Politics
Progressive Causes Find Financing in Speaker's Discretionary Pot
New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito directed her $16 million discretionary funding kitty to a potpourri of progressive causes, including many pushed by her caucus peers at City Hall.
The budget approved by the City Council last week included some $50 million in discretionary funding, a financing stream Mark-Viverito vowed to depoliticize by allotting $400,000 apiece for lawmakers and adding up to $100,000 more for those representing districts with higher poverty rates. The move came after Council members accused former Speaker Christine Quinn of divvying up the funding to favor her allies and punish her foes.
Mayor Bill de Blasio previously said he believed it was time to eliminate these so-called member items, which are meant to let lawmakers’ local knowledge guide decisions about which nonprofits and community groups most need city money. But de Blasio has reportedly given up that fight since last budget season.
This year under Mark-Viverito, discretionary funding flowed to several programs aimed at propping up the poor and immigrants, and those dealing with criminal justice-related issues. She directed money to initiatives that provide childcare for parents enrolled in school, that conduct tenant organizing and one that offers peer education on teen sexuality and endeavors to create a “new generation of the pro-choice movement.” The list also included money to conduct an analysis of ways to improve the legal system as it relates to domestic violence, educational programs for once-incarcerated mothers and their children, counseling and legal case management for those going through the court system, and job and general assistance for the formerly incarcerated.
Schedule C of the city budget, which outlines discretionary and Council spending, only details what was funded from the speaker’s pot and which Council members, caucuses or delegations sponsored that funding. The rest of the speaker's discretionary funding is not clearly detailed and her office did not respond to a request for comment.
Fellow progressives appear to have done well by Mark-Viverito, according to an analysis of the local initiatives segment. Six of the seven city lawmakers who sponsored programs that collectively received more than $1 million from the speaker’s list were members of the Progressive Caucus: Corey Johnson, Julissa Ferreras, Brad Lander, Daniel Dromm, Stephen Levin and Ritchie Torres. The speaker’s discretionary kitty has traditionally financed services that exceed the amount an individual lawmaker can allocate or that serve a more expansive area than any one Council district.
City Councilman David Greenfield was arguably the most successful in this area. Although he is not a Progressive Caucus member, Greenfield has historically been supportive of Mark-Viverito. Fourteen programs backed by Greenfield received funding from the speaker’s pot for a total of $1,340,000. (It should be noted that some initiatives had multiple sponsors, in which case City & State counted the entire sum put toward that intiative in each backers’ tally.)
Only three lawmakers saw no requests make it onto the speaker’s list: City Councilman Mark Weprin, who left to work for Gov. Andrew Cuomo during the budget season; City Councilman Ruben Wills, who was barred from selecting discretionary funding recipients due to a related criminal indictment; and City Councilwoman Darlene Mealy. Wills and Mealy could not immediately be reached for comment.
City Councilman Rory Lancman, who had only one initiative funded from the speaker’s pool in the local initiative section, said that a particular portion of the budget is not always emblematic of how members and groups fared in the entire fiscal plan. In addition to the one initiative associated with his name—which benefited a senior center called India Home—Lancman said his top two priorities were funded in the criminal justice section and he was pleased with how Mark-Viverito handled his requests.
“I feel pretty happy,” he said. “If in the grand scheme of things I got less, it is only because what I asked for was less.”
Mark-Viverito’s money also benefitted initiatives backed by some borough delegations more than others. Brooklyn had the most sponsored items picked up by her discretionary pool—13, collectively accounting for $1.61 million, compared to Manhattan’s 12, totaling $985,000; the Bronx’s eight, amounting to $545,000; Queens’ eight, adding up to $365,000; and Staten Island’s seven, totaling $285,000.
Council members in Queens and the Bronx, where the Democratic Parties did not initially back Mark-Viverito for speaker, said her pot was a small snapshot of their funding priorities and noted borough size could be a factor. Nobody conveyed the sense that any borough delegation was dissatisfied, and one member suggested shared priorities might explain why the speaker appeared to have kicked in more for the Progressive Caucus and its members’ sponsored projects.
“For years there was a big discrepancy in money for libraries by borough and now they are even,” said Queens’ delegation leader, City Councilwoman Karen Koslowitz. “Everybody was pretty happy.”