Tony Avella

Mayor
If going against Mayor Michael Bloomberg is considered a long shot for Comptroller William Thompson, then Council Member Tony Avella is the longest of shots. Avella, from Queens, has spent most of his Council career as a firebrand who often casts the lone-dissenting vote on legislation. He wants to empower community boards to take a greater role in local development, pledges to increase the involvement of parents and teachers in education policy making and supports commercial rent control.

William Thompson

Mayor
When most prominent Democrats declined to take on Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Comptroller William Thompson was the last one standing, facing only Avella, a long-shot aspirant, in the primary. As comptroller, Thompson’s alternative investment strategies helped cushion the pension fund when the economy collapsed. He knocks the mayor for being overly focused on Wall Street and real estate, a strategy that he says has harmed the middle class, and he promises to diversify. He would create an independent body to study student progress, and wants to mitigate the taxes, fees and fines that he says burden small businesses.

Melinda Katz

Comptroller
In the City Council, Melinda Katz chairs the powerful Land Use Committee, which oversees all development projects that need zoning changes. That has helped her raise campaign cash from real estate interests, but Katz says she has also pushed for affordable housing, fair labor wages and buildings that fit within a community’s context. Before her Council election, she worked in the Queens borough president’s office and she was a State Assembly member. As comptroller, Katz promises to invest a portion of pension funds in successful but debt-strapped companies that do business in New York, to help spur local job creation.

John Liu

Comptroller
John Liu is a reserved City Council member from Queens, but he also has a reputation for being a pit bull during committee hearings. As chair of the Transportation Committee, he claims to be the first elected official to discover the now-infamous “two sets of books” the MTA was using. Liu promises to use his tenacity when auditing city agencies, which the comptroller must do every four years. He also wants to audit and track stimulus funds coming to the city. On pensions, Liu wants to return to traditional, low-risk, low-yield investment strategies.

David Weprin

Comptroller
David Weprin wants voters to understand that he knows the buck. The Queens Council member chairs the Finance Committee, which must pass the city’s budget. He was also Gov. Mario Cuomo’s state superintendent on banking. His position in the Council has baggage, as he was partly blamed for not catching the slush fund scandal sooner. Nonetheless, he is touting his experience and his willingness to stand up to the mayor when appropriate, as he did when opposing the term-limit extension. Weprin plans to open satellite comptroller offices that would focus on financial literacy and assistance programs.

David Yassky

Comptroller
In a field of comptroller candidates from Queens, David Yassky is the lone Brooklynite. He is also the only candidate who supports the creation of a new level of pension benefits that would ease the city’s budget woes, but that remains unpopular with unions. Yassky points to his record in the City Council, where he worked to eliminate waste in the Housing Department, assisted in closing a tax loophole used by luxury developers and supported creating gas-electric hybrid taxis. He promises to invest a small portion of pension funds into biotechnology companies and increase transparency; during the campaign, he put the city’s budget online, at www.ItsYourMoneyNYC.com.

Bill de Blasio

Public Advocate
Council Member Bill de Blasio became Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s chief antagonist during the fight to extend term limits. The successful extension ruined de Blasio’s plans to run for Brooklyn borough president, but he found a spot in the public advocate’s race. He was quickly endorsed by most of the city’s elected officials. As the city’s ombudsman, de Blasio said he would stand up to a powerful mayor when necessary and promises to work collaboratively with other elected officials to get results.

Eric Gioia

Public Advocate
This two-term Queens Council member built a network of support from unions and young professionals, winning his first term without the backing of the borough’s Democratic organization. Gioia is capitalizing on this “outsider” status in his bid to be the city’s ombudsman and is touting his effective use of publicity to drive policy change. In 2007, he went on food stamps for a week, then pushed for legislation that would put applications online. He says he will continue working to improve schools, fighting for economic justice and holding government accountable.

Mark Green

Public Advocate
Voters may remember Mark Green as the city’s first public advocate who served during the Giuliani years, when he sued the mayor for withholding information on racial profiling and police misconduct, and he served as a general foil to many administration policies. He promises to continue that “aggressive progressive” platform, standing up to City Hall and helping government better serve New Yorkers. Since his unsuccessful bid for mayor in 2001, he has been president of Air America Radio, the liberal talk radio network that was owned by his real estate mogul brother, Stephen.

Norman Siegel

Public Advocate
This is civil rights lawyer Norman Siegel’s third bid for public advocate, following his unsuccessful challenge of incumbent Betsy Gotbaum in 2005. Siegel, who says the public advocate needs to be visible, a big mouth and a fighter, points to his record representing groups like the 2004 Republican National Convention protestors and West Harlem tenants in their battle against Columbia University. He plans to recruit hundreds of volunteers to be “surrogate public advocates” in each community, and create an “Institute of Advocacy” to help New Yorkers make themselves heard.

Richard Aborn

Manhattan District Attorney
Richard Aborn, a former assistant district attorney under Robert Morgenthau, stormed into the district attorney race as a dark-horse candidate. Yet his campaign has gained momentum after most of the borough’s elected officials, including Rep. Jerrold Nadler, endorsed his campaign. A gun-control advocate who was behind the federal assault weapons ban and the Brady Bill, Aborn is running on a platform of providing alternatives to incarceration, rehabilitation for nonviolent offenders and expanding the use of technology in the office.

Leslie Crocker Snyder

Manhattan District Attorney
This year, Leslie Crocker Snyder is mounting her second attempt to be Manhattan’s top prosecutor. In 2005, the former State Supreme Court judge ran against incumbent Robert Morgenthau, who had been in office since 1974. Snyder, a former assistant district attorney, was the first woman to prosecute homicides, founded Manhattan’s Sex Crimes Bureau and co-authored the Rape Shield Law. As district attorney, she would create a Second Look Bureau to address wrongful convictions and connect prosecutors to local law enforcement, civic and religious groups.

Cyrus Vance, Jr.

Manhattan District Attorney
Retiring prosecutor Robert Morgenthau chose Cy Vance, his former assistant district attorney, to be his successor. Vance, the son of President Jimmy Carter’s secretary of state, has been a defense lawyer in Seattle, Wash. for most of his career, litigating white collar crimes at a national firm. He plans to develop a community-based justice model in neighborhoods to better attack problems such as domestic violence and discrimination against immigrants. If elected, Vance would tackle the criminal court backlog and form special units for mental health issues and hate crimes.

Mark Green

Running for Public Advocate

By Shayndi Raice
Mark Green is back.

Although he swore off politics after losing the Democratic primary for attorney general to Andrew M. Cuomo in 2006, Green has decided he is ready for the spotlight once again. This time, he’s going after his old job: Pubic Advocate of the City of New York.

Green’s first foray into public service began in the 1970s, when he worked for Ralph Nader, running Public Citizen’s Congress Watch. Photo by Andrew Schwartz

“I was the public advocate. I know the job because I’ve done the job,” Green said at a recent candidates’ forum at Young Israel of the West Side. “And I have ideas to do it better.”

His history as—in his words—an “aggressive progressive” should be proof to New Yorkers that he has what it takes to stand up to City Hall and serve as an ombudsman for New Yorkers.

“Government has to do for an individual what he or she can’t do for themselves,” Green said firmly from the podium at the forum. “That’s not just a slogan. That’s my life.”

Indeed, Green’s first foray into public service began in the 1970s, when he worked for Ralph Nader, running Public Citizen’s Congress Watch, a consumer advocacy lobbying group in Washington, D.C. In 1981, he founded and ran the Democracy Project in New York City, a public policy institute. From 1990 to 1993 he worked for Mayor David Dinkins as the Commissioner of Consumer Affairs. Then, after the 1989 New York City charter revision created the office of the public advocate, Green ran and served as the first City Hall watchdog from 1993 to 2001. He unsuccessfully ran for mayor in 2001, losing a close battle for the post to Michael Bloomberg. For the last few years, he has been president of Air America Radio, the liberal talk radio network that was owned by his real estate mogul brother, Stephen. This January, he released Change for America: A Progressive Blueprint for the 44th President, a book he co-edited with Michele Jolin.

Green’s history is important because his campaign has essentially been built around it. He’s been out of public office for eight years, but that doesn’t mean he’s letting anyone forget his contributions from the 1990s.

“I meet candidates who say, ‘I stood up to this one, I fought that one’,” Green said to a group of Upper West Siders at Young Israel. “Listen to those words. What did they get done? All of us can brag about certain accomplishments. But eventually you have to look at someone’s head and heart and say, ‘Is this person going to be on my side because they’ve shown their values over time?’”

Green’s values, and accomplishments, include going after tobacco companies for directing advertising toward kids, suing former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani for withholding information on racial profiling and police misconduct and, most importantly for the group he addressed at Young Israel, forming a “kosher coalition” made up of organizations, wholesalers and retailers who pledged to restrain the price of kosher for Passover food products.

“Every candidate is ardently pro-Israel for reasons of morality,” said Green to the Jewish congregation. “But how many candidates can say they saved you money on matzoh?”

He is also focusing on his New York roots. Born in Brooklyn in 1945, Green lived with his family in Bensonhurst before moving to Great Neck, Long Island, where he graduated from Great Neck South High School. He left New York to attend college at Cornell and law school at Harvard. Today, he lives in Manhattan with his wife, Deni Frand. In his stump speech and on his website, he makes a point of noting that New York City welcomed his immigrant grandparents a century ago, just as it welcomes his two children, Jenya and Jonah, today as they begin their careers.

According to an Aug. 26 SurveyUSA poll conducted for WABC-TV, Green is leading his opponents with 38 percent, compared to 19 percent for City Council Member Bill de Blasio, 11 percent for civil rights lawyer Normal Siegel and 10 percent for City Council Member Eric Gioia. Nineteen percent of voters were still undecided. He is significantly behind his opponents, however, in fundraising efforts; Gioia leads in that category with more than $2 million. Green only qualified a few weeks ago for public campaign funds by raising $150,000 in private donations, trailing the other candidates significantly for matching funds.

If elected, Green promises to return to his old ways, going after City Hall and holding officials accountable for their actions. He is especially focused on Mayor Michael Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn’s decision to lower the budget for the office of public advocate by 40 percent. While he acknowledged that across-the-board budget cuts are necessary, given an approaching $5 billion deficit, he said that other city agencies were only cut by approximately 4 percent, a significant and stark contrast.

“Why did he cut only the watchdog by 40 percent? I think I know the reason. I think you know the reason,” he said. “To have such an unjustified, unprovoked, disproportionate reduction is absurd and indefensible.”

But even with the decrease in funds, Green said he’ll make do. He pledged to reach out to seniors, students and out-of-work lawyers to volunteer to make the office effective.

That does not mean he has any plans to let the mayor and speaker get away with the budget cuts, though. Although he almost always supports transparency, he is keeping quiet on how he plans to reinstate the public advocate’s budget.

“I would ask Mike Bloomberg to take the high road,” he said. “If he doesn’t agree, I have alternatives. You will have to stay tuned.”

David Weprin

Running for City Comptroller

By Zara Kessler

“I actually find the comptroller race very exciting,” said Council Member David Weprin as he took the podium at a forum hosted by the General Contractors Association of New York and the New York Building Congress.

David Weprin comes from a family of public servants, including his father and two brothers. Photo by Andrew Schwartz

Weprin, known for his focus on the esoteric details of the office, was taking the stage at the July 29 forum after two of his opponents—fellow Council members Melinda Katz and John Liu—had joked about the dry nature of an 8:30 a.m. comptroller discussion. (Council Member David Yassky, the fourth comptroller candidate, had yet to give his introduction.)

Weprin’s Manhattan campaign headquarters, a barebones storefront on West 54th Street, also seems to reflect that image: the focus is less on appearance and more on getting work done.

“I don’t think you need flashiness as comptroller. I think you need competence,” he said.

But at least some flashiness may be needed, as an Aug. 26 SurveyUSA poll conducted for WABC-TV noted that while 22 percent of voters are still undecided, Weprin is currently last in the comptroller’s race, with only 11 percent of Democratic voters’ support (Katz leads with 27 percent).

Luckily, campaigning is nothing new for Weprin. His father, Saul, was elected Democratic leader of his Queens Assembly District in 1962, and rose to become Speaker of the State Assembly until his 1994 death. Weprin succeeded his father as Democratic District leader that year, and in 2001, he was elected to the City Council. Older brother Barry did a stint as a town councilman in Mamaroneck, N.Y., and younger brother Mark represents their father’s former district in the Assembly; Mark is currently running for Weprin’s Council seat.

Born and raised in Holliswood, Queens, Weprin graduated from Jamaica High School, SUNY Albany and Hofstra Law School. He and his wife Ronni have five children.

Weprin became an associate in a litigation law firm and later joined Gov. Mario Cuomo’s administration as deputy superintendent of banking. But the section of his resume he stresses the most when it comes to comptroller qualifications is his work as a senior investment banker, which involved underwriting municipal bonds for infrastructure needs. This is the perfect background for the comptroller’s debt issuing responsibilities, he argues, as well as the office’s role in managing the city’s pension funds.

Pension funds have been a major point of contention among the candidates, especially in light of the pay-to-play scandal that led to the indictment of political advisers close to former city and state comptroller Alan Hevesi. Weprin believes that the city, as a huge client with a major portfolio, should only be dealing with principals or senior executives of firms, rather than the middlemen or political consultants who have been linked to the pay-to-play scheme. His opponents have a more tempered view of placement agents, arguing that they should be used in a more transparent fashion, or only for smaller funds that don’t have adequate resources.

Weprin promises to bring the comptroller to the people by opening up five borough-wide offices. Such community-oriented offices would deal with predatory lending, financial literacy issues and mortgage foreclosures, as well as pension and contract issues. Moreover, he promises to do a self-audit of the comptroller’s office to eliminate waste, and to invest in businesses that create jobs within the city.

Support for the campaign, which has raised about $2.3 million, comes from former Mayor David Dinkins, former Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer and former Brooklyn Borough President Howard Golden. Other prominent endorsements include seven DC37 locals and the New York City Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association. Weprin’s dance moves at a recent Brooklyn event gained him YouTube stardom, as well as the support of the organizers of the Soul Summit music festival.

In the Council, Weprin chaired the Finance Committee, where he sponsored the Autism Initiative, which funded programs for young children on the autism spectrum, and pushed to set aside $2.5 billion of surplus funds to pay for future retirees’ health care benefits.

But much criticism has resulted from the fact that Weprin was babysitting the Council’s finances throughout the recent slush fund controversy, which revealed the Council practice of assigning money to fake nonprofit organizations before it went out to legitimate groups, which were sometimes linked to friends and family. The scandal took down two ex-aides to a Brooklyn Council member, and led to a guilty plea for misusing public funds from Council Member Miguel Martinez, who resigned. Martinez should go to prison, Weprin says, but he notes that the Finance Chair does not police the speaker’s office, which was the source of the dispersed funds.

“Look, I mean, all 51 members of the Council who voted on the budget, who were part of the process, can take some blame. You know all my opponents are also Council members. Could we have done better? Absolutely. Have we done a lot to change the process to make it more transparent, to put in the safeguards to prevent certain things from happening again? Absolutely we have,” Weprin said, highlighting the many good organizations to which discretionary funding goes.

Nice guy that he is, a Mets fan and movie buff who eagerly hands out his cell phone number to a reporter in case of further questions, Weprin has pinpointed perfect jobs for his peers.

“John Liu would make a great MTA chair, Melinda Katz would be a great chair of the City Planning Commission and David Yassky would be a great head of the Environmental Protection Committee,” he said at a recent debate.

That, of course, would leave the comptroller’ seat wide open for Weprin.

But this year, the mayoral primary a foregone conclusion—Comptroller William Thompson, a Democrat, will likely face Mayor Michael Bloomberg in November. Plus, the bad economy is dragging down the pension fund, which the comptroller must protect. The fund covers benefits for 237,000 retiring municipal employees, police officers, firefighters, teachers and Department of Education officials.

This past March, the value dropped to $77.1 billion, down from $82.5 billion in December of 2008.

A sagging pension fund is seemingly of little concern to residents of the Upper West Side, a neighborhood where municipal pensioners are a rarity. But as the fund dips, taxpayer costs rise. In 2009, nearly one in every 10 dollars spent by the city will go toward pension costs. By the time the new comptroller ends his or her first term in 2013, pension costs to the city are projected to jump to $7.6 billion, from $6.4 billion this year. Moreover, the city must pay out pension benefits to retirees regardless of the fund’s health, leaving taxpayers on the hook for a large tab. And with the economy creating gaping deficits in the city’s budget, spending is being scrutinized more than ever.

That leaves the 2009 Democratic candidates for comptroller—Melinda Katz, John Liu, David Yassky and David Weprin, all City Council members—rolling out plans to better identify government waste, provide stringent oversight of municipal agencies and bolster the pension fund.

The comptroller is the city’s chief financial officer, the most public and visible trustee to four pension boards and an investment advisor to all five. Along with the other trustees, who include leaders from the city’s most politically powerful unions, a mayoral appointment, the borough presidents, their appointees and the public advocate, the comptroller is responsible for protecting and improving the pension fund.

As the city’s fiscal watchdog, he or she can nix any contract deemed questionable. Thompson famously rejected the city’s contract with the beverage company Snapple in 2004, calling the bidding process tainted.

But even a job that is essentially about money is fraught with political decisions that go beyond running for mayor, a popular career trajectory for most former comptrollers. Comptrollers have taken an activist approach to the job, leading to divestment in apartheid South Africa in the 1980s. Politics can also influence the decision to audit a particular city agency, or choose a sector in which to invest the pension fund. And as the city’s authority on finances, the comptroller can help sink or propel any proposal to balance the city budget, or bail out a struggling public authority. There can even be a role on social issues: Thompson released a report that detailed the economic benefits of same-sex marriage to the city and state.

“It’s got real power,” said Doug Muzzio, a political science professor at Baruch College’s School of Public Affairs. “This is a job worth having.”

Council Member Melinda Katz, who represents Forest Hills, Queens, seems to understand that. Beyond simply earning a return on city investments, she believes that the comptroller can invest in companies that will benefit the city while upholding her responsibility as steward of the pension fund. Katz says this will allow her to get concessions that will benefit New Yorkers, promote job creation and bolster the local economy.

“If you’re a big corporation and want millions from hardworking men and women, what are you doing for New York City?” Katz asks. “Where are your corporate offices? What will you do to train people being laid off?”

This aggressive approach toward shareholder rights is similar to how Katz chaired the Council’s Land Use Committee, which has a powerful role in shaping any housing development proposals that come through her committee. Despite being the preferred candidate of real estate industry donors, Katz said she has a record of pushing developers to include more affordable housing and create jobs.

“I’m willing to not back down. I’m someone who will negotiate better things for New Yorkers,” she said.

Tapping into her early career as a mergers and acquisitions attorney, Katz wants to invest a small part of the pension in companies that can make a profit but that are saddled with paying off debt. This investment strategy, skewed toward helping New York City companies, would allow businesses to restructure and emerge as a new company, debt-free.

John Liu, a Council member from Flushing, Queens, criticized the plan, saying that the pension fund should stay away from assessing the viability of struggling companies and providing taxpayer funds to help them get out of debt.

“That is not a function of pension plans,” Liu said. “That is a function for bankers.”

Liu has taken a hands-off approach to the pension funds, which he said wax and wane given that investment returns are cyclical. Besides, the real power of the comptroller, in Liu’s opinion, is in the ability to audit.

The comptroller has a mandate from the city charter to audit the mayor’s agencies every four years.

“The audit function is, at its core, the substance behind any system of checks and balances,” Liu said. “Tangible measurements are necessary.”

Liu notes his background as an actuary and management consultant for PricewaterhouseCoopers when highlighting his qualifications. Deadpan, he rehashes the joke that actuaries are like accountants, but without a sense of humor.

Liu developed a reputation as a pit bull by aggressively questioning city officials during his eight years in the Council, where he chaired the Transportation Committee. He has also fiercely criticized the Department of Education and the much-maligned MTA, claiming he was the first elected official to discover the authority’s now-infamous second set of financial books.

In addition to auditing city agencies, Liu wants to expand the comptroller’s influence to include the Department of Education (the gridlocked State Senate would have to act first to give the city comptroller that authority) and federal stimulus money.

“It’s a lot of money over a short period of time. It’s a recipe for waste and possible fraud unless someone is keeping an eye on it,” Liu said. “That would be my top priority.”

David Yassky, who represents Brooklyn’s brownstone belt, is another candidate who’s playing up his wonky persona. As the city was “within a whisker” of shutting down senior centers and firehouses, he says, it is increasingly crucial to use government money efficiently.

“That’s why I’m so determined to transform the comptroller’s audit staff,” he said, “into an in-house management consultant team that goes agency by agency to find the wasteful and inefficient spending.”

His goal is to identify the 10 percent of an agency’s budget producing the least results.

Yassky was a budget analyst in the mayor’s Office of Management and Budget, where he sat at a computer to analyze spreadsheets and create economic models to direct revenue. In the Council, he touts a law he authored that busted fraudulent claims to the city and his role in a bill that closed a loophole that gave luxury developers a tax break without building affordable housing. “You want to look for a background that tells voters: I know this candidate will produce in the comptroller’s office,” Yassky said.

Yassky has positioned himself as the “progressive” candidate, that is, the one poised to sweep Manhattan primary voters, though he has been criticized for his vote to extend term limits.

He is already the lone supporter—albeit a lukewarm one—of creating a new tier of less expensive pension benefits for future municipal employees. Gov. David Paterson and Bloomberg have endorsed the proposal as a way to bring down skyrocketing pension costs.

Yassky has also made green technology and the environment key components of his campaign. As comptroller, Yassky would push companies to account for their carbon footprint and plan for environmentally sound growth. He’d invest 5 percent of the pension fund in green technology.

“I don’t think it’s a conflict between a strong return and investing in the environmental sector,” Yassky said. “Most economists’ view is that the environmental sector will be the growth area when the economy as a whole rebounds. We want to make sure that that growth happens as much as possible in New York.”

David Weprin, however, is looking at a different kind of grassroots growth. The northeastern Queens Council member wants the comptroller to be the people’s financial planner, as well as guardian of the city’s finances. In addition to the comptroller’s headquarters in lower Manhattan, Weprin wants an office in every borough, plus one in northern Manhattan. These offices would educate New Yorkers on financial literacy, banking issues and predatory lending practices.

“I would have a more consumer-friendly office in the five boroughs,” Weprin said. “When I leave office, the public will know what the comptroller does.”

Though his proposals aim at creating an accessible comptroller’s office, Weprin has a propensity to use fiscal jargon that can sound like a foreign language to the average Democratic primary voter. When he talks about the pension investments, Weprin muses about investing in real estate now—“Buy low, sell high,” he quips—or talks about the merits of bond underwriting. It can be dense, but Weprin wants voters to know he is as knowledgeable on the economy as his resume suggests.

Weprin was deputy superintendent of banks under Gov. Mario Cuomo, served on the state banking board, spent time on Wall Street in municipal finance and has chaired the Council’s Finance Committee for the past eight years. These connections, he argues, are crucial for a comptroller.

Rather than detail a pension investment plan early in the campaign, Weprin says he would assembly a “blue-ribbon panel” of advisors and rely on the advice of fellow trustees to craft his policies.

“My whole professional career has been tailored to being comptroller,” he said.

While each of Weprin’s challengers would likely say the same thing, it remains to be seen what’s going to resonate with primary voters.

Perhaps they are looking for the candidate who promises to be a strong, independent check on the mayor (as Liu wants to be). They may want a comptroller who can help them handle a tax problem (Weprin’s vision). Or are they looking for investment in local business (Katz) or green technology (Yassky)?

Whatever these candidates’ goals or plans, the pension fund is low and a bad maneuver can cost taxpayers money to cover retirement benefits, points out Carol Kellermann, president of the Citizens Budget Commission.

“The fiduciary duties to maximize the funds come first,” Kellermann said. “When some of these creative ideas are placed into office, they might not be quite as enthusiastic about it.”