Cuny Forum; Charter Revision and Governmental Reform In New York

Good evening. My name is Bob Liff, and this is the CUNY Forum, a monthly town meeting that brings prominent New Yorkers together with faculty and students of the Edreteer at Galski Internship Program, in government and public affairs. Mark Twain said that nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits. If you've been watching the melodrama in Albany this year, and to a lesser degree in investigations into how the City Council does its business, you know the call for reform is coming from a wide variety of sources and it must be said a wide variety of motivations. Another aphorism is that whoever controls the rules could controls the game. Assemblyman Rory Lanceman recently asked whether a newly named charter commission by the city was interested in real reform or merely enhancing Mayor Bloomberg's powers in what is already a mayor-centered government. It was just such a charter commission in 1989 that that created our current form of city government which sought to reduce political

influence for example in city council districting. There was no such distance presumed or real in Albany which has which has spawned calls for a constitutional convention that could result in a system of policy by referendum that has done so much to destroy California's fiscal and government and governmental conditions. Our government is broken at part because our politics is broken and many of the reform efforts seek to insulate government from politics or at least drive a wedge between the two. In Albany, Lieutenant Governor Richard Ravich sometimes portrayed as providing adult supervision, wants to take a page from the municipal crisis of the 1970s when the state created new institutions to impose outside discipline on a city government that had borrowed and spent itself into near bankruptcy. Isn't it a good idea to take power away from elected officials in essence putting them on a leash because they can't be trusted to oversee government responsibly? And even where reforms have been put into place such as the term limits law imposed in 1993 and again in 1996 by city voters, Mayor Bloomberg simply orchestrated a change to give him four

more years in office when he found term limits and issued that the new charter commission is expected to revisit inconvenient. Maybe the problem is best summed up by another philosopher who hailed from the Okofenoki swamp and the dairy news comics page, Pogo the Apostle. We have met the enemy and he is us, Pogo said. We are joined by four New Yorkers who were part of the ongoing debate over reforming our civic affairs. Professor Joseph Viteride is the chair of the Urban Affairs and Planning Department at Hunter College and was an advisor to that 1989 city charter commission. Hezmer all the Simmons, the executive director of the Medurever Center for Law and Social Justice served on the first independent council districting commission created by that charter. Angelo Falcone is the founder and director of the National Institute for Latino Policy and a leading analyst of the impact of the shifting city demographics in which no group is now a majority. And Doug Museo, a well-known commenter on civic and political affairs, has the Center for Innovation and Leadership at Baruch College and also served as advisor to a charter commission.

Joel, let me start with you. Give us a little bit of background. The mayor is just named the city charter commission. What can that charter commission do? What can the candidate do? Well, the mandate is to take a total look and review the whole government of the city. What we have now in the city charter is a product of pretty much a product of the 1989 commission. Prior to 1989, there was a Board of Estimate in the city. Generally looked at as a three-headed government, the mayor of the city council and the Board of Estimate. And the Board of Estimate was a very powerful body. It was composed of the mayor, the controller at that point, the city council president and the five borough presidents. And it served as a Board of Directors. The Supreme Court deemed it illegal and unconstitutional because small boroughs had this much representation as large boroughs. And so that led to the charter revision and the Board of Estimate was eliminated. And the hope was that the vacuum of power would be filled by the city council. The council was expanded from 35 to 51 members to allow

for better representation among diverse, more growingly diverse city. But I think most of us, I think, would agree it never lived up to that role of checking on the mayor. We still have five borough presidents which do various things serve as sort of as borough executives. But also appoint members to the school board, the central school board, appoint members to the city planning commission. The other major piece of the charter which is very important today is a product of the 1975 charter. And that was very focused on community government. And we have 59 community boards in New York City that have some kind of voice with regards to budgeting, land use, and service delivery. They are still in place. So what can happen now? We could, this commission could rethink the relationship between the mayor and the city council. It could change the role of the borough presidents. It could change the role of a public

advocate which serves now as an advocate, which serves now as an ombudsman. The controller is still in place. There's some talk about what role community boards will play in the future. So this is wide open. It's not clear whether the commission is going to move yet. But as the mandate reads, they can take a total review of the city government. It could be the most significant change since 89. And of course, whatever they propose has to go to the voters for. That's right. Everything goes back to the voters. Doug, you worked on charter commissions, you've been watching this for an awful long time. He who controls the rules, controls the game. Absolutely. The rules are a cheap stake of the game. The mayor understood this very much. I mean, clearly the change in term limits. So this short of commission, there are a lot of things that could happen. They could take a narrow view, even though they're charged by state law with reviewing the entire charter, except for the 89 commission, the six commissions that followed three by

Giuliani and three by Bloomberg did not look at the entire charter. They picked out specific issues. For example, the 2003 charter commission looked at nonpartisan elections. So they tend to focus on things. I would expect that this charter commission will look at a broad range of issues. But I think they're going to do it in pieces. I think what they're going to do is take some of the hot issues, study them and put them on the ballot over the next six months. I would think that they've got to look at term limits. They might as well get it over with that's going to be hot. They might look at nonpartisan elections. They might look at they're going to certainly at some point look at land use. They're going to certainly look at some point that budgeting and they're going to review some of the offices of government. They're going to look at the borough presidents. They're going to look at the public advocate. So there's a lot of things that they can look at. The question is, how independent is this commission going to be? Are the commission is going to be independent? Are they going to be given enough money? Are they going to be

given enough staff to do a thorough going job? I think the first the first indication of the direction of the charter will be when the chair Matt Goldstein, the chancellor of the city university, names the executive director of the commission. Depending on who that person is, that person is going to drive the research, do the research. And depending on who that is, you'll get a real sense of the direction in which this commission is going to move. As Marale, you served on the first city council district in commission, not redistricting commission. Because I've been yelled at many times. I've always had a sense that one of the motivations, of a lot of the reforms, even if you go back to civil service reform around 1900, is to draw a wedge between government and politics. In Albany, the assembly draws its lines, the Senate draws its lines, here we have an independent commission. Was that a non-political commission? Of course not. That's ridiculous. Particularly since you have eight members appointed by

the mayor and seven members appointed by the city council, the mayor chooses who the chair is going to be. So actually, no, it is absolutely not. And that might be reversed at times. What happens is that the real question is, the people who are appointed, did they really know anything about what they're sitting there to do? On the commission, I served on. We had a few people who knew something about districting. We had a few people who knew something about voting rights. But the vast majority of them knew nothing and didn't want to know anything. They just wanted to know what the elected officials who appointed them, wanted them to do. They were there as a vote. Yeah, absolutely. And it was at one point in time when the group actually got together and decided that they had to do something in order to comply with the law. And out voted, out voted the city council crew. There was a big blue eye that they had been a public policy decision made by the district

commission. But I want to, I want to also emphasize that there are on that commission on most commissions. There are people who serve who actually want to do good public policy. I'm a policy walk and an attorney. I was one of those attorneys that overthrew a crew of us, believe me, that overdue the Board of Estimate. And we want to see the right thing done. But there is no, there is always politics in the room. And the real danger is for those of us that want to do the right thing and that are really concerned about good government, that we don't be naive enough to think, that the people working with us who also say that they're for good government are doing what they do, saying what they do only because they believe in good government. There's usually even not even a hidden agenda, a very obvious agenda. And sometimes it's not for the good of the city. Angelo, you've kind of chronicled the, as this city has gone from a majority white city to a city

where it's right now. Everybody's a minority in this city. And there's an argument that I've heard that as minorities, especially African-Americans and Latinos gain more and more numbers, all of a sudden you need to restrain politics. Is this a, is this a, are you trying to level a playing field just when somebody else is getting advantage? Well, I mean, that's, for example, your characterization of no one's in a majority depends on how you, you define, you know, populations. And one of the things that I remember I did a paper back in 1983 when we first chronicled, I documented that there were more people of color in the city than white folks. And I remember the reaction back then was a lot of, you know, technical, no, you're wrong, you got the numbers wrong to the point where today, you know, it's obvious. And you see the, if you talk about communities of color versus whites and see some sort of difference there and some commonalities between blacks, Latinos and Asians and agenda, then you're talking about a majority,

quote, a minority city. And back then in the old days, we used to talk about a new black politics, kind of like, you know, we were on the outside. And once we got on the inside, we changed things in a really dramatic way because, you know, we're coming from poor community, poor working class communities. And so our politics would be different. Well, what happens now? Today, people come up to me and they go, Angela, you're going to get involved with the redistricting process. And I tell them, I don't know. I mean, what we get out of the process is kind of scary. You know, we get more, for example, Latino elected officials. And it seems like, you know, we're only doing increasing the prison population. You know, there's always investigations. And the criminal justice system seems to be getting all this business. And people are very demoralized. And I don't know how you get people to have faith in government. And we were having a really ethical crisis. So, so it's been a disappointment. We've gotten for the first time. Well, the paper I did was in 83. Finally, last year, we started seeing that the majority of the voters now are probably community of many people of color. The city council finally, the majority. So, it took that

long for that to be translated into political power in the process. We've seen tremendous disappointment in terms of the type of leadership we're getting. But we're also seeing how these communities decide to be, you know, now that they're a majority. As you said, you start seeing how they're, we're still not part of the real decision-making process. Look at the membership of the Charter Division Commission. I know there's one Latino, for example. I don't know, half these people would, hell they are, except I know they're all connected to the mayor somehow. So, you know, it's not an open agenda, you know, clearly they can do all these things theoretically. But, you know, we got to find out what the mayor really wants. You know, you know, he wants to deal with non-partisan elections. He's been on that thing for like a while. You know, the term limits thing. I don't know how he's going to bring that up, but I'm sure he wants to deal with that. So, if this is largely going to be, I think, the mayor's agenda, and we've seen how heavy-handed it can be. I still remember that a panel on educational priorities were on the controversy over the great Gates policies. We had all these people, and I had some friends that were on there. Oh, yeah, the mayor's great.

Well, they all disagree with him, and he got rid of them overnight. He replaced them with his people, and they changed it. They didn't know the vote. The same thing with the term limits issue. You know, I saw him sitting there when they had the public hearings, and there are thousands of people coming up and saying, we disagree with this. He's sitting there, and I'm saying to myself, yeah, he's sitting there. He's very calm because he knows what the outcome's going to be. Well, and so that frames, I think, the agenda for this charter. In fact, you could argue that there's a number of things about this particular charter commission. In many ways, it grows out of a deal he made with Ron Lorder. Ron Lorder is the kind of the father of term limits. And when the mayor said, I want to be able to serve a third term. Third term, a third term, he argued because of the fiscal crisis they needed his study, and that Ron Lorder agreed not to take him on if he, and the mayor promised we would revisit term limits. Is that a bad deal or what? Well, tell me about that.

Well, to have two millionaires sit in the room. Billionaires, please. I'm sorry. I forgive me to have two billionaires sitting in the room and decide what the government of the city was going to be and who was going to have another chance to run for office. And once the charter commission was going to be, that's politics as well as it gets. Absolutely. Yeah, that was pretty open. Yeah, I mean, it was clear. I mean, in many ways, it was a bribe, maybe not in the criminal legal terminology, but it was a bribe. It was a deal. It was a bribe. It was something of value. In the ethics commission, in the ethics commission, clear it. Oh, he's cleared it. It's controlled by the mayor. I mean, I'm in trouble here. Yeah, trouble here. We don't need you as a matter of that. The bottom line is that it's all politics and it's not necessarily bad that it's politics. It just needs to be recognized as such and understood as such.

I think I disagree a little bit. Maybe I'm more naive than you are, Angela. And I believe that this commission's got the potential of being independent. I think Matt Goldstein's got the potential of really looking at issues in a serious, relatively unpolitical way. I don't know if the mayor is going to be the puppeteer. What do you mean? Unpolitical. You don't mean unpolitical. You mean unpartisan? I mean, I mean, I think what you mean is independent. I mean, in the pen. I mean, it is a political process and you cannot take that out of it. And I think what you're really looking for is independence on the part of the chair, which we have a shot at here, I think. That's right. And I think that they both work for gold's then. That's right. That's right. So we get paid by the chancellor. That's right. That's right. So we have to say a nice thing. Again, I go back to the executive director. The executive director is a very important position because that person really runs the research and he who runs or she who runs

the research in a sense runs the world. How that research is gathered, how it's presented and analyzed, and how it's then disseminated to the public is extraordinarily important. If the executive director comes out of the mayor or the mayor's administration, one's got poised to worry. If this person comes out of a more general pool of individuals, then you've got more B.I. to get more. The past has done both. He's taken an academic that he pulled into his input pattern and then put that person in charge of the charter division commission. In the past, we've had Alan Gardner, also from CUNY, who served in various capacities and worked with charter division or with other people. I don't think that having someone that is from the ivory tower or academia alone ensures that this is going to be done. I think the executive director, to some extent, can shape the debate and say these are the

issues that we might want to look at. These are the people who we want to hear from. This is the process. I just went through this with our commission on school governance. We had hearings. We went with the stakeholders. We went through a variety of things to get input from people. You can do that. The bottom line is how many votes who has on the commission? Even there, the chair has a certain amount of influence over the process, obviously, working with the director. It comes down to in the end. I've been through a few of these commissions. How many votes are in the room, and how people are going to vote, and why? It remains to be seen what's going to come out of it. I think the director is important. I want to ask you first, the only one of the panel who is not getting paid by Matt Goldstein. I'd like everyone to discuss it, but do you think these charter commissions get

their marching orders from their appointing authority? I think so. I think so. Whether there's so many limits is the driving force. Well, I think so. Whether indirectly or directly, I mean, Matt Goldstein is a master politician. I mean, I have a lot of respect for him. You hope also there's an issue of one's legacy, what you're leaving behind as chair, that that has an impact in terms of that. But the fact is, it's a very, I said, political process. As Maralda, myself, were involved in the coalition to try to delay the deadline on the charter revision in 89, because we felt communities of color were not part of the process, and we're getting into the process late. And we went through all sorts of stuff, and we debated the directors, and we went in, we dealt with people, and it was a real interesting process. I mean, one of the things I remember that they, that we got sold on was the public advocates position, for example, was created as a stepping stone

to allow minority member to become, to become a candidate. Ultimately, man. And then they would engage one that year, which kind of undercut the whole idea. So what happens is, you know, that position was never occupied by a person of color, which was interesting just to talk also about how you try to project changes in structures and what they, it doesn't quite work out that way. But, you know, when I look at the, I look at the process now, it was 20 years, that was 20 years. I was like, oh, he's here. Then we'd end up. Hey, I don't see much of a change in terms of the racial structure who's in there, in terms of the power structure, you know, who's sort of calling the shots, who's going to be the director. It seems to me, as I look at these names, and you know, I don't know, I know there's a post-racial country and all that stuff. I'm way back. It's not a post-racial city yet. Okay, so I look at this stuff and we're still catching it. And I look at the folks that are on the commission, and I look at the same old thing, you know, we're battling with, with Matt Goldstein around trying to get the faculty of, you know, a

CUNY more diversified, racially diversified. So we're dealing with those issues still with Matt Goldstein, he's a good person and stuff. And so we have that problem, and that is that you have the majority of the population, the people of color, the people who are running the show are white, mostly white folks. And there's a real problem, because you go into our communities. There's a real feeling of disenfranchisement. You know, you see, I mean, it's like weird stuff, the politics, you look at the Senate, which has been a white, white, bravely bashed in for so many. Now, the guys that seem to be running it are mostly, you see black characters and Puerto Rican characters. But everybody, it's at a point where that, that place is totally, you know, people, they're just disgusted by their politics up there. So I don't know, I still feel when I talk to folks in the Latino community, for example, that they feel out of it. They feel that these are like processes that are going on out in the distance. And one of the things I learned is a reporter covering the city council is you can't correlate minority status. You can't, you know, whether it's African American Latino and progressive politics. If you're talking about progressive

politics, there is not that correlation. There was a time when we started one to one. That's not right. No, certainly not. Do you think, I mean, what do you think about in terms of the term limits and how this came about and the fact that the people running this operation are very much the same? I say that there is definitely a pushback in New York City, non-New York State, with the advent of people of color being a majority population in New York City. And rising in seniority as well as in power in New York City and New York State government. There is a pushback to the point where I, when I sometimes when I hear the word meritocracy, or we need merit, I get absolutely disgusted. And I am someone who absolutely believes in merit. Why? Because it's usually a substitute with let's take the people who have gotten elected out of it so that a few chosen, well-minded, good government groups can make decisions about

that. That's a much better statement of the point I was trying to make my opening about the purpose of reform is reform some value-neutral process. Also, we tamper with institutions and we expect certain outcomes. So the promise of the 89th Commission, which I never really believed, even I was an advisor, was that the city council was going to emerge as the fountain of democracy. We went from 35 to 51 members because we understood that the city became more diverse. And by having more districts, you could represent more homogeneous communities. And the hope was that since the Board of Estimate was out of the way, the council would rise as the voice of democracy. Well, I don't think anybody who's watches this thinks that's happened. And so, you know, there are certain things you can expect from the process, even in the best of circumstances. And sometimes politics also becomes the institutional framework

anyway. And it's the political dynamic of the city that drives what's happening. And the institutions are kind of the rules of the game, but the players don't necessarily change. The game is the same. And the rules have changed a little bit. But, you know, they're still playing that political game and power lies, we are power lies. One of the points about a charter commission and one of the real powers that are made has a charter commission will knock any other issue off the battle. Yes, that's one of the, the control of commissions have been used as political tools. It's an element of the A&C, the A&C name. It's a Trump code. In 1998, there was a move to the local ones that are run for governor. Right. And he wanted to put it at the Yankee Stadium. It's you on the ballot. Rudy Giuliani was pro Yankee Stadium on the west side. He created a charter commission. As a matter of fact, there were two models for creating charter commissions. There's sort of the catch model, which was more independent commission is,

lots of time, lots of staff, real professionals are 89. And then you've got the Jewish to Giuliani approach, which was, you have sycophants and hacks running the commission to do the mayor's political bidding. You mean, you mean, you mean loyal people? Yeah. Right. Right. Black East. That's exactly right. Now on the state law, what the state law says is that if the recommendations of a mayor's charter are on the ballot, it precludes all of the questions. Bloomberg did it in 2005. They was the position on the petitions on class size. Would have put that issue on the ballot. And in order to preclude that from being on the ballot, Bloomberg named the 2005 commission. So commissions in and of themselves are often used as political weapons and they have been used by Rudy Giuliani primarily, but also Mike Bloomberg as weapons. Now this

legislation proposed before the assembly that would do away with that bumping rule, but it's been upheld by the court. So you need legislation to eliminate that. I want to make one point. So everyone here is perfectly clear. While we go through all the machinations of the charter and those of us worked for it, those of us work against this provision, I sent to get something we testify and we organized. The city council can then overturn anything that's been done with the vote of the mayor by a buyer by a charter. Which is exactly what happened with term limits. That's right. Which was done by referendum. Wasn't even done by a charter. Well, there were three main ways to do it. One is by local law. The city charter is the framework of city government, but it's not a constitution and the clear sixth sense of the word of statement of general principles. I mean, it's a massive document. It's 354 pages and it's got real minutia in it. It's got every agency and it tells what agencies do. The first thing the charter commission should do is cut it down by 90%

and move what ought to be in the administrative code. You can't do that because then you'll be able to read it. That's very helpful. That's another tactic used. You don't date people with paper. Okay. But then you can do it by petition. You can do it by local law or you can do it by by chalk. One of the, I mean, one of the issues in this state. Absolutely right. Every 10 years, the state has the has the legal authority to establish a constitutional dimension. Was it every 20 years? Which they have not taken luckily since I think 1967. Why tamper with perfection? Or don't trust the people with change in the constitution. One of the fears of a constitutional convention and it kind of relates to what we're just discussing in terms of in terms of referendums, referenda, is that, you know, flat-out popular democracy can be very dangerous. And that, you know, we have a Republican form of government, small R, rather than a

pure democratic small D system, system of government. Term limits was done by referendum, matter you could even, you even saw that when I was in convenient, it was kind of shoved aside. Does that cause you concern? I mean, there's no one thing that causes me concerned about it. Maybe, and I'm not the office of the budget, but all this money on commissions. And then three years later, you know, after two hearings, the city council just reverses it because the mayor wants it reversed or they want it reversed. And so a lot of resources put forward for charter revision. So I would love to see to see a state law that says if it's a referendum that it can't be reversed by charter, by a simple vote, a simple vote, a simple vote, a simple vote, a simple vote, a simple vote, a simple vote. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I agree with you. Well, one of the problems is, you know, we talk about this, these processes. We don't talk that much about the role of the person on the

street, the communities in terms of participating in the process. And that's an interesting way, looking at it, because a lot of the stuff is inside ball in terms of their hidden agendas that are set. People go and they testify. And it's like a waste. I mean, you know, again, these images I have of the Department of Education hearings on school closing. People go and everybody there is set on one thing. And then the Department of Education comes out with some, you know, the panel comes out with something else, because if not, I guess the mayor replaced them with his friends or whatever. So it's a kind of a process where we don't talk about a strength in democracy anymore. And these are like mostly technical things we're talking about, almost top-bottom kinds of like, let's tap down. Let's press around with the structure and hopefully a result in this. But it's usually to some politicians advantage over another politicians advantage or group. And that's where it gets frustrating. I get very concerned, like I do a lot of work looking at Latino politics in the city. And one of the things I keep raising is the problem that the leadership is

not very diverse in the Latino community. Almost all the leadership main agenda setting leadership are elected officials. All the work we've done over the years to empower the community has been around electoral arena. So we don't have a lot of religious leaders. We don't have business leaders. You know, there isn't a wider, in the community organizations, for example, the nonprofit, they used to be the soul of much of the reform movements in the cities. And now basically extensions of government, they're all getting contracts and they're all worried about extensions of Mike Bloomberg. Well, exactly. Secretly extensions of Mike Bloomberg through the Carnegie Corporation with not the case, so he's going to find out. So that part of it is really, in our community, is frustrating, because how do you organize to have other kind of power centers that could offset the power of the elected officials? Almost impossible these days to kind of organize. And there's a frustration among a younger generation of Latinos who want to get into the political process. Now, other communities have, you know, more diverse kind of leadership. You do have people. You have the Goldstein, then you have the, you know, guys in education. We don't

have that. So for us, it's a real challenge. How do we get in there and be real players in the process? And it's very, very, very difficult to do that. And that creates a, because once I think the policy, people in the, in the, in the population say, we don't have a role. The mayor is an imperial mayor. He's going to do whatever he's going to do because of money and power. And you have these commissions that have created more cynicism than anything else in the past. And then you have that crazy stuff that's been happening up in Albany. You know, what does the average citizen say? And then with this economic crisis and nobody trusts government, you know, you pay it all together. Baseball opening day is coming. 13 days. 13 days. As a, as a Mets fan. Let me be very clear. Yes ma'am, tell us, tell us your name and your campus, please. Hi, I'm Linda Davis. And I'm a Baruch student. But I'm with the CUNYBA program taking a class out of John Jay with the internship. I have a question from Ms. Simmons. Earlier you said something about minorities and pushback. And I was wondering if you could please expand on that. Yes, thank you for giving me the opportunity.

Excuse me. Um, succinctly, what I was referring to is that minority population, I hate to use the word minority because we're not minorities. As people of color, in the city of New York, gain demographic superiority. In other words, it's more of us. There has been more than a sense of I'll say more than that. There has been a structural, uh, what I call pushback in so far as more and more of the public sense. The newspapers, uh, editorial boards, even civic organizations, start talking about whether we have competent leadership as elected officials. Now, I'll be honest with you. I don't think that the leadership we have now is great as elected officials. But I don't think they're that much different than what we've had in the last 100 years. Um, there really hasn't been any great goldmine of elected officials in New York City in any

grant of government. Uh, in any, in any of the, any of the legislative branches. So, so I see that as when we have more people, more people of color in positions where they can make decisions and they have power that there is that are called to remove some of the power from them and put it in the hands of folks who have better qualifications, who are, this is all in quotes, who are independent, who are good government minded. Most of the time those folks happen to be sitting in either white things, tanks, good government organizations that are not very diverse. I do business with those folks every day, uh, but I'm just telling you they're not very diverse and it's very few. Uh, Angela, if our college or institute is one of the few institutes of color that those research in the city try to find, try to find one in five and you, and, and you're doing very well. Let me, let me, let me perhaps provoke an argument here. When I look at my, my, the minority leadership at the state and city level, I don't find it to be particularly

effective. I don't find it to be particularly enlightened. I find it to be, it as corrupt or more corrupt since they're just getting a piece of the action than what preceded it. I don't, I don't particularly find this leadership to be any more enlightened than, than what preceded it. Also, this notion of communities of color is a bit problematic to me. I mean, the, the pan-racial and pan-ethic terms obfuscate more than they enlightened the term Hispanic. I mean, uh, uh, a good friend of mine didn't know he was an Hispanic until he read it in time magazine. Yeah. Before that, he was a Puerto Rican. You don't even talk about it. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. What's he doing here? Let me just say it in a second. You're talking about it. We're talking about it. He, the other thing is, communities of color, I mean, my son is a Puerto Rican. He's a white man. He's not a community of color. It's not color. It's, it's, it's ethnicity in the case of Hispanics. And most Hispanics, when they answer

the census form, call themselves white Hispanics, not black Hispanics. So the term community of color, I think, is in itself obfuscating in somewhat bogus. So I mean, this terminology here, and also one last thing since I might as well go all the way, is that how about it? You have to click. You have to click. You have to click. You have to click. You have to click. You have to click. You talked about pogo is code about. We have met the enemy and they are us. Well, I mean, they are. It's you and me. The people are as much to blame here as the leadership is because if the leadership tells the people that they can't ever free lunch, the people are fearful and angry and throw them out. So it's not, it's not only a deficiency of leadership. It's a deficiency in the citizenry as well. And we keep bitching and moaning about all leadership. And in fact, it's the citizenry, the residents who are deficient, they're deficient in information, they're deficient in the management. Come on. Come on.

And you. And you. And you. And you. So let's get clear about the people. Okay, let's all get clear. Well, wait a minute. They're going to have to make sure that they're going to be an object. Let's let the audience. Yeah. Well, okay. I want to say one thing. The people of color, connotation is a self adopted term by those people who considered themselves to be of color. It is. And let's get clear. Let's get clear. There is really no such thing as race. Color that has no defining rights. Well, all we're really talking about is how you ask racism manifest in the society. However, in a city like in a city like New York, where, you know, you had, for instance, Puerto Ricans were 85% of Latinos up until 1980. You know, they were they were the vast majority of Latinos up until 1980 by by 2000 there. What? 35% of Hispanics in the city, you know, what changes? Puerto Ricans are citizens. All other Latino groups and not all of us. So, you know, demographics drives,

and drives an issue with gender in the African American, you know, between African Americans, Caribbean Americans, you have a distinction between language, between English, and Caribbean blacks. And now you have a large African, you know, you know, you have a diversity with a nation community, but that doesn't, to me, that doesn't mean that there's not such a thing as racial politics in the city. No, it's true. Well, it's true. Well, what I find, which is interesting, because you know, when I meet with policymakers, you know, you know, and I start talking about these affirmative action issues and diversity, and usually a white policy maker, you know, they, they, I start to glaze over and like, let's just get talking about, I don't want to talk about this shit, you know, blah, blah, get into all that stuff, and I'm saying they're going to shit, you know, hey, you're getting me a Donald Trump. We're going to look at this beat and you're laughing. I said, shit, this is insane. So, so, so the thing is an educational program. That's a very educational program. I'm with you, man. What I find is, you know, we talk about,

for example, this term Latino, Hispanic, these terms, this pan-ethic terms, do they mean anything, because there are talking about people from 21 countries, all this kind of stuff. But what I find interesting is I always tell people, terms like Latino, Hispanic are not terms that these people bring from their countries, right? It's an American term. It's right. And usually, it's a term of defensive term that comes out of a hostile environment. Right now, the immigration debate is seen as an anti-Latino debate. So, what, to me, the irony is more of an anti-Mexican debate in action. But, you know, we all feel it, you know, and so what happens is that it's interesting process. It's not that these communities come together on their own, rather American society to organize their shelves, so they give me into these terms. So, when I go back to my neighborhood, it's a Dominican's and Puerto Ricans in Brooklyn and Williamsburg, and they're all pissed off about all the stuff that were excluded as Latinos, and they may not say Latino, but they also say the same thing. So, in our communities, you see the frustration. And I see the unity that theoretically, you could demographically pick out and say they're all these differences,

it doesn't mean anything, but in real terms, I see it every day when I go back on the ground. I'm going to make one more attempt to seize control of my own show. Yes, sir. Tell us your name on your campus. My name is Arsalan, and I'm from John Jay College. And my question is, I'm going to go back to the earlier thing we're talking about is, how do you reform the process of independent people to the Independent Commission, put independent quotes to include minorities and to make the government a certain less control in a strong-marital government system? Well, I mean, but are you assuming that there are not minorities, whatever that means, that would be loyal to Mayor Bloomberg? I mean, can you take politics? Can you take politics? I mean, is independence at odds with politics? I don't know. But you know, but I mean, I'm saying you look at the list of the Commission members. There are many more prominent New Yorkers that are in independent positions, whether it's in business, the law judges, there are people that you can put on this thing that would give you the confidence that these are independent thinkers

they do exist. But you don't see them on this thing. I mean, they may be, but I can't tell I go through the list. I don't know a lot of these folks to be honest, but a lot of them are very much for exactly directly connected to the mayor. Even Matthew Goldstein, a city university, is part of the city of New York and the government. So there is no, and there are people that do exist that, yeah, and also the idea of people from, you know, more dependent people like from communities, working-class people, different, what about a different profile? Do they all have to be professionals? Can you have some more people on there? Let me ask you, Joe. I mean, somebody who served on these commissions, you know, served as a staff, these commissions, what is independence? I mean, I mean, it's, I was just going to ask, I was just going to say that. I don't know if anybody's entirely independent, because even if you say, you know, working people put a working man, a woman on the commission, the, the, the very choice of that person as a working person means they had a representative point of view, put a business person on. We used to think business people

were independent, right? Because they, they, they're not there. I mean, they have an agenda. There's a business agenda. I mean, if you look at what's going on with the economy, now there's a very big business agenda. So it's very hard to say who independent really is. And my experience working on these commissions is, is you don't know what somebody's going to do until you watch them do it. I mean, there are people, there are people who assume a role and they say, this is my moment in history. And I'm going to be independent. And, and, you know, they're, they're the vote you can't get. Sometimes you got to work for it. Right. And there are others who are they other, I mean, they were there, there are others there for obvious reasons. I think you got to let it play out. I mean, I, I, uh, yeah, I don't know most of the people on this commission. I don't even know where they are. I thought it was just me. And so, um, it remains to be seen how it plays out. I mean, I know who Matt Goldstein is because we, you know, and, but I don't know. I don't know the opposite. Yeah. Tom, do you know what I'm saying? I don't think he's saying that. But since he's not doing this, I'm surprised and openness

to information and an ability to critically evaluate that information with minimal outside influence. And I think that's possible. And what do we choose? And that's an idea of what, I've tried to achieve something greater than what we have already. What we have. Let me go for, let me go for another question. I mean, the obvious answer here is that the only one who is possessor of objective is me. Reality is me. Oh, right. Yes. No objectionable reality. That too. My name is Hasebe Rashid. I'm from Brooklyn College. Um, it's a statement slash question. You've mentioned that the mirror has a lot of control and a lot of power. And we even have seen his manipulation of the government with his power. And my question would be, do you think the public advocate would be a way to help check his power or would just be a way another way to help for him to continue his, his control over the politics? Well, ultimately, I think what's going to

be interesting about this charter revision is if part of his agenda is to get rid of the public advocate's office because he's been able to hamstring that office in terms of controlling the budget is all also to ways of doing that. And right now with the person that's in there, there's a potential of someone who's going to challenge him more. But that's going to be really interesting to see what happens to that office now. Right. I mean, one of the things you could do with that office is give it an independent funding stream like you give the internet and budget office. So the office is not subject to the vagaries of the mayor and the council. So when the public advocate doesn't like term limits, they slash the budget by 50% or 45%. In fact, I'm going to admit something, but I'm going to deny it if anybody's watching this, which is that I voted against the 1989 charter precisely because they kept the city council president's office in the guise of a public advocate and they destroyed the power. I think they did too much to destroy the power of boroughs because I think in a city of eight million people, it's hard enough to relate to eight

million people. I think boroughs should be a much more salient. And I was very, the story is my argument. That's how I got involved in this at my own project. Well, I was very disturbed at the first, the first hearing that they had was last week that Marty Markle would say, and I don't know if this is legal. Actually, he gave each one of them a junior's cheesecake. Now, I don't know if that's formally, if you're going to get bored off a junior's cheesecake, it's pretty good. You should be investing the game off. It should be invested. It's probably the evidence is gone. Yes, sir. Hi, my name is Samine Farouk. I'm from Brooklyn College, and my question is in the turn regarding the comments made about post-racialism and more specifically civic engagement. I know the panel has discussed that communities of color, of people of different ethnicities, they feel disengaged from the larger process. But how can they feel engaged when their voices are not being heard in the current system? And how can this issue of people at the ground level,

you know, getting their voices out effectively through trainings, through grassroots advocacy, through civic engagement coursework in their curriculum at all level of their education, how can that be incorporated? So these people are educated and trained. So they're not always the people who don't know anything or don't necessarily have the skill set, you know, to make a difference. How can this be addressed under the current system because there's a need for it, obviously, in this post-racial society of ours? I love that. And so you'll give me a soapbox. It goes back to the whole question. Well, what is education? What is the purpose of education in the democratic society? And now that we've seen our educational system turn into big tests, you know, hand it or quit it, push out of high schools. And whether or not you can get past the test in order to get your degree or even to get to the next grade. And very, very, very little talk about

civics. Very, very little talk about what your responsibilities are as a citizen. Very, very little talk about what your responsibilities are. If you're a resident and not a citizen. And that tells you something about how education is viewed and how the citizenry, how the residents of this city are viewed. They are not viewed as people who are welcome to participate in government. They are viewed as people who you want to rally around to get the vote out at a certain point in time. You know, all these commercials act up. And, you know, you have, you know, 20 cartoons, etc. And the newspapers get all health and puff about it. But when it comes to the everyday issues and, you know, have the people on the street don't know what the city charter is and we'll never know. They don't even know who they're, who they're elected officials are. But there is a vibrancy on the street among communities, whether it's the Indian guy, Guyanese community in Richmond Hill, whether it's the Korean community in Flushing,

these communities. Or the Irish community in Woodside. I mean, it's not just the right, it's just not a message. But I think there's a vibrancy out there that sometimes that we forget that there are emerging leaders and community leaders. Unfortunately, I agree with you, as Morel, that you're missing in our educational system this notion of civics and civic engagement. That's not a New York City issue. No, that's national. I mean, one of the criticism of no child left behind is it's focusing the curriculum on basic skills, which is not a bad idea, by the way. But other things are being squeezed out of the curriculum. I was on a commission on civic in civic education. And it's a real issue nationally. But to go to your point, Doug, I think that there is a charter issue here in the sense that what you're talking about is really community politics, where people get access easier. You don't need to,

the resources you need to get active on a local level and the community level, not the same as to become mayor. You don't need a bank level to become a community activist. And so, there is a piece of the charter that relates that in terms of community government, community boards, and that's a part of the conversation. We've got about five minutes left and we want to try to get some more questions there. I'm from the college and you're kind of addressing my question already. For those of us who do know our elected officials and are engaged in the community, how can we reach out to this commission that is being created by, you know, is this members are going to be appointed by the major and the council, the city council, but how can we, the regular constituents, reach out to this commission and have to say of how we think government should be reformed. They're going to be public hearings throughout the

five boroughs. They're going to be multiple. Find out the schedule. Find out the topics. Put together testimony and you'll be able to deliver it. Yes ma'am. Tell us your name and your campus. Hi, I'm Heather Ann Schaffner. I'm from John Jay College and my question is two parts. The first part is, do you think that the commission will overturn the term limit overturning? And the second question was turning overturning. And the second question is, if they don't, do you think the mayor will run for a fourth term? No, he's not running for a fourth term. He's, you know, this was a place all these going to run for president in 2012. Let me ask the term limits question. I absolutely believe that that was the deal and that the mayor will make sure that the commission puts something on the referendum about what eliminating or limiting terms again, putting back in some sort of limited terms. I don't speculate about who's going to run,

who's not going to run because I don't find it to be a good use of my political energy. Let me ask a technical question. You have a number of very heavy issues. You have, you have term limits. You have some budgetary issues. You have the survival of the public advocate. Do they have to be put on as a package or they could be put on as individual items? You can do it in a way. You can do it sequentially. You don't have to do them all the same time. You can put out some issues this November and then wait. But if you do do that, you need a separate commission because the law says that once, once they go on the ballot, that commission is done away with so they'd have to do that commission and you'd have to reconstitute. What happened in AB 9 is Ravich was the chair and he came off it. Most of the membership remain the same then. Right. But they were some, right. Frick Schwartz came on. They're going to do a two-stage process. Do you think the public advocate's office will survive this? Well, I think considering who's in it now, depending on what you only have, he's talking about six months that these guys have to work

in before they have to submit the recommendations. There are a lot of people who say, don't rush. I mean, keep yourself going beyond six months. You don't have to put it on this November's ballot. No, you don't have to do it on that. Well, will this mayor let that ballot be vacant? I don't think. Well, I think part of the issue is, again, getting back to citizens, you know, people's participation and how much people are going to get involved in raising the issues and making a big stink about what they want in communities and making sure that the papers cover it and make it into a big political issue. The big fear a lot of us have is that people aren't going to be following this thing. They're going to be hearings. It's going to get real technical and people are just going to shut off and it's going to stay in the control of the people that have control right now. So unless there's some sort of big upsurge in the communities and then the other thing, you have the complication of the November elections also in terms of how that's going to work out. So I don't know. It's going to be really hard to tell. It's possible for this commission to get out of control. I don't get a sense of people out there really are into this. I mean, you have a constitutional crisis here. You have to get the Supreme Court was involved. Right. Yeah. You don't have that. And they had to reshape the government. If you

start with the premise, you have to eliminate the Board of Estimates. The whole government is reshaped. Right. You don't have that premise here. I don't see my feeling is that they, even though they'll be discussed, they think the public advocates stays in the borough president's stays. They might even get more power because the imperial mayor was so obvious to eliminate another check on his power. I think it'll be just too much for the commission to swallow and then the election. The Mueller problem. The Mueller problem. The Mueller problem. Oh, yeah. See, that's the best thing. Talk about technical. We haven't even said what it is. And we're upset about it. We're not going to be very much review procedures. It's how it's the community role. It's like a 7-11 trick. But the bottom line is land is the most valuable commodity in the city. The mayor, his administration, and the real estate developers think it's too sloppy. It's too inefficient. Getting all these people involved in it. So what they want to do is quote, unquote, they want to streamline it and they're going to cut out my feeling is they'll

make an attempt to cut out community involvement rather than. Well, even now, community involvement is advisory. Right. Will the public advocates survive? You've watched these. I mean, that's, and I know that Bill, I know that Bill de Blasio will fight tooth and they'll say his job. He's going to make it hard. I don't think he's going to believe it's a done deal. If you asked me a year ago, I'd say they're gone. She's gone. And she probably would have said that too. I don't think so. I think it remains to be seen. I really do. I think there will be organizing against the commission and will actually make the commission a sexy item for the papers and everything else. That might draw crowds to those hearings if they try to touch. Well, I mean, this public app. What happened in, I mean, what happened in, what year? It was a 2003 was the, was the nonpartisan elections. Here's the mayor at the height of his power spending $7 million of his own money creates a charter commission that does his bidding and puts

on the ballot, nonpartisan elections, and it goes down. It was a union organized against it. Well, I think that also it was, there's a sense of fair play and it violated people's sense on, again, it's much broader. You don't get 70, 30 by, you know, unions turning people out on a 70, 30 vote. That's a kind of a visible vote. Now, you do have, you know, you know, you're liable to have. I'm not sure yet because of the throw the bums out attitude coming out of Albany and this isn't Albany election year. You're liable to have a higher voter turnout than usual, which I would argue would be, people would tend to say no. So I'm not so sure that the charter commission is where I think there's a danger, okay? If you start out with the eye understanding that there's an apathetic public, not including our CUNY students who you guys are self-selective group, that's why you're taking the course. But if you start out with that, there's a danger that some of the hot button issues are going to over, are going to, are going to overshadow everything else. So the nitty gritty, you look thing that nobody even

understands what you all exist. Get's on the, you know, if you're talking about limiting the public advocate, what are you talking about term limits? That's the headlines. Did I just get the goodbye sign? I'm sorry. Yes. I've run over. I've tried never to miss deadline. Thank you all, and it's very spirited. We'll see you all next time at CUNY Forum. Thank you.