[HK-Online] Peter Vallone: Anti-tenant, Anti-neighborhood

[kitchen]

Hell's Kitchen Online                                9/2/01
http://hellskitchen.net "All the News the Times Won't Print"
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IN THIS ISSUE ...

1. Ten Reasons Why Peter Vallone should not be Mayor
2. Vallone: Son of Donald Manes (Jimmy Breslin, Newsday)
3. Will the Peter Principle Snag Peter Vallone? (Lobbia, Voice)

For more on Peter Vallone, see http://www.tenant.net/mvallone.html


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TEN REASONS WHY PETER VALLONE SHOULD NOT BE MAYOR
(get an Acrobat version of this flyer on www.tenant.net)

Peter Vallone’s hallmark is not managerial excellence, but one of 
threatening City Council members to deliver for the landlords, developers 
and others that keep his slush-funds filled.

HERE’S TEN GOOD REASONS TO RETIRE VALLONE!

1. 1994 RENT DECONTROL BILL

Receiving more funds than anyone from the Rent Stabilization Association, 
the City’s largest landlord lobby, Peter Vallone is the one elected 
official most responsible for introducing Vacancy Decontrol. Since 1994, 
tens of thousands of rent stabilized apartments have been removed from 
regulation and  are unaffordable for most New Yorkers. Rents have 
skyrocketed — $3,000 per month is not uncommon — affordable only to those 
making over $100,000. Neighborhood destabilization is common forcing 
middle-income New Yorkers and many small businesses out.

2. THE PETER VALLONE “LEAD POISONING ACT”

In 1999, Vallone’s Lead Paint bill, written by landlord lobbyists and the 
RSA’s Joe Strasburg, weakened protections against lead poisoning of NYC 
children. Vallone operatives “visited” every city council member the night 
before the final vote, hand delivering a “message” from the speaker. 
Community groups later sued and overturned the bill.

3. JOE STRASBURG

Joe Strasburg was Vallone’s Chief of Staff, and now heads the Rent 
Stabilization Association — the City’s largest Landlord Lobby group. The 
RSA funds Vallone and Vallone delivers for landlords and developers, not 
tenants or neighborhoods.

4. VALLONE’S DO-NOTHING CITY COUNCIL Jimmy Breslin in Newsday (Aug. 19):

“The NYC Council holds the North American record for causing public disgust 
... The public voted [2-1] to get rid of the whole council ... The man 
responsible for turning this City Council into a national embarrassment is 
Peter Vallone. As he wears a hairpiece, he does not have to scratch his 
head in amazement at all his failures ... he is so proud of his record of 
experience that he now runs for mayor. If you give him a chance at mayor, 
he could get the whole city thrown out. Vallone was a product of a convict 
and a suicide. He ran the council by paying taxpayers’ money to members who 
would vote his way. Archie Spigner was given something like $15,000 extra 
for being on a housing committee. In the last 10 years he did not put a 
roof over a mouse. There never was a council. There were no close votes 
ever, and no true debating. It was Vallone and his handouts.”

5. PUBLIC FUNDING OF STADIUMS

While other candidates say that funding for new stadiums (for the Yankees, 
Mets & Jets) should not be paid for by the public, Peter Vallone has 
consistently left the door open that taxpayers could be hit with the bill, 
expected to run several billion dollars. Economic studies have shown that 
new stadiums do not help the economy. When we don’t have money for schools 
or housing inspectors, handcuffing city taxpayers to stadiums is mind-boggling.

6. MEDIA ENDORSEMENTS

Vallone’s endorsements by Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post, developer Mort 
Zuckerman’s (Boston Properties) Daily News and Crains New York Business 
come from right-wing fanatics and the real estate industry.

7. PRODIGY OF DONALD MANES & STANLEY FRIEDMAN

Peter Vallone was annointed City Council Speaker in 1986 by Donald Manes, 
then Queens Borough President who committed suicide a few weeks later 
rather than face Federal Racketeering charges and Bronx’s Stanley Friedman 
who went to prison in the largest NYC bribery scandal in a century. Vallone 
had excellent training.

8. PETER VALLONE, JR.

Peter Vallone is not a quiet family man. Like any despot with too much 
power, thuggery appears to be a family trait. His son and law partner, 
Peter Vallone, Jr. is now running to succeed his father’s seat in Astoria 
(although he’s been living in Nassau County). The father uses the police to 
strong-arm citizens at  City Council proceedings. The son, Vallone Jr. 
attacked a man peacefully protesting his father’s policies in the 1998 
gubernatorial race (Newsday, Sept. 7, 1998).

9. THE EIGHTH AVENUE ZONING/JFK AIR TRAIN

In 1998, Peter Vallone helped Mayor Giuliani ram through City Council, over 
strong community objections, a rezoning of Eighth Avenue to allow 
skyscrapers in the low-rise middle-income Clinton neighborhood. The 
neighborhood later sued  and was able to have over 50% of the destructive 
zoning measure overturned. In 1999, Vallone ignored protests from Southeast 
Queens communities and pushed through a plan for an AirTrain from JFK 
Airport to Jamaica — even though it wasn’t an answer to the desired 
one-stop train-to-the-plane.

10. 2001 VALLONE CAMPAIGN CLAIMS

Vallone’s 2001 campaign claims he protects tenants and seniors. He is 
simply lying.

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LEADING THE CITY ASTRAY
by Jimmy Breslin
Newsday, June 30, 1999

Peter Vallone is known here, and for all time, as Son of Manes. He is the 
Speaker of the City Council who cannot speak. He was issued this job by the 
late Donald Manes of Queens and Stanley Friedman of the, Bronx, who 
presided over perhaps the worst scandal of politicians in this city until 
today, when we have one that is far worse.

In the last scandal, Manes unfortunately killed himself, and Friedman went 
to prison. But they were only steeling and extorting money. In this 
scandal, Vallone, the Son of Manes, is putting a bill through the City 
Council that helps landlords and endangers children.

The song turns crazy when you discover that Mayor Rudy Giuliani who chased 
Manes is partner with Vallone, the Son of Manes in this bill. Vallone, the 
Son of Manes, is doing it on behalf of the landlords of buildings in areas 
where the poor live and lead can be found in the walls.

Lead dust smothers a child's brain, and everybody calls him dumb when he 
can't make it in school. Every single solitary doctor I have spoken to says 
the bill is crazy unless you can tell them that somebody is getting paid. 
Then at least the immorality has a financial base.

The landlords group has hired Joe Strasburg, who for years ran Son of 
Manes' business in City Hall. He now runs it from outside city Hall.

It is obvious that for letting landlords put children at risk, Vallone, the 
Son of Manes, will receive financial backing for what he says will be a 
campaign for mayor. Already, Son of Manes was the one saddest candidate for 
governor we ever have had. He wobbled and stuttered and was an embarrassment.

Two thieves got him the job as speaker. He rules the council by handing out 
small money for these fake and fraudulent committee chairmanships. The poor 
fools on these committees show that they can be bought for a cup of coffee.

The lead paint dust problem is one found in neighborhoods such as 
Brownsville, Morissania, Harlem, Bedford-Stuyvesant and East New York. 
There are councilmembers from these areas who are being told by Son of 
Manes to vote for the landlord's bill, that it is all right he personally 
guarantees that the children of the poor will be protected.

Archie Spigner of South Jamaica. whose buildings have the most lead of any 
place in Queens was attempting to tell people why it was good for him to 
vote for the landlords. Decent people should chase him out of Jamaica. His 
game is infamy.

Lead dust isn't some municipal housing word. I have a friend in Canarsie 
who had water come through the ceiling in the kitchen and in one other room 
in his apartment. The ceiling collapsed in two places. He asked what it meant.

A doctor told him that he was in an old building, and the ceilings had lead 
in the paint and that dust from this, if taken in only once by a child, 
could insure that the kids never would be able to do math the rest of their 
lives.

The first thing he did was seal the rooms off with double thick curtains of 
plastic and begin the long, tedious job of washing the lead out of the 
paint by himself. There are no workmen who'll do that kind of job.

He first had to take art done by the children, which he wanted to save 
forever, and throw it out because of the lead dust on the paper. And here, 
as he worked last night, I showed him a copy of this bill by Son of Manes. 
There is supposed to be a lead dust clearance test. Vallone insists there 
is. He must think that all people are cocker spaniels who will flop along 
with anything you tell them.

Under the landlord's bill that he is trying to pass, the landlord is 
supposed to make the test, send it to a lab and then, well then, nobody 
knows what happens. For there are no lead dust clearance standards. So he 
sends the test and whatever the result, it's all right, it is lost out 
there in the stars.

It is a landlord's bill, and since the invention or roofs, money comes 
first with them and let the people drop dead the way they should. Reading 
it last night my friend in Brooklyn asked, "Why does this guy do a thing 
like this? It's an outright lie. "He does it for a landlord's money," I said.

There is bill already in the council that seems designed to protect the 
children. It was introduced by Stanley Michels of Washington Heights more 
than three years ago. Because this Son of Manes rules the council, it never 
came out of committee. This should be the last time Michels comes to work 
with patience.

Vallone never even allowed a hearing on the Michels bill. Everybody sat 
like cocker spaniel, while this Son of Manes stalled and stopped everything 
until the landlord came in with their bill.

Which says you no longer should presume that there it lead based paint in 
apartments built before 1960 and now have children living in them who are 
under the age of 6. Now you can only say this when the city issues a violation.

Obviously, if you have a poisoned child, who is barely going to be able to 
count for the rest of his time, you can not have the basis for a lawsuit or 
this would not be a good law for landlords.

And if any lead dust get into a kid's brain, that simply is the way it is 
in life. Your kid gets a good whiff of it, and he can't do any math. And 
the people supposed to represent him stand up and vote for the landlords 
and against their own children, and the leader is Vallone, who is the Son 
of Manes. That's the way it is when you live in a poor neighborhood where 
the landlords give money to some fake and fraud politician most vile.

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WILL THE PETER PRINCIPLE SNAG PETER VALLONE?
Village Voice, August 15, 2001
by J.A. Lobbia, Research: Taron Flood

It was early morning at the Brooklyn Bridge subway stop near City hall-so 
early the coffee vendors were still stacking their cups, the bagels and 
donuts were in ample supply, and newspapers were piled chest-high on the 
stands. And it was hot, one of the first days of a sweltering spell that 
would grip the city. But Peter Vallone looked crisp in his gray suit, pale 
blue shirt, maroon tie, and black polished wing tips. By 7:30 the 
66-year-old City Council Speaker and mayoral hopeful had already finished 
his daily treadmill-and-yoga workout and attended Mass.

Vallone spent nearly an hour greeting subway riders, whose reactions ranged 
from enthusiasm to disinterest. He shook hands with all takers, gently 
squeezing the shoulders of those who stopped to chat. Vallone was joined by 
Lee Saunders of District Council 37, which represents 125,000 city workers. 
In the four-way race for the Democratic mayoral nomination, the union's 
July 19 endorsement was a major coup, although Vallone won it by only a 
fraction of the vote. Even DC 37 members who are committed to him are 
unsure about their candidate's future.

"I'm voting for him because he stands for most of the issues I stand for," 
says George Echebiri, who works at the city's Department for the Aging. "I 
doubt if he has a chance, but even so, voting makes sense."

The September 11 Democratic primary will probably require a runoff. Public 
Advocate Mark Green has consistently garnered about 30 percent in the 
polls, and his three competitors—Vallone, Comptroller Alan Hevesi, and 
Bronx Borough President Freddie Ferrer—trail with 16, 17, and 18 percent 
respectively. In some ways, Vallone's last-place status is baffling: Why is 
it so hard for a man with a 15-year stint as City Council majority leader, 
a three-decade career as an elected official, and lifelong entrenchment in 
the city's best-oiled political machine to make the step from being the 
city's second most powerful politician to its first?

"Peter Vallone has made the City Council effective, but it's a job that by 
its nature requires compromise and making deals," says pollster Mickey 
Carroll. "It's hard to be dramatic about compromise. It's not the kind of 
thing that you can put your jaw forward, clench your fist, and make a 
poster about, or fashion into a vigorous campaign theme."

A lack of pizzazz is not Vallone's only dilemma. For as often as he is 
called dedicated, compassionate, and politically savvy, he is also regarded 
as bullying, conservative, and short on innovation. "He's very 
old-fashioned, very much out of clubhouse politics, and very provincial," 
says one City Hall source. "He's not a sophisticated man."

Vallone, who professes his faith in political machines because "otherwise, 
it would only be the Michael Bloombergs of the world who could run for 
office," was dealt his most stunning blow when Queens Democratic leader Tom 
Manton backed Queens-based Hevesi instead. Vallone attributes the rebuff to 
his refusal to undo voter-approved term limits. Others say that Manton was 
simply picking a winner. Bereft of the party's blessing and its 
get-out-the-vote operation, Vallone sees himself as an insurgent.

"I like it," Vallone told the Voice. "I love it because nobody can accuse 
me any more of being the pawn of the political leaders, which used to be 
one of the mantras."

But there are other mantras that Vallone can't seem to hush. Despite some 
progressive policies, most notably campaign finance reform and smoking 
bans, Vallone is essentially a traditional outer-borough pol whose 
pragmatism is more highly developed than his ideology. He is regularly 
labeled as a beneficiary and tool of the real estate lobby, and his 1994 
rent law giveaway let landlords deregulate thousands of apartments. Vallone 
can be a frustrating contradiction: an autocrat who badgers council members 
of his own party into "consensus" while failing to fully use his powers to 
consistently challenge a Republican mayor. "I wish he had taken on both 
David Dinkins and Rudy Giuliani more on budget issues and oversight," says 
Chris Meyer of the New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG). "That 
would have strengthened his qualifications for mayor."

Vallone's campaign theme is that he has far more experience than his 
opponents. But in driving home the point, he turns remarks about his larger 
agenda into arcane digressions outlining what he understands about 
government that his competitors do not. In the end, Vallone gives the 
impression that perhaps his long years in government have dulled him, 
leaving him with less vision and too much of a "been there, done that" 
attitude.

"There's an insularity to him and his operation," says one source who has 
worked for years with Vallone on many citywide issues. "For him, there's 
really just this world, this Astoria, and he knows that, and everything 
else that he doesn't want to know, he just doesn't deal with. He doesn't 
have a lawyer's perspective of seeing the other side."

In fact, Vallone is a lawyer, practicing for years from an Astoria office. 
His life is marked by routine—church in the morning, dinner at home every 
evening—that he says keeps him "rooted." He attended a Catholic high school 
and went to Fordham for law. Like his politically active parents—his father 
was a judge and his mother a district leader—Vallone came up through the 
Queens Democratic organization, and in 1974 was elected to the City 
Council. In 1986, with the city on the brink of a bid-rigging scandal that 
would end with the suicide of the Queens Borough President and the 
conviction of several politicians, party leaders scrambled to install a 
friend at the council's helm. They chose Vallone. But while he was immersed 
in the machine, Vallone appears not to have taken to its venality. That may 
have been his appeal.

"The leaders wanted someone who would let them do what they wanted but who 
wouldn't demand a piece of it," says one political reporter. "If you 
offered Peter a bribe, he'd probably deck you."

Council members elected Vallone leader by one vote. Once in power, he 
undertook what he calls "the core of my life—to change government," 
particularly the Board of Estimate and Apportionment, which was ruled 
unconstitutional and disbanded in 1989. The council was given power over 
budget and land-use issues. Vallone used it to advocate for homeless 
shelters that offered treatment and to rewrite campaign finance laws.

"The council has passed some meaningful legislation, and Peter Vallone 
deserves genuine credit for it," says Gene Russianoff of the NYPIRG. "On 
some issues, like youth and tobacco, police misconduct, and campaign 
finance reform, his position is identical to progressive Democrats. And his 
hallmark is that he hires good staffers. It's a big mistake for 
progressives to paint Vallone as if he's an arch conservative. He's more 
complicated than that, more like the John McCain of New York."

Vallone himself quips he's "been the most progressive Speaker in the 
history of the city"—a joke for those who understand that he's been the 
only one to fill the job since it was created in 1989.

Progressives who have worked under Vallone find his leadership style less 
amusing. Sal Albanese, who represented Bay Ridge until 1997, lost his chair 
of the council's Youth Services Committee in 1991 when he bucked Vallone's 
plan to hire more cops. Ronnie Eldridge, who represents the Upper West 
Side, lost her chair of the Contracts Committee in 1994 for voting against 
Vallone's budget.

"It's all so ludicrous," says Eldridge. "He decides alone, he appoints 
chairs, he assigns the majority of members to committees, decides who's on 
the steering committee, what the stipends are" for committee chairs. 
Vallone also uses money that council members get to dole out in their 
district—a base of $80,000—as part of what he calls his "carrot-and-stick 
approach." Those who support Vallone can get even more.

Vallone insists that members are free to vote without consequence on 
anything but the budget."No one is ever punished," Vallone says. "They're 
just not rewarded." He also controls the fate of bills. For instance, 
Eldridge has for years sponsored a bill to stem the loss of single-room 
occupancy hotels, but it has idled in committee. "Any bill that's just 
sitting around means there's no consensus for it," says Vallone—even though 
Eldridge's bill has the backing of a dozen council members. Also stymied 
was a lead-paint bill from Manhattan's Stan Michels, cosponsored by 33 of 
51 members.

Indeed, the lead-paint battle of 1999, when the council was under court 
order to rewrite the lead laws, was one of Vallone's most brutal loyalty 
tests. Michels, who chairs the Environmental Protection Committee, proposed 
a bill to strengthen the law. That peeved landlords, who had long 
complained that the existing law was cumbersome and that litigation from 
lead-poisoned children was bankrupting them.

For days, Vallone's staff met with landlord lobbyists, including Joe 
Strasburg, who in 1994 left his post as Vallone's chief of staff to head 
the city's largest landlord group. Together, they wrote another bill that 
greatly reduced landlord liability and proposed loose clean-up standards. 
Vallone sent that bill to the Housing and Buildings Committee, chaired by 
loyalist Archie Spigner. Vallone staffers made it clear to council members 
that the vote would be considered a "leadership issue." In the end, Vallone 
wrangled a "consensus" of 36 votes on a bill that critics, including the 
federal Environmental Protection Agency, say is detrimental to children's 
health and severely limits the ability of families of poisoned children to 
sue landlords.

Today, Vallone refers to the issue as "a completely misunderstood 
situation." He blames trial lawyers, who were "making a huge amount of 
money on lead-paint cases," and asks, "Who says [the new law is] not 
better? Hey, it's harder to sue," he says, his tone changing from 
explanation to contempt. "Well, you know, that's tough. That's really 
tough. Prove your case."

Matthew Chachère, an attorney who represents health groups that have sued 
the city over lead-paint laws, rebuts, "We're not talking about lawyers 
getting rich; we're talking about kids who are getting poisoned, and he's 
saying, 'Too bad.' Of course lawyers make money; that's not the point. The 
point is that if kids get poisoned because a landlord has an unsafe lead 
situation, they should have remedies."

At the root of the lead bill is perhaps Vallone's biggest liability, his 
allegiance to the real estate industry. In October 1999, Steve Spinola of 
the Real Estate Board of New York made an unprecedented plea for 
contributions to Vallone's campaign, calling the Speaker "a friend of the 
industry." When, by this spring, no clear winner emerged, the industry 
instead backed all the candidates equally. But Vallone's argument that 
"they gave me the same amount of money as everyone else" is specious, since 
throughout his career landlords and developers have been major 
contributors. In fact, Vallone's biggest campaign fundraisers are Spinola 
and Strasburg.

Vallone's most troubling landlord gift came in 1994, when he made permanent 
what had been two temporary state provisions. The first deregulated 
rent-stabilized "luxury" apartments occupied by tenants who earned more 
than $250,000 for two consecutive years and paid rent of $2000. The second 
allowed landlords to deregulate vacant apartments if they spent enough on 
improvements to bring the rent over $2000 a month.

"Those laws have been abysmal in terms of destruction of neighborhoods, 
especially the vacancy decontrol" says Kenny Schaeffer of the Metropolitan 
Council on Housing. "It just gave landlords a bigger profit and drives the 
middle class out."

Vallone spokesman Mattis Goldman says the luxury decontrol law followed 
news stories about celebrities, including Mia Farrow and Carly Simon, whose 
rent was well below their means and the market rate. "There was a real fear 
that these cases would ruin rent regulation for everyone, so the council 
acted to take steps to end most egregious cases." Vallone himself invokes 
rent issues "as an example of the kinds of things I'm criticized for, but 
if you're in government, you must work towards a consensus to preserve the 
best, and you must make compromises that are not unconscionable. That's the 
principle of how I try to govern."

Vallone has an Affordable Housing Trust Fund plan that would use revenue 
from the sale of the World Trade Center—a scheme that his opponents mimic. 
But Vallone's use of affordable housing as a campaign plank can't disguise 
his role in eroding the existing affordable stock.

Vallone is banking on support from middle-class voters concerned about 
expensive housing and inferior schools. He's made a play to poorer parents 
with a plan to cover health care premiums for children. And he is counting 
on support from an old reliable core, seniors. Central also are Giuliani 
Democrats—white, outer-borough voters who liked the mayor's crime policies 
and conservatism. While Vallone says he wants to continue many of 
Giuliani's "gains," he's quick to say, "I really do think, contrary to this 
administration, that if money is your problem, you save money if we treat 
people with compassion."

Can Vallone win? He harks back to his 1998 gubernatorial run against 
incumbent George Pataki. That race, too, turned this ultimate insider into 
an outcast in upstate counties, where the city and its politicians are loathed.

"What people don't know is that in spite of the fact that Pataki spent 40 
million bucks and I spent 7 million, I still carried the city better than 
2-1 against this guy. . . . I think that's a fairly good analysis of why I 
believe I'm going to win this Democratic primary. Unfortunately, after that 
I won't be facing Governor Pataki and $40 million in the state of New 
York," he chuckles. "I'll be facing Mike Bloomberg and $100 million in the 
city of New York."