City Limits: What Is New York’s Mayor Really Able to Do?
New Yorkers like to think of their mayor as one of the nation’s top movers and shakers. For a reality check, consider the title that Lynne A. Weikart has chosen for her forthcoming book: Mayor Michael Bloomberg: The Limits of Power (Cornell University Press). With the mayoral primary election approaching, we asked Weikart, a professor of public administration, first at Baruch College and then at James Madison University, as well as a former New York City and State official, to put the impending transfer of power at City Hall in perspective.
Urban Matters: New Yorkers have gotten used to Governor Andrew Cuomo regularly boxing in or overriding Mayor Bill de Blasio. How much of their conflicted relationship has to do with personalities, and how much is a basic institutional antagonism between the City and State?
Lynne A. Weikart: Of course, New York State is a powerhouse. The City cannot increase our own taxes, except for the property tax. When the mayor [Bloomberg] wanted to put into place congestion pricing, the State killed it. The State stopped the building of the stadium on the Far West Side of Manhattan. The mayor had to get permission to increase the number of [traffic safety] cameras. The list seems endless.
But mayoral personalities play a big role in whether mayors succeed in pushing their agenda. It is well known among the political class that Cuomo is very difficult to deal with. However, Bloomberg was far more able to cut deals with Cuomo than de Blasio ever was.
De Blasio ruined his chances to work with Cuomo early in his first year in office when de Blasio wanted to raise [City income] taxes on high-income earners. Of course, he had a very good reason; funding full-day pre-kindergarten for four-year-olds.
Cuomo, like most politicians, did not want taxes going up anywhere in the State during his re-election year. Instead, he made a deal with State Senate Republicans. Without raising taxes, Cuomo got over $300 million for free full-day pre-kindergarten and afterschool programs. In return Cuomo supported charter school legislation. He agreed to increase the number of charter schools in the state; he guaranteed room in public school buildings for charter schools or money from school districts to pay for private space; he agreed to leave school space-sharing alone; and Cuomo provided more State funding for charter school operations. It was a terrible deal for public schools and those who did not support charter schools, which de Blasio did not. De Blasio was totally boxed out of the deal.
Contrast that with Bloomberg, who very carefully never quarreled with Cuomo in public. Rumors abounded that Bloomberg thought Cuomo too political, but to the media and the public, he said only good things. Bloomberg organized other New York mayors and county supervisors to pressure Cuomo to limit pensions. He got Cuomo’s agreement to limit pensions for new hires. This almost-impossible task saved the City millions of dollars. It was an amazing feat on Bloomberg’s part.
UM: You argue that personality traits can limit mayoral power, too. For example, you think Bloomberg’s loyalty to subordinates sometimes blinded him to their bad decisions – like adhering to stop and frisk police tactics – to his detriment and the city’s. Is there a formula for success in mayor as manager?
Weikart: I think there is a good way to manage. After 20 years in City and State government, I have learned that really good managers are much like Bloomberg: excellent planning, hiring skilled people, setting goals that can be measured and keeping tracking of their implementation, paying staff well, and celebrating their accomplishments. All of these are Bloomberg’s strengths and Good Management 101.
Poor management strategy fails to accept and value advice from experienced and knowledgeable experts in areas where you lack that base, and then fails to jettison administration insiders when they prove their lack of competence. That describes Bloomberg’s anti-strategy on low-income housing. He was far too dependent upon [Deputy Mayor for Economic Development and Rebuilding Dan] Doctoroff and never invited in a host of good government types who knew low-income housing better than either of them. He failed to apply his own common sense here.
UM: Mayors aren’t just managers; they’re also marketers. You write approvingly of how Bloomberg laid out environmental and health policy visions, then strove to line up public support. How important is that kind of entrepreneurship in working around the institutional limits that mayors run up against?
Weikart: A social entrepreneur is an innovator, a source of new ideas, goods, and services that make the world a better place. Bloomberg was very much an entrepreneur in the two arenas you cite, the environment and health policy. Bloomberg recognized his opportunities to innovate and pushed the envelope of new policy.
New York City has always been the city in which public health was taken seriously. Of course, resistance comes from specific interest groups. When Bloomberg moved to ban smoking in bars and restaurants, resistance came from those who owned bars and restaurants. Bloomberg fought for support from City Council members; he testified before the Council about the public health dangers of smoking. He organized some restaurant owners to support his policies. And he used data to prove how dangerous public smoking is. He worked hard and won; he changed our corner of the world for the better, and showed the rest of the country it was possible and good.
One of his pioneering environment changes was to greatly improve the energy efficiencies of large buildings by persuading the City Council to support legislation for the Greener, Greater Buildings Plan. Bloomberg sought and won State support for tax credits for landlords who installed green roofs and solar panels. He speeded up the process of cleaning up brownfields by convincing the State that the City could do it and then created the Office of Environmental Remediation to make it happen.
He isn’t recognized for his work with young people, but he created career and technical high schools that led to good-paying jobs. He created the Young Men’s Initiative that supported low-income students in college. He was instrumental in getting juvenile offenders home from Upstate detention facilities.
In these arenas, Bloomberg was an excellent communicator. We don’t think of Bloomberg that way. But his passion was in three areas: climate change, public health, and creating career opportunities for young people. And in these three areas, he was quite persuasive. Today he continues world leadership in all three arenas.
Next week, we talk with Weikart about the housing crisis the next mayor will face, the ups and downs of New York’s relationship with Washington, and what being a post-pandemic mayor might be like.