By ELIZABETH COLUCCIO
As the 109th mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio now has the task of bringing about all the changes he promised New Yorkers, and indeed there are many.
De Blasio remained on top of polls since mid-summer, leading to big expectations about what he will accomplish in his time as mayor. He expressed his own high expectations, too.
“Make no mistake, the people of New York City have chosen a progressive path,” he said Tuesday night as he declared victory.
Jobs and unemployment topped the list of concerns of voters, according to exit polls, followed by education, crime, city finances and housing. De Blasio addressed many of these issues during his campaign, especially city finances, education and crime.
One of de Blasio’s main points was his plan to fund universal pre-kindergarten, an agenda that many people supported. However, a recent study by the Campaign for Educational Equity and Center for Children’s Initiatives found that the first year of universal pre-K would cost New York State $225 million. By 2016, the city would be expected to pay half the bill, and then move on to paying the entire cost of $390 million in 2017.
De Blasio’s plan for raising the revenue for this program is to raise taxes on New Yorkers who make more than $500,000 a year. This money is also expected to fund afternoon programs for middle school students.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo has already stated that, while he supports universal pre-K, he does not support taxing wealthy New Yorkers, fearing that they might take poorly to increasing their currently low taxes and leave the city altogether.
“What [the wealthy] fear is that they’re in a place where the taxes will continually go up and there will be a ceiling and they’ll say, ‘I’m going to Florida,’” Cuomo said in an editorial meeting with the Daily News. “I believe that.”
Opposition from the governor poses a serious impediment for achieving this goal. However, just recently Senate co-leader Jeffrey Klein promised to push for tax hikes during the next budget talks.
David Bloomfield, professor of education leadership and law at Brooklyn College, said he agrees that de Blasio will be able to convince the state legislature to support his goals.
“He will go to the legislature and get a fair shot at hitting the tax increase that he said, and he will request or find some other way of financing pre-k and after school education. He will bring a degree of parent confidence to the school system that Bloomberg was unable to attain,” said Bloomfield. “It will be difficult and the way the financing is put together may be different than his campaign proposal, but I expect there will be increased funding for pre-k education.”
Another talking point of de Blasio’s was his stance against stop and frisk. In his campaign commercials, his son Dante appealed to New Yorkers directly, telling the public that his father was against racial profiling. It is widely believed that Dante’s role in de Blasio’s campaign was an important reason for his popularity.
De Blasio vowed to carry out the alterations that were ordered by Federal Judge Shira A. Scheindlin this past August, which included the use of surveillance cameras worn by patrol officers but did not call for an entire repeal of stop and frisk. Mayor Michael Bloomberg was notably displeased with this ruling, calling Scheindlin deaf to the needs of New Yorkers, and going so far as to say that the changes she suggested would not be implemented in his time in office.
De Blasio has made it clear that his time as mayor will be very unlike Bloomberg’s 12 years, though exit polls have indicated that 52 percent of voters approved of Bloomberg. Even still, 70 percent want to see change in the next years. In addition to rebuffing Bloomberg’s policy towards stop and frisk, de Blasio has said he would not keep Ray Kelly on as police commissioner, even though 65 percent of voters approved of Commissioner Kelly during exit polls.
De Blasio’s strong position against stop and frisk appealed to the city’s minority groups, a demographic he paid a great deal of attention to in the primaries. Stop and frisk has been the cause of a great deal of mistrust towards law enforcement; a study conducted by the Vera Institute of Justice in September showed that 88 percent of residents aged 18 to 25 from neighborhoods most targeted for stop and frisk searches do not trust the police. In addition, 55 percent of people in the Edison Research exit poll said stop and frisk was excessive.
Some troubles De Blasio will have to face as mayor are those left by his predecessor, Bloomberg. The city is struggling with a major deficit in the budget, with financial experts suggesting unfunded expenses could run anywhere from $811 million to $7.8 billion in the next fiscal year. When De Blasio takes office on Jan. 1,, he will have to figure out a plan to deal with one of the city’s most pressing financial issues: renewing expired contracts with city workers and retroactively paying withheld raises.
Robert Cherry, professor of economics at Brooklyn College, said he is not confident that de Blasio can rectify the city’s budget issues while making the unions happy.
“He can’t do very much if he’s going to give money to the unions. It’s very hard for him not to throw some money to unions, so I don’t know what he’s going to do about the budget,” said Cherry. He noted the limits of mayoral power.
“He doesn’t have the power to tax, and even if he does he has already dedicated funds to early childcare,” Cherry said. “He could charge the real estate industry a bit more … it’s a complicated situation but he’s a very sharp person and he understands all of these things.”
Though he has touted his plan to raise taxes on the wealthy and cut off big companies that have been favored in the past years, de Blasio cannot make the decision about how to find the money to pay the city’s debts on his own. The mayor needs to have the approval of the city council and the state legislature in order to raise taxes.
“It’s too soon to say with any certainty how Bill de Blasio might deal with that budget gap as well as address other priorities he has outlined,” said Independent Budget Office communications director Doug Turetsky. “But the city operates under rules that require it to have a balanced budget in its current year and every mayor since the city’s near bankruptcy in the 1970s has accomplished that, in partnership with the City Council. There is no reason to think a de Blasio administration would be any different.”
De Blasio’s competitor Lhota has has charged he will be ineffectual as mayor. The election results showed that voters believe otherwise. De Blasio has high aspirations for his mayoralty, and the people of New York City will be expecting him to deliver.
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