10-Bill Package to Protect the Rights of Tenants Passes Assembly
February 4, 2009
Anyone who rents in New York City knows that the rent laws are broken and our City’s affordable housing stock is in crisis. Over the past decade we have watched as speculation in multi-family housing resulted in the harassment and eviction of families from their homes.
I’m proud to say that earlier this week, the Assembly acted to update and strengthen New York’s rent laws. For your information, these ten bills are listed below. The bill package is now headed to the Senate.
A.2005 (Rosenthal) - Repeals vacancy decontrol laws that allow landlords to deregulate apartments. The bill also re-regulates thousands of units that are renting for less than $5000/month.
A.1686 (Lopez) - Reduces the maximum amount a landlord can increase the rent on a vacated apartment from 20% to 10%.
A.860 (Bing) - Adjusts income decontrol thresholds to more accurately reclect present day realities and tie income decontrol thresholds to inflation in the NYC metropolitan area.
A.1687 (Lopez) - Require former Section 8 properties to be automatically subject to rent regulation.
A.1685 (Lopez) - Limit a landlord’s ability to recover an apartment for personal use to one unit per property.
A.1688 ( Lopez) - Repeals the Urstadt Law, allowing New York City to make its own rent laws.
A.857 (Bing) - Maintains the rents for tenants at their same levels when a building leaves the Mitchell-Lama program and enters rent stabilization.
A.1928 (O’Donnell) - Extends the length of time during which major capital improvement (MCI) expenses are recovered by landlords so that the costs to tenants are more spread out. Also, prohibits rent surcharges for MCIs after the costs of the improvement have already been recovered.
A.2002 (Silver) - Creates civil penalties for tenant harassment and raises penalties on landlords that violate DHCR housing codes.
A.465 (Jeffries) - Protects tenants with preferential rental agreements from exorbirant rent increases.
The Executive Budget: Beginning the Conversation About Shared Sacrifice
December 19, 2008
Governor David Paterson presents the 2009-10 Executive Budget to the NYS Legislature.
As we all expected, the Executive Budget is the result of a painful reality of our difficult economic situation. It demonstrates what we have known for months: balancing the budget will require shared sacrifice.
I am very aware of the obligation that I share with my colleagues to ensure that necessary cuts and tax increases are done in such a way to ensures that higher education remains affordable, the commitment to funding our schools is maintained, quality health care is available to every New Yorker, and that mass transit is adequately funded.
There are many cuts that I am uncomfortable with as I am sure the Governor is. As an example, Senator Tom Duane and I wrote to Governor Paterson in November to ask that the relatively small amount of funding allocated for the Bridges to Health program be maintained, only to discover today that its funds have been frozen and its full implementation delayed for many years. This is a program to provide services to medically fragile, severely traumatized, and chronically disabled children in the foster care system. I will continue to advocate for its funding.
Despite this, I respect that the Governor made tough choices from a poor set of available options and I did not envy his task. Over 50% of our state’s spending is designated to healthcare and education, so it is impossible to avoid cuts in these areas when balancing our budget. I also know that our budget can’t be balanced on cuts, nor would I want it to be. You have probably heard that the Governor has proposed a new range of taxes and fees, some of which have gotten more attention than others (like the ’sweet tax’ proposed tax on non-diet soda drinks which Governor Paterson recently defended in an editorial posted on CNN.com).
Two of these fee increases concerned drivers; the first is a 25% increase on car registration fees and the second is a 25% increase in driver license fees. I wrote to the Governor in November to suggest these fee increases (see my blog post on this topic, Increasing Driver License, Car Registration Fees Could Raise $550 Million for Cash-Starved MTA), and I am happy to see them included in the budget. But I am disappointed that these fees are not designated for mass transit funding as I suggested, but rather to plug holes in the general operating budget. It is important to me to ensure that even as we repair the massive shortfalls in the 2009 budget we plan for mass transit funding for the future. Designating funding for mass transit from drivers’ fees can achieve both.
We are in the midst of an unprecedented global financial crisis that threatens our economic security. People are losing their jobs and their homes. Pensions are losing their value and families are making horrible choices about necessities. I have no doubt that we will pass a budget that contains significant cuts in spending and increases in fees and taxes. And I will continue to demand that this sacrifice is shared and not shouldered by the most vulnerable New Yorkers. Continuing to advocate for more progressive tax structures is one way that I will work to achieve this.
It is very important to me to hear what you think about the Executive Budget. It is by no means a final version of what we will pass in 2009. The Governor himself emphasized yesterday that it is a starting point for dialogue. The PDF of the Governor’s presentation can be found on his 2009-10 Executive Budget website.
My Visit to Israel
December 16, 2008
I thought I’d take a moment to share with you a bit about my recent trip to Israel.
I was honored to recently take part in a delegation of New York State Assembly Members who went to Israel from December 6th to 12th led by Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. About twenty of us travelled together on a visit that was financed and organized by the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York and the Government of Israel.
It was a packed schedule. We met with the Mayor of Jersualem, Nir Barkat. He told us about municipal initiatives which were modeled after New York City. We met with Prime Minister Ehud Olmery for a frank discussion of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian peace process. We also met with US Amabassador to Israel, James B. Cunningham, to review relations between our two countries.
In between dignitaries, we had the great pleasure of meeting with ordinary citizens. In this photo below, I am pictured with an Israeli social worker and an Ethiopian immigrant woman who has resettled in Israel’s growing Ethiopian Jewish neighborhoods.
One very interesting stop was at the corporate headquarters of Israeli Aerospace Industries, a company that does a lot of business in New York State. It was great to meet the people behind a company that is important to both the Israeli and New York economies.
To show solidarity with Israeli citizens, we spent some time in the town of Sderot. Situated on the border of the Gaza Strip, Sderot and its citizens face the harsh daily reality of Hamas rocket attacks. This situation was underscored when as we were visiting the Barzilai Medical Center, rockets exploded in the area.
Nothing to Hide: Financial Disclosure Laws for Lawmakers Should be More Transparent
September 18, 2008
A cynical observer might assume that the reason I am so nonchalant about handing over unredacted copies of my financial disclosure forms to anyone who asks, including the New York Sun, who published an article today that featured my doing so (“Taciturnity is the Word on Legislators’ Pay”) is that other than my public service as an Assembly Member, I have no other income. But the fact is that it is precisely because of my elected post that I don’t have any other income. Being a legislator is a full-time gig. Most of my colleagues treat it as a full-time job, and they should.
I was a little surprised that when the Sun called around, I was the only one to comply with their request, but I strongly suspect that if they had called more than just a few lawmakers, they would have received many more forthcoming replies.
As I said in that article, there is an unfair public perception that all lawmakers are crooks or clowns, and the high-profile scandals following the exposure of the occaisonal bad apple only heightens this carictature. But for the vast majority of legislators this is simply not the case, and being more transparent about their finances would demonstrate this. I will work in the next legislative year to improve the laws around transparency. The public deserves to know when lawmakers have other jobs and how much they make from them.
A little over a week ago, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver told the Associated Press that he would be taking steps to reform ethics and disclosure rules for lawmakers next year. When I next spoke to the Speaker, I made sure to tell him that I completely supported what he said and that I looked forward to working with him on legislation to accomplish good government reforms. I will continue to update you on our progress when the legislature goes back to session in January.
Taciturnity Is the Word On Legislators’ Pay
By JACOB GERSHMAN, Staff Reporter of the Sun | September 18, 2008
While other state lawmakers are accustomed to cloaking their financial secrets behind lax disclosure laws, Assemblyman Micah Kellner stands apart.
Unlike most of his Albany colleagues, the 29-year-old Democrat of the Upper East Side has no problem providing an unredacted review of his financial disclosure forms. Not that his forms disclose terribly much: The only income Mr. Kellner earns comes from his $79,500-a-year salary as a legislator.
“I guess I’m very poor,” he said. “It’s the most depressing day having to fill out these forms.”
Other lawmakers contacted by The New York Sun, including the four legislative leaders, were not so forthcoming, refusing to make available the full versions of their annual statements.
Under rules set up by lawmakers in the 1980s, they are permitted to conceal how much outside income they earn, a practice that is coming under increasing scrutiny.
Last week’s arrest of a Queens assemblyman, Anthony Seminerio, whom federal prosecutors accuse of accepting payoffs from hospital executives in exchange for lobbying his colleagues on budget matters, has again trained a spotlight on Albany’s disclosure laws. Critics say they are too weak, allowing lawmakers to hide business interests that could potentially conflict with their public duties.
Mr. Seminerio, who maintains his innocence, established a private consulting firm to sell his services. By law, he was not required to publicly disclose the nature of his business or how much outside income he earned.
In Albany, it’s hard to find a lawmaker defending the current system. In theory, most are supportive of stricter reporting requirements. Some, including Mr. Kellner, are pressing for new resolutions or legislation, saying the Seminerio arrest has undermined their credibility.
Mr. Kellner said he is concerned that the public has a perception that lawmakers are “crooks or clowns.” For the “vast majority of us, neither of those things is true,” he said, adding that by giving the public a fuller account of their outside work, lawmakers could better make that case.
In practice, few are willing to share information beyond what the law requires. Those who are so inclined say they fear such an act of transparency would alienate their less-forthcoming colleagues.
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