NY Times’ Tale of Two Low Turnout Elections: Will the Paper That Helped End Corrupt School Boards Save NYC From Being Destroyed by an Economically Irresponsible Progressive City Council?

  By Gary Tilzer           

After 95% of the City’s voters staged a voter boycott of NYC’s failed government, politics, and democracy, during the recent City Council primary, the public’s outcry that their local government was failing them, was either ignored or not understood by the media.  The NY Times reacted to New Yorkers’ stay-at-home protest with an op-ed “Better Government in New York Depends on Higher Voter Turnout.”  The Times noted, “Preoccupied by daily concerns like paying astronomical sums of rent and deluged by the occasional barrage of apocalyptic wildfire smoke, the average New Yorker clearly wasn’t closely focused on the local primary elections of 2023.” 

 In contrast, after the low vote election in 1993, The Times wrote a strong editorial, “The School Board Sham.”  The sham editorial concluded that “the low turnout School Board election disconnects accountability, attracting low-quality candidates less interested in education than in politics and patronage.”  The Times analyzed that the low-voting School Board elections were a failure and demanded the mayor’s office take control and be accountable for the performance of the City’s schools.  This time, however, the paper offered no solutions on what to do about the City Council’s low vote, except changing the date to combine elections. 

 In 1993, the paper informed its readers that they “could not responsibly endorse in that year low voting School Board elections,” which they called “anti-democracy.”  None of the City’s newspapers, including The Times endorsed candidates in this year’s City Council races, but none including The Times offer a reason why or what to do about the City Council.  After both elections, the Times admitted that low votes cause a lack of public accountability and empower special interests, encouraging bad behaviors among both the School Board and City Council members they elected.  

 The game changer between the two very different NY Times reactions to low voting elections is that the candidates the special interests are now putting into office are not political hacks looking to make money off of the government for themselves and their friends.  They are ideologically driven progressives, mostly socialists looking to change society; a political movement that the liberal narrative of The NY Times supports.  The special interests that put their ideologically driven progressive candidates in office are creating a generation of NYC political leaders who ignore the public and only listen to ideological beliefs, political bosses, and lobbyist campaign consultants who put candidates into office for personal monetary gains.  In 2010, lobbyist Hank Sheinkopf told the late Village Voice reporter Wayne Barrett, that “Lobbyists Elect Kings so They and Their Clients Can Eat the King’s Meat.”

Both the School Boards and the City Council were supposed to derive their political power from the electorate but were taken over because of the low voter turnout by what the late Village Voice reporter Jack Newfield called the “permanent government”--an interlocking group of power brokers controlling NYC’s elections, government, and the media.  Until their elimination, the School Boards, their elections, and members were controlled by the UFT and the local political clubs.  Now, the City Council, its elections, and council members are controlled by the City’s growing progressive political machines, pay-to-play lobbyists, and their clients PACs, unions, and local political clubs.  In 1993, The Times needed to step in to save the schools.  In 2023, the paper needs to break up a ruling junta between the special interests and the progressive politicians to allow the 95% of the registered voters who did not vote, to use their wit, intelligence, and power of their vote to restore common sense, and financial reality to local government and save NYC and democracy.

Sal Albanese Twitter @SalAlbaneseNYC  Reviewing turnout, I noticed that I garnered more votes while running for school board decades ago. . . the political system is not aligned with the public interest.  Unfortunately, the people who benefit from it, the political class, with rare exceptions will not change it.

de Blasio Lobbyists Created a New Progressive Political Class:  A Culture Change of  Activists’ Ideological Rule, Replacing Representative Governing

NY Times reporter Michael Powell warned in 2014 that the new mayor was building a shadow government with his Working Families Party (WFP) team of pay-to-play lobbyists, led by his campaign consultant Berlin Rosen to take over NYC politics.  Over the last decade, de Blasio’s WFP lobbyists’ shadow government has metastasized into progressive political machines led by WFP, Democrat Socialist America, Comptroller Lander, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, and AOC, which now control a majority of NY elections and politics.  Jewish Voice - AOC & the Progressives’ Interlocking Directorates are the New Bosses of Brooklyn & the 2022 City Council.\

Jewish Voice 2022: “AOC’s endorsement in Brooklyn turned out to be more than an endorsement.  It can now officially be labeled a movement that not only propelled Brad Lander in his race for City Comptroller and helped candidate for Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso win.  It also helped elect eight Brooklyn City Council candidates.  This growing progressive machine also helped mayoral candidate Maya Wiley’s rise to a close third place.”

A decade after de Blasio’s shadow government lobbyists who worked for progressive candidates took over the City Council, The Times’ Op-ed stated, “low turnout may help explain why the actions of elected officials in the City Council are sometimes bizarrely out of step with the needs of the majority of the constituents they serve.”  Interestingly, The Times failed to extrapolate whose interests the City Council elected officials represented or why 95% of New Yorkers did not vote in the Council election this year.

The Times Ignoring Twitter Posters Documenting How the Disconnect Between the New Progressives’ Rule & New Yorkers Needs, is Leading to a Bankrupt City 

Journalist and printer John Peter Zenger, a German immigrant, set the standard of NYC journalism.  He was put in jail for informing the people of NYC what colonial Governor William Cosby was doing to them in 1734.  Zenger put his life in danger by following the teachings of Founding Father Thomas Jefferson: “A well-informed citizenry is the best defense against tyranny.”

Unlike The NY Times and the rest of the City’s media, the new media Twitter Posters (TP) are the only journalists still following the NYC journalistic mission of Zenger, informing New Yorkers what is really going on in their City politics and government.  TP, since de Blasio became mayor, detailed how the progressive political machine in control of the City Council came to power and how their ideological governing has disconnected an overwhelming majority of NYC residents, causing over 500,000 to leave the City and 95% of the registered voters who are still here, to boycott the council election.    

Reza Chowdhury Twitter @RezaC1: “92% think crime is a serious problem across the state.  80% of New York City residents think crime is a serious problem in their community. . .  The data shows that 33,000+ crimes may have been prevented and 3400+ violent felonies may also have been prevented in the state of New York if not for bail reform?” Victims’ Rights Twitter @victimsrightsNY: “Not one of these “activists” have helped us call out the policies or politicians that prevented Jordan Neely from getting the help he needed. We have been warning of the detriments Bail Reform/Discovery Reform/laxing Kendra’s law/closing psych centers and defunding the police would cause - especially to the Jordan Neely’s of the world since 2017. 

Unlike the newspapers, TP holds council members accountable for inaccurate statements.  Since Councilwoman Tiffany Cabán called the subway assault on Elizabeth Gomes in which she lost an eye, a one-in-a-million attack, TP repeated Cabán’s inaccurate, uncaring, and hurtful statement after each and almost daily new subway violent attack. 

Gina Newman Twitter @ginamnewman: “The gas lighting is so so so sickening!  No one reports the microaggressions or intimidations and threats Tiffany! 99% of women will tell you they are in a constant fight or flight on the subway. Stop gaslighting women!”

Minority TP has shown how progressives came to power by pushing black, Hispanic, and the poor out of their neighborhoods and then electing their own fellow socialists to occupy the elected offices in those locals.  TP has already reported on the next phase of the progressive power grab, pushing the rich and middle class out of the City, who disagree with their ideological governing, to allow ideologically progressive leaders to remain in control of NYC for decades.  The TP is the only media voice of the non-voting majority that reached 95% of the City’s registered voters during the last primary.  

Candice Give  @candicegiove: “The far-left NYC Council is constantly concocting ways to weaken the NYPD.  This time they want to bury the police in meaningless paperwork for every single encounter they have.  This is a waste of time when we have crime on our streets. Let them do their jobs!”  Brian Robinson Twitter @votebrian:  “A few weeks ago there was a man that entered this same station and sliced the legs of 3 women. Today, a man sitting on a bench in the station was stabbed in the neck. This will not stop until you vote the current soft-on-crime “right-size the police budget” councilman out in Nov.”

TP explains daily how the council is hurting the City’s economy by not reducing crime, making problems like the mentally ill homelessness worse, and destroying the City’s economy.  The Twitter Posts warnings about the City Council are the canary in the coal mine warning, a Save Our City message that the old media is not listening to. 

Sam E. Antar  Twitter @SamAntar:  Hey @tiffany_caban: Please cut the nonsense. When a mentally ill person suffers a violent psychotic episode, but refuses help, they have to be taken off the streets for their safety and the safety of others. Unfortunately, in NYC, they have to be let go to roam the streets and subways.

Broken Journalism is Allowing the City Council to Push the NYC’s Economy Off the Financial Cliff, Destroying a Great City

Sam E. Antar Twitter @SamAntar: “There are 460,000 LESS people (minus 5.8%) living in NYC and 117,000 less children attending public school (minus 12%) compared to 2020. but our city government spending increased by 16% and the Board of Education spending increased by 9% during the same period with no tangible results.

After the low vote of the School Boards in 1993, The Times editorial analyzed the effectiveness of the School Boards and proposed a mayoral takeover.  After the recent extremely low turnout at the polls, the lack of media analysis, outrage, or editorials, looking for reasons of the low vote and attacking the redistricting that favors the incumbents, has made the City Council progressives who follow their ideological beliefs while ignoring public opinion or the needs of the City’s economy, stronger.  This means the council will continue to overspend, instead of preparing the City’s budget for the coming hard times in tax revenue collection that the State Comptroller DiNapoli is warning about, citing a jaw-dropping new $36 billion projected budget deficit caused by declining tax collections since the beginning of the year.   

As tax revenue continues to fall, NYC Comptroller Brad Lander is helping the City Council to continue its overspending ways by putting his thumb on the scale, pushing for billions for housing vouchers and dozens of other progressive spending programs.  Lander has abandoned his most important City Charter-mandated role, the chief watchdog for the City’s very troubled economy and budget.  His incompetent comptroller work already caused the City to lose $6 billion needed by the pension funds, when Lander lost $35 billion in poorly chosen pension investments in 2022, while in the same year, the NYS pension investments grew by 9.5%.  As State Comptroller DiNapoli warns of double-digit budget deficits, Lander monthly spins positive economic news on NY1 Errol Louis show, such as alleging that NYC’s cash balance is at an all-time high at $18 Billion, although later acknowledging that the money will disappear when the city pays its accumulating liabilities. 

NYC’s Future Will Depend on Whether The NY Times Can Find Its Old Journalism Standards to Help Restore Economic Reality to the City Council

In 1993 when the School Board Sham editorial was published, the NY Times was funded by NYC advertisers and newsstand sales.  The NY Times was a different kind of paper then, joined at the hip with the interest in keeping the City’s economy healthy.  Today, the very progressive narrative NY Times, funded by and catering to its liberal worldwide subscription base, is facing a dilemma of what to do with another low-vote election that elected a broken although ideologically progressive City Council that continues to ignore the needs of New Yorkers and the City’s economy.  Susan Learner, Director of Common Cause NY said after the low voting primary, “You have a government that is walled off from the concerns of the people.”  Both The Times and liberal good government Learner have a hard time blaming the progressives, despite the progressives being in charge in the City Council. 

The Council behind the wall they built to cut off the public, allowed half a million taxpayers to leave the city, caused businesses on almost every block to close, and despite falling tax revenues fails to understand how to or the need to repair NYC’s economy, that The Times’ former real estate advertisers in the NYC Partnership still depend on.  The Times’ brand of power and leadership, “The Kingdom and the Power,” was helped over the years by NYC’s economic strength and leadership in finance, business, and the arts.  As the City Council causes NYC to become a failed municipality like San Francisco, The Times’ image and brand will suffer.

It is easy to see how the newspaper’s progressive political narrative journalism makes a difference in Washington where Democrats and Republicans battle for control.  But who wins or what is there to win by sticking to The Times’ progressive narrative, in a City that is being destroyed because of the current generation of leaders, who happen to be young progressives without an understanding of the importance of keeping NYC economically strong?  Regardless of the answer to that question, there is one final warning from a former financial savior of the City, that the future of NYC is in danger, that The NY Times can no longer wait to deal with or keep silent by sweeping a well-informed call for action, under their vast and clever progressive narrative new journalism rug. 

Its High Noon for the NY Times: Stick with Progressive Narrative Journalism or Listen to NYC’s Economic Saviors’ Last Warning?

E.J. McMahon @EjmEj: “Dick Ravitch, among the last of the generation that led NY out of the fiscal crisis.  Ravitch & his contemporaries in both parties weren't perfect. But they were principled in their politics—not mindless, inflexible ideologues. In short, grown-ups.”

It is not surprising that this generation of the media and City Council are not following a financial wizard who saved the City from going bankrupt in the 70s, final warning that the City is heading into a deep financial crisis; most of the media and council members were not alive when he performed his financial magic that saved NYC.  Shockingly, this generation of NY Times leadership is ignoring the final warning of the late Richard Ravitch, that the City’s economy is being destroyed.  

In his NY Times obituary, former political reporter Sam Roberts described “Richard Ravitch, [as] a politically savvy, civic-minded developer and public citizen who helped rescue NYC from the brink of bankruptcy and its decaying subways from fiscal collapse.” The past generation of NY’s leaders like Governor Hugh Carey and media leaders Arthur Ochs "Punch" Sulzberger, understood that New Yorkers need to hear from smart people like Ravitch to identify, build public support, and fix problems that elected officials controlled by politics and special interests would never address or understand, to maintain NYC as the economic capital of the world.

Ravitch understood that as people continue to make Florida the sixth borough of NYC and businesses close, the City’s economic engine and tax revenue collections are going to weaken, requiring 70’s type layoff of city employees, cuts in City services and social service programs,  that this generation of progressive council members take for granted.  Mayor Adams, with the structure of local government stacked against him, charged that the Council does not understand basic accounting when he tried and failed to block the passage of a new rent voucher program that Adams said was unworkable and will cost the City up to 17 billion dollars in additional costs.  In the last two years of his life, Ravitch grew increasingly concerned that NYC politicians seemed unable or unwilling to grasp the severity of the coming budget problems.  NYC needs to listen to Ravitch now as a financial storm bears down on the City’s commercial real estate empty buildings, caused in part by workers working from home, fearing the return to midtown Manhattan because of crime.  Commercial property tax is a massive portion of NYC revenue.  Empty office buildings lower their resale value, which is going to have a cascading negative effect on the City’s budget.

To save NYC, The Times needs to start a discussion on how to reconnect the public with their local government as they did after the 93 School Boards election.  Changing the date of the election to presidential election years as The Times and The Daily News suggest is like putting a Band-Aid on a cancer.  No matter what year the election is held in, the lobbyists and their clients’ campaign donations, PACs, and political bosses including the new progressive political machines will prevent the council which they control and make money off of, from representing the interests of the voters.  The special interests will continue to control the progressives in control of government regardless of what the progressives do to the City and the people who live in it, until they are stopped by the fourth estate (the media), which currently lacks the knowledge and will to take on the progressives. 

The reasons as to why 95% of New Yorkers did not vote is being heard on the conservative or common sense WABC radio, the NY Post, and the Twitter posts, which are cutting into The Times’ ability to control the message to New Yorkers.  However, they have yet to be able to expand and reach enough of NYC's diverse registered voters to shift power from the progressives.  Even Fox News is doing more NYC local news coverage than The Times.  The New York Times’ current business model is focused on progressive readership worldwide and was the result of the old Times’ NYC-centered business model being destroyed by the Internet.  Both aspects had the effect of severely reducing the Times’ influence on NYC voters.  If DA Bragg runs for reelection in two years, the paper will even lose its influence with its remaining die-hard supporters on the Westside.  

Progressives Forcedly Use Ideological Governing to Push Out Long-Time New Yorkers Who They Call Leftovers in Private, to Increase Their Power

The progressives in control of the City Council see themselves as political disruptors of local government, not as a representative body that takes care of the needs and desires of all the people in their district.  The newly arriving Greenpoint progressive elected leaders from Brooklyn are pushing to redesign McGuinness Boulevard with bike lanes and create traffic islands to replace car lanes, which long-term residents of that neighborhood oppose.  In just a few short years, progressives have taken over all the elected offices in Greenpoint and initiated fights designed to push their opponents out.  Some even say that the increase in crime from the bail law reforms is not a concern to progressives because it pushes out moderate common sense New Yorkers from the City, giving progressives permanent control of City Hall and politics.  When it comes to elected office, progressives run very clever and effective campaigns, and know how to bring out their progressive supporters in low-turnout elections.  McGuinness-type ideological battles heavily covered by the City’s liberal narrative media, have erupted on issues all over the City. 

New Yorkers know their elected officials who write the state’s election laws will not change NY’s suppressive public participation laws regardless of how many people stop voting or leave the City.  New Yorkers have not been granted voting rights, such as recall elections and citizen referendums, available to residents in nonprogressive states like Arizona, Idaho, and Kansas.  The same special interests that control the City Council elections along with the elected officials they elect, run campaigns that cancel the holding of NYS-mandated Constitutional Conventions that would give the public the ability to change NYC’s local government.  The 1821 NYS Constitution, for example, gave non-landowners in New York, including veterans from the Civil War, the right to vote.  NY’s progressive Democrats continue to use the NY Election Law to suppress the vote.  While Chicago designated an Open Primary, allowing all of its registered voters to vote, NY’s election law still blocks over 2 million registered voters from voting in the Democratic Primary, which elects 90% of the City’s elected leaders.

Only a free press that covers the government and campaigns will be able to change the voter-suppressive tyrannical election law to help restore representative democracy in NYC.  Currently, 95% of New Yorkers who boycotted the primary believe the City Council violates the US Constitution which states:  “Governments deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.” U.S. Constitution

The Jewish Voice Warned the Media Months Ago that Incumbent Protection City Council Redistricting Would Result in Few Competitive Races

In the June primaries over 80% of the council incumbents did not face opponents.  Last September The Jewish Voice wrote, “City Council Redistricting Seems to be an Incumbent Reelection Party That Forgot to Invite the Voters.”  

Jewish Voice Incumbent Protection Reelection: “While the elected City Council members have been paid off by the City Council Redistricting Commission with the districts that they already won in with minor adjustments to cut out areas where the incumbent council members were weak.  The public gets more of the same of a failed broken City Council that ignores their need to be safe, have affordable housing, and fix the schools where less than 24% of 8^th grade students can read at grade level.” 

The NY Times in June called the lack of a large number of incumbents unchallenged during a redistricting year “a quirk,” without any explanation of what caused the quirk.  If The Times wanted to fully investigate the reasons behind the incumbent protection quirk, they would have investigated if there was a secret deal behind a non-aggression pact between the council members, special interests, and the redistricting commission that gave incumbents the district they wanted.  How else could you explain why AOC is not running progressive candidates against council moderate incumbents after doubling the number of progressives on the council in the 2021 primaries?  Similarly, progressive organizations like WFP, Democratic Socialists of America, and leaders such as Brad Lander and Jumaane Williams did not make any effort to expand the number of progressives on the council, after their endorsement and contributions were very successful in the 2021 election.  Even the real estate PAC “Future NYC” focused on reflecting six moderate council members; not a heavy lift in a year where 95% of the incumbents won.  The real estate PAC did not help Christopher Banks defeat Charles Barron, the only incumbent that lost his council seat.  Jewish Voice - Do Real Estate Barons Know How to Protect City Hall and Albany? Or Will Left-Wing Team AOC Take Over?

Progressives Use the Low Vote and the Media’s Incomplete Incompetent Coverage to Allow Campaign Promises That Can Never Be Fulfilled

Most of the candidates in the few competitive council races promised more money for City services despite the double-digit budget deficits expected in the coming years.  The issue of how much increasing additional costs stemming from the migrants, housing vouchers, union contacts, NYCHA repair costs, state-mandated small class sizes in the schools, and police overtime to compensate for recent NYPD retirements avalanche, will further increase the City’s budget deficit, was never brought up during the 2023 council campaigns.  By not covering NYC’s economic weakness or what it means to the City’s service and maintaining its quality-of-life standards, the media is dumbing down campaigns and voters who do not have the knowledge to understand that it is in their best interest to vote for candidates who are economically responsible.  In other words, the residents of the City who feel that this is no longer the City they grew up in and can no longer recognize, feel like they have fallen into Biff’s alternative reality in the “Back to the Future” movie.  If the economy falls into a recession, the City’s financial crisis will require more cuts in services than were needed in the 70s, hurting a lot of New Yorkers who count on those programs.  In the middle of this economic uncertainty, Councilwoman Julie Won and her fellow council incumbents successfully campaigned this year while promising more City services and ignoring the economic budget deficits the City is facing.

On the campaign trail @CMJulieWon Twitter @CMJulieWon: The Mayor must commit $15 million in funding and higher pay for teachers for a system that is equitable and accessible to all New Yorkers. . . . These nonprofit employees have seen us through the darkest days of the pandemic to today, providing vital programs and wraparound services to New Yorkers. I will continue fighting alongside our nonprofits until the Mayor pays these workers what they deserve. . .  . I will continue fighting in the City Council to ensure that our libraries are fully funded.

Progressives Use Woke Attacks to Control the City Council While They Ignore the Public’s Needs and Past Generation of Progressives Reformers 

Twitter Poster describes today’s City Council progressives as young, incompetent, and inexperienced who believe in throwing money at untested and unaudited programs that waste money and fail to solve the social problems they were designed to address.  Their unwillingness to stop overspending and fix problems, such as violent crime, that are keeping people off the subway and from returning to their midtown office buildings, will bankrupt the City, as Ravitch warned us before he passed away.  In the early 1900s, Teddy Roosevelt’s generation of progressives fought to reform government by making it operate better, cheaper, and make it more transparent by including the public in all its decision-making.  Progressive Frances Perkins, before she became the first woman presidential cabinet member, started her career as a social worker who fought for the poor in Hell’s Kitchen.  Her work with Tammany Hall politicians in the McManus family who ran the neighborhood led Perkins to collaborate with NYS Governor Al Smith, reforming the fire and workers’ rights laws after the Triangle Shirt Fire tragedy.  Today’s City Council progressives in their quest for power fight for member items and nonprofit funding in secret policy and city budget negotiating meetings held behind closed doors.  

Andrea E @AAC0519  Crusading from one progressive cause to the next. Perfectly captures NYC Democrats right now. NYC is governed by the loudest activists. They have no concept of finances and remarkably ignore the chaos they create. Just hop to the next big loud cause.

NYC is a one-party City, where Democrats control all of the government’s decision-making.  However, the progressive machine and their supporters in the media who rule the City Council and Albany are bullying their own party members.  The bullying includes threatening primaries and public shaming, with Eugene McCarthy-like name-calling, including calling moderate Democrats right-wing Republicans, to politically neutralize common-sense Democrats who disagree with their ideological programs, overspending and police defunding.

Progressive co-founder of the left-wing PAC “The Jewish Vote” Twitter user @rafaelshimunov wrote, “Right-wing NYC budget defunding almost every facet of \ society in order to give police more massive raises and submachine guns.”  Independent with common sense Twitter user @enforcelawsNYC, wrote:  “Weird. @rafaelshimunov calls the NYC budget right-wing (Republicans), but the @NYCCouncil is held hostage by one-party democratic rule. These anti-cop radical progressives really are confused.”

The City’s Republican Party leaders are too busy fighting and running candidates against each other to take on the progressives.  Democrats work together against Republicans, as a team, coordinating and constantly updating their message to the public.  Democrats work together with the media, investigating and attacking their ideological opponents, such as the U.S. Supreme Court Judge Clarence Thomas.  Republican elected officials work alone, with appearances on Fox News or WABC conservative radio, putting out their individual personal messages, as opposed to forming jointly coordinated spins of the day, as the Democrats do.  The lessons of the successful coordinated crime message during the Lee Zeldin campaign for governor have been lost on the Grand Old Party leaders. 

NY Times Helped Destroy Competitive Elections by Not Following up on How Politicians Use Gov’t Funded Nonprofits as Their Personal Political Machine

The NY Times understood back in 1993 that nonprofits were being used by incumbent politicians as their own personal political machine when they investigated the late Brooklyn County Leader Vito Lopez’s nonprofit, “Growth of a New-Age Political Machine.”

In 1993, The Times investigation wrote, “Over 17 years of near obscurity, Mr. Lopez has built the prototype of the modern inner-city political machine, one capable of generating thousands of votes and armies of volunteers, largely by exploiting its links to a social-service organization that Mr. Lopez founded and that is now the largest employer and economic enterprise in his neighborhood.”  Since then, from time to time The NY Times uncovered political corruption at nonprofits, but failed to report how widespread the practice was.  The Times quickly dropped covering de Blasio’s corrupt use of nonprofits like “Campaign for One New York” after the federal government dropped its investigation of the former mayor, although there was clear evidence the nonprofit money was used for progressive politics, to put the Democrats in control of the NYS Senate.  The story about former Lt. Governor Brian Benjamin stopped at the one pay-to-play campaign government check he gave to developer Gerald Migdol’s nonprofit.  In the 2010s The NY Post briefly tied Bronx nonprofits to the politicians and lobbyists that funded them, but quickly abandoned their boroughwide investigation:

In 2012 The NY Post wrote:  “The dating life of Assemblywoman Naomi Rivera sheds light on a web of nonprofits in The Bronx that benefits a close-knit network of political insiders.  Rivera installed her boyfriend, as head of the Bronx Council for Economic Development, a taxpayer-funded nonprofit he admits to being unqualified to run.  But the council is only one nonprofit of many organized under the Hispanic Federation nonprofit, which has taken in $24 million in taxpayer money since 1998.  The federation had ties to almost every Hispanic lawmaker in The Bronx, including Rivera, but primarily benefits two men: political strategist Luis Miranda, who co-founded it and once served as its president, and Roberto Ramirez, a former Bronx Democratic Party boss.  Both men ran a private political consulting firm, the MirRam Group. MirRam is paid by the Hispanic Federation and is hired to run political campaigns that steer taxpayer money to the nonprofit.”

It is time for the Times to follow up their 1993 story on how Boss Lopez used his nonprofit Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizens Council, to get re-elected.  Jewish Voice:  The City’s Non-Profit Political Complex Has Recklessly Spent Billions of Dollars.

Sam E. Antar Twitter @SamAntar: “New York has a disproportionate population of homeless people because there is a lot of money to be made by “nonprofit” entities in cohorts with their “progressive” political cronies in maintaining, rather than eliminating, homelessness.”  Reza Chowdhury Twitter @RezaC1: “The nonprofit industrial complex has been plundering the city's coffers for years without oversight while engaging in full-time advocacy. These poverty and addiction pimps should be defunded.”

De Blasio, WFP, Brad Lander, Jumaane Williams, and Other Progressives Activists Misused Nonprofits to Take Over NYC’s Politics and Government

The media completely missed the story of how the nonprofit group ACORN was used by de Blasio, the Working Families Party, Brad Lander, and Jumaane Williams to win their elections to the City Council, which was the start of the progressive takeover of NY politics.  Lobbyists and campaign consultant Berlin Rosen who managed de Blasio, Landers, and Williams’ campaigns got their start representing and working for the ACORN nonprofit.  Berlin Rosen also represented developer Forest City Ratner in his battle with community leaders to build and develop the Atlantic Terminal and Barkley Stadium site.  Ratner even loaned ACORN a million dollars during a corruption investigation of the nonprofit that led to it going out of business.  The Ratner alliance with Berlin Rosen was the start of the coalition between lobbyists who run progressive campaigns and NYC developers.  Berlin Rosen, Red Horse, Hill Top, and the Advance Group all work for developers, nonprofits and elected over half of the progressives on the City Council in 2013, 2017, and 2021.  The NY government and taxpayers are even funding progressive nonprofits like Communities of Change, which was created by WFP and their ACORN alumni to push their progressive policies and fill the progressive activist void after the nonprofit ACORN was shut down. 

 The media, which did not cover the start of how nonprofits are widely misused to create progressive political machines and why the IRS has failed to investigate these obvious abuses of the nonprofit status of 501(c)(3)s, can still investigate how politicians like Brad Lander create and use their own local nonprofit machines.  Lander used his executive director job at the 5^th Avenue Committee nonprofit to win a position on the City Council in the same neighborhood. As the 5^th Avenue Committee was expanded out of gentrified Park Slope into Sunset Park, Lander used his control of the nonprofit to elect one of fellow progressive traveling socialist community organizers for the 5^th Avenue Committee to the Assembly, Marcela Mitaynes.  Over a dozen of the progressive City Council members trace their neighborhood roots to nonprofits, which made them known to the voters, many of which Lander’s wife’s nonprofit works with.  Jewish Voice –“How Comptroller Lander’s Government Funded a Nonprofit Political Machine Elected, Assemblywoman Mitaynes Helped by the Bankers and Developers building affordable housing with the nonprofit.”

Lander and his progressive army who are implementing unworkable and expensive social programs are funding community-based nonprofit programs to treat mental illness, while at the same time blocking public hearings on what happened to the de Blasio and his wife’s $1.5 billion ThriveNY nonprofit slush fund, which funded many of the same community-based nonprofits.  ThriveNY was supposed to stop the mentally ill from attacking the riders on the subway and the public on the street of the City but accomplished nothing except successfully hiding where the money was spent. 

While the seriously mentally ill need institutional care and monitoring to ensure they take psychiatric medication, Simon Martial was allowed in and out of community-based mental health programs before he ended up killing Michelle Go on the subway platform.  Only the courts and mental institutions can ensure that the mentally ill take their medicine and don’t live on the streets and subway hooked on fentanyl, which causes them to act more violently.  The progressives in control of Albany refuse to give judges the power to institutionalize the mentally ill.  They have made New Yorkers who are attacked or threatened on the subways by the untreated mentally ill, the victims.  Those New Yorkers injured like Gomes or murdered like Go are sadly the Guinea Pigs of progressives’ mental health and social criminal justice theories. 

Two NY Times Editorial Board Members, Generations Apart, Indicate the City Council was a Bad Choice to Replace the Board of Estimate in 1989

Two editorial board members of The NY Times, 33 years apart, expressed concern about how well the decentralized structure of the City Council will work or is working in the largest, most complex, and economically important city in the nation.  After the low vote in the City Council election this year, NY Times Editorial Board member Maya Gay, wrote, “New York is electing local and state candidates who derive their political power from tiny slices of the electorate.  It’s a recipe for bad government.”  The voters who showed up to and reelected incumbent council members on local issues including opposition to a development in their district, apparently do not hold their local representatives responsible for unsolved citywide issues such as lack of affordable housing, mental illness, and bad schools.  The failure of the voters to hold the City Council accountable for these important citywide problems unfairly shifts the burden of accountability from the City Council to Mayor Adams, who is merely a partner to the local government.  It is clearly a structural problem of the City Council that their member re-election does not depend on their negotiating with the Mayor to solve serious citywide issues such as homelessness and mental health. 

Thirty-three years ago, NY Times Editorial Board member Roger Starr wrote, “City Council members are legislators in a large body, not powerful executives who sat on the Board of Estimate.  Most are hardly known outside their own districts.  The [abolishment] of the Board of Estimate is a reminder that City government has become more complex, more remote, and less comprehensible.”  Ravitch’s frustration that NYC leaders seemed unable or unwilling to grasp the severity of the coming economic problem, is a strong indication that Starr and Gay’s concerns about the decentralized structure of the City Council was not appropriate for a complicated City like NYC. 

Increase Public Participation to Break Up Ideological Control: Reconstitute the Board of Estimate & Connect Community Boards to the Council

In 1989, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously declared the NYC Board of Estimate (BOE) unconstitutional on the grounds that Brooklyn, the city's most populous borough, had no greater effective representation on the board than Staten Island, the city's least populous borough, and that this arrangement was a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause "one man, one vote."  The City Charter discontinued the Board in 1989 and gave it power to the City Council, after a citywide vote that 54% of the city’s voters supported. 

Reconstituting the Board of Estimate (BOE) through either weighted voting or breaking the Board into equal population districts, is needed to reconnect the public to their local government, creating a body where elected officials’ reelection depends on their serving and responding to the public needs and concerns.  Using equal population districts would make the BOE members more representative of the districts they were elected in.  Every district would equal the size of SI’s population, a little less than half a million.  Right now, the current Brooklyn Borough President who was elected with progressive votes in Northern Kings County, has nothing in common with the residences in the southern half of the borough.  A new BOE would take over the passing of the budget from the City Council, the offices of the Borough President and Public Advocate would be eliminated, and their function would be transferred to the BOE members.

A redesigned City Council would be interconnected with Community Planning Boards to get the grassroots community involved, reducing the centralized control of the council and local campaigns by unions, pay-to-play lobbyists and their clients, new progressive and old boss-run political machines.  In the 1960s, Mayor John Lindsay had a plan to convert Community Boards into local Town Halls and have its members directly elected by the public.  Lindsay wanted to connect the City Council with the City’s community boards to give the neighborhoods and their residents a voice in their local government.  Only by changing the structure of the local government to encourage public participation, would reconnect the 95% of the registered voters who did not vote, giving them the power to unlock their creative genius to fix problems they want and need to be solved.

Members who vote in the Community Boards/Town Halls would not be appointed like the current Boards.  They would be elected like the political party’s County Committee members by election districts contained inside each Town Hall/Community Board district.  The elected board members in each district will vote for a Board Speaker, who would run the Town Hall and function as the councilman at City Hall.  This Community Board election system would elect Council members connected to the community, unlike the low-turnout primary election system electing Council Members today.  Advancement in technology since the Lindsay era allows the Town Hall meetings to be broadcasted live on the internet, and the registered-to-vote residents in the district to vote and comment on major citywide issues such as zoning and land use, and other issues that the Town Hall would address. 

Without connecting our city government to the people and local neighborhoods, we have a succession of well-organized political gangs controlling the city against the public’s needs and interests.  The progressive gang, now in charge of the City Hall, came to power too fast to appreciate Ravich’s lesson of the delicate balance needed to keep the City’s economy healthy.  The progressive gang is endangering the tradition inscribed on the Statue of Liberty, which resulted in generations of immigrants becoming part of the middle class in New York and New York City being economically strong to allow the immigrants to achieve the American Dream.  Is anyone in the media looking at where are we going as a City?

@GaryTilzerTips

 

The Media Ignores Who Really Picks NYC Judges

Jewish Voice - The NYU Brennan Center for Justice has done numerous studies that political parties and court insiders choose most of NY’s Judges. Most judicial elections are non-competitive and when there is more than one judicial candidate on the ballot, voters know little about the judicial candidates running. Judges should not be an arm of the political machines, court insiders, or chosen by the mayor and government selection committees full of the same party and court insiders. We need elected judges who reflect the values of all New Yorkers, not just the special interests. To make judicial elections easier to understand, Civil Court Judges should be elected by Assembly Districts. Supreme Court Judges should be elected by State Senate Districts. Judicial elections need public funding, and the state should mail every vote a bio of every judicial candidate, as the city does of every City Council candidate.  NY needs an elected third branch of government, an independent judiciary, to speak out against bad laws made by the other two branches of government, not one controlled by political insiders by regulations. Some in Albany and within the state’s court system want to take the control of electing judges away from the voters.  With NY Chief Judge Janet DiFiore stepping down from a position that was once elected, now appointed, it is time for the media and all New Yorkers to investigate who picks the judges.

Judicial Convention Sausage Factory Continues, 

Almost Nobody Noticed “For a glimpse into the odious nature of how the political bosses make judges in New York, we direct your attention to a letter in Friday's Voice of the People by veteran court watcher Alan Flacks. On Tuesday, Flacks dropped in on the Brooklyn Democratic Party's ceremony for elevating faithful lawyers to the bench. The party calls it a convention. It's not. It's a charade, currently directed by boss Vito Lopez.” – September 19, 2008.Manhattan: I attended the Kings County Democratic judicial nominating convention Tuesday. It was orchestrated "Soviet-style." Short, sweet, lady- and gentleman-like, the script called for the eight candidates to be designated or redesignated without opposition, even for supposed "open" seats. Before adjournment, each judge candidate got up and gave a short thank-you speech. Every one of them expressed gratitude to the party district leaders for their support, and they also expressed effusive thanks to and praise of County Leader Vito Lopez (photo). One "re-up," John Leventhal of the Appellate Division, Second Department (after inquiring if the press was present) thanked now-imprisoned county leader Clarence Norman as well, and another called Lopez "the greatest county leader ever." After adjournment, I spoke with a number of delegates who voted "automatically" and didn't seem to know for whom they were voting. They didn't know, and were just told for whom to vote.  - Alan Flacks

“For a glimpse into the odious nature of how the political bosses make judges in New York, we direct your attention to a letter in Friday's Voice of the People by veteran court watcher Alan Flacks. On Tuesday, Flacks dropped in on the Brooklyn Democratic Party's ceremony for elevating faithful lawyers to the bench. The party calls it a convention. It's not. It's a charade, currently directed by boss Vito Lopez.” – September 19, 2008 Daily News

Daily News Call the City Bar Association Screening Panel Seddio's Puppet
 "The city bar association also rates would-be judges. But Seddio, a honcho in the Brooklyn bar, influences that panel. Why even have a supposedly straight-arrow screening commission when it's tainted by bosses? You know the answer." - Daily News, Sep 06, 2017

Party Puppets Rubber Stamp The Political Bosses Pick for Supreme Court Judges

"A dozen delegates, in recent interviews, said they could not even remember the handful of candidates they had nominated for the State Supreme Court last year. They said the convention, as always, had been a carefully scripted event lasting less than an hour.  Whether the candidates were potentially outstanding judges, the delegates said they never knew. Before the convention, the party never makes an effort to inform them about which candidates are going to be nominated. In fact, the names are often secret." NY Times 2003

Surrogate Court is A Political Toll Booth Exacting Tribute From Widows and Orphans" 

                      - Robert Kennedy, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia 

In the 1930s, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia called Surrogate's Court "the most expensive undertaking establishment in the world." He believed it was control of the Surrogate's Court of New York County, more than any other factor, that kept the Tammany Hall political machine alive through the lean years when he deprived it of city jobs and President Franklin Roosevelt denied it federal jobs. All wills are probated in this court and all estates of people who die without a will are handled in this court. The Judge of this court handles the unclaimed property of the deceased without wills. It also handles adoptions. There is a Surrogate's Court in each county in the state.

Queens  A Court, Not Votes, Sustains a Political Machine in Queens (NYT, 11/28/11)

 True News Corruption and the Surrogate Court *Stealing From the Dead Court  DA Vance announced the trial conviction of Richard Paul, the former bookkeeper for the Kings County Public Administrator’s Office, for stealing more than $2.6 million from the estates of individuals who died without a will by manipulating the agency’s check writing system. Paul was found guilty by a jury in New York State Supreme Court of Grand Larceny in the First Degree and Defrauding the Government. Taryn Miller was convicted by the same jury of Grand Larceny in the First Degree for helping facilitate the scheme, and receiving stolen funds. Both defendants are expected to be sentenced on December 5, 2013. *Corruption and the Surrogate Court (True News) * Surrogate's Court And Why It Should Go (True News)

Estate's official resigns after office mishandles $2.2M in assets(NYP)The official who oversees estates of people who die without wills in Brooklyn — and whose office was cited for sloppy work by the city comptroller last year — has resigned, The Post has learned. Kings County Public Administrator Bruce Stein stepped down earlier this month, in part because of questions about his ability to perform the job, a source said. Stein’s office was slammed by former Comptroller John Liu in 2013 for mishandling more than $2.2 million in assets, including misplacing a fur coat and allowing $50,000 in cash to sit unclaimed in a safe deposit box for five years. The money was claimed only after the auditors pointed it out. The auditors found shoddy work in more than half of the 50 cases that were examined. Stein was appointed to the role in January 2009 and was earning more than $123,000. He did not respond to a request for comment.

Brooklyn lawyers deciding Democratic ballot line for judicial seats get guardian, referee jobs from judges they review, records show

City Council Redistricting Seems to be an Incumbent Reelection Party That Forgot to Invite the Voters

Denis Walcott, the Redistricting Commission’s Chair, said those drawing the new City Council lines did not pay attention to any elected official while creating the proposed first-round new Council district maps. The Committee did not have to discuss their plans with any incumbent Council members, since they were drawing almost the same lines protecting the incumbents, with one exception that combined two council incumbent members into one Brooklyn district to make room for that borough’s first Asian district.    

While the elected City Council Members have been paid off by the Council Redistricting Commission with the districts that they already won and will easily win again, the public gets more of the same of a failed broken City Council that ignores their needs to be safe, have affordable housing, and fix the bad schools not with more money or smaller class sizes but with better teachers to improve the math and reading abilities of the City’s students. The Council that voted to cut over a billion dollars from the NYPD budget has done nothing to stop the crime wave that is causing harm and fear to every New Yorker and is destroying the City’s economy. The City’s economy is not recovering as fast as in other cities, its unemployment rate is more than double the national average. New Yorkers continue to move out because of crime and the feeling that nobody is in control. Businesses like Right Aid on the Upper East side closed because of continued looting, and the mentally ill homeless continue to prey on the innocent on the city streets and subways.

Andrew Fine Twitter @AFineBlogger “I can't recall a @NYCCouncil ever that has been this pro-criminal and this out of touch with your everyday New Yorkers.”

Continued low voting causes NYC elections to be controlled by incumbency, lobbyists, and big money from both the clients of lobbyists and the emerging progressive interlocking PACs and nonprofits pouring money into left-wing campaigns. The five Republican members of the City Council make deals with the Mayor and the Council Speaker, then act as a political party with a platform that opposes the democratic policies of City Hall.  The Republican Council Members are so good at this role that unlike the Democrats in Albany, GOP council members’ districts were protected by the Mayor and Council Speaker who control redistricting. The reform movement that used to fight the big money in campaigns and pay-to-play lobbyists who doubled as political consultants is long gone.  With single-digit turnouts, New Yorkers are disgusted with high crime and failed governmental services. It is clear that when 90% of the voters stay home, they have given up on the election system which exists to represent and protect their interests.

The victory of the four State Senators: Brisport, Rivera, Gonzalez, and Jackson in the August primary, who blocked any changes to the bail law despite polls showing that over 75% of New Yorkers want to change the bail law to reduce crime, is strong evidence that the voters who want safe streets and subways, have disconnected themselves from NYC’s election system. All Walcott’s Redistricting Committee did was assure that incumbents get reelected and the same special interests robber barons that run the Council now will continue to be the pay-to-play political bosses after redistricting. Walcott poured oil on a city already burning down.

It is time for Walcott and other city leaders to adopt Mayor Wagner’s and Lindsay’s strategy to decentralize the city’s government and to empower the public’s ability to make government function better. Only by decentralization, restoring power to the city’s neighborhoods and its residents, can New Yorkers regain their ability to pressure their elected officials to fix the broken government.  Until we decentralize NY’s political system, the UFT political machine has more influence over elected officials than the parents. Developers and city contractors, with their pay-to-play lobbyists who double as campaign consultants, will continue owning the elected officials. Nonprofits who wasted billions of the taxpayers’ money, while their highly paid board members fund elected officials’ reelection campaigns, are not going to give up their power and control over elected officials without a fight. The lobbyists, unions, and special interests who control the Council and the election system, even blocked the Constitutional Convention in 2017, when changes to the structure of the city government, including decentralization could have been made.

If you believe that the City Council defunding the police caused the current crime wave, then Walcott did a terrible job. If you believe the Council caused an increase in homelessness by not building enough affordable housing, then Walcott did a terrible job.  If you believe that the Council’s high spending and taxing are driving the city into a recession, then Walcott did a terrible job. Walcott’s incumbent protection redistricting plan hurt you. If these failures of the City Council do not make you believe that those Council incumbents protected by Walcott don’t belong in office, the fact that Council members who voted for school budget cuts because of lower enrollment are now against them after a call from the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) or those groups that speak for them should arouse your concern. The UFT puppets on the City Council have joined in, demanding that Adams “immediately restores” some $415 million for the school budget. Those who want more money have not said one word about the quality of education. Albany has never connected the school’s budget of 32 billion, the largest budget in the nation, to math or reading results; if they did, there would be more Charter Schools. The NYC Department of Education spends $30,469 per student. In comparison, Charter Schools’ per-student funding for FY 2019-20 comes in at $16,343 per student. According to numerous studies on Charter Schools, Charter students get a better education than those attending public schools.

With the End of the Federal Stimulus Money and IncreasedPension Costs, The Days of Wine and Roses are Over

Next year, when federal stimulus money runs out and the city’s tax collections begin to shrink because of Wall Street and other business losses, inflation and a recession will begin to reduce the city’s budget. The school budgets will then have to be cut like in the 1970s, with teacher layoffs.

With returns on the pension funds way down, the city will have to kick in more from its operating budget to cover benefits for current and future retired workers — $4 billion more than planned from next year through 2026. Adams by asking for 3% budget cuts for City agencies to see the coming recession, the ideological clueless City Council has no idea that their ability to throw money everywhere is about to end. Many economists believe that the city’s near bankruptcy in the ’70s was caused by the elected officials not understanding that the money supply was endless. This year Mailer and Breslin believed that decentralizing city government into self-ruling neighborhood municipalities would offer creative solutions to long-term problems and enable the public, by making local government and elections simpler, enabling the public to choose politicians who would listen to them and serve their needs.  NYC’s budget is 101 billion, and Bloomberg’s 2014 budget was 68 billion.

The failure of the newspaper business, the dumbing down of TV journalism into press release news readers, and the rise of public relations consultants have also been big factors in disconnecting the voters from their government and the political system. The same TV news stations that make millions off of the political ads have nothing to improve their political coverage. Most of the news readers who cover politics get most of their information from consultants who have political agendas.  Jewish Press In the Scripted News Era, Journalists & Elected Officials Become Actors, NY Special Interests Pull the Strings. 

Paul Starr, the distinguished Princeton media scholar, maintains that “the failure of the newspaper business has fragmented the public’s understanding of politics and government.” Starr believes that “strong newspapers of the past, provided the public a powerful means of leverage over politicians and the state - that this leverage is now gone. If the newspapers are considered as the fourth branch of government, the end of the age of newspapers implies a change in our political system itself, where pay-to-play insiders and left-wing activists have gained more control.”

Two Attempts to Decentralize NYC Government Were Defeated by New York’s Political Class Insiders

Mailer and Breslin believed that decentralizing city government into self-ruling neighborhood municipalities would offer creative solutions to long-term problems and enable the public, by making local government and elections simpler, enabling the public to choose politicians who would listen to them and serve their needs.

One has to go all the way back to the 1970s to review the last attempt to transfer power back to the neighborhoods, the people. During his administration, Mayor John Lindsay created a plan for a network of Little City Halls to give the voters a smaller decentralized government that gave the average New Yorker a voice in making sure city services are properly delivered and problems that affect the neighborhoods are properly addressed. Lindsay wanted to transfer power to the City’s 62 Community Boards and run them like Town Halls. The Democratic majority of the City Council blocked Republican Lindsay’s Little City Halls plan because they said it would function as a political clubhouse for the mayor. The City Council did not want the Community Boards to have power over them and decades later, in one-party NYC, they still control appointments to the Community Boards today along with the Borough Presidents. In one-party NY, the voices of those opposed to the government voices have been silenced, and that is why 90% of the registered voters in the last election stayed home.

NYC’s economy in the 1969s was eerily in the same bad shape as it is today. The City was suffering from sinking finances, rising crime rates, and an expanding government on borrowed funds.  With a dysfunctional and insider-controlled City Hall, millions of middle-class residents fled to the suburbs. The award-winning author Norman Mailer ran for mayor, along with journalist Jimmy Breslin on his ticket, for the discontinued office of the Council President. Both men ran on the platform seeking to transfer the City Hall and Albany’s power into the hands of the neighborhood’s leaders and the people. Mailer and Breslin believed that power centralized with insiders in government, party bosses, and other special interests blocked the “energies of the people of New York” whose only interest was to make the city a better place to live, work and enjoy.

Mailer and Breslin believed that decentralizing city government into self-ruling neighborhood municipalities would offer creative solutions to long-term problems and enable the public, by making local government and elections simpler, enabling the public to choose politicians who would listen to them and serve their needs. They wanted neighborhoods to put pressure on City Hall and Albany to act more responsibly to solve problems and elect more community leaders to elective office, who were already serving the public and solving the neighborhood’s problems.

The late journalist-novelist Pete Hamill once wrote that New York’s neighborhoods are a series of interconnected hamlets, one block and it was a different world, but all connecting its residents to the beautiful city fabric. Hamill said developers were sucking the life out of NYC’s neighborhood ecosystem, causing New Yorkers to lose a sense of themselves, as people in control of their own lives. Hamill said the richness of character of growing up in the City’s neighborhoods was determined by some other standard but not the standard that had shaped him and the generations that made New York City a special place. Most of the Council members in City Hall have no idea about the New York City that Journalists Hamill was talking about. 

The same elected officials today who are telling us they are saving the democracy, fail to understand that in order for the government to work they have to serve the needs of the voters, not just 9% who elected them.

Adams is being Forced By NY’s Dysfunctionally Structured Government to Take the Fall for Increasing Crime and Looming Budget Cuts

Today, similar to the 1970s, New Yorkers have no other choice than to watch with certain gallows humor and hopelessness, the deterioration of the City they loved or join the hundreds of thousands leaving it. The special interests have used low voting to control the elections. NYC’s one-party political control, with no recall option, is not democracy. Low voting favoring incumbents has only weakened the public’s ability to influence their government. The progressive socialists have used low voting to elect their radical members. The public not only believes that the City’s government fails to represent them, they think nobody is in control. Charter Changes to empower the public and the neighborhoods, like Mayor Wagner, accomplished with the creation of local Community Boards, have not been attempted by today’s city leaders.  Decentralizing New York City’s government has not even been thought about in decades.

If the crime wave continues, it will block further recovery from COVID, putting the city’s economy into a real danger of falling into a recession. If NYC falls into a recession like during the financial crisis, the shrinking tax base will trigger deep cuts in city programs and the workforce.

NY Times 3/27/22 Federal Covid Cash Kept New York State Afloat. That Could End Soon.  “All I know is that when the federal money runs out, it is highly likely that the state and the city are going to face budget crises of significant proportion,” said Richard Ravitch, the former state official who helped mastermind the rescue of New York City’s finances in the 1970s.

Decentralize City Govt: Replace Community Board with Town Halls and Make the Council Members into District Managers

Council districts should be made identical to Community Board districts and should be renamed into Town Hall districts. The district on the Eastside of Manhattan should be called the Eastside Townhall. Members who vote in the Town Halls would not be appointed like the Community Boards. They would be elected like the political party’s County Committee members, by election districts contained inside each Town Hall. Council members should be required to answer questions every week from members of the Town Hall, similar to way the British Prime minister is cross-examined by the members of Parliament. Town Hall will force Council members to address issues that the community is concerned about, knocking aside ideology and pay-to-play governing that controls the government today. All of the Town Hall meetings should be broadcast live on the internet, allowing every registered voter to vote and comment on major issues facing their neighborhood.

 

City Council Members functioning as Town Hall City Managers would be allowed to hire some staff for the Town Hall, with the advice and consent of its members. The council district offices would be located inside the Town Hall building. Council members’ terms in office would be two years, not four. The mayor would hire the Town Hall technical staff from the different city agencies. Council Members would be given the power to audit city services in their districts. They would be required to issue monthly reports on the state of the Town Hall’s city services, local economy, and the problems facing the district. The City needs a second set of eyes doing audits on city agencies and nonprofit-funded programs and government services, including the schools. NYC Comptrollers always seem to run for higher office, never doing any oversight over the special interests, including the nonprofits that waste millions, while contributing to candidates for public office.  Lobbyists’ clients, city contractors, and developers fund mayoral campaigns, which are also never properly audited. 

DSA Avilés vs All Sides Justin Brannan. If the Current Redistricting Lines Stand, One of Them Will Be Voted Off the Council Island

Under the first draft, only two Council Members will see changes to their districts that can defeat them if their district lines are not changed after public hearings and behind-the-scenes lobbying by candidates and their supporters. Incumbent Council Member Alexa Avilés has the City’s growing progressive socialist political machine on her side. Justin Brannan, who was put into a combined Bay Ridge, Sunset Park District with Avilés to make room for the new Asian district, knows the lobbying game better than most.  According to his friends, Brannan thinks he will get a district he can easily win, once the Commission redraws the lines.

The Commission slightly modified the lines, though there were a handful of notable changes — including the neighborhoods of Brooklyn’s Dyker Heights and a portion of Sunset Park, which are now included in a proposed 43rd Council District, which favors an Asian candidate.  While most incumbents will not lose their seats in the 2023 election because of the redistricting, there is a lot of talk about progressive socialists challenging the party machine candidates and county organizations going after the progressives.  The other candidate facing extinction could be Ari Kagan, who beat the Republican candidate by less than a thousand votes in 2021.  The first draft of the new lines adds thousands of Republicans in the Dyker Heights and the Bay Ridge area, which is now in Kagan’s district. The proposed maps also drew recriminations from the New York Immigration Coalition, which claimed the Commission “failed” in keeping immigrant communities intact. Last year, the NY Court of Appeals threw out the redistricting done by Albany and redrew the Congressional and the State Senate lines, and will soon redraw the Assembly Districts, also declared unconstitutional.

Since the last City Council redistricting, New York City’s population grew from 8.2 million people in 2010 to 8.8 million in 2020. Brooklyn was the most populous borough, with 31% of New York City’s population. There has been a significant increase in the Asian American Pacific Islander population, which now makes up 14.3% of New York City, according to the 2020 Census. The NYC Council Districting Commission is a 15-member panel appointed by Mayor Eric Adams and the City Council majority and minority caucuses. It must draw new lines with roughly 173,000 residents per district. The second round of public hearings was completed this August. Soon the commission will vote on its final plan. As the State and Federal redistricting demonstrated, big changes in the final council lines are possible. So is a court challenge that could throw out the lines, similar to what happened earlier in the state and federal redistricting.

@GaryTilzerTips