Gifford Miller

Regarded by many as the second most powerful politician in New York City, City Council Speaker Gifford Miller is banking on his legislative record to catapult him into the mayoral office. As City Council Speaker, since 2002, Miller created the city’s first Earned Income Tax credit, passed the first living wage law and required the removal of lead paint dust from city dwellings. Still, the 35-year-old candidate has had a rather poor showing in the polls, continually lagging behind former Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer, the democratic front-runner, and Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields.

However, Miller remains confident that his demonstrated skills as a political leader will make him the standout come September 13th. Nevertheless, with the Democratic Primary less than a month away, the Upper East Side resident must present a platform that not only caters to the needs of the city’s diverse populations, but also distinguishes him from his opponents. Speaking at a recent Independent Press Association event, the mayoral hopeful attempted to do just that.

Unemployment

“We live in a city with enormous disparities in communities of color in terms of jobs and job access and I have a specific plan to address that by building on the Workforce Development Initiative [created in the City Council],” said Miller. In May of this year the United Way and the City Council, under Miller’s direction, launched a $10 million program, NYC Works, targeting chronic unemployment in low-income neighborhoods.

Miller is using an initiative that will award grants ranging from $100,000 to $700,000 to non-profit groups, to create innovative ways to help the chronically unemployed obtain and retain jobs, as the basis of his unemployment strategy. While the plan is noble, it appears that the candidate is passing the problem off to the nonprofit sector instead of having the mayor’s office tackle the problem head on.

Like his democratic contenders, Miller cites education as the key element to decreasing the staggering unemployment rates within communities of color: “When we’re failing 550,000 children and the schools are predominantly made up of children of color there is a connection between the disparities in terms of jobs and the failure of our school system."

Education

In many ways, Gifford Miller’s education plan closely resembles that of Fernando Ferrer. Like Ferrer, Miller wants to reduce class sizes, recruit and retain quality teachers, return disciplinary control to principals, expand after-school programs and use technology to keep parents informed. The only real differences in the aforementioned initiatives are the qualitative goals set by each candidate; while Ferrer hopes to add 66,000 new classroom seats, Miller seeks to reduce class sizes by 20 percent.

The greatest distinction between the two candidates’ platforms is the means by which they will be funded. Ferrer’s controversial School Investment Program, which seeks to reestablish the stock transfer tax – a sales tax on purchased stocks – his primary financial solution.

Technically, this plan depends upon the willingness of State legislators to reestablish the transfer tax – a highly unlikely feat. Miller, on the other hand, wants to cancel the upcoming tax cut for those who make more than $500,000, in order to use the $400 million in revenue to lower class sizes.

Crime

Walking the political tightrope, Miller praised the policies’ contribution in making New York one of the safest big cities, as he indirectly addressed poor police relationships with communities of color, calling for the expansion of the Cadet Corps program to diversify the force. One of the few standouts in Miller’s rather unimaginative program (increase salaries and hire more cops) is the creation of community courts in every borough. The courts will provide low-level offenders the help they need instead of recycling them through the court system.

With heightened concerns of terrorist attacks on our subway system, Miller’s safety program primarily focuses on subway security. He intends to create a task forces headed by the NYPD and accountable to the mayor to launch the following subway upgrades: install 9-1-1 phones in stations and tunnels, install repeaters throughout the subway system to enable emergency responders to communicate, modernize the system to enable tracking of every train and install a subway notification system to alert passengers on what to do in case of emergencies. To pay for his proposed upgrades, Miller wants to reinstitute the Progressive Commuter Tax on those who work in the city but live elsewhere.

Affordable housing

Of all of Miller’s proposed initiatives, his housing tax credit is by far the most distinctive. He has proposed the creation of a renter’s tax credit, totaling 3 percent of annual rent for renters earning up to $100,000 who do not qualify for the Earned Income Tax Credit. The credit would range from $180 to $1,000 and would be paid for by getting funds from the state’s Star program, a house credit, which tends to primarily benefits homeowners.

Miller also proposed doubling the City’s Earned Income Tax Credit by billing the state, after a year, for the cost of housing inmates before trial, which Miller estimates will bring in $75 million.

Beyond tax credits the candidate seeks to continue his efforts in the City Council to preserve Section 8 and Mitchell-Lama housing. "Any plan for affordable housing has to be about preserving existing affordable housing, and unfortunately we are losing tens of thousands of affordable housing units each year," said Miller.

He also intends to use the Battery Park City fund to create more affordable housing as well as institute inclusionary zones, allowing developers to use more density if it is used for the creation of affordable housing.

Of all of the candidates running for mayor, Gifford Miller does have the most experience in the legislative arena, serving on the City Council for the last nine years and overseeing some of the body’s most progressive initiatives. The question remains, will voters, many of whom could not recognize Miller on the street, remember that on Primary Day?

Anthony Weiner

Declaring himself the candidate of ideas, Congressman Anthony Weiner, 40, formerly threw his hat into the mayoral ring earlier this month. Although the congressman from Brooklyn has been campaigning around the city since the beginning of the year, Weiner’s congressional schedule has prohibited him from campaigning with the same regularity of his opponents. With the end of the congressional session Weiner has stepped up his campaigning efforts hoping to raise his profile among Democratic voters.

At a recent Independent Press Association event, the underdog candidate, who remains dead last in preliminary polls, tried to live up to his self-proclaimed title, "candidate of ideas," with a presentation of his vision for the city.

Healthcare

"We have to stop the closure of hospitals throughout the five boroughs; the majority of the hospitals that are closing are disproportionately in communities of color and low-income communities," said Weiner. The candidate wants mayoral control over the opening and closing of public hospitals in the city, which is now the responsibility of the State Department of Health. In fact, Weiner wants the state to relinquish much of its control over the city, allowing the city to oversee everything from the MTA to the raising or lowering of income taxes. Historically, initiatives which depend on politicians, especially those in Albany, giving up power tend to be dead on arrival.

Weiner also seeks to utilize state funding, which left $40 million unallocated after it’s first year of operation, to subsidize low-cost health insurance. Modeling his plan after the Brooklyn Healthworks, a local initiative that employs state funding to subsidize low-cost health insurance for small businesses in Brooklyn, Weiner hopes to yield the same results, with insurance offered at less than $120 for individuals and less than $350 for families.

Small businesses and unemployment

Citing small businesses as "the bedrock on which this city was built," Weiner seeks to increase investments and build an incentive program for NYC businesses. He plans to create a $10 million fund to encourage new businesses with $100,000 to $200,000 seed loans, primarily benefiting businesses that don’t qualify for larger venture capital investments.

The congressman also seeks to provide street clean-up patrols, often seen in trendy Greenwich Village, for shopping strips in the outer boroughs. To aid local businesses in competing in the global market, Weiner plans to revive and expand the Digital NYC program, which originally offered landlords incentives to pre-wire their buildings for broadband and will now include a "ShopNYC.com" program to market merchant’s goods on line.

When asked about the racial disparities within the disbursement of city contract dollars, the congressman danced a political shuffle. He urged city agencies and private companies to buy from local business, which just might be minority owned "giving [minority businesses] another pot to feed from." Weiner also said he wanted an incentive program to bridge the contract dollar gaps, but neglected to provide specific information or a plan.

Education

One has to wonder if all of the Democratic candidates sat in a room one night and devised their education platforms together; Weiner, like his rivals, wants to recruit and retain quality teachers, remove disciplinary restriction for principals and the revise the "cookie cutter" curriculum.

To his credit, Weiner has called for some specific alteration to Bloomberg’s education programs that have not been addressed by his opponents. Weiner wants to eliminate parent coordinators, whose very existence he feels is counter-productive to affecting any real change, since principals can hire and fire the liaisons who are less likely to criticize the school or the principal. By diverting the $43 million used to pay parent coordinators to create Centers of Parental Involvement in every school –a space where parents can access detailed information on their children’s progress – Weiner hopes to bring every parent into the schools not just a selected few.

A staunch critic of the mayor’s Leadership Academy, a school for principals, Weiner would prefer to use the private donations that fund the school to address basic needs of students, from toilet paper to new textbooks. Weiner is particularly critical of the fact that graduates of the academy were schooled at a cost of approximately $300,000 per attendee.

Weiner also wants to rehire 1,100 special education evaluators, laid off by the mayor in order to consolidate 32 special education district offices into 10 regional offices. Since the mayor’s reorganization, the backlog of students referred to special education but waiting to be evaluated has dramatically increased from 12,997 to 28,640.

Transportation

To create a "comprehensive and reliable" transportation system, Weiner wants to expand ferry service and create a bus-rapid transit system. He wants to build ferry landings in neighborhoods like Red Hook, Long Island, Sheepshead Bay, Marine Park, Coney Island and Bayside to provide travelers with multiple options while spurring economic and residential growth. As a member of the Transportation Committee in Congress, Weiner plans to use his clout to obtain federal funding.

Improving the efficiency of the bus system, Weiner proposes a bus-rapid transit system, which would create bus only express lanes in heavily traveled areas as well as pre-paid fares.

Weiner’s most attractive plan, a 10 percent tax break for anyone making less than $150,000 annually, is the lynchpin of his campaign. He hopes that voters recognize him as a candidate whose ideas will serve the needs of the city’s economically, racially and socially diverse populations. "I’ve never run in a race where I wasn’t the under dog. I’ve never run in a race where I wasn’t out-spent. I’ve never run in a race where the political organization didn’t support my opponent, and I’ve never lost an election in my life,” said Weiner. We’ll see.