DMI Blog

New York City's New Schools Chancellor

2010-11-30T17:14:15Z

The day after securing a waiver from the state that would allow her to become New York City's next schools chancellor, Cathie Black posed for the cameras outside of P.S. 109 in the Bronx.

"The mayor has said right from the beginning, in our first conversation, 'What I need is a very experienced manager who is used to complex organizations, who is a decision maker and is a very good people person.' And he chose me."

I have to wonder how well Black will be able to relate to the parents of New York City school children, especially those from low-income communities. Here is a woman that owns a $4 million beach home in the Hamptons, on top of her Upper East Side penthouse and her recently sold $1.9 million Connecticut home. Will she really be able to understand the pressures and challenges that face these communities?

Ms. Black grew up sheltered and privileged, in a middle-class Irish enclave of Chicago at midcentury, attending Catholic schools and riding horses at a country club where blacks and Jews were excluded.

We will see.

Economic Might Makes Right? NY City Council's Moral Choice

2010-11-24T18:34:16Z

When explaining her reasons for killing paid sick leave legislation earlier this year, New York City Council Speaker said that the economic costs associated with the bill would be too great. The bill's opponents--including Mayor Bloomberg--agreed that guaranteeing every worker the right to earn paid sick leave was the right thing to do, but the bill ultimately lived or died by its perceived economic impact.

The city's leading big-business lobbyists estimated how much the bill would cost businesses based on the results of an opinion survey of business owners. The report failed to clearly explain how it calculated these costs and kept all of its supporting evidence secret. No matter. The survey and its dubious findings were embraced by Quinn--after all, she was the one who suggested that the survey be carried out in the first place.

Proponents of the bill, myself included, also debated the bill's economic merits. I authored a report that examined the economic impact of a similar bill in San Francisco and found that it had absolutely no observable impact on the growth of jobs or businesses there. San Francisco's economy was doing just fine after adopting paid sick leave, despite the recession, and there was no reason to believe that New York's economy would be harmed by paid sick leave when San Francisco's had not. Paid sick leave was good economic policy.

But with all this emphasis on economics, something terribly important was lost during this debate: is it fair to deny over one million working New Yorkers the right to take off of work to recover from illness? Is it morally right that children must be sent to school when they're sick because a parent cannot afford to take the day off from work?

No, it is not right, and it is not something that a society rooted in the principles of equality and justice should tolerate. Not only is it acceptable for elected officials to consider the moral implications of their decisions, it is absolutely essential. In the case of paid sick leave, it turned out that the policy was good for New York both in terms of economics and justice, even though it was eventually defeated because of supposed, but unproven, economic harm.

The same can be said of two other bills working their way through the City Council: the Fair Wages for New Yorkers Act and the Prevailing Wage bill. These bills would undo an economic injustice: city-subsidized jobs that pay poverty-level wages.

The fastest-growing jobs in New York are low-paying jobs in retail and home health care. As higher-paying manufacturing jobs left New York--squeezed out by real estate pressures--they've largely been replaced with jobs with low pay and no benefits.

The reality is that one-in-three adult working New Yorkers makes less than $24,000 a year. Families must worry where their next meal is coming from, whether they will be able to make rent, and skip basic necessities.

When we're talking about city-subsidized developments, like retail malls that get city tax breaks, the injustice of poverty-level wages is even more pronounced. A meeting of the city's faith leaders last week highlighted the moral imperative.

"If developers and the rich benefit from our tax dollars, they should pay a wage that allows people to live with dignity, be able to feed their family and provide a safe, clean place to live," said Rev. Jesse T. Williams of the Convent Avenue Baptist Church in Harlem. "It is a fundamental issue of social justice."

So the city's elected officials, when considering whether to support these bills, should ask themselves: is it right to give developers tens of millions in city tax breaks only to create poverty-level jobs? Is it fair?

Call me an idealist if you must, but our whole democratic system is the result of centuries of progress in which fairness and justice were advanced in the face of opposition from those with wealth and power. In New York City, where developers wield a tremendous amount of power, we will see whether progress prevails.

Climate Deniers Take Congress, but Mayors May Save the World

2010-11-23T13:56:05Z

The prospects for national climate change legislation look grim indeed. According to a tally maintained by ThinkProgress, 76 percent of Republicans who will be in the U.S. Senate next year and 52 percent of those in the House have publicly expressed doubts about the scientific consensus on global warming. This climate change denial has been enforced at the ballot box, reports the New York Times, noting that for acknowledging the preponderance of scientific evidence that human beings are contributing to a warming planet, Rep. Bob Inglis was not only voted out of office, but denounced as having “gone to Satan's side on climate change.”

The good news? We’ve still got the cities. And not just the American ones.

On November 21st, 135 mayors, representing cities from Istanbul to Johannesburg, Barcelona, and Jakarta signed on to The Mexico City Pact, an agreement designed to encourage municipal action and create a global registry holding cities accountable for their efforts against climate change. American signatories included Los Angeles, Des Moines, and San Francisco as well as smaller municipalities. (Note to Mayor Bloomberg: it’s not too late to sign on)

While far from a substitute for national and internationally binding action, city commitments can both make a concrete difference reducing greenhouse gas emissions in their own right and spur national governments to take action, as the World Mayors’ Summit on Climate, held in advance of the Cancun climate talks, hopes to do.

“Cities play a strategic role in the fight against climate change,” the Mexico City Pact notes “because they are centers of economic, political and cultural innovation, host to half of the world population, and manage vast public resources, infrastructure, investments and expertise.”

Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Erbrard, who hosted the World Mayor’s Summit on Climate, elaborates:

Cities have great capacities to address climate change, even in the absence of a binding global treaty among nations. We manage public buildings and lands. We operate water and electric utilities and solid waste facilities. We establish building codes and zoning regulations. We run public transportation systems. If we can make all of these services more energy efficient or cleaner, we can have a significant impact on reducing harmful emissions.
With more than half the world's population today living in cities for the first time in human history, mayors and urban leaders are on the frontline of the planet's fight against a changing climate. At the World Mayors Summit on Climate, we took action. Now we want national governments to summon the political will to do the same.

Under the Microscope: One County’s $3 Million Dollar Immigration Experiment

2010-11-19T18:07:33Z

“The Hispanic businesses and malls are empty. You used to see 100 people at the shopping center, and after the resolution, you'd see five. You noticed the difference."

This quote describes the fallout from Prince William County’s polarizing local immigration law which was passed in 2007 and modified in 2008. A three-year, $385,000 University of Virginia study of the policy released this week found that it drove out a significant number of immigrants—both legal and undocumented.

Under the original policy, local police were directed to check the immigration status of any individual they had probable cause to believe was in the country without authorization. After much controversy, Prince William limited the measure in 2008 to require police officers to check the immigration status of all arrestees.

Clearly, Prince William’s immigration actions cost the county the contributions of thousands of immigrant taxpayers, workers and consumers. From 2006 to 2008, Prince William’s non-citizen Hispanic population dropped by 22 percent, or by 7,700 people. During the same period, the undocumented population decreased by an estimated 3,000 to 6,000 people.

Immigration hawks are quick to separate legal from undocumented immigrants; we’re told harsh laws aren’t anti-immigrant because they only target undocumented immigrants. The UVA study shows us that this is a naïve assumption. Too often, restrictive immigration enforcement and the corresponding policy debates also impact legal immigrants and the broader Hispanic community.

From 2000 to 2006, Prince William County charted rapid Hispanic growth rates, higher than any other area in the DC metropolitan region. Between 2006 and 2009—after the policy was enacted—Prince William’s Hispanic population grew by only 3.6 percent, while the metro area Hispanic population increased by 18.8 percent. The study warns readers that Prince William’s declining construction industry combined with the broader economic downturn in part influenced these population shifts. So it is notable that these figures reveal population shifts within an entire metropolitan region affected by the recession.

]]>Whether UVA’s findings are indicators of the policy’s success or troubling evidence of collateral damage depends on who you ask. For county supervisors, driving out legal immigrants and Hispanics was never a goal of the measure, but an “unintended consequence.” For others, this was a victory. From the report:

Some actors in the drama of the resolution’s passage had quite different goals. Some in the community who advocated the policy made clear…that they were hoping to “take back the County” by reversing the tide of rapid in-migration of Hispanics to Prince William County.

Immigration restrictionists also counted this as a win for “attrition through enforcement,” a strategy that calls for crafting harsh laws to make life so untenable for undocumented immigrants they choose to leave—an approach best described as “a product of delusion and cruelty.”

What about crime? After narrowing the policy’s focus to post-arrest status checks, county supervisors more explicitly aimed to improve public safety. According to the study, local immigration enforcement had no effect on “most types of serious and minor crime,” largely because undocumented immigrants commit a relatively small number of serious crimes. The study did, however, find a significant drop in aggravated assaults. In addition to reduced offenses, this decrease was attributed to reduced victimizations of undocumented immigrants as well as reduced crime reporting among them. Nor did these effects last very long.

Predictably, a recent Fox and Friends segment reduced the 300-plus page report’s meticulous and carefully qualified findings to one inaccurate headline: “Under Immigration Policy, Crime Drops.” This is despite the fact that one co-author said he had “no indication that the enforcement of the policy led to a reduction in crime.”

Should other localities follow Prince William’s approach to immigration enforcement? The authors conclude that their results should be only applied to other jurisdictions with “great caution.” They explain that the economic downturn combined with the “acrimonious and fear-inspiring” public discussion surrounding the policy may have had a lot to do with its’ effects. Moreover, these less-than-stellar results cost Prince William almost $3 million to implement. One author of the study advises would-be copycats: “This not a free policy…Don’t try this if you don’t want to spend some money.”

Nonetheless, a majority of county supervisors this week approved a policy statement saying that the county had implemented an “effective” immigration policy that should be used across the Commonwealth. Perhaps these supervisors didn’t read the entire report. UVA’s impressive and well-balanced study is a cautionary tale for localities looking to take immigration enforcement into their own hands.

Bloomberg's Job Killing Budget Cuts

2010-11-18T20:22:29Z

It's the city's ninth round of budget cuts in three fiscal years, and the most brutal. Mayor Bloomberg calls for 6,201 layoffs of public workers in the 2011 and 2012 fiscal years. Instead of responding at our firehouses, serving our frail elderly, and helping job-seekers perfect their resumes on the library computer, former New York City employees will instead crowd the unemployment lines - where, given the fact that there is just one job opening for every five Americans looking for work, they are likely to remain for some time. But this understates the impact on New York's economy.

When we lay off public workers, we not only lose the services they provided to New Yorkers but also their spending power as city residents. As a result, laying off 6,200 New York City workers means destroying an additional 1,860 private sector jobs. The last thing New York needs is another 8,000+ jobless.

Think about it: the administrative worker in the city finance department who used to support her family on $45,000 a year now qualifies for a maximum $405 a week in unemployment benefits. She'll buy cheaper groceries, cancel the cable, pull the kid out of ballet lessons, and put off the next shoe purchase, for starters. Suddenly the neighborhood grocery store, shoe shop and ballet studio have lost revenue: multiply that and they'll quickly be ready for more layoffs of their own. Small businesses already on the edge may close up shop completely. In the meantime, New York taxpayers pick up the tab for her unemployment benefits as our former city worker searches in vain for a new job. It's a bad deal all around.

Worse still, destroying 8,000 jobs in New York City is completely unnecessary. Economists find that progressive tax increases on higher income households do far less economic harm than spending cuts and layoffs. As the Fiscal Policy Institute has pointed out, New York City could raise $1 billion by raising personal income taxes on residents making more than $250,000 a year while still reducing taxes for lower-income households. Studies at the national and state level find that wealthy taxpayers do not flee tax increases in significant numbers. Yet Mayor Bloomberg has categorically ruled out such an increase, arguing that killing jobs and decimating city services is preferable.

DC37, a public employees' union with a big stake in avoiding city job cuts, has identified still more sources of new revenue. The city could more seriously enforce its existing tax laws on billboards and cell phone antennas, for example, and could crack down on inappropriate property tax exemptions, making certain that when non-profits sell land to for-profit companies, property taxes are once again levied on those previously exempt parcels. Yet there's no sign that these common sense proposals are on the table either.

New York’s Lousy Jobs (And What Public Policy Can Do to Make Them Better)

2010-11-15T16:36:09Z

Should we tear down the city’s middle class? Or work to turn lousy jobs into good ones? That’s the policy choice facing New York’s city and state leaders. So far, their decisions aren’t encouraging: for years New York has failed to use its economic development programs to promote the creation of good, family-supporting jobs. Now it is welcoming WalMart’s industry-decimating low-wages with open arms. The state has so far failed to take a stand against $1 billion a year in wages stolen from New York’s lowest-income workers, but instead is spoiling for a fight of a very different sort: vowing to scale back the pay and retirement security of middle-class teachers, transportation workers, and other public employees.

The result? A disappearing middle class amidst the proliferation of lousy, low-wage jobs. It doesn’t have to be this way.

For the time being, New York City is getting more lousy jobs. We are gaining retail and restaurant jobs -- positions that often lack benefits and fail to pay a living wage – while losing middle-class jobs in the public sector and manufacturing. To make matters worse, education and health care – among the few bright spots in New York City’s recovery over the past year (as well as the state’s job growth over the past decade) -- are the very areas Governor-elect Cuomo has vowed to cut.

]]>As a result, the disappearance of New York’s middle class is likely to accelerate. We may continue to be home to more millionaires but we’re also apt to see more people with jobs showing up at food pantries because they’re not earning enough to feed their families.

None of this is inevitable. The economic trends impacting New York today were heavily shaped by past public policy decisions at the federal, state, and local level. Meanwhile the choices made by our political leaders today could redirect (or intensify) the way the city’s economy develops. What will New York stand for?

If we’re stung by the loss of good jobs, one reaction is to turn our resentment on the folks who still have solid middle-class careers: deplore teachers who still have protection from arbitrary layoffs and insist that the biggest problem New York faces is that parks department workers still have pensions. We could assert the worker protections they enjoy are outdated, trash the compensation these public workers earn, and turn their jobs into lousy jobs too.

While we’re at it, we can welcome WalMart into the city and insist that it’s perfectly acceptable for people to go to work every day and still need food stamps to feed their children. Maybe the teachers we’re laying off can get jobs there.

Or we could try something different.

We could, for example, look at the hundreds of millions of dollars in economic development subsidies the city spends every year and insist that these taxpayer dollars be used to promote jobs that allow working people to support their families. New York could emulate Pittsburgh’s decision to stop using subsidies to foster poverty wages. We could pass the Fair Wages for New Yorkers Act to insist that the mega-developments underwritten by our public dollars pay decent wages. These measures won’t put an immediate halt to the decline of job quality in New York, but at least they’ll put the city’s economic muscle on the side of the angels.

We could also work to ensure that the job standards we have now are enforced. New York’s minimum wage is an inadequate $7.25 an hour, yet a fifth of the city’s low-wage workforce (317,200 working people) are cheated out of even that meager pay or fall victim to other workplace violations in a typical week. The state’s Wage Theft Prevention Act, now languishing in Albany because the Assembly and Senate passed slightly different versions, would be a step towards enforcing the laws now on the books to protect New York’s lowest paid workers.

It’s not too late for New York to take a stand for good jobs, strengthening and expanding the city’s middle class rather than tearing it down. But time is running out.

NY Post Wants a Walmart in NYC Very Badly

2010-11-12T16:22:56Z

The New York Post is concerned. You see, they were able to get their hands on an "exclusive" analysis of how much New York City households spend at Walmart stores outside of city limits.

"Big Apple residents spent $165 million last year to buy low-cost products at Walmart's suburban stores because there aren't any outlets in the five boroughs, according to an analysis obtained by The Post. The massive money drain costs the city millions of dollars in tax revenues and hundreds of jobs."

$165 million? Well, that sounds like a lot at first, until you consider that New York City retail establishments racked up $31.3 billion in taxable retail sales in 2008-2009 (see page 14).

So, the amount city households spend at suburban Walmarts is equal to a minuscule one half of one percent of all taxable retail sales in the city.

The Post wants us to believe that we need a Walmart, that without allowing the low-paying retailer into the city, we're losing out on a tremendous opportunity. In reality, it seems that Walmart is the one that needs New York City, or else they wouldn't be trying so hard to get "exclusives" into the hands of Post reporters.

Voters: We’ll Pay for Good Transportation

2010-11-12T14:37:13Z

Think last week’s election was nothing more than a massive voter referendum in favor of lower taxes, reduced spending and less government? A roundup of transportation ballot measures from the Center for Transportation Excellence should make you think again.

From Anchorage to St. Louis to Fairfax County, Virginia, when they were asked to weigh in directly on local transportation spending measures, voters chose to approve the investment 77 percent of the time. In many cases, voters opted to raise their own sales, property, or vehicle registration taxes in the process, indicating a strong support for mass transit, infrastructure maintenance, and upgrades in street safety even during lean times. Some highlights:

In Ypsilanti, Michigan voters overwhelming approved property tax increases earmarked for public transit.

Voters in Austin, Texas supported a $90 million bond to improve streets, sidewalks, transit infrastructure, and bike paths – rejecting the advice of critics who denounced “frivolous spending” and insisted that new roads were the only projects worthy of funding.

In St. Louis, the light rail and bus systems will be able to restore service cuts and expand thanks to strong voter support for a half-cent sales tax dedicated to public transit.

Street repairs and transit upgrades will move forward in San Francisco and many of the surrounding counties as voters chose to pay higher vehicle registration fees to fund improvements.

Case Dismissed: ICE vs. the Immigration Courts

2010-11-11T19:04:30Z

What characterizes a broken immigration system? Though the phrase has become shorthand in describing our current immigration policies, just what this means can sometimes get lost in the weeds. This week, an analysis of our immigration courts by Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) adds to our understanding of what’s wrong with the status quo.

According to the study, the immigration courts rejected one out of every three ICE deportation requests from July to September 2010, an increase from one out of four just 12 months prior. Throughout the whole year, New York City courts denied a whopping 70 percent of removal requests, and while Los Angeles courts denied 63 percent.

Cases are terminated when a judge finds that government lacks grounds for deporting an individual, when he or she has a legitimate claim to asylum or other relief provision, or when DHS finds it doesn’t have the evidence to support a removal case. From the FY2009 to the latest available data for FY2010, immigration courts rejected nearly 111,000 government cases on these grounds.

Immigration hawks will probably leap on these statistics to support claims that the Obama Administration doesn’t want to enforce immigration laws. In reality, this research is indicative of aggressive and misguided immigration enforcement. Indeed, TRAC’s most striking finding attributes the growth in rejections to larger numbers of cases terminated when the government has no legal basis for deporting an immigrant.

Consider the staggering amount of governmental resources wasted investigating ultimately terminated cases—because of massive court backlogs, these take an average of 424 days to complete. For immigrants, the effects of a flawed system are closely felt; some languish in jail as their cases plod through the immigration system, while others can return to their communities, but must put lives and livelihoods on hold while awaiting a favorable ruling.

These results are also clearly at odds with ICE’s recent push to target dangerous violent criminals for deportation. As ICE continues to ramp up immigration enforcement programs to catch these lawbreakers, its rejection record in the immigration court is surprising. If ICE is really focusing on dangerous deportable aliens, why are these dismissal numbers so high? Unfortunately, ICE has been unlawfully refusing to provide TRAC with data that could answer this and other key immigration enforcement questions. From the report:

Without ICE data, we were unable to assess why judges are turning down so many ICE removal efforts, why turndowns during 2010 were climbing, or why ICE's record in some parts of the country was particularly poor…The reasons ICE gave for its refusal were in themselves simply astounding had they been believable.

In addition, much of the data requested under the Freedom of Information Act had been previously released to TRAC and other researchers. It’s unclear what has changed to make this information unavailable, but ICE should release the data immediately. TRAC pointedly reminds us that ICE’s actions aren’t consistent with the Obama administration’s commitment to transparency and public participation in government. Only with further analysis of these striking removal trends can we continue to identify, and hopefully improve upon the failures of our immigration system.

Will Albany Stop the Wage Thieves?

2010-11-10T20:00:00Z

It’s difficult to imagine anything more basic to a free economy than the right of an employee to be paid for his or her work. Yet this fundamental right is violated in New York’s low-wage industries as a matter of routine. Research from the National Employment Law Project concludes that a fifth of the city’s low-wage workers – an estimated 317,200 working New Yorkers – are paid less than the minimum wage in a given week. Even more are cheated out of the tips they’ve earned, their overtime pay, or the meal breaks they’re legally entitled to. It’s not a case of a few “bad apples” but a well-documented, pervasive pattern of wage theft throughout the city.

In March, I wrote about powerful state legislation drafted and promoted by community organization Make the Road New York to cut the state’s epidemic of wage theft. The Wage Theft Prevention Act stiffens penalties for cheating employees out of wages, encourages workers to come forward, and provides new avenues for investigating and prosecuting wage theft cases - and ensuring violators will pay up.

The bill passed both the state Assembly and Senate in the last legislative session. Yet because each chamber passed a slightly different version of the legislation the bills must be reconciled before the law can be enacted. Legislators will have a small window to act on the bill in the upcoming legislative special session: The Wage Theft Prevention Act sponsored by Senator Diane Savino and Assemblyman Carl Heastie should be a priority.

Clearly low-wage workers and their families are hurt deeply when income they’ve earned is stolen from them. But an environment of pervasive lawlessness at the bottom of our labor market also harms New York’s small businesses, drains revenue from the already depleted city and state budgets, and retards the city’s overall economic recovery.

]]>When enforcement of workplace laws is as lax as it is now and penalties are so low, corrupt employers can simply factor the risk of getting caught into their cost of doing business. As a result, businesses that cheat their employees can come out ahead, leaving responsible, law-abiding business owners at a competitive disadvantage. Small businesses with low margins face the greatest difficulty competing against rivals that are willing to break the law to lower their costs. Enforcing the law would level the playing field for everyone.

Both New York City and New York State face daunting revenue shortfalls that have led to very tight budgets. New York’s epidemic of wage theft makes the situation worse. The state loses an estimated $427.9 million a year in reduced unemployment insurance payments, workers’ compensation premiums, and personal income tax revenue as a byproduct of wage theft. New York City also loses income and sales tax revenue when employees get cheated out of their wages. By improving enforcement of wage and hour laws New York can begin to reclaim a portion of this lost revenue.

There are also broader economic consequences when money is taken from the pockets of New York’s lowest income workers. Workplace violations rob low wage workers of an estimated $3,016 annually out of average wages of just $20,644 a year. New Yorkers living on such low incomes tend to spend their paychecks quickly, buying food, clothing, and other essentials in their communities. By deterring violations, the Wage Theft Prevention Act will keep these wages from being sucked out of our neighborhoods, enabling workers to support their families and put dollars to work rebuilding New York’s economy.

Tell Me What I Want to Hear: Bloomberg's Living Wage Study

2010-11-10T18:59:35Z

Three top city officials, each rumored to have their eye on a mayoral run in 2013, challenged Mayor Bloomberg on Monday over a living wage bill in the City Council. The mayor has made it clear that he opposes the bill, which would guarantee workers at city-led development projects a living wage, calling these requirements a job-killer.

But with support for living wage growing in the City Council, a grassroots campaign led by city faith leaders gaining momentum, and a complementary bill on prevailing wages also gaining traction, the Bloomberg administration commissioned a $1 million study on the living wage to be released sometime next year. Many City Hall insiders saw the move as a delaying tactic.

Now the three city officials, Comptroller John Liu, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, and Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, have questioned whether the study is designed to come to a predetermined conclusion.

The study's lead economists, David Neumark and Daniel Hamermesh, have consistently been critical of living wage and minimum wage laws in the past, and their work has been used to bolster arguments against raising the national minimum wage. While there is certainly disagreement among economists, the majority agree that increasing the minimum wage does not create unemployment.

So the concerns of Liu, Stringer, and Diaz are valid. But the real issue here is not Bloomberg's study, it is creating good jobs for New Yorkers and correcting the structural imbalances in the city's economy. It's about maximizing the impact of the city's economic development programs so that they benefit those that need them the most: low-income New Yorkers.

The city's Economic Development Corporation (EDC) is the quasi city agency in charge of most of our economic development programs. They engage in a wide variety of projects, but the bulk of the EDC's resources go towards large-scale development efforts like Coney Island or Willets Point. The EDC has become, as professor of urban affairs Tom Agnotti called it, "The Real Power in City Planning."

The focus of the EDC should be to increase economic opportunity for the one-in-three adult workers in the city that make less than $24,000 a year. But as Agnotti concluded, the EDC often promotes the interests of real estate developers and big business over the public interest. "The real power and money is with the companies with whom the agency is supposed to be a partner."

Let's be honest. If the EDC-led Kingsbridge Armory project--a planned retail mall that was shelved over community demands for a living wage--had moved forward last year, the entity that would have gained the most was the developer Related Companies. Handed tens of millions in tax breaks and a sweetheart deal on the land, Related would have done quite well with its new retail mall.

Who else would have benefited? National retail chains that would have siphoned off business from locally owned stores and sent their enormous profits back to corporate offices outside of New York.

Yes, there would have been new jobs at the mall for local residents and tax revenue would have flowed to the city from retail sales. But would these jobs really have been "new" jobs, or just transferred from the city's small businesses to national retail chains? And without a requirement for living wages, these jobs would have offered no real economic opportunity. The workers, many of them their family's primary bread-winners, would have made poverty-level wages.

The point is: the city can do better. Our resources are being spread thin because of budget pressures and all city agencies are expected to do more with less. Our economic development resources should be directed at projects that will benefit city residents, not real estate developers. This means creating living wage jobs, not poverty wage jobs.

But instead, Mayor Bloomberg argues that raising wages for city residents is bad for the city's economy. And he is hoping that his $1 million study will tell him he's right.

After National Losses, Progressives Should Focus on the City

2010-11-05T14:25:29Z

I wasn't surprised by the Republican takeover of the House. Unemployment, foreclosure, and economic stagnation--it was written on the wall. I was surprised, however, by how willingly Democrats allowed the GOP to shape media coverage of the victory as an American repudiation of the progressive agenda.

Republicans used their mid-term victories to claim that Americans had rejected Obama's policy agenda--though exit polling clearly suggests otherwise. Republicans came out swinging, gleefully proclaiming that their priority would be to undo the policy gains made by Obama and the Democrats in the past two years. Representative John Boehner said of Obama's agenda, "We're going to do everything -- and I mean everything we can do -- to kill it, stop it, slow it down, whatever we can."

Democrats, for their part, did everything they could to run from their achievements and their principles. Obama nearly apologized to big businesses yesterday, ceding the Republican narrative that his administration was anti-business. But after an infusion of cash from the federal government, corporate profits are healthy. It's every day Americans that are still suffering the effects of recession.

Even though Washington is about to turn its back on progress, there is still hope for those that worry about rising inequality, social justice, and sustainability. By focusing on advancing a progressive agenda in cities, we can pave the road for future gains at the federal level. As my colleague Harry Moroz pointed out earlier this year, "Cities are laboratories of progressive change where government plays an outsized role in improving our daily lives." By proving that progressive policy works, gains made in cities can be leveraged at the state and federal level.

Cities are still at the forefront of progressive policy innovation. Look at San Francisco.: in the past four years, San Francisco raised the citywide minimum wage to nearly $10 an hour, guaranteed every worker in the city paid sick leave, and established a universal health care system for city residents paid for by businesses.

Mandates on business, new taxes, and new workplace standards: conservatives would tell you that this is a recipe for economic disaster. But in fact, San Francisco's economy has been downright resilient during the recession, with both job and business growth up over 2006 levels.

But just as in Washington, big business interests can mobilize to quash good progressive policy in cities. Take New York City's recent fight over paid sick leave. Big businesses groups, like the chambers of commerce and the Partnership for New York City, defeated the bill by arguing that it would be a "job killer" and would harm small businesses. Although these claims were boldly false, the political pressure was strong enough for the speaker of the city council to pull her support.

The ten largest US cities alone hold 25 million people. Their metropolitan regions hold 71 million people. Clearly, advancing a progressive agenda in cities would have an outsized impact. And city-dwellers tend to get it; they understand how local governments can improve our quality of life. From passing new sales taxes for transit to pressuring local governments to take up sustainability initiatives, Americans have much more tolerance for progressive reforms at the local level.

So, my advice to disheartened progressives is to turn inward to your communities, to your local governments. By focusing on passing progressive policy the local level, we can build momentum for national policy.

San Francisco Goes to the Ballot Box for Electoral Reform

2010-11-01T20:00:04Z

San Francisco may soon become a national model for election reform. Voters tomorrow will decide on the Saturday Voting Act, a proposition that would require San Francisco to open all polling places on the Saturday before Election Day in November 2011.

Alex Tourk, organizer of San Francisco’s weekend voting campaign, says: “If we really want to increase access to the democratic process, especially for working families and single parents, we should do what the rest of the world does and vote on the weekend.”

A weekend voting option would make it much easier for working citizens to get out and vote. According to a Census Bureau study of the 2008 election, the most common reason registered voters reported not voting was due to their busy schedules. Though 2008 had the highest voter turnout rates in 40 years, the United States still ranks near the bottom on voter turnout compared to most other developed countries.

The measure would create a pilot program to open hundreds of polling stations around the city. And best of all, it would be funded by private contributions, so the 2011 experiment wouldn’t cost taxpayers a dime. This could explain why Proposition I has racked up endorsements, including from the San Francisco Chronicle and Board of Education. SF’s campaign is inspired by the national “Why Tuesday?” movement, an organization founded in 2005 that seeks to increase voter turnout and participation.

If successful, the city’s program could spark action on weekend voting elsewhere. In an interview with the New York Times, Tourk said he’d like to expand the plan to statewide and national elections. And last week, New York Mayor Bloomberg voiced his support for the Act, and indicated that New York could be next. Bloomberg said: “I look forward to working with local civic and community leaders to develop our own weekend voting proposal. Weekend voting is an idea whose time has come.”

The Saturday Voting Act is an innovation that could significantly boost voter turnout, and at the same time help improve our electoral process. It will be exciting to see if San Francisco can make this happen.

Rep. Gutierrez, Rep. Smith and the Battle for the Rule of Law

2010-10-29T19:37:00Z

In recent weeks, Reps. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) and Lamar Smith (R-TX) have been engaged in an all out op-ed war, attacking each other’s positions on immigration reform. Guess which one has a plan worth getting behind?

On the Huffington Post, Rep. Gutierrez asks voters to help maintain momentum for comprehensive immigration reform, and makes it clear that the stakes are high: “A vote for any GOP House or Senate candidate is a vote for the status quo on immigration or worse.” And he didn’t hold back on naming names. The title says it all: “On Immigration, Are You a Lamar Smith-John Boehner-Steve King Republican?”

Rep. Smith takes to The Hill to launch his rebuttal: “Proud to Support the Rule of Law and Immigration.” From the first sentence, he gives us a distorted view of what’s really going on in the immigration debate. Smith claims that Gutierrez and other supporters of immigration reform criticize Republicans “for favoring enforcement of immigration laws.” The truth is a bit more nuanced: Smith and his restrictionist colleagues deserve criticism because they refuse to consider anything other than increased enforcement as a solution to our immigration crisis, the failed strategy we’ve pursued for decades.

Above all, Smith’s work puts forward the tired notion that only Republicans are concerned with immigration enforcement and the rule of law. He quietly ignores the fact that the Obama administration has deported more immigrants and audited four times more law-breaking employers than his GOP predecessor. Moreover, comprehensive immigration reform bills introduced in the House by Rep. Ortiz (D-TX) and the Senate by Sen. Menendez (D-NJ) both address immigration enforcement at length, while also creating an earned legalization program and modernizing our visa system.

]]>Gutierrez had the final word in an essay pointedly titled “Proud to Support the Rule of Law and Immigration, Too.” He points out that the enforcement-only strategy favored by House actually serves to undermine the rule of law, because it drives undocumented workers and their employers further underground and off the books. Rep. Gutierrez presents a detailed plan based on the House bill to offer these workers a path to legal status that will enable them to pay more in taxes and participate in upholding our labor laws. In addition, he calls for modernizing the visa process so that future workers can contribute legally too. And, crucially, Gutierrez speaks to the need for a more effective employment verification system.

Most important, Gutierrez agrees with several analysts in calling out the basic hypocrisy that defines many Republicans’ immigration stance. As restrictionists demand ever increased enforcement measures to end undocumented immigration, they also refuse to support the corresponding legalization and visa reforms needed to actually achieve this goal. Gutierrez ends the piece by explaining:

Erecting barriers to legal immigration and legality, then railing against the illegalities and wrapping yourself in the rhetoric of the "rule of law" is a political strategy; it is not an immigration strategy.

Unfortunately, it seems to be working, as restrictionist candidates are poised to gain Congressional seats and governorships across the country. And if Republicans win the house, Smith will chair its Judiciary Committee, and ensure that his hollow immigration strategy will go further than ever.

Clean Trucks: Stalled in New York

2010-10-28T20:17:54Z

Less air pollution. More jobs capable of supporting a family. A more efficient use of taxpayer dollars. Those are the benefits the New York City Council is asking the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and the U.S. Congress to consider in a new resolution to promote the adoption of a New York-area Clean Truck Program modeled on a successful policy in Los Angeles.

I spoke in support of the resolution this afternoon, telling the Waterfronts Committee:

In August, the U.S. District Court lifted its injunction on the Los Angeles Clean Truck Program. Their judicial reasoning can do a great deal to inform good policy in New York. The Court ruled that the program was not preempted by federal law because the Port of Los Angeles was acting in its own proprietary business interest “to sustain and promote port operations” rather than setting regulatory policy. In essence, the Port of Los Angeles was making a prudent business decision, adopting the most efficient means to mitigate air pollution that “jeopardized the Port’s continued viability as a commercial enterprise” in the words of the Court.

Speaking at a Drum Major Institute event in autumn 2008, Port Authority Executive Director Christopher Ward acknowledged similar business pressures at the Ports of New York and New Jersey. Mr. Ward noted that if reducing truck pollution was not “part of the solution for the port, we will have no growth and we will end up losing the very engine that creates the jobs.” In other words, our ports also have a clear proprietary interest in measures like L.A.’s employee-driver provision that create an efficient and sustainable model for reducing truck emissions.

]]>When he addressed the Drum Major Institute, Mr. Ward also vowed to “take the lessons learned that L.A. and Long Beach have provided.” Two years later, it’s not clear that these lessons have been learned at our ports.

The data provided by the Coalition for Healthy Ports is powerful: the Port of Los Angeles used $44 million in public funds to leverage private investment and get 8,500 clean trucks on the road. In New York and New Jersey, the plan is to use $32 million in taxpayer funds to replace 700 or fewer trucks. Without commenting on how far advanced the Port Authority’s program is now, it’s clear that the plan going forward represents a less efficient use of public resources than we saw in Los Angeles.

The New York/New Jersey truck replacement program is less efficient because it dumps public money on top of a broken employment model rather than restructuring port operations to make the funds work effectively. As a result, we are trying to make thousands of individual low-income port truck drivers take on the burden of improving air quality rather than demanding accountability from the large companies that profit most from the operation of our ports, as Los Angeles does.

Again, the recent District Court case is illuminating. The judge notes that “the employee driver provision was designed to transfer the financial burden of administration and record keeping onto the trucking companies instead of the Port… and [to] protect the Port’s investment in clean trucks.” Yet this key portion of the Los Angeles model is not being replicated at the ports of New York and New Jersey. It is significant that this resolution specifically calls on the Port Authority to do so, noting that “the responsibility for cleaning the air near ports should belong to the trucking companies who have the financial stability to purchase and maintain newer and cleaner trucks.”

Let me close by saying that in the wake of the federal court decision, Congress’ Clean Ports Act of 2010 remains a critical piece of legislation. First, it will uphold ports’ ability to establish policies like the Clean Truck Program in their public capacity as regulators – not merely as entities that participate in the marketplace. No less significantly, enacting this law would bolster the political will of ports, like those here in New York and New Jersey, that have been timid about emulating the successful Port of Los Angeles model. The fact that this resolution calls on both Congress and the Port Authority to act is judicious.