"New York City Council Tries to Strip Giuliani Legacy
Wednesday, April 16, 2003
NEW YORK CITY — It passed a resolution against the war in Iraq, has called for a living wage $3 above the federal minimum wage and has sought tax hikes higher than what Mayor Michael Bloomberg has requested.
Citing just a sampling of the City Council's recent attempts to alter New York City's political landscape, some analysts are accusing the municipal body of being stuck in the free-spending, radical '60s rather than the austerity-minded times of today.
"Basically, it's what I would call a turn-back-the-clock City Council. They're trying to turn the clock back to the pre-Giuliani era in New York City," said Manhattan Institute scholar Steve Malanga, referring to former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, credited for introducing zero tolerance policies that whipped the city back into a renaissance in the late 1990s and pre-Sept. 11 2000s.
The council's composition was created by the same force that ended Giuliani's tenure -- term limits. And now, says Malanga and at least one former council member, that council is undoing all the achievements that made the city great.
"It's really very counterproductive and it's a reversal of all the things Mayor Giuliani tried to do," said Henry Stern, a former New York City councilman, who also served in the Giuliani administration. "The council is much more Democratic than it used to be and as a result, it's freer to do foolish things."
But members of the new council, with its veto-proof Democratic majority, say radical change is just what the city needs.
"You're dealing with articulate, bold, audacious, outspoken, fearless council members who will not be controlled by a mayor or a speaker," said Charles Barron, a former Black Panther and current councilman who has made slavery reparations and hanging portraits of "people of color" in municipal buildings top priorities.
One of 38 members inaugurated in January 2002 to replace most of the 51-member council, Barron has since hosted a council reception for Zimbabwe autocrat Robert Mugabe. He said council criticism comes from people who have a problem with minorities.
"They probably have racial overtones now that it's more people of color in the City Council. This is the most progressive City Council the city has ever had," Barron said.
Malanga said racial demagoguery aside, the new council has it in for the business community without realizing the impact on the average resident. For instance, the living wage increase was justified by council members who said that low-wage workers needed the extra money to pay for a property-tax increase the council had recently approved.
Bloomberg had proposed the property-tax increase as a way to pay for the $12 billion education budget without increasing income taxes. The council approved it in a matter of days without public hearings.
"Bills the council has already passed have worsened the business climate in what is already one of the country’s most heavily taxed, heavily regulated cities — a city still struggling to recover from a severe downturn in its Number One industry and a terrorist attack on its Number Two business district," Malanga wrote in his latest article on city-journal.org.
Among efforts to roll back Giuliani's work, the council is considering a law to reform welfare-to-work to allow education or job training to substitute for work. That reverses Giuliani's approach, which led to the decline from more than 1 million to under 500,000 welfare rolls.
The board is also considering strengthening the citizen complaint board against the police, accused of being racially insensitive, and giving itself veto power over mayoral appointments.
Critics of the current council say the one remaining hope is that the same term limits that brought the current group to power will also be responsible for kicking them out. That means in six years, the majority of the current council will be gone."
Instead, nonpartisan elections will be used to kill the council.