Henry J. Stern
June 13, 2007

The early agreement on the 2008 city budget between Mayor Bloomberg and the City Council is the latest example of the "era of good feeling" that characterized the administration of James Monroe, from 1817 to 1825. You can link to the mayoral press release here.

The budget settlement was covered in today's Times by Ray Rivera, MAYOR AND COUNCIL AGREE ON BUDGET, PROVIDING BREAKS ON PROPERTY AND SALES TAX; in the Sun by Jill Gardiner, CITY CUTS TAXES BY $1.3 BILLION IN $59 BILLION FY2008 BUDGET; in the Post by David Seifman and Frankie Edozien, CITY TAX RELIEF HITS HOME IN BUDGET, in the News by Kathleen Lucadamo, MIKE, CHRISTINE OK 59B BUDGET, and in Newsday by Karla Schuster, TAX RELIEF, RENTER GRIEF.  The news for '09: Christine made the headline.

The Mayor and Council Speaker Christine Quinn have forged a constructive relationship that has generally been helpful to the city.  This is part of Ms. Quinn's strategy for a mayoral race in two years, when the mayoralty will be open as a result of the Term Limits Referendum of 1993, initiated by Ronald Lauder, who has just become president of the World Jewish Congress.  The Council, under Speaker Peter Vallone (now Sr., because Jr. took his council seat), generated a repeat referendum in 1996, and the voters once again supported eight year term limits for elected city officials.  District Attorneys are exempt because they are considered state officials.  They can serve as long as they are re-elected; the goal is for life
or until they become judges.
 
There is nothing wrong with Ms. Quinn's judgment that her best opportunity to attain higher office lies in demonstrating responsibility in her position as Speaker, and aligning herself, so far as practicable, with a generally highly regarded city administration.  Her acceptance of the failure to include a tax credit for renters showed good spirit.  "Sometimes you put ideas out there, and it takes more than one year to accomplish," she was quoted by Newsday as saying.  We observe that if the tax credit passes next year, it will that much closer to the 2009 Democratic primary.

Ms. Quinn's predecessor as Speaker, Gifford Miller, followed the opposite game plan, opposing the mayor on a variety of issues, notably by passing dozens of bills and overriding the mayor's vetoes.   Most of those bills were of minor importance, except to the councilmember who introduced them, so no great harm was done to anyone.  Indeed, on major issues, such as the ban on indoor smoking and the increase in the real estate tax, Speaker Miller supported the mayor's initiatives.  Part of the problem from 2002 and 2005 was the generation gap (27 years) between the mayor and the speaker, but most of it camea because the mayor was seeking re-election, and the speaker wanted the job, posthaste.
 
Wiser heads, including Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, who gave Miller his first job in government, urged the young speaker to run for Borough President of Manhattan.  BP was an open seat because Term Limits required Virginia Fields, the incumbent, to retire or seek another office.  She ran for mayor and came in a distant third, with fewer than half the votes of the runner-up, Congressman Anthony Weiner.  Ms. Fields surpassed only Mr. Miller, who has retired from politics.

 If Mr. Miller had taken the advice of Ms. Maloney and many other friends, he would have been a favorite in the race for borough president.  If elected, he would have served four years, with an option, exercisable by the voters,  for another term.  After eight years, he would have reached the ripe age of 44.  He would have had twelve years' experience as a major elected official with substantial media exposure.

Gifford Miller is by no means the only politician whose career was interrupted or terminated by an Icarian venture, although he is the first alpha male in recent years to have self-destructed in that manner.  In the last 35 years, four female elected officials, holding safe seats, reached for the stars, but they were not in alignment, and the candidates plunged into the sea.

 Bella Abzug would have been a Congresswoman until she died in 1998 had she not given up her West Side seat in 1976 in an unsuccessful challenge to the iconic Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who went on to hold the office for four terms.  He retired in 2000 to be succeeded the woman who became New York State's first female senator, Hillary Rodham Clinton.  She is now seeking another office but, wisely, not in a year in which her second senate term expires.  That will be 2012.

Similarly, City Council President Carol Bellamy left elective politics after her unsuccessful challenge to Mayor Edward I. Koch in 1985.  She later served with distinction for ten years as head of UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund.  The acronym comes from the agency’s original name, which included International and Emergency. She was the Democratic-Liberal candidate for State Comptroller in 1990, losing to Ned Regan.  She is now living in Vermont,  where she is president of World Learning, a nonprofit.

Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm did not give up her seat in Brooklyn for a quixotic candidacy for president of the United States in 1972.  She stayed for five more terms.  She died on January 1, 2005, which indicates she could have been a senior member of the House.  She remains, however, the first black woman to have been elected to Congress.  There are now fourteen African-American women  serving in the House of Representatives.

Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman of Brooklyn, ran for the Senate in 1980.  Senator Jacob K. Javits was the incumbent, completing his fourth term. She won the Democratic primary over Bess Myerson, John V. Lindsay and John Santucci of Queens, but was defeated in the general election by Alfonse D’Amato, who had defeated  Javits in the Republican primary.  She is now practicing law.

Ms. Holtzman began her comeback in 1981, when she was elected District Attorney of Kings County. She was re-elected in 1985 and won a higher office when she was elected New York City Comptroller in 1989.  However, she was defeated for re-election in 1993 by Assemblyman Alan Hevesi, who challenged her on ethical issues, particularly her borrowing money for her campaign  from a bank which was promoted to a larger role as an underwriter of city bonds.  Her misstep was repeatedly attacked on  television by Mr. Hevesi.   It is not one of our Animal Rules, but chickens do come home to roost.

Perhaps the most enduring effect of Ms. Holtzman’s bid for the Senate was the opening of her House seat in Brooklyn, which was filled by the promotion of a young (30 at the time) assemblyman, Charles E. Schumer.  Eighteen years later (three Senate terms, nine House terms), Mr. Schumer defeated Mr. D’Amato for the same seat, which he now occupies.

So much for political history.   We return to the budget agreement just announced at City Hall with two kisses and a handshake, itself a break from precedent.
 
In past years, we have written many articles, which you can find on our website, www.nycivic.org, about the budget process, centering on the perennial disputes between the council and the mayor, and the financial irresponsibility of state and city budgets based on borrowing.

When I was younger, so much younger than today, when the President sent the Federal budget to Congress, the legislature was likely to reduce it, because they were not sympathetic to funding some of the programs he wanted, did not want to support some unpopular ideas, and wanted to avoid a situation where they might have to raise taxes.   History has reversed that protocol.  In reacent years, the legislatures, both state and municipal, habitually seek to increase the executive  budget, and it is the governor and the mayor who try to hold the line..

The senators, assemblymembers and councilmembers are responding to constituent pressures, for more local services and  additional funding for cultural institutions they favor.  They receive demands from labor unions, who are fully aware that more than half  the discretionary funds the council appropriates end up in their members' pockets.  The political power of public employee unions was recently demonstrated by their exemption from the draft of a new city campaign finance bill sharply restricting contributions by lobbyists and companies that do business with the city.   Who does more business with the city than public employees union..  Even the sponsors of the bill say that the exemption is unjust, but its excision from the bill was considered a necessity to give it a chance for passage by the City Council.
 
This was a flush year for the city, financially, with billions of unanticipated dollars coming in as a result of the advancing stock market and the real estate boom (or bubble).   In the past, the city has spent almost all that it received in bonanza years and then was unable to balance its budget during down years.  It is now more fully recognized that, particularly in the FIRE sector of the city's economy (finance, insurance, real estate), revenues are cyclical.  Public expenditures, however, change in only one direction: upward.  There are a number of reasons for this: One, wages increase each year rather than remain constant or decrease.  Two, even modest inflation impacts a $59 billion budget.  Three, the state legislature has an apparently irresistible desire, stimulated by the union lobbyists at whose trough they feed, to enact pension sweeteners which have a permanent impact on city budgets but cost the state nothing.  Four, the ever-increasing public debt requires that more and more money be set aside to pay interest to bondholders.  That expenditure is expected to exceed $3.5 in the 2008 expense budget, although the administratin is reducing the cost of debt service by prepaying interest..
 
There is no question that the city's finances are in much better shape than they were a few years ago.  Moody's and Standard & Poor's, the rating agencies which evaluate the safety of municipal bonds, have reacted by upgrading the city' s credit rating, which leads to lower interest cost on city borrowing.  The 2008 expense budget sets aside $2.3 billion to cover expected deficits in 2009 and 2010.  Over the years, impending deficits have been exaggerated, so that we areskeptical of the estimate.  But, if there is no large deficit next year, New York City will still have the money for other purposes, possibly even making some repayment of municipal debt to reduce future interest costs.
 
Macroeconomic issues of public finance are being reasonably well handled, and harmony, at least for now, is the rule between the executive and legislative.  The time is now propitious to attend to operational issues that have not yet been discovered, let alone resolved.  There is a digital counter in the bullpen (the large room which is the northwest quarter of the second floor of City Hall, formerly the Board of Estimate Chamber, now the City Hall offices of the mayor and his principal staff) which ticks the number of days remaining in Mayor Bloomberg's term.  Today the number is 932, meaning there is still time to initiate good works.

 It is most important as well for the mayor to take an interest in seeing to it that his successor is competent and compassionate, honest and decent, moderate and reasonable, devoted to the poor and the sick in body and mind, while totally committed to protecting New York City and its people from the criminals, psychopaths and terrorists who would destroy us if they could.  To paraphrase Alexander King . "May this city be safe from tigers".

 
#384  6.13.07  1936wds