Author: Larry Littlefield

Do we actually have different political parties, different factions within those parties, and different politicians with different points of view? In the past two years, the City and State of New York have decided — at a time of financial crisis, at a time when most Americans have no choice but to work longer — that its teachers should stop working seven years earlier at age 55, and then be paid to do nothing for anyone else ever again. Older generations got to walk out the door (they should spit in the children's faces on the way out) contributing little or nothing to this; after all it was claimed it would cost nothing. And then, immediately the City and State have turned around and decided to cut the pay of all future teachers by five percent, with some advocating a later retirement age for younger generations as well. As if this was in now way in conflict with, had to be justified relative to, and had nothing to do with the decisions previous decisions to enrich retirement benefits for those cashing in and moving out. As if somehow what cost nothing for older and existing public employees was too costly for future public employees.

Tier V, or a higher contribution level for future hires but not existing hires — these proposals add greed to greed, injustice to injustice, and damage to what is left of public services to the existing damages. And here we are coming to the end of a campaign for local office, and no one has said so. This has barely even been spoken of.

A quick glance through the campaign sites of the candidates for NYC Comptroller shows that all of them avoid talking about the two most important questions in state and local public finance, the questions whose answers determine how much worse off people will be in the future than today (as taxpayers, service recipients, future public employees, or all three), and how much more will today’s interests be allowed to take from that future. When determining how much money the City of New York has to contribute to its pension funds, and the cost of past and future retroactive pension enrichments for past and present public employees, what is the rate of return on pension assets that is fair and reasonable to assume, and from what level of assets? And how much more will people have to pay in the future to fund the retiree health insurance being granted in return for services provided today?

In the City Council district where I live there is a rare event going on: a contested election for a legislative office in New York City. The election is being contested because the seat is open, and the seat is open because its current occupant – Councilmember Bill DeBlasio – is running for something else. Generally, aside from citywide and statewide positions such as Mayor, Governor, and Senator, we don’t really have contested elections in New York. The House of Representatives and state legislature can barely be considered elective offices in New York State at this point – incumbents can keep citizen challengers off the ballot, challengers motivated primarily by ambition don’t bother taking on the long odds of running against an incumbent, the media has over the pasts 25 years generally only covered incumbents, and retiring legislators generally leave mid-term, so a new perpetual incumbent can be appointed in a special election few people know about.

At the New York City Council, however, we have had real democratic elections, thanks to term limits. Term limits are not popular with incumbent members of the City Council, even those who say otherwise, because they would like the office to once again be a permanent sinecure that can be willed to the next generation, like the state legislature. Faced with their own possible political demise the Council, working with Mayor Bloomberg, has already voted to modify the limit to three four-year terms, rather than two four year terms, over the heads of voters who had endorsed a two-term limit by referendum, twice. The courts upheld their right, under the City Charter, to change the number of terms as they see fit, even if voters are opposed. The question is what happens next? “Extending” term limits to ten terms, a de facto repeal? Unfortunately, the only candidate I trust on this all-important issue is Rock Hackshaw, who is a candidate in a different district.

I read recently that federal officials are creating a new management plan for Gateway National Recreation Area, a National Park Service area located mostly at scattered locations in New York City. With a series on America’s National Parks set to air on PBS, I thought I would make a suggestion, in the spirit of past Labor Day weekend recreation-oriented posts like this one.  Although it is actually one of the five most visited national park areas in the U.S., most of the visitors are going to various scattered historical sites Gateway is responsible for, such as the Statue of Liberty. And most of the recent effort by parks officials has been directed at preserving the wetlands of Jamaica Bay, an important place for birds well known to birdwatchers. Park documents make it clear that preserving and making accessible historic sites and important natural resources are its most important goals.

But Gateway also includes large land areas taken off New York City’s hands in the 1970s, when the city was broke, in the hopes of bringing in federal money and reversing neglect. (Gateway was created as a “national recreation area” under coordinated management in 1972). These areas are really local parks, not “national” in any sense, one reason I doubt Gateway will even be mentioned in the PBS series. Included are Riis Park beach in Queens and nearby Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, huge and in some cases under-used areas with many buildings in disrepair. My suggestion is a new “national role” for those these areas: as a point of contract between rural and small town America and New York City. It is a suggestion consistent with two assumptions: unlike New York City’s local parks Gateway should have a national role; and we Americans are broke, individually and collectively.

Sometimes incompetent government has its advantages. I was asked to research the convention center situation while at City Planning in the 1990s, and found out pretty quickly that the problem wasn't the size of the Javits Convention Center. It was the number, cost and availability of hotel rooms and the lack of transit airport access. And yet the city and state decided to go full speed ahead with a doubling of the size of the Convention Center. Fortunately, they were unable to pull it off. Meanwhile, other state and local governments overbuilt convention center space, and are desperately trying to attract a shrinking number of conventions by cutting prices and losing money.

Other state and local governments have also placed much of their hope for economic salvation on casinos, but while New York has pursued gambling at race tracks, it has consistently failed to make a deal to allow casinos elsewhere. Meanwhile, casinos elsewhere are running into financial problems, and pretty soon state and local governments will have to cut the financial benefits they get from gambling to attract gamblers, while still dealing with the social costs.

Or would he advise them to live elsewhere? That isn’t a liberal or conservative question. I’m open to argument on whether everyone should pay more into the community and get more out, or pay less in and expect less — although I’m more and more leaning toward the latter, moving away from a prior tendency toward the former, the more hopeless it seems. Because younger generations will be putting more in AND getting less out. And no one will say so. Not on the national level, where Medicare beneficiaries and public employees with government health care oppose universal health care because “we can’t afford it.” And not at the state level.