The moment Tokumbo Shobowale finished, several members of the Council’s newly-formed progressive caucus pounced.
Council Member Brad Lander, cochair of the vocal new 12-member faction formed in early March to push the body left, questioned how the administration could oppose the bill without having studied it. His caucus co-chair and the bill’s sponsor, Melissa Mark-Viverito, said the administration had been unwilling to even meet with her. Another member, Jumaane Williams, said he was frustrated that the administration had been stonewalling all of their efforts.
“It seems like the administration always comes from the opposite side of the issue,” said Williams, a Council freshman.
Many of the members of the new caucus were supported by labor last fall precisely because they had a history of vocal activism and community organizing, and promised not to let the issues that mattered to working people get ignored. But although the progressives have certainly been vocal so far, it remains unclear what effect they are having in changing city policy.
They held a rally in early May on the steps of City Hall calling for higher taxes on Wall Street fat cats to stave off budget cuts, but their concerns were immediately dismissed by the Bloomberg administration. At the recent Council hearing, when Council members were finally done grilling Shobowale, about 15 people from the Bloomberg administration got up to leave before hearing arguments from proponents of the bill.
“Could you just leave somebody behind so they can hear what 32 BJ has to say?” asked Domenic Recchia, the Finance chair.
A couple of people from the administration relented and stayed to listen.
Some observers had expected more immediate progress on the union-backed agenda in the wake of 2009 election wins by Working Families Party-backed candidates, the number of which seemed to surprise the WFP itself. But even the paid sick leave bill, which many of the WFPbacked members campaigned on, is still being kicked around. Though the WFP throws a press conference each time the bill gets reintroduced or reheard, actual legislative progress remains out of reach. A limited ability to pursue this agenda, combined with a desire to quickly make good on campaign pledges, has created some frustrations.
“I feel like we’ve been here before,” said Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer, a member of the caucus, at one such rally before the bill was heard in the Civil Service and Labor Committee. “We’ve had this event before. Enough time for talking—we need action.”
But the bill is likely to again be tabled until after budget negotiations.
Council Speaker Christine Quinn, meanwhile, has not publicly taken a stance on the bill, waiting until it gets further amended through the committee process. One Council member supportive of the bill said the fact that Quinn was refusing to offer her public support—or an assurance that she would bring the bill to the floor—had allowed the business community to continue a full-court press assault in an effort to peel members off from a veto-proof majority. (According to sources in the business community, several of the 35 sponsors that constitute a veto-proof majority are expected to bolt if more concessions are not made.)
“Her silence on this speaks volumes,” the Council member said.
In a prospective 2013 mayoral race, he added, Quinn would be unlikely to get support from the WFP and their member unions anyway over other potential candidates in the field. This highlights her need to maintain positive relations with the business community, which since last fall has been trembling over whether the new Council members would yank this and other legislation to the left.
Council Member Dan Halloran, a Republican who has emerged as one of the strongest voices in opposition to the prounion agenda, said that initial fears about the Council’s rapid move leftward had not been realized. A number of Council members in the most important committee chair positions are more moderate. The new Council members are unschooled in the give-and-take of the legislative process. The tough economic situation has also played a role.
“The economic times we’re in mean that the progressives who are trying to remake government have no money to do it,” Halloran said.
Though the formation of a progressive caucus in March unified the backers of the liberal agenda into a more cohesive force, the business community has also unified in response to the paid sick leave bill, said Carl Hum, president of the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce. Business leaders have held frequent meetings with lawmakers about the bill and have so far been able to delay a vote until more compromises are made.
“It kind of keeps us on our toes in the business community,” Hum said. “People who haven’t seen eye-to-eye on things in the past have become more and more cohesive.”
Even if legislative victories have not come yet for the progressive new members, though, some union leaders say that the very fact that these issues are getting serious hearing counts as a victory. The prevailing wage bill was introduced with 34 co-sponsors and got its first hearing ever—after years of not even getting on the agenda.
“It used to be that these things were swept under the rug,” said Pat Purcell, of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1500. “Now these new members are pushing the issues, making people talk about it, and they’re seeing the light of day. Some of it might take a long time.”
Union leaders say they will continue to press the argument that if workers are not paid a decent wage, they will instead rely on the city’s already strained social services. More so than in the past, union officials say, they will aggressively stay on members they helped elect to make good on campaign pledges.
And the good news for the liberal members is that the best may be yet to come for the union-backed agenda. In 2013, there will be a new mayor, and a number of WFP-backed candidates, including Comptroller John Liu and Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, are seen as strong contenders. There will be a new speaker, and because of the term-limits extension, a number of the members newly elected last year will by then be senior Council members.
Council Member Peter Vallone, Jr., one of the more conservative Democrats on the Council, cautioned against judging the impact of the progressive caucus just yet.
“Getting these freshman Council members in there was a heck of a way to build for the future,” said Vallone. “It’s just a very unfortunate future.”
