How To Vote On The Three City Charter Reform (Reform?- Really?) Proposals on The November 6, 2018 Ballot! (NO, NO. . . & MAYBE. .?)

The adviceon how to vote on three proposal to change the NYC Charter sent out by two activist coalitions (above) is pretty similar and largely negative about the proposals.

The short answer is—

Vote NO on #1
Vote NO on #2
On #3?: Think about it, only MAYBE? YES.

In other words on the three proposals to change the New York Cit Charter that are on Tuesday’s ballot (all that “flip the ballot” stuff you have been hearing about that sounds oddly, perhaps intentionally, reminiscent of “Flip the Congress”) here is how it is recommended that informed, community activist-minded voters vote:

1.    On “Campaign Finance Reform- Reducing the amount of contributions to politician’s campaigns and increasing the amount of matching funds.”  VOTE NO.

2.    On “Creation of New Community Engagement Agency.”   VOTE NO.

3.    On “Term Limits on Community Boards.”  MAYBE VOTE YES (but THINK ABOUT IT!!- see below)

We are shortcutting this process and not doing all our own thinking on it.  Instead, having reviewed them, we present here the consonant recommendations, with some very validly expressed reasoning of both MTOPP (The Movement To Protect The People) and The New Yorkers For A Human-Scale City Alliance, two activist group coalitions vigorously fighting for more responsible, less destructive development (with less displacement) that will better reflect the wishes of New Yorkers.
 
First off, as you can glean from the title of this post, to call something a “reform” doesn’t mean that it actually is validly and unquestionably a “reform”; some changes labeled “reforms” actually make things worse for most of use while shifting more power, benefit and control to the powerful (think Trump’s “Tax Code Reform”).  Next, the way that revisions to the City Charter get proposed and put before the voters makes it likely that proposed changes will benefit those already powerful and controlling the process and not those wanting to challenge power.  This will likely hold as the general reality of things unless and until strong, broad based populist efforts seize the initiative and coordinate for proposals that effect true reform.  That is not exactly true of the mostly below-the-radar way that the current proposals were cooked and served up.

Here is some background on what happened as described by The New Yorkers For A Human-Scale City Alliance.

The Mayor created a Charter Review Commission last spring, shoved it through with little advertising or public debate, and that Commission came up with three ballot proposals that you will encounter when you go to vote next week.  Most voters had no idea it was happening.  We testified at one of their hearings about campaign finance and community board reform.

The City Council, not to be outdone, created its own Charter Review Commission, which, I am told, is preparing another round of hearings this winter. We testified at the first round of their hearings and will be testifying again this winter and spring.

The composition of both Commissions is not encouraging (too many people who reflect the views of Big Real Estate and the Mayor), but the presence of campaign finance reform advocate Sal Albanese on the Council's commission is a hopeful sign that the Council's Commission will continue to address that particular issue this winter and we could get better reform ideas out of them that with the bad ideas the Mayor's team has come up with.  Here is what is on the ballot (to see more detail, go to Ballotopedia here.)

Remember that every ballot proposal is worded by the people who want to see it enacted and is thus worded with the hope of enticing people to vote for it.

One thing that is highly discouraging is that, as City and State observes in its reporting: “The measures from de Blasio’s commission . . have drawn overwhelming approval from the city’s Democratic lawmakers.”  Proposals that please "Big Real Estate and the Mayor"?  This is another example of how the Democratic machine in New York City continues to work against the most fundamental interests of the public while nominally working for the public dressing up, without significant challenge from the press, in fauxmanteau progressivism.  That’s why, to get some genuine reforms, this city needs to institute instant run-off voting and start growing third party generated alternatives for the voters to vote for.

Below are the proposals worded as you will see them on Tuesday’s ballot followed, in each case respectively by the analysis and recommendations of MTOPP and The New Yorkers For A Human-Scale City Alliance.  Interjected in brackets is some of my own Noticing New York thinking about the composition of community boards.
  
Question #1: Campaign Finance

This proposal would amend the City Charter to lower the amount a candidate for City elected office may accept from a contributor. It would also increase the public funding used to match a portion of the contributions received by a candidate who participates in the City’s public financing program.

In addition, the proposal would make public matching funds available earlier in the election year to participating candidates who can demonstrate need for the funds. It would also ease a requirement that candidates for Mayor, Comptroller, or Public Advocate must meet to qualify for matching funds.

The amendments would apply to participating candidates who choose to have the amendments apply to their campaigns beginning with the 2021 primary election, and would then apply to all candidates beginning in 2022.

Shall this proposal be adopted?

MTOP’s Recommendation to vote NO:

Campaign Finance Reform- Reducing the amount of contributions to politician’s campaigns and increasing the amount of matching funds.

First you have to keep in mind that there are a lot of laws on the books that allow Politicians to get large sums of money from various sources.  For example, campaigning and collecting funds when you are not facing an opponent!  This allows existing elected officials to create large war chests that they can use later, if a challenger does come a few years down the line.

Thus the reducing of the contributions will only benefit the large, well machined candidates who have the real estate industry working behind them exercising all of those other loopholes.  Whereas the small candidates who truly must rely upon small contributions will be further hurt. 

For example, in the election campaign against Councilwoman Laurie Cumbo, she had three campaigns working for her. Her own, the Mayor’s and the Hotel Industry!!!  So a reduction in contributions to her campaign would not have made much of a difference, but with Ede, who was running against her, it would have been large since she had only one campaign!

MTOPP's  Position:
MTOPP says no.  If real voting reform is wanted (and it is not) then all of these loopholes need to be eliminated not just campaign contributions.

The New Yorkers For A Human-Scale City Alliance’s Recommendation to vote NO:

Proposal 1:  Vote No.  Lowers the maximum campaign contribution in the City's Campaign Finance Law (not the state law) from $5,000 to $2,000.
Vote NO.

Why vote no?  Think about it. Can you afford to give $2,000 to a politician?  This is a fake fix to the campaign finance system and all the politicians know it.  It won't stop the dependence of politicians on the wealthy or on big real estate, nor does it even address the issue we have been raising for a year about loopholes big as trucks that allow big real estate to get around the rules that are part of this law. This isn't a even an improvement - it's a pretend fix, an actual insult to good government groups and to the public. Don't let any politician get away with the claim that they "improved" the system with this one. It would be a shameful lie on their part.  Vote NO.

* * * *
Question #2: Civic Engagement Commission

This proposal would amend the City Charter to:

Create a Civic Engagement Commission that would implement, no later than the City Fiscal Year beginning July 1, 2020, a Citywide participatory budgeting program established by the Mayor to promote participation by City residents in making recommendations for projects in their communities;

Require the Commission to partner with community based organizations and civic leaders, as well as other City agencies, to support and encourage civic engagement efforts;

Require the Commission to establish a program to provide language interpreters at City poll sites, to be implemented for the general election in 2020;

Permit the Mayor to assign relevant powers and duties of certain other City agencies to the Commission;

Provide that the Civic Engagement Commission would have 15 members, with 8 members appointed by the Mayor, 2 members by the City Council Speaker and 1 member by each Borough President; and

Provide for one of the Mayor’s appointees to be Commission Chair and for the Chair to employ and direct Commission staff.

Shall this proposal be adopted?

MTOP’s Recommendation to vote NO:

Creation of New Community Engagement Agency.

This is suppose to be a government agency that will encourage more community engagement, foster more participation in elections and provide Community Boards with City Planners, (professionals who are suppose to know all about the rezoning laws etc..)

Now isn’t the community board suppose to be the place for community engagement? And why would you need a completely new government agency just to provide the community boards with planners?

The answer is simple.  If you empowered community boards to hire their own planners, then the planners would be beholden to the community board and have their best interest at heart.

However, if you allow another agency to do the hiring then those being hired would be beholden to that agency’s directives.  The Department of City Planning has such a bad reputation in communities all over the city that they are no longer trusted and in some community boards are told to get the hell out!   Now this new agency who’s leaders will be hired by the Mayor, will hire and then lend City Planners to community boards.

The rational is that the only reason community boards are saying no to all of these rezonings is because of ignorance. If they just understood all the benefits that would be gained from all the developments being proposed Community Boards would be more willing to agree to them.

For example, when the City Planning Commission was reviewing the Brooklyn Botanic Garden rezoning to increase the heights on land that was downzone to protect the garden, the Department of City Planning blamed the no vote that  Community Board 9 gave because CB9 didn’t have a planner! 

But we we did.  We had Richard Birack, Borough President Eric Adams's planner, at every meeting, “giving” his expert opinion, that sometimes amounted to pure lies and half truths. But the proof is in the pudding, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand the devastating effects of rezoning, not when there are so many examples out in the world, including how the Department of City Planning will simply ignore all suggestions from the community despite all of those so called “community engagement” sessions!!!

The New Yorkers For A Human-Scale City Alliance’s Recommendation to vote NO:

Proposal 2:  Vote No. Creates a Civic Engagement Commission dominated by Mayoral Appointees who then get to mess around with so-called participatory budgeting and community boards land-use work. 
Vote NO.

Why vote no?  This is a blatant attempt to create even more power for a despotic Mayor who already has way too much power in our Charter. It also makes some of us laugh.  Our Mayor won't even take petitions or respond to petitions that neighborhood groups send him, and he wants a Civic Engagement Commission? Worse, those who came up with this idea seem to think civic engagement just means controlling community boards on land use and pretending to give us a say in budgeting. Ugh. This is an Orwellian proposal.  Vote no.

 * * * *

Question #3: Community Boards

This proposal would amend the City Charter to:

Impose term limits of a maximum of four consecutive full two-year terms for community board members with certain exceptions for the initial transition to the new term limits system;

Require Borough Presidents to seek out persons of diverse backgrounds in making appointments to community boards. The proposal would also add new application and reporting requirements related to these appointments; and

If Question 2, “Civic Engagement Commission,” is approved, require the proposed Civic Engagement Commission to provide resources, assistance, and training related to land use and other matters to community boards.

Shall this proposal be adopted?

[Noticing New York Thinking:

As can be seen from the analysis of MTOPP and The Human Scale New York coalition below, there are huge problems with the current composition of the city's local community boards, including that they are often rife with conflicts of interest and accountable on very short leashes to the Borough Presidents.  We have seen the composition of such boards punishingly changed by Borough Presidents when they represented the community in their votes.  We have also seen the calculated re-composition of the boards and their committees in advance to prepare for and ensure the vote results the real estate industry wants in instances such as the proposed sale of public libraries for real estate deals.  But does the institution of term limits ensure any improvement with respect to what needs to be fixed?: Only sometimes in some particular instances, and other times it can have the opposite result.

In general, the Noticing New York thinking is to favor term limits for powerful executive positions like the President of the United States or the Mayor of the City of New York because they wield such power of office that, together with the bully pulpit keeping them in the spotlight, the power of their incumbency undermines accountability.  In the case of others operating as part of communal bodies that need to be strengthened in standing up to those powerful executives, it is likely a different story.  Term limits mean that those who have increased their power and influence by becoming knowledgeable (and appropriately skeptical?) learning how to represent the public are turned out of office, their resources lost even when the public needs and wants them.  Term limits can make office holders think short term and in terms of their next office, not their current one, which may not mean representing their current constituents' priorities.   Term limits were introduced to New York City by big money interests and when offices change hands big money has an extra out-sized influence when voters need to familiarize themselves with entirely new faces and dig down below a public relations blitz veneer (case in point- Councilmember Laurie Cumbo who obtained office by virtue of REBNY money and proved to be outrageously opposite to her the promises of her innocuous, reassuring campaign platitudes.)

The question is how to make community boards more accountable to and representative of the community.  More transparency with stricter conflict of interest controls would help a lot.  Should community board members be elected directly by the public?:  The problems with that, as with electing school board members and judges, is that it is too much for the average voter to catch up with by the time they get into the voting booth.  That opens the door for other inside powers to have too much influence.

What community boards and other New York City boards of influence (the Landmarks Commission, City Planning Commission, boards of the three city public library systems) might benefit from is diffusing the appointments to those boards among more elected officials who the public is likely to be able to identify and hold accountable when their interests don't get represented.  One of the benefits of all the myriad appointments to boards and commissions now made by the New York City mayor is that the public knows who the mayor is and, as such, can more easily hold him or her accountable.  What the mayor does is more likely to be written about and covered by the press.  But one individual having all the power involves no checks and balances and sets up just one easy target for the powerful influencers like the real estate industry.  Others who could be making appointments include, as the case may be: The New York Public Advocate (giving that office more of the power it should have), The City (and perhaps sometimes State) Comptroller, local City Councilmen, perhaps in some cases the City Council as a body, Borough Presidents (offices that also currently have scant power).

If nothing else, more diffused power means that when moneyed interests want to put the fix in they have more elected officials to corral and buy off and it is harder for them to operate for long stretches in secret.  It is also likely to provoke a few more real open debates on a few more things before votes rather than discussions before votes being as scripted as they almost always are now.

Maybe, rather than succumbing to the eyewash and pretending that there is any worthwhile  "reform" here, all of three of these proposals should just be short down together.]      

MTOP’s Recommendation to vote (a “hard one”- That is not very clear) YES:

Term Limits on Community Boards
There are two points of view: The Upper White Middle Class Community Boards and the Community of Color Community Boards.

As has been the case since the inception of Community Boards and their empowerment in 1974, community boards have fared a lot better in white upper middle class neighborhoods than in communities of color.

White Upper Middle Class Community Boards

Community Board members in white upper class community boards are knowledgeable, know their stuff, have been around the block and have been a thorn in the real estate industry side, because of their unwillingness to let anything slide by them.

These board members are very strong and Borough Presidents have been unwilling to let them go because of the political consequences.  However, if term limits are introduced, then the Borough Presidents can not be blamed and then they will get to put who they want in, who will be beholden to their goals and not necessarily the goals of the community.

Thus term limits in White middle class communities may weaken these boards!

Communities of Color

What about communities of color, who’s boards are already weakened?  There have been countless complaints against these community boards and their members.  Serious violations of the law are done openly and no one does anything about it.  For the most part the board behaves like a private club with a few people running the whole thing for years, at the expense of the rest of the community.

These open violations are tolerated by the City and Borough Presidents, to enable the political structure to get what they want from the board when they need it, i.e. rezoning requests.

In these communities people see term limits as a great opportunity to get rid of these long standing board members and to attempt to integrate and to diversify.  However based upon the experience of a Community Board (CB9) who had a major change in their members over the past four years ago, this may not be the answer, especially if the Borough President has his eyes on that community for rezonings.

An Example of Changing the Guard at a Community Board

In Community Board 9, (CB9)  Borough President Eric Adams, in 2014,  removed the long standing (30 years or more) board members (Jewish and White men),  and replaced them with Black folks who had the same agenda and motive - to rezone the community. However, not all of the new board members were apart of that intention and thus we have been successful at least of not having another rezoning request materialize at CB9, despite certain members of CB9 working all kinds of tricks to do so.

But our struggle hasn’t been easy, we have had to file at least seven lawsuits, we have demonstrated, we have filed complaints, we have been arrested and have decided to dedicate our entire lives to protecting this community against certain Community Board members who’s intention it is to fulfill Borough Hall’s mandate of rezoning for the real estate industry.

In fact, we lost one of our strongest allies, who was the first vice-chair of CB9 because she was a strong opponent against a massive rezoning.  She was removed off the board despite being an officer of the board, after only two years of service, whereas there were other board members who had been on the board for over 30 years, still there.

That means that even if community boards members are replaced, a lot of how that board will function will be determined by the Borough President and his/her agenda,

MTOPP Position

MTOPP Says Yes. This was a hard one, because we don't want to see community boards weaken, but  if this city wanted true diversity then they would diversify who can place members on the Board. Right now all of the board members are placed there by the Borough President with only the City Council members making recommendations. Having City Council people make those appointments as well as the Borough President could go a long way to diversifying and ensuring that it is not just the Borough President’s agenda that will be followed.

What we know however is that true diversity can not happen when only one person is allowed to appoint and remove board members off of community boards and this is not going to change unless people really fight and demand it.

In the case of CB9 we do believe that having representatives that are on the board who reflect the majority of the residents in the community has empowered us to at least prevent a massive rezoning, where as if the board was still in the hands of those few we might be writing a different story.

The New Yorkers For A Human-Scale City Alliance’s Recommendation to vote YES:

Proposal 3:  Vote Yes. Term Limits for Community Boards
Vote YES!

Why vote this way?  Well, to start with, Community Boards are, in the words of Councilmember Reynoso, "political cesspools", meaning that since they are unelected, they get filled with an even worse stew of unregulated conflicts of interest, lobbyists, political sycophancy, and executive teams of Democratic Party Political Clubs. They are the fiefdoms of Borough Presidents who appoint them and who control them tightly (ex: warning people who speak in ways they don't like to be quiet or get lost or just mass firing them as has happened in the Bronx).  The Community Board system desperately needs four reforms:

1.    term limits (and hey, if we need the institutional memory of the old-timers, they can always serve as non-voting public members);
2.    to be elected by neighborhood voters, we don't need a Borough President choosing who represents us, like a one-person Electoral College - we know how not to vote for lobbyists or real estate developers.
3.    much stricter conflict-of-interest rules to rid the boards of lobbyists;
4.    and a new mission and mandate to actually do something relevant to neighborhoods.

We see term limits as a good start and we can have them without the creepy civic engagement commission the Mayor wants.  We need more reforms as well, but this is one of them. We demand term limits from our elected politicians, why not term limits for our unelected neighbors who pretend to be looking after our interests? Vote YES!

Councilman Brad Lander Announces Participatory Budgeting 2.0- The Next Phase of Participatory Budgeting- “With Meta-Participatory Budgeting We Demonstrate Democracy Without Training Wheels”

Democracy without training wheels

Councilman Brad Lander, the city’s most joyously fervent exponent of Participatory Budgeting, took the opportunity of this spring season’s focus and rampant advertising for the Participatory Budgeting program to release information about the program’s next phase, which Mr. Lander promised will be bigger and more real than anyone imagined.  It wasn’t until release of the carefully timed announcement that anyone even knew a next phase was in store.  Lander is referring to the program’s second phase as “Participatory Budgeting 2.0” although its more formal name, which refers to the extra layers through which it works is “Meta-Participatory Budgeting.”

“Now that we have demonstrated what we can demonstrate with the original version of the program, and we always referred to it as a `growing program,’ it is time to take the baby into the big time,” said Mr. Lander.  “We are ready to spend some real money and make the kind of commitment that will get real attention.”

The current form of Participatory Budgeting program that is now operating was introduced in New York City for the 2012 budget year cycle and was announced in September of 2011 by Mr. Lander, who had pushed for it as an effort to “increase people's faith” in how the government is spending the people’s money.  The New York Times describing the PB “experiment” that began that year reported that “New Yorkers jumped into the trenches and dirtied their hands with democracy.”

Councilman Stephen T. Levin praises Participatory Budgeting, what it is and what it is to become- It's an "antidote" to being distracted by the malfeasance of elected officials

That Times article premiered a refrain still used to promote the program by elected leaders like Councilman Stephen Levin, assisting Lander, explaining it as an opportunity “to counter people's cynical view of government by inviting them to participate in the very process they mistrust.”   Said Levin in a similar vein more recently, “You know, all too often people see government gone awry, elected officials engaging in malfeasance or dysfunction . . .  . . and you know people get. . . it’s easy to get cynical when you see that.  And this is an antidote to that! ”

Councilman Brad Lander- He brought us Participatory Budgeting and now brings us Participatory Budgeting 2.0 -“Meta-Participatory Budgeting”

Heretofore, the PB program has been used to allocate capital expenditures, a portion of the available councilmatic discretionary funds that each of the City Council members receive annually.   Council members joining in the program have made available $1 million apiece each year for a process where members of the public could redirect their energy to identify and vote on projects they valued.   Councilman Lander recently made even more than that available, an extra $.5 million in his district for a total of $1.5 million.  In all, the public that engaged was recently allowed to vote on the about $35 million in expenditures across those districts running the program.

Lander has staunchly defended the program against critics who say the funds directed by the program are so paltry as to create little more than a sideshow, given the total city capital budget, the total city budget and even just the amount that is available through elected officials as discretionary capital expenditures.  The city’s capital budget has been averaging about $8 billion a year (of which PB’s $35 million would be about 00.4%) and the separate NYC operating budget for this year is proposed to be over $80 million.  Each of the city’s 51 council members gets $5 million in discretionary funds with total elected officials discretionary funds totaling about $400 million (Borough Presidents also have discretionary funds).

It was noted by Noticing New York that the PB amounts available are so very small that they are not even a fraction of the amount that it has been said would be necessary to address repairs now withheld from some of the public’s libraries, like air conditioning repairs for the central destination Brooklyn Heights Library.  Those needed repairs are being cited as reason to sell off the libraries.  “Have the public vote to repair the libraries we want to sell and turn into real estate deals?” asked Mr. Lander. “That would be counterproductive.  There is a reason we have made the amount for stated necessary repairs to libraries we want to sell such high figures.”

Mr. Lander said that people who complained that the amount of funds heretofore channeled through the program are relatively small don’t understand that the purpose of the program is to “demonstrate that government can be good.”  “Having done that,” he said, “we can now open the program up in new ways to set up the expenditure of more funds.”

Steve Levin said this was exactly the case, that the program was to offer “a positive experience for folks” and that it meant that, “people have faith, through this process they know, at the very least, where that funding [the PB funding] is going.”

Lander said that the purpose of the first phase of the program was this restoration of “faith in government” and also for members of the public to “enhance skills and learn how to be active citizens.”  He said that now that the first phase had succeeded it was time to proceed to phase two: “We are going to take the training wheels off Democracy,” he said, “and it means spending real money as well.”

Asked what kind of financial commitments the real money of “Participatory Budgeting 2.0- Meta-Participatory Budgeting” involved, Mr, Lander explained that the commitment of financial resources was so extensive as to be essentially open-ended.  “We are talking about, as eligible, virtually all of the online scheduled capital budget items for the city, but not just that, because there are also commitments that have substantial value in terms of deployment of resources valuable to the public like zoning policies and real estate variances and regulatory overrides that don’t show up as line items in the city’s official budget.  All of these are up for grabs as part of the Meta-participation program.  The more resources we can direct through it the better.”

The first action to get PB 2.0 rolling will be the appointment of an informal and rotating board of advisors, essentially a panel, to judge, consider or reject proposals that may possibly come from the public interested in “reconnecting with government” and wanting to “take control over their own public resources and steer a path.” 

Administrative costs for the panel will be kept extraordinarily low, next to nonexistent, through the use of a public-private partnership approach where those choosing to be on the panel will bear their own expenses, almost undoubtedly meeting on an ad hoc basis in gatherings at private residences or dinners where discussion of proposed projects can integrate readily with other business and social interactions.  It is expected that panelists will already be of means as they will also be expected to make public-spirited contributions to the essential business of funding NYC elections and the related need of running of campaigns.

According to Mr. Lander, the efficiency of the program structure that is being rolled out is that whatever the panel can be convinced by the public is a good idea has a very high probability of being effected with very significant commitments of public funds backing them.  Not only is the likelihood of effectuation enhanced, the process is much more direct than relying on council members as conduit decision makers.  In addition, whereas government has always been subject to lots of “procurement rules, red tape and regulations that need to be in place,” Mr. Lander said these approvals would provide the sort of “done deal” imprimatur that would help assure they move through to completion.

Council Member Levin said that it was exciting to see the PB program “blossom in this way” furnishing the “ramped up growth” and “innovative ways of expanding the program beyond City Council capital budget expenditures that were promised.”  He said the structures being formalized and now explicitly laid out this way ought to “give people more faith in the transparency of government, in the fairness of government, that there is some responsiveness and accountability.”

The names of those on the informal panel will not be known since it is considered that they will have a freer hand to vote their conscience, making the inevitably hard decisions that will confront them, if their privacy is protected.  Both Lander and Levin agreed that members of the public wishing to steer a path while not knowing who in actuality would be considering their proposals could help surmount their frustration by considering themselves as addressing the same decision makers as have always had ultimate say about the city’s affairs.

Lander said that whatever is lost in terms of transparency by not publicly identifying these decision makers is more than made up for by bequeathing those members of the public engaging through the program “the much more real and actual experience of the way Democracy operates that they ought to be asking for.  Those who engage thereby become a much more educated platform of voters than they would otherwise be.”

Mr. Lander said that one of the main purposes of the Participatory Budgeting program when it was introduced was to “get people to start asking questions about their government” and “with more things left appropriately concealed there are more questions to ask.”

Councilman Lander said that his press release announcing the launch of Participatory Budgeting 2.0 -“Meta-Participatory Budgeting” was timed so that the first year of its actual implementation one year hence could also be the same date: April 1st.

Real Real Money, Real Real Power

NYS Attorney General Eric Schneiderman Is Taking Political Donations From Those He Could or Should Be Investigating- Despite a (Playboy) Model Being Involved This Is NOT A Model That Serves The Public Well

WNYC and News News 4 New York have partnered to report on Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s office taking contributions from the potential targets of his investigations

You probably don’t come to read stories at Noticing New York for shallow analysis.

WNYC and News 4 New York have partnered to produce a pair of stories about how New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s office is often taking political donations from those they are investigating.  Although I don’t know what to think when not-for-profit news organizations increasingly “partner” with for-profit news organizations, these articles ought to grab public attention.  (Note: The more sensationally presented News 4 New York story had to conclude with a disclaimer of ownership relations between NBC and companies mentioned in their investigative story.)

    •    WNYC: Could Some Political Donations to New York's Attorney General Be a Conflict of Interest? Interview by Jami Floyd, February 18, 2016

    •     News 4 New York: I-Team: Why Did Former Playboy Playmate Donate $65K to Attorney General Eric Schneiderman?  By Chris Glorioso and Ann Givens, February 18, 2016

Both stories state that Attorney General Schneiderman isn’t being accused of any wrong doing.  Both stories also note statements from a Schneiderman spokesman that Schneiderman has investigated his own political donors, and in the WNYC report, Chris Glorioso states that the Attorney General’s office says this “evidence that he is unbiased and not swayed by these political contributions.”  According to Glorioso, the spokesman also said that in cases where donors stand to benefit from investigations that “those investigations began from the ground up, they began from New Yorkers who may have been wronged in one way or another, or from whistleblowers who called out wrong doing in the financial sector.”

Is the investigation of an Attorney General of his own donors evidence of a lack of bias, a lack of problems with receipt of the money received?

An uncle of mine was in the public relations business in the 1970s and there is a story I was privy to growing up told as a cautionary tale in my family about a fabled, wealthy publicist of the time.  I found it fascinating.  I won’t use names because I have never been able to find anything anywhere documenting the allegation although I did read that records that might have said something one way or another about the facts were burned after the publicist’s death.

The story was that when clients came to the publicist he told them that it was his job to tell the public everything good about the client, everything the client would want the public to know and everything it was the goal of the client to put out to enhance the client’s name and brand, but that he also needed to know what he would need to steer around. He explained that he needed to know all the client's secrets, the skeletons in the closets.  This man was recognized as being an exceedingly good publicist and did a good job for his clients, but if there ever came a time when a client thought about abandoning the use of his services, or if they began to think his fees verged on being too much, the situation could become uncomfortable. . .

. . . Was there reason for the client’s to be uncomfortable?  Was there ever an instance of private confidences having been breached?   I don’t know that there ever was.  I only know that the feelings of discomfort were part of the story that was told and that everyone knew from his flamboyant life style that the man’s fees were high.

I tell this story because it reminds me of another seeming paradox that might bring people up short when they first think about it.  Campaign finance reform expert and advocate Lawrence Lessig has written about how elected officials across the spectrum, both Democrat and Republican, “have an interest in extending the reach of regulation, because by increasing the range of regulated interest, you increase those who have an interest in trying to influence . .regulation.”  (This quote is from Lessig’s book, “Republic Lost.”)

Why do electeds benefit from regulation?  Is Lessig’s view that they necessarily want to enforce regulation?  No, it is that, as gatekeepers who get to collect political contributions in the money-in-politics “gift economy” that Lessig writes about, it’s good to have lots of “targets for fund-raising.”   Lessig tells us how federal lawmakers seek to be on certain “cash cow” committees which because of their regulatory power “primarily because members of those committees are able to raise large amounts of campaign money with little effort.”

Professor Lawrence Lessig appearing in the documentary, “The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz.”  Mr. Lessig's preface to the second edition of "Republic Lost" is a lamentation of our loss of activist Aaron Swartz.

In other words, Lessig quoting the work of Peter Schweizer and his book “Extortion,” describes an “extortion game.”  “What if politics is really largely about fund-rasing and making money,” is one of the quotes Lessig picks up from Schweizer.    

Later in analyzing what causes the campaign contributions, whether it originates with the hopes of the donor, or with the politicians and electeds soliciting contributions, and how much blame to put in the system itself Lessig writes:

Think about a more pedestrian version of this sort of extortion: We wouldn’t look to the failure of a local Mafia to give the victims of its extortion benefits as proof that there is no extortion. The victims are trying to avoid penalties; they’re not seeking special favors.

It’s particularly uncomfortable to apply this analogy to a state attorney general, because as Glorioso stressed in his WNYC interview:

Prosecutors are not just politicians, they are law enforcement officers.  They have subpoena power.  More than a law maker or a governor they can act unilaterally to penalize an entity, or to force an entity to cough up information.  So particularly here in New York where the Attorney general’s Office has been called the “Sherif of Wall Street,” a subpoena or a decision to investigate can have tremendous consequences in the market place.   

While, on one hand, there is a question of how things may turn out when there is competition between various moneyed interests, there is a bigger problem when you are the public with no money to pony up in the game.  Then you lose out entirely, in practical terms dropping off the face of the political earth.

Near the end of the NBC story Lawrence Norden of the Brennan Center Democracy Program says: “As a general matter there is political science out there that says that the donor class has more influence over policy than the general public.”

Bill Maher on his Friday, February 13th Real Time showing speaking about how the average American has "only a minuscule, near zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy."

That is essentially what Bill Maher said in far more blunt terms on his last show a week ago:

Bill Maher: I just want to read one thing I read before on the show, it's a study, I am sure you are familiar with it, by two Princeton professors who said this is an oligarchy:

The preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.

 . . And they wonder why there's a revolution!

The professors Maher referred to are Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page (from from Princeton University and Northwestern University) and their report, Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens, uses in some cases some very academic sounding language to say these things; while they speak of “U.S. government policy” you can readily believe that with money in politics the way it is locally and in New York it is also true of New York City politics:

Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.

A summarizing preview was published (Oligarchy, not democracy: Americans have `near-zero' input on policy - report, April 15, 2014) containing these extracted quotes:

"Despite the seemingly strong empirical support in previous studies for theories of majoritarian democracy, our analyses suggest that majorities of the American public actually have little influence over the policies our government adopts,". . 

While "Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and association," the authors say the data implicate "the nearly total failure of 'median voter' and other Majoritarian Electoral Democracy theories [of America]. When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for, the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy."

If you are involved in a political fight and want something that a considerable portion of the moneyed elite with influence and access also want, you might have a chance of winning it. . .  And there are some good things that the elite might also want to pass.  There are no reasons why the elite shouldn't be almost equally on the same sides of certain social issues such as abortion or gay marriage.  A goodly portion of the moneyed elites might also not want there to be fracking in New York State where the NYC water supply could be poisoned or the environment of vacations homes surrounding the city ruined.

The influence of money has certainly been a problem when it comes to how the fossil fuels industry has frustrated appropriate measures to head off climate change.  That includes all the money spent on climate science denial.  Even so, there must to be a certain portion of the elite, a large one, that don’t want their children and grandchildren to live in world that perishes, ceasing to exist as we know it because of severe climate change.

Notwithstanding, Lessig in his book (where in the updated edition he also writes about the Gilens and Page study) cites issue after issue with documenting polls showing that the policy the government follows is what the elite, the top 1%, want, not what the majority of Americans want.

We normally think in terms of going to our elected officials to get government to do what we want it to.  But maybe that doesn’t make sense at all. Instead of beseeching and lobbying our elected officials, the public probably ought to be at the doorstep of the moneyed elites trying to influence their viewpoints given the documentation (and Lessig includes graphs in his book) that “as the percentage of the elite supporting a proposal goes up, the probability of that proposal raises,” but “as the percentage of average voters show support an idea goes from 0 percent to 100 percent, the probability that idea will be adopted doesn’t change.”

$65,100.00 from 2010 Playboy Playmate of the Year tops Schneiderman's contribution list?

The WNYC and News 4 New York stories pointed out mysteries and lack of public access to information about what was going on with the contributions coming in.  The hook for both the stories was to ask the question why a former Playboy model from Texas, Hope Hope Dworaczyk, now Hope Smith, the 2010 Playboy Playmate of the Year, contributed $65,100.00 to become the largest political donor to Attorney General Schneiderman this January.

Ms. Dworaczyk recently married private equity billionaire Robert Smith who has contributed a lot of money, $150,000.00,  to Schneiderman over the years with much of the cash contributed to Schneiderman after he launched a probe, and then closed that probe, into the fees that private equity firms charge their clients.  The print version of the News 4 report explained that Smith is “the founder of Vista Equity Partners, a private equity fund that has attracted nearly $1 billion in investments from the New York Common Retirement Fund, a public pension, over the last seven years.”

Compounding the problem of mystery and its deepening the appearance of impropriety, News 4 interviewed James Tierney, a former Maine attorney general, now directing Columbia University's National State Attorneys General Program who, News 4 said explained that:

hedge funds and private equity firms are not transparent about their investments. That means the funds can allege some sort of wrongdoing about another company - and it is impossible for prosecutors to know if a resulting investigation could be seen as posing a conflict of interest.

Would you like to consider yet one more layer of complexity?  With all the money and ownership interests affecting the press there is, similar to the situation with elected officials including Attorneys General such as Schneiderman, the question of what gets investigated by the press . . .

Part of the News 4 story related how Schneiderman has investigated and now halted in New York the Fantasy Sports Gambling industry (See the Frontline Report: The Fantasy Sports Gamble,
February 9, 2016).  NBC’s investment in this industry necessitated disclosure in its report, but there is money on both sides of the deal because NBC reported that Schneiderman has also taken money from the local regulated gambling industry which competes with fantasy sports gambling.

As noted, the WNYC and News 4 New York reports both make clear that, when all is said and done, the Attorney General’s office, despite how troubling all of this must necessarily be, is not being accused of any wrong doing.  Indeed, while part of the purpose of this article to deepen the analysis points out that it is simplistically naive to believe the assertion of Attorney General’s office when it says that Scheiderman’s investigation of his own “political donors” is “evidence that he is unbiased and not swayed by these political contributions,” that doesn’t change that fact that nothing written here concludes that Schneiderman doesn’t strive to do the right thing in a troublingly warped and problematic system.

We can note in more detail here the questions about how elected officials including state attorneys general are essentially gatekeepers to benefit that can be politically derived, essentially collecting tolls, but one would expect or hope that, because an attorney general's office is comprised of attorneys with the licenses and personal integrity on the line, it would ensure that the office operates within legal bounds and mostly according to Hoyle.

Tim Wu during the Teachout/Wu campaign for Governor and Lieutenant Governor from this Citizens Defending  Libraries gallery of events page.

Further, it must certainly serve as an inherent check and balance on the office that so many attorneys working there have no doubt gone to work in the office precisely because they hope it is a place where they can do the right thing and accomplish idealistic objectives they likely came equipped with.  A recent case in point is that, this fall, Tim Wu, the Columbia Law Professor and highly influential open internet advocate (and Tweeter par excellence), joined the Eric Schneiderman’s office.  Mr. Wu is also recently famous by virtue of his political foray to become lieutenant governor as running mate of Zephyr Teachout.  It was a campaign that was startlingly effective.  Ms. Teachout is a protégée of Lawrence Lessig and a central tenet of the Teachout/Wu campaign was the overriding need for the kind of campaign finance reform that this article is about.

Still, in the final analysis, how does our warped system serve or not serve the public?  When it comes to moneyed interests being on the scene does Schneiderman stand on the side of the public if all the money is on the side of private moneyed interests?   Or does our state attorney general fulfill predictions of professors Gilens and Page that the actual interest of the public will have “only a minuscule, near zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy”?

Here is a perfect test case with a now escalating profile.  The New York State Attorney General regulates charities and is supposed to "to police fraud and abuse" and, for instance, the office was recently even given additionally clarified  powers “to bring judicial proceedings to unwind interested-party transactions."

A complaint about such fraud and abuse by the Brooklyn Public Library was recently filed by a newly formed group, Love Brooklyn Libraries, representing the public interest.  There is, however, a lot of private industry money on the other side, particularly real estate interest money that would like to see Brooklyn public libraries sold for a pittance, far less than their value to the public.  Part of the problem is that the composition of the board of the Brooklyn Public Library is extremely ill-suited to upholding the public interest with far too many competing agendas at odds to the public’s.  This is exactly what the Scheiderman’s office is supposed to be regulating.  He is supposed to prevent and insulate the public from exactly that kind of harm.

Read about the composition of the board of the Brooklyn Public Library and competing agendas at odds to the public’s.

Point of disclosure: I am a co-founder of Citizens Defending Libraries which has similarly brought such matters to the attention of the Attorney General’s office, not only with respect to the BPL and its trustees, but also with respect to the NYPL and, for instance, its sale of the Donnell Library.

Now if one were plotting it on one of those professorial graphs we talked about, it is important to know that the public almost universally opposes the sale and shrinkage of our libraries, the elimination of books and librarians and the deliberate underfunding of libraries in a time of plenty being being used as an excuse to do so.

The breaking headline news now escalating the status of this story: The New York Post has just come out with an eviscerating story about the sweetheart details of de Blasio's giveaway of the Brooklyn Heights library.  The developer to whom the de Blasio administration and the BPL trustees regulated by Schneiderman’s office wasn’t the highest bidder; his bid was 20% lower than another of the two bids that surpassed him.  It was an inferior bid in other respects as well.  See:  New York Post: Developer with ties to de Blasio scores job, despite being outbid, By Aaron Short, February 21, 2016.

The new facts in the Post article are further evidence of what Scheiderman needs to be investigating.  But even this needs to be put in context: David Kramer (of the Hudson Companies) was the low bidder for a library that should not even be sold.  Kramer and the other developers were only bidding for the value of the library site as a vacant lot.  There were being asked by the BPL and its trustees to bid only for the “tear-down” value of the library.  These bids were in no way related to the value of the library to the public from the public’s perspective, because de Blasio and the BPL trustees were selling off the library with no appraisal of the value of the library from the public’s perspective.  And it is important to remember that what we are speaking of is a recently enlarged and fully upgraded library that would cost more than $120 million to replace.

So that is the test case that the New York Post has now given an escalating profile: What Schneiderman does in this instance, a matter that the public cares about intensely, will tell us much about exactly how worrisomely warped our system is.

Citizens Defending Libraries on Thursday night outside an event where Mayor de Blasio and economist Paul Krugman were to discuss income inequity in NYC.