Green to Bloomberg: Don't Cut the Public Advocate

It's wrong to try to destroy a charter-mandated 178 year old City office by budget strangulation rather than by charter change. And it's absurd that an office intended to be a watchdog over City Hall is being gutted by City Hall. Since when do we allow speeders to bar radar guns or Wall Street to shrink the SEC? Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

It's one thing for the Mayor to favor mayoral control of education with conditions (which I support)...but quite another to favor mayoral control of his own watchdog. Nor does blaming a financial crisis - the same excuse offered to extend term limits -- pass the smell or laugh tests; it's one thing for all similar city offices to share the sacrifice, another to selectively cut only the watchdog office 40%.

My vow is this: either convince the Mayor to seek a budget modification to restore the bulk of the cuts so that average New Yorkers continue to have a defender in the bureaucracy...or become a mouse that roars by doing more with much less starting in January 2010 by utilizing volunteers, students, "public advocate locals," just-laid off subsidized legal associates and philanthropic funds.

Let's step back from today's crisis. This office traces directly back to 1831 when it was called The Board of Aldermen (with presidents later including Al Smith and Fiorello LaGuardia), then President of the City Council in 1937 and finally Public Advocate in1993 (for a history of the office, see Green & Eisner, "The Public Advocate for New York City: An Analysis of the Country's only Elected Ombudsman", New York Law School Law Review, Vol. XLII, 1998.)

As the City's ombudsman, it was the bridge between citizens needing city services and an often ineffective bureaucracy. It resolved complaints against agencies, investigated city services and was a "counter-weight" to City Hall, according to the court decision in Green v. Safir (1997).

Having been the Public Advocate for eight years, I know first-hand how effective it could be. We investigated and changed practices when it came to police misconduct, child abuse, Access-a-Ride, job discrimination against domestic violence victims and scores of other areas - and answered/resolved 12,000 complaints a year, or nearly 100,000 in my years there. Public Advocate Gotbaum had her own initiatives and resolved a similar number of complaints. At a cost of 25 cents a person, was there a more cost-effective city office?

But because the political process controlled its budget -- unlike the Independent Budget Office whose budget is tethered to the OMB budget -- there was always the threat that it would lose funding not because it didn't do the job but because it did. Throughout its history, powerful Mayors and Council leaders have tried to politically reign in or eliminate the office when it performed its watchdog function.

So should a 178 year history be threatened and a budget slashed because of a severe temporary recession? Actually, Public Advocate is needed more than ever precisely because so many citizens desperately need city services like child welfare, senior centers, municipal health care, rent stabilization, public transportation and more. Now is when we most need an advocate protecting people's wallets and health.

This attack then on the ombudsman's office is not an assault on a person named Betsy Gotbaum or her successor but on hundreds of thousands of average New Yorkers depending on vital city services.

Almost every government agency should take a cut in a temporary crisis. But a 40% cut to one watchdog office that had previously suffered large reductions -- with no similar cuts to Mayoral or Council budgets -- looks like political self-interest. The Speaker has noted that the Council wanted to keep fire houses and libraries open. I'm for that. But when the Council then divies up some $48 million in Member Items to political allies and friendly groups - 2% of which could restore adequate funding to this charter-mandated office -- the explanation for choking only the Public Advocate collapses.

What will not work, however, is for the Mayor and Speaker to blame each other for a budget that they controlled from start to finish. They proudly shook hands in front of the cameras and they in tandem are accountable for the result.

The Speaker is right however in one important sense: this situation began when the Mayor proposed a reduction from $2.8 million to only $1.7 million in the Public Advocate budget (which will result in a reduction of staff from 65 in 1990 to 45 in 2000 to perhaps 22 in 2009). But if the Mayor and Council can so arbitrarily and politically eliminate oversight at will - and term limits before that -- what's the next democratic institution or principle to fall on their say-so?

When Mayor Giuliani tried this exact same budget ploy of a 40% cut in 1994, Speaker Peter Vallone stopped him and protected the office. And when Mayor Giuliani tried to sabotage PA by a charter change in 1999 to retaliate against our stream of reports, exposes and lawsuits, we organized a large civic coalition to defeat him at the polls 76%-24%.

I've often said (admiringly) that Mike Bloomberg was no Rudy Giuliani. In that hope, I'm urging him to step back and come up with a budget modification to restore PA funds so that it suffers no less of a percentage cut -- or more of a cut -- than other charter-mandated offices like Community Boards and Borough Presidents.

As a former Public Advocate and perhaps a future one, I'm dedicated to making sure that this voice of the people will not be silenced. President Bill Clinton, in 1997 at the Hudde School in Brooklyn, understood the importance of this mission. "I don't know if there's another city in America," he told the students that day, "that has an elected public advocate. But think about what that means. What would it mean for you to be a public advocate. Someone who is standing up for people at large, right? For the public. I'm sort of the country's public advocate."

Comments

[AliveInNYC]

Sorry Mr. Green but I disagree. Bloomberg should't be cutting the Public Advocate's budget, he should be working to eliminate the position completely. No other city has a position like this and there are plenty of citizen watchdog groups that do the exact same work.

In this time of budget cuts and hard decisions, the Public Advocate's office should be one of the first things to go.