Level
Comptroller
More Information
Campaign Site
2020 LID Questionnaire Response
Why are you running for NYC Comptroller?
Even before coronavirus, our democracy was in peril. Gaping inequality in the economy, housing, education, health care, and policing has left us fractured, and far from the ideals of equal justice or opportunity. People doubt that our government will do what it promises, that it will spend our money wisely, that it will tell the truth, that it can serve as a vehicle for people to come together with their neighbors, across lines of difference, to confront our problems and make our life in common better.
The COVID-19 crisis has both revealed and exacerbated those flaws in our governing institutions and society.
Our next Comptroller will be in office through a once-in-a-generation test of our city’s ability to govern: Helping to control and end the COVID-19 crisis. Bringing our city back to life. Supporting millions of struggling families to get back on their feet. Responding to an overdue reckoning with systemic racism. Investing in a long-term rebuilding that provides a platform for thoughtful growth, shares the benefits far more equally, and implements a green new deal to mitigate and prepare for the climate crisis. Rebuilding trust in government will be necessary to do any of those things.
I’m running for New York City Comptroller to help our city rise to meet those challenges. The Comptroller’s office has the tools and the responsibility to ensure that we are budgeting wisely, investing strategically, governing democratically, and living up to our commitments to each other and to future generations. As both the city’s Chief Financial Officer and its Chief Accountability Officer, the Comptroller leads a staff of over 700 employees to oversee the City’s finances, audit City agencies, review City contracts for integrity and accountability, underwrite municipal bonds to invest in the city’s physical and fiscal future, enforce prevailing wage and living wage laws, and serve as a fiduciary to the City’s five public pension funds.
The tools of this office can and must be put to work to help New York City recover from one of its most daunting crises, and to build a more just, well-governed, and resilient city, and one that is more prepared for the crises that lay ahead.
Why do you want LID's endorsement? If LID endorses you do you commit to including that endorsement on your website, social media, and all campaign literature on which you list or make mention of endorsements?
LID has a powerful, four-decade history of fighting fiercely and effectively for equality and justice, for Brooklyn’s LGBTQ community, and far beyond. Being associated with LID would be an honor, and I would of course proudly list it on my website, via social media, and on my campaign literature. I have loved being a long-time ally of the club and have been proud to fight in the trenches with you to deliver a more progressive, equitable, and just New York City -- from the fight for marriage equality in 2010/2011, to the work to defeat the IDC in 2018, to this year’s fights to repeal the “walking while trans” law and include gender non-binary people in the Kings County Democratic Committee (in a manner that is genuinely inclusive and not “pinkwashing”).
There is so much more work to do together. I commit to be your partner in the Comptroller’s office, deploying the tools of the office in fights for equality, inclusion, and compassion. That means “equity audits” to hold government agencies accountable to the values of equality and inclusion; investing in truly affordable, social housing; holding abusive employers accountable; transforming public safety away from abusive policing and investing instead in the services people need to thrive; better supporting the nonprofit human service organizations that care for our communities; and divesting from fossil fuels and investing in the sustainable infrastructure we need to mitigate the climate crisis. I look forward to working together in the hard, important, years ahead.
Please describe your particular skills, education, and experiences that you believe have prepared you to serve as the City's chief fiscal and auditing officer?
In my decade in the City Council representing the 39th District and serving as the Council’s Deputy Leader for Policy, and in 15 years leading nonprofit organizations before that, I’ve made government work better by listening to the voices of the community, demanding that we live up to our values, understanding that budgets are moral documents, taking a good hard look at the data, and building lasting partnerships for meaningful change.
My education at the University of Chicago (BA), University College London (MS, Social Anthropology), and the Pratt Institute (MS, City & Regional Planning) helped me to develop the analytic skills to design and audit programs, dig into budgets, and understand systems.
Before running for City Council, I served as executive director of two nonprofit organizations, both of which grew and had strong track records under my leadership. As executive director of the Fifth Avenue Committee, I oversaw the development and preservation of hundreds of units of affordable housing, and launched innovative community organizing, workforce development, and criminal justice programs. As director of the Pratt Center for Community Development, I helped provide planning and organizing assistance to grassroots community-based groups in every borough working for housing, economic, and environmental justice, and led successful campaigns to reform New York City’s tax and zoning policies.
Since joining the Council in 2010, I have led innovative work to intervene in the city’s economy in ways that have delivered for working New Yorkers, and to expand democracy and transparency in City government. My work to raise the floor in the gig- and contingent-work economy has delivered for Uber and Lyft drivers (who are now earning on average $5000/year more thanks to the living wage law I passed), fast-food workers (who have stable schedules and a path to full-time jobs), and freelancers (who have the strongest protections in the country against wage theft). I understand how to make the economy work for working people, in ways that strengthen our city’s ability to flourish overall.
I’ve also worked successfully to expand transparency and democracy in New York City, by launching and expanding participatory budgeting, strengthening our campaign finance laws to prohibit dark money, and establishing the NYPD Inspector General’s office. During my tenure in the Council, I’ve also led efforts to keep tenants in their homes, integrate our public schools, confront abusive policing, and combat climate change. More on my track record can be found on my website.
Finally, I know that change doesn’t happen by elected officials acting alone, even with the best economic analysis, investment plan, or audits. I am proud of the organizing and movement-building I have done in my district and beyond, helping to launch the New York City Council’s Progressive Caucus, Get Organized BK (a grassroots network of thousands of Brooklynites working to defend democracy during the Trump era) and Local Progress (a network of over 1000 local elected officials advancing a racial and economic justice agenda through all levels of local government). I will bring the perspective of “co-governance” to the New York City Comptroller’s office, which means that the tools of the office must be used with unstinting integrity and independent analysis, but also in partnership with New Yorkers working for sustainable and livable neighborhoods for everyone, reckoning with issues of racial, gender, and economic inequality, and fighting to build a more genuinely inclusive democracy.
Please cite your top three-five priorities should you be elected Comptroller?
New York City is facing some of the greatest challenges of our generation. As Comptroller, I would focus especially on:
Helping New York City achieve a just and durable recovery from the Covid-19 crisis, through a path that invests in a vibrant, more equal, and more sustainable future rather than choosing a path of austerity, with a focus on small businesses, sustainable innovation, the care economy, and good jobs with stronger worker protections.
Making the Comptroller’s office a hub for focusing the attention of New Yorkers on the climate crisis (the greatest long-term risk to our lives and economy, and one that will make the Covid-19 crisis look small by comparison) through a comprehensive approach of divesting from fossil fuels and investing in sustainability, holding us accountable to our climate goals, and overhauling our infrastructure to create a city that is far more resilient (and far more equally so) to rising seas and temperatures, all while creating good green jobs.
Doubling the footprint of “social housing” by requiring city-owned land and subsidies for housing go to community land trusts, limited-equity cooperatives, and nonprofit organizations (rather than for-profit private developers, in forms of ownership that permit and encourage speculation) and other strategies, to dramatically increase housing that is permanently affordable to those who need it most.
Transforming public safety by significantly reducing what we seek to do with policing, fully overhauling accountability for misconduct, and investing in community-centered supports. I recently released a campaign platform on transforming traffic safety with less police, as one model for how we can achieve these goals.
To achieve any of these issue priorities will require making New York City government work better. The Comptroller’s fundamental responsibility is to instill and maintain public confidence in the workings of government. Toward that end, I will focus on:
Telling the truth about our finances so we are informed to make difficult but necessary fiscal choices that lie ahead (with an eye toward Keynesian solutions, rather than austerian ones).
Making City government work better, and more in sync with our values, by auditing City agencies using new tools and partnerships, improving City contracting and procurement, and engaging communities in strengthening the work of local government.
Investing the City’s pension funds wisely and consistently with our values, to guarantee city workers have the full pensions to which they are entitled, and to help insure a more equal and sustainable future for them, their families, and their neighbors.
Taking the long-term view on our city by accounting for our future. That means supporting economic policies that help our city thrive more equally, and evaluating and preparing for the major risks facing our city (especially the climate crisis).
If elected, what (if anything) would you do differently versus previous Comptrollers and why?
New York City has had some excellent Comptrollers, on whose work I would build, but also forge a new path for the future we face.
Andrew Haswell Green (1871-1876) led the way to the consolidation of the five boroughs into Greater New York City, a visionary step that has made much of our economic success possible (even if I sometimes wonder about Staten Island).
Liz Holtzman (1990-1993) blazed a path-breaking gender equity trail to the office, and developed an innovative strategy to hold gun manufacturers financially liable for injuries caused by illegal guns.
John Liu (2010-2013) implemented “Checkbook NYC” which allows New Yorkers to see every check written by our City government, and engaged New Yorkers in selecting audits.
Scott Stringer (2014-present) has worked to open up corporate boardrooms, demand greater diversity, and force action on important social issues like climate change.
As Comptroller, I will build on their work, and aim to take it in an even bolder direction, especially on racial and gender equity, workers rights within companies, transparency and accountability in government, and the climate crisis. I will establish an “equity audit” unit with the Audit Bureau, to make sure City agencies and contractors are reckoning with racism and gender bias. I will establish a “strategic plan for responsible investing” to make sure public sector workers have retirement security that is aligned with their long-term values. I will implement new “participatory auditing” strategies designed to work with stakeholders to achieve real change.
Most significantly, I will make the Comptroller’s office a hub for focusing the attention of New Yorkers on the climate crisis -- divesting from fossil fuels & investing in renewable energy, building resilient infrastructure, doing more to reduce emissions, tackling health care and environmental justice disparities, and transitioning to clean energy with good jobs for New Yorkers. The 8 years that the next round of elected officials will serve will be the critical ones. The mayoral candidates will all talk about the threat of the climate crisis -- but on most days, other issues will seem more pressing -- so we need a Comptroller who will hold us accountable to our climate goals.
What is your plan to help NYC recover from the economic crisis caused by Covid-19?
In the wake of the fiscal crisis of the 1970s, New York City adopted austerity budgeting, making large cuts to CUNY, NYCHA, mass transit, and a wide array of other public services. The result, as Kim Phillips-Fein writes in Fear City, crippled New York City’s ability to serve as an engine of upward social mobility, put downward pressure on wage, expanded inequality to the point of crisis, and paved the way for gentrification.
But austerity was not inevitable then, and it is not inevitable now. In the wake of earlier crises, including the Great Depression and World War II, our city’s leaders helped to pioneer urban investments in clean water and public health, public transportation, the programs of the New Deal, public housing and Mitchell-Lama, and public higher education. Those investments were the platform for our city’s growth and success for many decades.
Now, in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis, amidst a reckoning with systemic racism and inequality, and with the climate crisis on the horizon, it is our time to renew this forward-looking leadership. It is appalling to live in a country where, during a global pandemic, a handful of billionaires have seen their wealth grow by over half-a-trillion dollars, while tens of millions wait in line for food, 40 million have filed for unemployment, we have refused to provide any relief to millions of immigrant families, small businesses face devastation, and millions of tenants cannot afford to pay their rent.
The first responsibility belongs to the federal government, which has the power to enact a bold and far-reaching stimulus package that would provide COVID-19 relief to all who need it (including undocumented immigrants), enable people to stay home to slow the spread of coronavirus, prevent evictions, save small businesses, invest in a just and sustainable recovery through a green new deal, and pay for these investments through a combination of federal borrowing and new progressive wealth and income taxes. The New York State Legislature also has an obligation here, since it can tax billionaires, close the carried interest loophole, and adopt other progressive revenue strategies in order to fund excluded workers, save small businesses, provide support for marginalized New Yorkers, and invest in long-term recovery.
While the City of New York does not have the power of the federal government to borrow, or of the state government to adopt progressive taxation, we are not helpless. We can adopt smart Keynesian strategies like investing in infrastructure, affordable housing, climate resilience, and job creation. That’s why I led efforts to push back against Mayor de Blasio’s short-sighted cuts to this year’s capital budget, which ultimately won a $466 million restoration in affordable and supportive housing.
Rather than cut summer youth jobs and social safety net programs, while preserving funding for the NYPD, as the Mayor and the City Council did in this year’s budget, we could do the reverse: cut the NYPD budget, and invest in education, youth, and the social safety net. That’s why I voted against this year’s City budget, and will continue to fight to get our priorities in order.
The New York City Comptroller has the responsibility to tell the truth about our finances, to make sure that our budget is balanced, and to find ways to make our agencies work more effectively with the resources we have. I’ve made those hard choices in the past as a member of the City Council, supporting cuts to programs that are truly missed in my community, from curbside composting to beloved parks programs. But that does not mean supporting austerity, or ignoring rampant inequality. Investing in better-shared, more-sustainable prosperity, and working hard to strengthen the capacity of City government to help deliver it, is the best way forward for our city. As New York City Comptroller, that will be my north star.
Describe key changes you'd urge the Mayor and City Council to take to make NYC's budget more equitable and sustainable, including any changes you'd suggest making to the NYPD's $6 billion budget?
I was the first City Council Member to call for an NYPD hiring freeze back in April of this year. And I voted no on the FY21 budget, because it was not responsive to demands to reduce the NYPD budget by at least $1 billion, invest that funding in underinvested communities, and begin to transform our approach to public safety away from a system with policing at its center. I approached this year’s budget with simple principles in mind: Divest at least $1 billion from policing to preserve as much investment as we possibly could in education, youth, and social services. Prioritize public health to get us through the pandemic. Invest in a just recovery. And take a smart, long-term approach to our city’s economic and fiscal health. The budget that the City Council was asked to approve did not come close to meeting those principles. We urgently need to move away from having policing as the primary response for every problem, from homelessness to mental health to gender-based violence to traffic safety, and, instead, must invest in the resources that actually keep our communities safe.
I support removing police from many aspects of the city’s public life, including homelessness, drug use, overdose, and mental health, because they fail to deliver good public health and public safety outcomes, particularly for our BIPOC neighbors. I believe that we not only need to reduce the size of our police force but also develop the alternative infrastructure for non-police response. To that end, I recently released a campaign platform (in partnership with Tiffany Caban, the family of Allan Feliz, Justice Committee, Families for Safe Streets, and other criminal justice advocates) that proposes removing the NYPD from routine traffic enforcement and decriminalizing or eliminating minor pedestrian and cyclist infractions, among other recommendations. Taking a data-driven, problem-solving, restorative approach to reducing traffic violence has enormous potential to save lives, prevent injuries, save money, and make our streets safer for all New Yorkers -- and to demonstrate the value of a public health approach to public safety.
One other critical area for savings, especially relevant to the Comptroller’s office, are the hundreds of millions of dollars that we pay out each year to settle claims against the City. The top two areas of claims are police misconduct and traffic crashes caused by City drivers. By combining the Comptroller’s settlement responsibilities, audits, and data analysis, we can take an “early warning” approach to holding City agencies and workers accountable, and thus save both lives and money.
What would you do to further LGBTQ+ rights, equity, and justice if elected Comptroller?
During conversations with colleagues, friends, and advocates in the LGBTQ+ community I hear a constant theme: more investments in housing, in healthcare, in education. Remove barriers to economic success. Eliminate discimination that leaves LGBTQ+ individuals, particularly Black Trans women, at risk for homelessness, poor health outcomes, and run-ins with the NYPD. I support increased investments in housing and supportive services for the LGBTQ+ community, increased funding to DOHMH to fund targeted interventions to communities at high-risk of HIV/AIDS, the decriminalizaiton of sex work, the implementation of an LGBTQ+ curriculum in the city’s public schools, and a repeal of the State’s Walking while Trans ban.
The job of Comptroller should be “accounting for our values.” I therefore plan to create teams within the office’s Audit Bureau (the largest division of the Comptroller’s office) to conduct audits focused on equity, sustainability, and accessibility. I will have a team conduct “equity audits” to reduce disparities across race, gender, sexual orientation, and ethnicity citywide, including in how our city agencies deliver services, treat their workers, and hire contractors. I will be releasing a detailed platform on “equity auditing” shortly.
Where appropriate, I will use the office as an organizing vehicle for advocates, with a model of “co-governance,” as I have done my entire career in public service, and produce audits, draft reports, and release data in partnership with organizers running campaigns centered on equity and justice. To ensure that we are accountable to the needs of the people, my office will continue to center the voices of our most vulnerable community members by inviting them to participate in government decision-making with us.
What does it mean to you to support and further gender equity?
As I detailed a bit in this op-ed explaining why I was endorsing Elizabeth Warren in the 2020 Presidential Primary election, I recognize a responsibility to confront the bias toward male/hetero/cis leadership that exists in political and professional spaces, as well as the ways in which sexism (and lack of representation) impacts the delivery of government services and allocation of resources. Women, LGBTQ+, and TGNC folks in New York City face barriers to living safe, happy, and healthy lives. Women of color, and Black women in particular, receive lower wages, are at a higher risk for poor health outcomes, including maternal mortality, and face housing insecurity. The insidiousness of patriarchy has resulted in a lack of investment in childcare and caregiving, which harms not only the women who rely on childcare to work but the women who are overrepresented in the caregiving workforce. White women and gay men continue to face pervasive discrimination and barriers as well. Citywide, there seems to be little honest reckoning of the cost, or of the ongoing legacy of patriarchy, which is around us in every element of our economy, our health, our homes, and our politics. If I’m being honest, I fail to achieve gender in my own home, personal, and professional life.
I strive, both in my professional work and in my personal relationships, to be an ally to women, LGBTQ+, and TGNC folks by putting my privilege as a white, male cis man to good use. I have championed legislation that would eliminate arbitrary and gendered dress codes in the city’s public schools, implement race and gender equity assessments that seek to address systemic inequality within government institutions, and provided funding to organizations working on grassroots gender equity. I have consistently supported the advancement of women and LGBTQ candidates for elected office (including Melissa Mark-Viverito, Carlos Menchaca, Tiffany Caban, Ritchie Torres, Jessica Ramos, Nydia Velazquez, Cynthia Nixon, Elizabeth Warren, and many others).
I have worked to embed gender equity into the offices and organizations I have led. At Fifth Avenue Committee, I recruited a woman-of-color to serve as board chair and subsequent executive director, where she has done a better job than I did. At Local Progress, I’m being succeeded as chair by Helen Gym (as a co-chair with Greg Casar), who will surely exceed me in that job. And I am proud that two women-of-color who worked in my Council office decided to run for City Council seats themselves.
I commit to doing even stronger work on gender and racial equity in the internal workplace policies of the City Comptroller’s office. I will have gender parity and equitable representation in the Deputy Comptroller and senior jobs within the office. I will work with members of the Sexual Harassment Working Group to develop internal policies to ensure the Comptroller’s office is welcoming and safe for staffers of all gender identities. And I will ask the new “equity audit” team to audit the Comptroller's office on a regular basis, to ensure that we are doing all we can to practice what we preach (and audit).
How much money has your campaign raised to date and what are the key sources of support? Relatedly, are you rejecting contributions from specific sectors, such as lobbyists, real estate interests, pension fund managers, police unions, etc.?
As of today, we have raised over $750,000 from over 4,500 contributors, more than twice as many contributors as any other candidate in the race, with support from every borough in neighborhoods all across the city. Of that total, over $400,000 in matchable small-dollar contributions, which will result in over $3.2 million in public matching funds. So overall, we have raised just under $4 million. We are 80% of the way to the spending cap for this race ($4.5 million), which we plan to hit by early spring. As of the July 11th filing, our average donation size was $173. For the contributions since July 12th, our average donation size is $42. I am the only candidate in the race who has committed to reject contributions from all of: developers and real estate interests (per the New York Communities for Change Pledge), corporate lobbyists, pension fund managers, fossil-fuel executives, and police and corrections unions.
If elected, do you commit to using inclusive and gender neutral language in all official documents and press releases?
Yes, absolutely. Our campaign team has endeavored to use inclusive and gender neutral language in campaign materials to date and we will continue to do so, following the model set by LID.
