Hell's Kitchen: Charter Revision News 10/17/99

[kitchen]

Hell's Kitchen Online         Charter Revision News 10/17/99
http://hellskitchen.net "All the News the Times Won't Print"
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What's all the fuss?, see "Smarter Charter?"  http://www.RetireRudy.com/charter
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Even though this is not a big election year, we urge you to go to 
the polls and vote 'NO' on the Charter Revision proposal.

In this issue...

1. Where are Hell's Kitchen Elected Officials on the Mayor's 
   Charter Proposals. Are they being quiet?

2. Council quiet on charter referendum... (Crains)

3. Vote Looms, but Debate on Altering Charter Falls (NYT)

4. 'NO' on Charter Revision (NY Post Op-Ed)

5. By All Means, Revise The Charter (NY Post Editorial)
   
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WHERE ARE CLINTON/HELL'S KITCHEN ELECTED REPS ON RUDY'S
CHARTER REVISION PROPOSALS?

Some days we get too much information from our politicians. But 
unless we missed it, we haven't seen any of the six elected officials
that represent Clinton/Hell's Kitchen make any recent statement 
on the Mayor's proposed Charter amendments. Yes, we know some 
did appear and testify (in opposition) at the public hearings 
held in August, but as election day draws closer, we haven't 
seen them on the streets or even discussing the issue. Yes, 
this stuff is boring, but it's important.

So you might want to call your elected official and ask them
what they are doing on the Charter Revision Proposal -- not
what their position is -- what are they doing?

City Council Member CHRISTINE QUINN (55th St. and south)
tel: 768-4344
fax: 768-4380
quinn@council.nyc.ny.us

City Council Member RONNIE ELDRIDGE (55th St. and north)
tel: 765-4339
Fax: 765-4805
eldridge@council.nyc.ny.us

State Senator TOM DUANE
tel: 414-0200
fax: 414-2156
duane@senate.state.ny.us

State Senator ERIC SCHNEIDERMAN
tel: 397-5913
fax: 397-3201
schneiderman@senate.state.ny.us

State Assembly Member SCOTT STRINGER
tel: 873-6368
fax: 873-6520
strings@assembly.state.ny.us 

State Assembly Member RICHARD GOTTFRIED
tel: 312-1492 or 807-7900
fax: 243-2035
gottfrr@assembly.state.ny.us 

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COUNCIL QUIET ON CHARTER REFERENDUM...
Crains Insider (October 18)

Although Mayor Giuliani's proposed city Charter amendments would sharply curtail the power of the
City Council , council leaders have yet to come up with a strategy for opposing the referendum.
``That's up in the air right now,'' concedes a spokesman for Speaker Vallone.

Last week, the council passed a bill requiring trigger locks on guns, one of the charter
proposals, in an effort to show that the mayor's proposals can be enacted through legislation.
``This shows why charter change is unnecessary,'' says a Vallone spokeswoman. Mr. Vallone has also
scheduled a hearing on the referendum Wednesday, Oct. 20.

However, it is unclear whether Mr. Vallone will use the council's political committee to drum up
an anti-referendum vote. The charter referendum would limit the ability of the council to increase
spending and make it more difficult to override a mayoral veto of tax increases.

...while Mastro ponders mass mailing

Meanwhile, the mayor's Charter Revision Commission is planning a mass mailing to ``educate''
voters about the charter amendments that will be on the November ballot. Commission officials say
the mailing comes under the panel's public service responsibilities and will not urge passage of
the controversial amendments.

``It's allowed to educate, not advocate,'' says a spokeswoman for the panel. ``The (city's)
corporation counsel has been consulted.'' The size of the mailing is unclear. The commission has
obtained a computer tape with the addresses of all registered city voters, but commission chairman
Randy Mastro says the mailing is unlikely to be that extensive.

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VOTE LOOMS, BUT DEBATE ON ALTERING CHARTER FALLS
New York Times, October 13, 1999
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

When Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani announced the creation of a Charter Revision Commission in June, he
did not deny that a primary motivation was to block one of his principal tormentors, Mark Green,
the Public Advocate, from succeeding him as Mayor.

But now that Green's future is no longer part of the 14 proposals that the commission will put
before voters on Nov. 2, Giuliani, with less than three weeks to go before the election, has been
largely silent on a subject he once described as vital to the city's future.

Although Randy M. Mastro, the commission's chairman and a former Deputy Mayor under Giuliani, said
this week that the Mayor "has done everything that I would have hoped he would do up to this
point," aides at City Hall said they could not remember the last time the Mayor had spoken out in
support of the commission's work. In September, shortly after the commission decided to drop a
proposal that could have hindered Green's mayoral ambitions, Giuliani's responses to reporters
about the committee's work grew tepid.

When Sunny Mindel, the Mayor's spokeswoman, was asked on Tuesday about the Mayor's support of the
commission's proposals, she said she would have to find out and call back. She never did. Mastro
did say that the Mayor has submitted a statement in support of the commission's work in the New
York City Voter Guide, a nonpartisan publication to be mailed out next week.

"Perhaps he's keeping his distance because he sees what a stinker it is," Green said on Tuesday of
the charter initiative. But Green, whose staff spent the summer heckling the commission during a
series of public hearings, has himself retreated, literally from the front row, now that the
proposals no longer directly affect his political future.

Nonetheless, Green and Mastro both said they could not attribute the relative quiet on the charter
changes to the absence of a brawl between two major political personalities who have been in
near-constant conflict with each other for the last five years. Instead, both said it was because
voters in a minor election year with only a handful of races at stake are almost entirely
uninterested in the issue.

"It's not that it's too close to call," Green said. "It's too obscure to call."

Gene Russianoff, the senior lawyer for the New York Public Interest Research Group, a civic
advocacy organization, said this: "It's charter revision. You know what I mean? It's like 11
people care about it."

In fact, Russianoff and a number of critics have cared enough to say vociferously that changing
the city's basic governing document is a bad idea in a year when the expected voter turnout will
be 5 to 10 percent.

Although some of the commission's proposals, such as banning guns within 1,000 feet of schools,
are clearly popular, critics also say that Giuliani has rushed the initiative through in a
high-handed, politicized and undemocratic way.

Other proposals, like a cap on budget increases, are seen by opponents as efforts to restrict the
City Council's powers in favor of the Mayor. Critics are also displeased that voters will have to
approve or reject the entire initiative instead of individual proposals.

Both Green and Mastro made promises of increased activity from each of their sides closer to the
election. Mastro said there would be "some public education campaign," although he also said he
had not decided what form it might take.

Green said that his side would pass out leaflets in the week before the campaign. But neither
talked about the kind of television advertising wars that some opponents of the charter revision
had predicted in the summer.

Green's side consists of a coalition of labor groups, who are positioning to oppose Giuliani in
his presumed Senate campaign, as well as Vote No on Charter Inc., an advocacy group led by Richard
Schrader, who went on leave as Green's chief of public affairs to campaign against the changes.

Under the original proposals, the commission would have required a special election within 60 days
if the Mayor leaves office early, as is possible if Giuliani runs for the United States Senate in
2000 and is elected with a year left in his term as Mayor. Under the Charter's current provisions,
the Public Advocate automatically finishes the term of any Mayor who leaves office early.

The special election proposal was immediately attacked by critics who said Giuliani was engaging
in a political vendetta against Green, who by the nature of his job and his personality has gnawed
at the Mayor since both men took office in 1994. Mastro retreated under the assaults on the
proposal, and last month announced that the commission would delay the special election provision
until 2002, when both Green and Giuliani are out of office.

The City Council has also opposed the changes as cynical and an assault on democracy, and plans
hearings next week to urge voters to reject the charter revision.

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'NO' ON CHARTER REVISION 
New York Post, October 16, 1999
By MARK GREEN 

WHEN the Mastro charter commission earlier this month abandoned under public pressure its original
proposal to alter the rules of mayoral succession mid-term, many people thought the
charter-referendum controversy was over.

Wrong. The commission's 14-point referendum will be on the ballot this November. It should be
rejected as both a mayoral power grab and a grab-bag of unrelated ideas that are wrong,
meaningless or better enacted by legislation.

Over 90 elected officials, civic groups and unions - including Citizens Union and NYPIRG; the
Central Labor Council; State Comptroller Carl McCall; Reps. Charles Rangel, Jose Serrano and
Carolyn Maloney; City Council Speaker Peter Vallonek and Borough Presidents Fernando Ferrer and
Virginia Fields - have urged voters to vote no on the Charter Referendum, for four reasons:

1) One "take-it-or-leave-it" charter referendum in a low-turnout election is undemocratic. Lumping
all 14 proposals into one referendum holds uncontroversial items on guns and human rights hostage
to bad proposals on budget and succession. We vote separately for governor, senator, attorney
general and representative - not on one all-or-nothing slate. And it's inconsistent for a mayor
who says that 5- to 10-percent turnouts of eligible voters in local school-board elections are a
joke to then intentionally propose changing the city's governing document in a 5- to 10-percent
turnout year.

2) It's a mayoral power grab bypassing the City Council. A constitution or charter should be
largely concerned with the structure of government, not used to push specific legislative ideas,
good or bad. It's a radical and wrong shift of power for an annual summer commission of mayoral
supporters to effectively replace our elected legislative branch of government.

Many of the commission's proposals could and should be enacted by the City Council. For example,
the council passed legislation this week that would accomplish the commission's goal of increasing
the safety of our children by requiring trigger locks on all firearms. Similarly, the council
could create an Organized Crime Control Commission to coordinate the city's efforts at reducing
the influence of organized crime in legitimate industries.

Because the legislative process is deliberative and allows for consensus building and compromise,
several of the commission's more complicated proposals - such as merging the Health and Mental
Health departments - are better left to the give and take of a legislative process rather than to
a charter commission hearing three-minute pro or con monologues.

3. If succession ain't broke, don't fix it. The referendum would, starting in 2002, replace the
168-year precedent of a stable mayoral succession followed by an election the next November with a
costly, chaotic, low-turnout, special election. But having two mayoral elections within six months
risks having four mayors in one year. There's a reason we have a tradition in this country -
special elections for any of the hundreds of legislative offices that might become vacant but
next-in-line succession for the one chief executive office of president, governor or New York City
mayor. If our municipal system of automatic succession is so deficient, why hasn't Mr. Mastro
called it undemocratic for the vice president to succeed the president or the lieutenant-governor
the governor?

Also, the requirement of a special nonpartisan mayoral election within 60 days of a vacancy a)
helps Republicans who'd prefer to run without party labels in a city that is 4-1 Democratic, and
b) may violate the Voting Rights Act banning election-law changes that hurt minority prospects.
Per-capita African-American and Latino turnout is lower in special and off-year elections (like
1999), and it's harder for a minority candidate to win a non-partisan special election than to win
a regular Democratic primary and a general election with a united party behind the nominee.

4. A Tainted Process = A Tainted Result. While mayors appointed charter commissions every 22 years
on average this century, Mayor Giuliani has had two in two summers. Mayor Koch appointed a
distinguished, diverse charter panel in 1988 (half of whose members came recommended by other
officials), which held 31 hearings over two years. Mayor Giuliani, on the contrary, appointed 15
allies, 10 of whom had contributed to his campaigns. This hand-picked panel then held just six
hearings in the vacation month of August and hurriedly whittled 40 ideas down into 14. Voters
shouldn't reward such a flawed process with their votes.

The few good ideas in the charter referendum are an attempt to sweeten a lemon. But you don't buy
an Edsel because it has the best radial tires. Voting 'No' on the charter is a way of telling the
mayor to work for the best interests of our city by negotiating with the legislative branch, not
circumventing it. 
--- 
Mark Green is the New York City public advocate.

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BY ALL MEANS, REVISE THE CHARTER 
NY Post Editorial, October 14, 1999

In less than three weeks, New York voters will accept or reject changes to the City Charter - the
document that can best be described as Gotham's constitution.

Heretofore, most discussion of charter revision centered on a plan to alter the mayoral succession
- a notion that never made the final cut. Now it's time to look at what actually is on the ballot
proposal.

There's a whole lot to like.

Specifically, the revision commission has recommended making permanent a number of fiscal reforms
adopted early on by the Giuliani administration.

First of all, year-to-year increases in city spending would have to be limited to the actual
inflation rate, unless both the mayor and the City Council formally declare - and justify - a
fiscal "emergency." Among other things, this would make it virtually impossible for politicians to
negotiatelarger-than-inflation wage hikes with the municipal unions.

Second, all tax increases would need a two-thirds vote in the council - and if the lawmakers
sought to override a mayoral veto of a tax hike, they would need a four-fifths vote to carry the
day.

And at least one-half of any future budget surpluses would be placed in a rainy-day fund - and, if
not used by the end of the fiscal year, used to pay down the municipal debt.

There are other, duller good-government elements in the charter-revision package. But right now,
it's enough to note that the fiscal safeguards written into the proposed charter revisions would
go a long way toward preserving the budget stability achieved by the Giuliani administration.

For that reason alone, all thinking New Yorkers should vote "YES" on Nov. 2.

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Charter Revision News is not associated with the Public Advocate, 
or any other organization, person or political party. See more 
information on "Smarter Charter?"  http://www.RetireRudy.com/charter
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