NYCivic

NYCivic is not the only blogger on city and state government. But none is more distinguished than former Mayor Edward I. Koch, who has been blogging, as we have, since the spring of 2002.

In his article last week, which he sent to several thousand readers who have e-mailed him (at eikoch@bryancave.com) to ask to receive it, Mayor Koch expressed indignation and frustration at the state of politics today. We are publishing his column, as revised by the author, so that more people will read it, and consider acting on it.

Koch Calls Politics in New York
National Disgrace, Laughingstock
Seeks Citizen Action For Reform

I have been thinking long and hard about the state of politics in New York. We are a national disgrace and laughingstock. Our state legislature has been called the most dysfunctional in the country, and most opinion-makers who write about the subject agree with that description.

We have had a most unusual situation with the recent resignation of a governor, Eliot Spitzer, who was in office for a little more than a year, for using interstate hookers and engaging in other possibly criminal conduct. This followed the resignation and guilty plea of the newly-reelected state comptroller, Alan Hevesi, for using state resources to provide assistance for his wife.

The recent departure of the state senate majority leader, Joe Bruno, came as a surprise. Bruno, before he resigned as leader, allegedly inquired of Federal law enforcement authorities whether ask if his resignation would cause them to end their investigation of his business activities then and now under scrutiny, and was told it would not. Now Bruno is said to be resigning his senate seat as well.

The state assembly at this point is totally dominated by the Speaker, Sheldon Silver, who while conducting the state’s affairs also draws an alleged $1 million per year as a partner in a negligence law firm. In this state, trial lawyers wield great weight on the passage or defeat of state legislation affecting their financial interests.

Then there is the enormous influence of the municipal unions on the state legislature and the laws it enacts affecting the relationship of those unions and New York City, particularly with respect to pensions. Those pension increases imposed by the state cost the City of New York billions of dollars in increases, most are strongly objected to by the City. The state gives away the money and the city must pay it.

While the city has limited the terms of its City Council by referendum, the state legislature rarely sees sitting members lose at the polls, with an average of fewer than three percent of state legislators losing in any general election.

In 1999, we saw many city legislators led by Speaker Silver disgracefully vote to abolish the commuter tax paid by non-residents to the city for the services they receive here including police, fire and sanitation, thus depriving the city of more than $500 million dollars a year in tax revenues. No city legislator lost the support of editorial boards, union endorsement or has been punished at the polls for that traitorous act.

Paraphrasing the late Bill Buckley when he ran for mayor in 1965, what am I doing in this zoo?

I propose that we use the tactic employed in New York City back in the 1950s through the 1960s and expand it. What was that tactic? The formation of a reform wing in the Democratic Party. It was led by a group of revered citizens – Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, Senator Herbert Lehman, Mayor Robert Wagner and others. The reformers undertook primaries against the regulars and beat many of them in 1961, when Mayor Wagner won renomination for a third term.

I had the privilege of running against the boss of bosses as he was referred to – Carmine De Sapio – leader of Tammany Hall, the Democratic organization governing Manhattan (and at one time New York State) politics. I beat him in 1963 (and 1964 and 1965) in Democratic primaries for District Leader in Greenwich Village, but I was not the first. He was first defeated in 1961 by James Lanigan.

Those victories led to many reform changes in Manhattan which spread to the other boroughs. Regrettably, as often happens, reform ultimately tires with the return of the regular forces, and reformers, once elected, become regulars.

What we should do is improve on the reform model and create a new party which will state in its manifesto that it is running against the candidates of both the Democratic and Republican parties and has as its goal the sweeping out of Albany of all incumbents – the bad and the good – replacing them with the new party’s candidates, unless the incumbents cut their existing ties, join the new party and are accepted by it.

After two elections in which the new party is successful, it should agree to dissolve and allow the Democratic and Republican parties to once again take over, vying against one another on a philosophical basis, hoping they have learned their lesson and become functional.

So how do we start? We have to find those five New Yorkers willing to do what Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt and Senator Herbert Lehman et al did – step forward and lead such an effort. If they do, we can turn our state of deplorable politics around and once again be proud to be citizens of the great Empire State that produced Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Alfred E. Smith, Nelson Rockefeller, Hugh Carey and Fiorello LaGuardia, among others.

This need not be a dream. If enough people join in the effort, it will become a reality.

(Mr. Koch, a lawyer, was elected a City Councilman in 1966, a Member of Congress from Manhattan in 1968, 1970, 1972, 1974 and 1976, and Mayor of the City of New York in 1977, 1981 and 1985.)