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Spitzer Takes the Helm
What It Means for the City

By Edward-Isaac Dovere

"Have to get used to all new faces with a new administration," said the Amtrak conductor with a shake of his head. He was collecting tickets on the early morning train from Penn Station up to Albany full of elected officials, staffers, lobbyists, watchdogs and reporters all headed north to hear new Gov. Eliot Spitzer address the Legislature.

The train was full of people from New York, and Spitzer's speech was full of proposals that would directly and indirectly affect them, due to the new policies which seem likely to come with the new faces. Spitzer announced a wide-ranging, highly ambitious agenda he laid out during his first week in office.

Spitzer's plans are for the whole state, but many of the policies proposed by the man who lives just a few doors down from Mayor Michael Bloomberg on East 79th Street seem poised to change life for city residents as well.

After spending almost two years as the presumptive winner of the 2006 election and two months as governor-elect, Spitzer spent 40 minutes at his inauguration and a full hour at his State of the State address two days later laying out general principles and specific plans.

City partisans agree that while Spitzer's attention to reform, property tax cuts and health care will help the city, the new governor's specific attention to education, certain transportation projects and Ground Zero redevelopment are the areas where he is likely to have the most immediate and most direct effect.

"I'm excited to go back to the city and tell people it's a new day-and you know what? It just might be," said Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer.

He said that during the days when he was an Assembly member and George Pataki was governor, he used to leave State of the State addresses "totally depressed."

With five executive orders he signed on the morning of Jan. 1 and much of his two major speeches so far, Spitzer has made clear his intention to reform the state government. He wants to limit the interaction between lobbyists and elected officials and increase prevention of corruption and other abuses of power.

This was welcome news to Assembly Member Linda Rosenthal (D-Manhattan), who was first sent to Albany in a February 2006 special election, and began her first full term in the Assembly last week.

Rosenthal, who has worked actively on reform issues, said that after listening to Spitzer promise reform on the campaign trail "it was good to hear him say it again to hear he really means business."

A reformed government will be a much more productive one, she said. "City residents and people in the state now view the state Legislature as the most dysfunctional in the nation," she said. "If through some of the reforms we change the way the Legislature operates, that kind of description might subside, and then our work can be taken more seriously. There are a lot of people who do a lot of hard work but who are stuck in the muck and mire of the dysfunction."

There may be greater consequences from reform for the city than that, said Jonathan Bowles, director of the Center for an Urban Future.

"So much money is wasted, there's endless borrowing, we end up having a dysfunctional, inefficiently run government that ends up costing us lots of money. It keeps us from undertaking innovative programs," Bowles said.

"There hasn't been a lot of imagination, and part of it is because of the dysfunction." Bowles cited Spitzer's demand to rework the state's approach to stem cells as a prime example of how a changed policy could change both the lives and the economy of New Yorkers.

"Supporting stem cell research has the potential to ignite growth in the city's biotech center," Bowles said.

Spitzer's new approach to health care dovetailed into another campaign theme, as he vowed to combat Medicaid fraud.

This could save the state millions-if not billions-of dollars each year. Spitzer also encouraged New Yorkers to join him in demanding universal healthcare.

"Expanding access to health care will reduce state spending significantly in the long run, because seeing a primary care doctor costs far less than providing charity care for the same patient in an emergency room-and it leads to far better care," Spitzer said.

On education policy, Spitzer said the state should work towards universal pre-kindergarten. Additionally, he pledged to give more money towards schools overall.

During last year's gubernatorial campaign, Spitzer pledged to resolve the Campaign for Fiscal Equity (CFE) lawsuit that has languished in state courts for a decade and a half. State education funding is distributed by school district rather than by student population. The lawsuit alleged that city students, who live in much higher density districts, therefore get a disproportionately lower share of state money. Analysts say that correcting this imbalance could mean up to $6 billion in additional money coming to city public schools.

Brian Kavanagh (D-Manhattan), who began his first term representing the East Side in the Assembly Jan. 1, said the changes on education would have "the biggest and most immediate effect" for city residents.

Kavanagh echoed Spitzer's insistence that only with an investment in education can the state expect to keep up with innovation, both by developing its own youth and by attracting top professionals to the state by providing good neighborhood schools.

Spitzer also vowed to raise the cap on charter schools in the state and provide funding aid for school districts adding new charter schools, as many Assembly Democrats have demanded in the past.

Among those applauding most loudly at this line in the speech was City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, as several in the chamber turned to him, laughing. Klein was seated next to Randi Weingarten, president of the United Federation of Teachers.

Spitzer also committed to public transportation projects expressed in the State of the State. The governor pledged to complete East Side Access, a project which would connect the Long Island Rail Road to Grand Central Station. He also demanded the state work to construct the first phase of the long-awaited Second Avenue Subway, which would run from 96th Street to 63rd Street, while continuing to plan for extension of the line to Lower Manhattan.

"He expressly said making sure we do a full-build," said Kavanagh, whose district contains much of the area which would only be touched by the new transit line if the second phase of it is built.

Spitzer said these and other infrastructure projects he outlined in his State of the State were also essential to making New York competitive in the 21st Century. Without a wholesale redirection of the state, Spitzer said, New York will continue losing population and becoming less relevant and competitive.

"We have significantly reduced our focus and investment on major infrastructure projects at a time when they have never been more important," Spitzer said.

Spitzer said the rest of the state should pay attention to Mayor Bloomberg's recent attention to long-term sustainability.

Bloomberg liked that and much of the rest of what he heard at the inauguration and the State of the State address, praising what he saw as a new direction of the state.

"You just go right down the list," Bloomberg said.

He said the city is already moving forward to take care of its own public schools, though he welcomed Spitzer's determination to resolve CFE. From education funding to tax cuts, Bloomberg said that he had been very satisfied ever since reading an advance copy of Spitzer's State of the State several hours before it was delivered.

"There are very few things in the speech that I could ever quibble with," Bloomberg said. "They'd only be in degrees."

Spitzer also pledged to devote more resources and attention to programs promoting minority- and women-owned businesses, placing Lt. Gov. David Paterson in charge of these initiatives. Currently, New York lags behind most other states in promoting these programs and in the share of the economy constituted by minority- and women-owned businesses. Experts agree that a significant portion of these new businesses would likely be in the city, given its higher minority population.

Among the city concerns unmentioned in Spitzer's speech was the area of the far West Side known as Hudson Yards.

Daniel Doctoroff, the deputy mayor for economic development, had hoped to put a stadium as the centerpiece of the failed 2012 Olympic bid, and has remained concerned with development of that land.

With rezoning done and a bond sale in progress, however, Doctoroff said, "I don't think there's any need to address it."

Doctoroff said he found nothing specific or general missing from the speech, and was pleased with the "overall tenor that we're not going to accept the status quo."

State Sen. Eric Schneiderman (D-Mahattan) added that Spitzer's proposals to change how the state approaches economic development would have a significant impact on the five boroughs.

"The programs have really been more about cronyism than they have been about creative development ideas, and I think this is going to benefit people who work in the city and small businesses and everything," Schneiderman said.

Moreover, he said Spitzer had made a significant move by going beyond general principles in his speech to make specific proposals that satisfied people at different points in the political spectrum.

"The element that was so brilliant about it is that he essentially kicked the whole process into the mode we're usually at in June," Schneiderman said, referring to the point in the legislative session when members of the state government usually scramble to reach compromises.

"He set everyone's agenda. He didn't just set his own agenda."

Among the projects on which Spitzer indicated that no compromise would be possible was development on the 16 acres known as Ground Zero, which have been essentially moribund since the destruction of the World Trade Center. "I cannot accept that more than five years after the attacks of Sept. 11, progress is only starting to be made," Spitzer said.

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D), whose downtown Manhattan district includes Ground Zero, said he was glad to hear this commitment from Spitzer.

"Very little" has to happen from the Legislature to make things happen, said Silver. Blaming Pataki for the lack of construction or development where the Twin Towers once stood, Silver said that when it comes to Spitzer, "I think we're pretty much in lockstep."

Silver has been speaker since 1994. After spending 12 years playing defense on the Republican legislative proposals of Pataki, he expressed excitement at having a fellow Democrat in the governor's mansion. But he said that his experience leading the Assembly so far had taught him to view Spitzer's much-lauded State of the State as "part two of a trilogy," after Spitzer's Jan. 1 inaugural address.

The third, and most important, part of the trilogy will come Jan. 31, when Spitzer submits his first budget proposal.

Within that, Spitzer will have to explain what cuts he will make to achieve all that he spoke of in his first two major addresses as governor. That will mean gambling, and perhaps losing, the political capital and overall good will the governor has enjoyed so far in his first term.

"I think you have a rather generous amount that was talked about," Silver said. "Now we begin the process."