the polls or casting no vote for a gubernatorial candidate are legitimate actions by voters, whether they admit it or not. Recently, a national poll revealed that voters cited lack of time as their No. 1 reason for not voting in the midterm elections.

If voting is a social activity, one can escape peer pressure by claiming you would’ve voted but you were too busy.

But what was Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s

36

city & state — November 17, 2014

Print. Mail. Win.

excuse for running away from the Democratic Party brand?

Gov. Cuomo’s real running mate in 2014 was Wilson-Pakula. The cross-endorsements of the Working Families, Independence and Women’s Equality parties carried him across the 50 percent threshold.

Cuomo’s earlier pledge to abolish the Wilson-Pakula Act of 1947 went by the wayside, along with campaign finance reform and rooting out systemic political corruption. One political wag tweeted that Cuomo should have been a magician because he is so good at misdirection.

Given all of the constituencies he has alienated, I can’t help but wonder how Cuomo will reign. Does he govern in a way that wins back his liberal constituency? Or does he continue down the centrist path using his unique sense of expediency?

One Latino Democrat suggested that moving forward Andrew Cuomo should re-engage the Hispanic communities in places such as Rochester, Buffalo and Kingston.

Bringing jobs to those places and passing the DREAM Act would go a long way toward improving relations with Latinos.

Assemblyman Steven McLaughlin, a frequent Cuomo critic, believes that

a GOP-controlled state Senate is good for the governor because it “allows him to triangulate.”

“Andrew Cuomo isn’t a fan of Mayor de Blasio’s ultra-liberalism, and he can blame the Republicans when he wants to,” McLaughlin opined.

My hunch is that Cuomo doubles down on the brand of politics and governance he has practiced in office to date. He’ll thwart his critics and rivals (that’s you, Mayor de Blasio).

And he’ll continue to court business executives and moderate Republicans who may give him cover on the DREAM Act and raising the state minimum wage. And he’ll make deals with his black and Hispanic supporters in the Legislature.

And he won’t have the worry of an airplane sitting on the tarmac at Albany airport ready to ferry him to New Hampshire. He can fully focus on on-time state budgets in 2015 and 2016.

But Who knows what the future holds?

Former Assemblyman Michael Benjamin (@SquarePegDem on Twitter) represented the Bronx for eight years.

# 1 S ’ K R O Y NEWrce for Union Sou . l i a M t c e r i D & t Prin

Now Offering A Full Line Of Promotional Items:

MAILERS • DOOR HANGERS • YARD SIGNS • LABELS • BUTTONS • LAPEL PINS

ALL PROUDLY UNION MADE FOR ALL INQUIRIES EMAIL: GSALZMAN@WPPRINTING.COM OR CALL: 718-370-8000 AND ASK FOR GREGG SALZMAN

www.WPPRINTING.com

cit yandstateny.com

SIGN UP FOR

The Must-Read Morning Roundup of New York Politics and Government Our morning email delivers daily exclusives from City & State, as well as a curated summary of the day’s most pertinent headlines, editorials, news tidbits, schedules and milestones from across the political landscape in New York—all before 7 a.m.

Be the the first first to to know. know.

Be www.cityandstateny.com/subscribe for more information.

GIANT TALENT T

city & state — November 17, 2014

38

iki Barber, the all-time leading

the talent. So we created a marketplace for these types of transactions to occur. As any e-commerce business grows, you evolve, and over the last 10 months we’ve gotten really deep into producing events.

rusher for the New York Giants, walked away from pro football in 2006 at the top of his game. Since retiring he has stayed in the public eye as a broadcaster and TV personality, and his latest venture—Thuzio, a company he co-founded two years ago—aims to help other athletes maintain their brand and connect with fans.

Barber spoke with City & State Albany Bureau Chief Jon Lentz about life after professional sports, the midterm elections and his Super Bowl favorites.

The following is an edited transcript.

City & State: You just ran in the New York City Marathon. How was it?

Tiki Barber: It was interesting. I learned something. I tell people this all the time, everything you do in life, you learn something about yourself— so I learned that I’m a really good half-marathoner. [Laughs.] My first half was great. Then I got to the 59th Street Bridge and my long distance training started to fail me and my body started to cramp, and so as I tried to push myself up First Avenue I realized that I was going to hurt myself. So I just slowed down and enjoyed it. And then I pulled out my phone and I was taking pictures, and I saw on the New York Road Runners tracking app that my wife was catching up to me. So I slowed down and then waited for her for about 15 minutes at the finish line so we could cross the line together. It was a great experience—probably a once-in-a-lifetime experience. The bucket list has been checked, and I’ll do other athletic endeavors instead of running 26.2 miles again.

C&S: You ran on behalf of a charity, the PitCCh In Foundation, which

A Q&A WITH

TIKI BARBER was founded by Yankees pitcher CC Sabathia and his wife.

TB: My wife, Traci, and Amber, CC’s wife, have been close for about four years now. And over Memorial Day she asked us if we would run it. And just on a whim, we said, “Absolutely.”

So we started training and getting in shape for it. PitCCh In is awesome, and we’ve been involved with it for a few years now. They help a lot of inner city kids. They also build baseball fields, out in California where they are from and here in the tri-state area. They’ve just become friends, and anything that they’re doing we try to support.

C&S: You’ve done a variety of things since retiring from the NFL, but now you’re focusing on Thuzio, a booking service for athletes. How is that going?

TB: It’s for various types of events, whether it be a corporate speaking engagement or a bar mitzvah or a lunch or a dinner, or anything really—it could be a flag football game—anything you could think of, experiential-wise. We book a talent, whether that’s an athlete, or we’re moving into chefs and authors, and every other vertical you could think of.

What we saw when we founded this company was that we were looking at needs. We saw this problem that former athletes face: You have this brand that you’ve built for many years that, all of a sudden, you can’t monetize it anymore, because you’ve lost connection with your agent, with your community. But there’s still a desire for people to connect with you.

But unless someone was actively in that market, you weren’t going to find

C&S: You have a sports radio show, but you have also done some political coverage, including interviewing folks like U.S. Sen. John McCain. Any reaction to the recent midterm elections?

TB: We’re at an interesting point in our political life right now in this country, with the Republicans in control of both houses—and in a couple of years we may have a Republican president as well. Politically this country is at an interesting inflection point. We hear all the catchphrases like “mandates”—what this country wants. It gets complicated. I had a very unique journalistic background because I got into it doing sports because I wasn’t a very good football player. But then I got an opportunity with Sirius, when Sirius was starting to expand their programming, to do a show that had nothing to do with sports. My first guest was John McCain, and I interviewed some sports guests like Jim Brown, and the head of NASA because I wanted to be an astronaut when I was a kid. It was great to open my eyes to different lanes in this country that I was interested in but never got involved with. That’s why I got involved in politics—not so much because I love or want to be a commentator on politics but because I was interested in it as a consumer of our world.

To read the full text of this interview, including Barber’s Super Bowl picks, go to cityandstateny.com.

cit yandstateny.com