EDITORIAL

EDITORIAL
The City Council Rent Law Renewal

The recent City Council vote on the continuation of rent control and rent stabilization was the result of a process that was complex. It is difficult to relate what happened without resorting to spin. But it is worth trying, and with a minimum of detail, this is what happened.

The rent laws were renewed, and the Mayor signed the renewal on March 31 after a brief hearing and a credit-mongering ceremony. The City Council vote was 47-3. It appears to be a resounding victory until one takes note of a few realities:

The renewal of the laws also renewed the 1994 decontrol amendments passed by the City Council, high-rent vacancy decontrol and high-income decontrol.
The tenant movement, opposed to any kind of decontrol, attempted to get the Council to renew the laws and repeal the 1994 decontrol provisions, but failed in this goal. Its bill, Intro 930, spearheaded by Councilmembers Stanley Michels and C. Virginia Fields and sponsored by many others, was scuttled under pressure by Council Speaker Peter Vallone.
Despite this failure, Speaker Vallone was forced to amend his decontrol language, to clarify that only vacant apartments legally renting for $2,000 a month to the prior tenant could be decontrolled.
The 17 Councilmembers who voted against decontrol provisions in 1994, plus five others who were absent or not in the Council in 1994, voted for decontrol this time, joining the members that voted anti-tenant in 1994. Of course they voted for it, so the excuse goes, because it was attached to the renewal bill which they had to vote for in order to protect tenants.

This is negative stuff. The Council basically continued the bad decontrol in order to get the good renewal, and Councilmembers up for re-election this fall can be expected to declare the virtue of their act. But now the focus moves into the venue of the state Legislature, where the question is not only whether there will be some kind of decontrol, but whether the laws will be renewed at all.

Gov. George Pataki and the Republicans demand that rent regulations either end immediately or be phased out in two years through decontrol, and they have not backed away from this position since they declared it last December. Pataki should not be seen by any tenant as an unbiased mediator of the "fair thing to do." He is his party’s leader and the decisionmaker for public policy. It’s time for tenants to wake up and target Pataki.