Dc37 Questionnaire Final

Screening Questions for Mayoral Candidates 2009 Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s Response

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As a newly elected official what will be your three top areas of focus during your term of office as Mayor of the City of New York?

If I have the honor to be reelected as mayor, I will strongly focus on the areas most important for working New Yorkers: managing the budget and the City well, creating jobs and keeping the City working, improving the school system by undertaking critical reforms made possible because of mayoral control of schools, cutting crime, and modernizing mass transit by reforming the MTA. Managing the City—and its budget—well is the key to getting us through this recession. We prudently saved in good times in order to prepare for bad times, and as a result the City’s finances are in far better shape than those of the state or federal governments. To prepare for this downturn, we cut planned spending, reduced debt costs by $3.2 billion and set aside $2.5 billion for retirees’ benefits. If we had not taken those steps, instead of confronting a crisis today we would be caught in a cataclysm. And it’s that sort of prudent decision-making that will allow us to get through this continuing crisis while preserving key services. Keeping our economy strong is also particularly important, because without a vibrant private sector creating jobs and spurring economic activity, the City will not collect the tax revenues necessary to ensure that it can maintain the dedicated, excellent workforce that provides the services New Yorkers need, want and deserve. That’s why I created the Five Borough Economic Opportunity Plan, which will create or save 400,000 jobs; and that’s also why I launched our DiverseCity initiative, for without a diverse economy that is less dependent on Wall Street, our ability to provide the public sector services that we need will continue to be overly dependent on the financial sector’s boom and busy cycle.

2. The City of New York is facing a possible $4 billion budget deficit this year and $2.3 billion for FY2010. Given the Wall Street Crisis revenue to the City will decline significantly. What revenue raising ideas do you have that can put money in the city’s treasury? Tackling our Fiscal Year 2010 budget, during a period that many have come to call “The Great Recession” and which felled many of our city’s financial institutions, took foresight and planning. Even before we first got wind of potential tough economic times ahead, we resisted calls to spend more during the boom, and instead saved billions to help the city weather future storms. City services have been maintained and even improved—crime is lower, test scores are higher, emergency response times are faster,

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and the city’s streets are cleaner. When those storms arrived, we balanced the budget through a combination of reducing City spending and raising additional revenue. This new revenue enabled the City to avoid laying-off tens of thousands of workers in the middle of a recession. Even Comptroller Thompson—my opponent—acknowledged that the City’s competitive position is “inherently stronger” today than it was during previous downturns. I continue to search for ways to responsibly raise new revenues. For example, our administration proposed a plastic bag fee, in order to raise much needed revenues and help the environment at the same time. Unfortunately, the City Council would not go along with the proposed fee. Finally, the best way to raise new revenue is to help foster a vibrant private sector. That’s why we are moving forward with the Five Borough Economic Opportunity Plan and DiverseCity initiatives outlined above. Always remember, this is not the first time that our great City has faced a profound fiscal crisis. As this union knows all to well, in the 1970’s City labor unions stepped up to the plate to help the City avoid bankruptcy. When I first became Mayor following the tragic events of September 11, 2001, I was forced to make some very tough decisions regarding the City’s fiscal future. Many called on us to cut programs, sell our hospitals and privatize services, but we made the tougher decisions. We bet on New York City by raising revenues and protected and invested in our core services. It was the right thing to do. We came out of the City’s last recession stronger than before. I am confident that—because of the prudent decisions we have made in balancing the FY 2010 budget— history will repeat itself. We have taken the responsible path towards balancing the City’s Fiscal Year 2010 budget, though very difficult times still loom in Fiscal Year 2011, when we anticipate facing an over $5 billion budget deficit. 3. For a long time the BOE/DOE has not been under the jurisdiction of the office of the Comptroller – The state legislature is considering reauthorizing Mayoral Control and establishing an office of contracts in the comptroller’s office to oversee all contracts in the DOE under Mayoral Control – What is your position on such a proposal? I am very pleased with the mayoral control agreement that just passed the State legislature – it preserves the most important elements of the system, gives parents more of a say, and establishes welcome oversight and transparency on the contracting process, with non-competitive contracts and contracts over $1 million requiring approval of the Panel for Educational Policy. I believe the new mayoral control bill strikes the right balance, and our contracting process will continue to be as transparent and accountable as possible. 4. In addition, as a part of the reauthorization members of the legislature are calling for the Board of Education/Department of Education to become a mayoral agency – What is your position on this proposal?

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Once again, I believe the mayoral control legislation that just passed will allow us to continue to bring accountability and transparency to a school system that was, by all accounts, broken. 5. DC 37’s recent White Paper “Massive Waste At A Time Of Need” found $9.3 billion in public dollars that went to private contractors – as the next Mayor – What actions would you take to correct the findings in this report? To read report, go to www.dc37.net Over the course of the last year, members of my Administration have been meeting with leaders of DC 37 to discuss the union’s white papers and ways in which the City could continue to deliver quality services to New Yorkers provided by union workers. We have found these analyses to be thoughtful and impressive. We also continue to discuss many of the potential ways your union has identified to raise additional potential revenue to avoid layoffs. We have and will always welcome dialogue with union leaders on these issues. In fact, similar conversations have led to real action to help members of the labor movement in the past. One specific example regarding contracting out vs. existing municipal service is sanitation service. My administration did a comprehensive study comparing private collection to the service provided by the city workforce. The results showed that they were basically the same. I have no ideological belief that contracting out services is the best way to do business. In fact, I would prefer to use City workers whenever it is fiscally prudent to do so. But, as mayor, my guiding principle is that City funds should be used with one principle always in mind – that city taxpayers are getting their money’s worth in quality services. 6. Both Mayor Bloomberg and Speaker Quinn have endorsed the reversal of term limits in New York City through legislation. The council passed this legislation on October 23, 2008 by a vote of 30 to 21. (non - incumbents): What is your position on this action and what is your position on term limits? (incumbents): What is your position on this action and how did you vote on term limits and why? Support. The City Charter gives the City Council the authority to amend the term limits law, and so the question for Council members - and for me - was this: Is it in the best interests of the City to extend term limits from two terms to three, giving voters more choices next November, a time when we could be (and now are) in a full-fledged recession?

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I believed then and still believe now that the answer is yes. And after considerable debate and lengthy public hearings, the majority of the City Council agreed - choosing substance over process and pragmatism over ideology. Ultimately, the voters will have the chance to decide whether they agree. And that's important to remember: the people will render the final verdict on this bill, because it empowers them to decide who they want in office. 7. Do you support the “workfare” concept of giving welfare recipients municipal jobs without affording them full pay, civil service status or protections? I support programs that provide low-income New Yorkers with on-the-job training. I believe that we should work with people to move them up the career ladder - and for some people getting basic job skills is the first step on the road to self-sufficiency. I do believe that one important way to gain skills is in a work environment. That’s why it’s important to continue initiatives like the JTP (Job Training Participant) program, which provide structured, time-limited employment for those transitioning to or back to the work force. The goal of these programs is for the City to give as many individuals on public assistance as possible a helping hand in becoming self-sufficient. Providing full benefits and pay would undermine both the rationale and the funding of these programs. Indeed, they have been very successful. Thanks to our continued welfare reform efforts designed to engage recipients in work and work-related activities, which enhance their ability to obtain employment and reach self sufficiency, the number of persons receiving cash assistance has reached the lowest level since October 1963. When I came into office, we had 462,500 people on our welfare rolls. Now that number is down to 346,100 – a decrease of 25%. 8. The City of New York has privatized and contracted out many city services. What is your position on contracting out of city services? I believe our municipal employees do stellar work and deserve the salaries and benefits that we provide for them. City agencies have to make evaluations based on productivity and cost when doing work that is generally outside the scope of expertise. While I firmly hold the belief that New York City has the most dedicated and talented municipal workforce in the nation, I cannot strip the ability of managers to make decisions that are in the best interest of the City and its taxpayers. That being said, my door remains open to discuss any specific issues. 9. By most accounts, housing costs constitute up to 50% of our members’ salaries. What is your position on rent control and rent stabilization and what affordable housing plan would you devise to deal with the lack of availability of decent and affordable low and moderate income housing? The Rent Guidelines Board was created by the State and made an independent board so that politics could be removed from the process. I believe that was the right decision.

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As mayor I launched the largest municipal affordable housing plan in the country, which will provide affordable housing for half a million New Yorkers. In fact, working with DC37 in 2005 we also launched an innovative program that created a 5% set aside for municipal workers in NYC’s affordable housing developments. While in office, our Administration has already completed over 91,000 affordable housing units, and we will work hard going forward to meet our goal of building or preserving 165,000 affordable housing units throughout the city. 10. What do you think can be done to stop the City’s practice and abuse of the civil service system particularly in regards to the over 35,000 provisional employees now working for the city? The number of provisional employees in City government has grown over decades, and we’re working aggressively to address it by giving more exams more often. We have already opened one computer testing center in Manhattan, and we expect to open a second center in Brooklyn by early next year. The Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS) has prepared a comprehensive plan to address this issue over the next five years, and we’re working with the State Civil Service Commission to address it. 11. What is your position on the revision of the Taylor Law? The Taylor Law was created to protect the public and I support those principles. Note that the law provides for binding arbitration for public sector employees, which does not exist in the private sector. As always, my door remains open to discussing how we could make improvements to the law. 12. Do you support the employment of “Support Personnel” (Non-Pedagogical) employees working in the New York City Department of Education public schools? Support. Support personnel are critical to the proper functioning of the Department of Education. Indeed, one of my proudest achievements as mayor is the creation of the position of parent coordinator to provide a specific, dedicated outlet for parents to find out more about their child’s education. 13. Would you be supportive of legislation enhancing the Cost Of Living Adjustment (C.O.L.A.) and other benefits for retirees? Retirees, who have served this city dutifully, deserve everything that was promised to them in their respective contract/tier. There is a COLA adjustment that is already applied to public employees statewide. In terms of increasing that adjustment, the City’s current fiscal situation makes that difficult. But that’s not to say that at some point, when the economy has recovered, an increased COLA or other index-adjusted increase wouldn’t be brought back into the discussion.

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14. Would you be in support of repealing the current 1 in 3 rule to go strictly by list number order on civil service exams? Exams are an important part of the Civil Service system. They test necessary qualifications and help to ensure that City employees are hired on the basis of merit and fitness—not based on who they know, or some other inappropriate basis. But managers and prospective employees also need some flexibility to account not only for particularized skills, but also to ensure that an employee and a manager can work together. This works both ways—prospective employees are not forced to take a job, and managers aren’t forced to take a particular person, even if they are next on a list.

15. What is your position on the issue of an Early Retirement Incentive (ERI) for city employees as an alternative to layoffs? These tough economic times require tough choices, but to minimize any necessary pain my administration has worked hard to reduce our workforce through attrition rather than layoffs. We will look at the economic viability of ERIs for City employees, as part of our efforts to find as many ways as possible to reduce the pain of this recession for our municipal workers. 16. What priority and resources should the City give to making government services accessible to immigrant residents? Our administration has launched numerous initiatives designed to the ability of nonEnglish speakers to access to government services. We established a uniform policy and standards for translation and interpretation services for City agencies that have direct interaction with New Yorkers – a historic step that is making city life better for all foreign language speakers. Every such City agency now provides language assistance in the top six languages spoken by New Yorkers. Additionally, we equipped 311 to handle calls in dozens of languages. 17. What is your position on the issue of Civilianization – The practice of uniform workers doing clerical duties of civilian employees? As a general rule, I believe people are best suited doing the work they were specifically trained to perform – that means uniformed officers should be on the streets and civilian employees should perform clerical duties. Indeed, I have a record of working with your union’s leadership, and Executive Director Lillian Roberts in particular, of finding ways to help civilian employees at uniformed agencies. Your Executive Director, Lillian Roberts, and I worked together to avoid laying-off 300 NYPD civilian employees. It is in this spirit of cooperation that I will continue to work with union leaders to explore opportunities to civilianize appropriate parts of the civilian workforce. 18. What is your position on SLR 36 of 2005 (S.749 Krueger/A.1688 Lopez) - Which asks the state to restore city control over city Rent Regulations.

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The Rent Guidelines Board was established to remove rent regulation from local politics. I will continue to examine issues regarding State and City control over Rent Regulations, but firmly believe this issue should be insulated from the political process. 19. NYC’s Health & Hospital Corporation (HHC) is world renowned. What would you do to ensure the maintenance of services they provide? After years of administrations neglecting or trying sell off HHC facilities, my administration is dedicated to reviving the City’s public hospital system, which have been transformed into a widely praised system that provides care for New Yorkers who are the most in need. But we have more work to do, and no matter how good the present state of our hospitals, we can always do better. That’s why our administration has launched the largest public hospital capital improvement program in the City’s history. The 5-year, $1.2 billion program will expand and modernize City hospitals by replacing existing structures with state-of-the-art medical facilities, investing in infrastructure upgrades and developing new healthcare services. Our commitment to quality public hospitals has transformed that system, and I am proud of the work of Local 420 in helping us achieve this transformation. 20. In February 2005 the NYC Council issued a report “Food Stamp Enrollment and Growing Hunger in NYC” – the report found that between 621,000 and 1 million eligible New Yorkers’ are not receiving food stamp funds – resulting in a loss of revenue for New York City of $1.45 billion. What plan would you devise to eliminate the barrier of access at the community level? Since entering office, I have worked hard to improve accessibility of the Food Stamp Program for working New Yorkers. More than 1.39 million New Yorkers are enrolled in the Food Stamp Program—an increase of 74% since our administration started. In addition, using federal stimulus dollars, we recently increased monthly food stamp grants for all enrolled New Yorkers by 13%. The increase will bring an additional $25 million a month to food stamp households and increase the total food stamp benefits issued monthly to New Yorkers to more than $200 million. What’s more, using a new federal grant of over $650,000, we are providing targeted food assistance to seniors by creating an automated food stamp benefit assessment and simplified application process for over 40,000 seniors who may be eligible. 21. What is your position on Intro. 241 of 2006 – Spousal coverage? We have supported the extension of survivor benefits to certain surviving spouses through local laws passed on a case by case basis. However, we do not support extending such benefits through blanket legislation that fails to take into account the individual circumstances. 22. What is your position on for profit charter schools?

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During my administration, the City has opened 333 traditional public schools. Test scores in reading and math are up over twenty percentage points for fourth and eight graders, graduation rates are up fifteen percentage points and school crime is down 44%. Much of that good work is due to the members DC37 represents. It takes an entire school community to comprehensively educate a child. We all play a role and we should all feel proud of the progress we have made. But the job is not done. On the question of charter schools: I strongly support charter schools, because they offer a great educational option for our children and give more choices to parents. Our efforts have mainly been focused on opening non-profit charter schools, but for-profit charter schools have been part of the program and as long as they prove to deliver solid results, they will remain in our plans.

23. Do you believe there should be money for mandatory support services employees, appropriated from the Campaign for Fiscal Equity (CFE) award? The CFE money should have one goal: to better educate our children and help end the inequality of school funding in New York State. To the extent that support services are necessary towards achieving that goal, they should be funded. 24. In 2006 the City Council passed Intro. 486-A a tax abatement and tax exemption program for developers commonly referred to as 421-A. What is your position on this legislation? Support. The 421-A program has helped fuel the construction of over 110,000 apartments in the city since starting in 1971. However, the city’s real estate market has changed dramatically since that time. In recognition of the need for reform of the program, my administration convened a 26-member task force in February 2006 to examine 421-a, and recommended proposals which eventually ended up in the final legislation. The reforms in the legislation allow us to ensure that affordable housing is built in the future. By removing unnecessary tax incentives for luxury developments and market rate housing, we shifted the incentive structure to make sure that more affordable housing is built. Going forward, these 421-a reforms will play an important role in helping us meet our goal of providing affordable housing for half a million New Yorkers. 25. What is your position on Mayoral Control of the New York City school system? I support mayoral control, because it brings true accountability to a school system that desperately needed it. Under mayoral control, New York City school children have made educational gains that no one thought was possible under the old Board of

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Education, which is why test scores and graduation rates have increased significantly, while the achievement gap has shrunk. 26. Do you support the creation of a new pension Tier – Tier 5 – why or why not? Support. I believe every worker in the system now has earned the rights and benefits agreed to when they became an employee. For future hires, I believe that we need to find a way to care for them while doing so in a way that makes long term economic sense for our city. 27. What do you propose to do about civilianization in the uniformed agencies, in light, of the Arbitration Awards Local 1549 has received? I.e., School Safety, Traffic Enforcement Agents and the Benewitz Award concerning Police Administrative Aides and Senior Police Administrative Aides. A few years ago, the NYPD hired more than 500 civilians in connection with arbitration. In most cases, once again, I believe people are best suited doing the work they were specifically trained to perform. I want to see police officers on the street and administrative personnel handling the civilian duties. In light of the recent arbitration award, we will continue to look carefully at this and look forward to cooperating with DC37 to work on some of these issues. And we will do so in the same spirit that we have used to in the past, including when we worked with the DC 37 leadership to avoid layoffs of civilian employees at NYPD, as mentioned above. 28. Would you consider using Education and Experience Civil Service tests to reduce the number of Provisionals? Many Provisionals have served for 15, 20, 25 years and more in Departments where no civil service tests were offered for years. In too many cases, civil service test takers have died on the list. Exams are one important way to address the provisionals problem, but that cannot and should not be the only way. There are more than 1000 titles in New York City government, and the need to reduce the number of provisional employees has forced us to look at the entire universe of titles and recommend some consolidations—or reclassifications of particular titles. As you’ve noted, the City has many too many provisional employees right now, and we need creativity and dynamism to address it. 29. What do you propose to do to resolve the Impasse a 911 because the PCTs and SPCTs are presently processing FDNY 911 Calls. These members have seen their workloads significantly increased and are due an appropriate wage adjustment. Our 9-11 call-takers and supervisors are on the front lines of Emergency Response in New York City, and in many ways, are the unsung heroes of the City’s workforce. We are in the middle of a transformation at 9-1-1, after which NYPD and FDNY call takers and dispatchers will be co-located in the same place; and NYPD call takers have already begun to answer some calls that used to be answered by FDNY call takers, eliminating a redundant step that will save time and lives.

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My understanding is that PCTs and SPCTs were offered an increase when they were asked to field these additional calls, which they thought was insufficient. We’re still in negotiations regarding this issue. So there’s no disagreement that PCTs and SPCTs should get some additional compensation for this work, we just need to figure out how much is appropriate. Beyond that, I can’t comment on an ongoing negotiation.

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