Dear friends,
It’s a fat budget year, because of the federal dollars that enabled the city to restore the important things that were cut last year. The good news is that there are some meaningful investments in education, including funding for tutoring and additional social workers, an expansion of 3K (preschool!), and some money to reduce class sizes.
We (by which I mean, almost ALL of us), dropped the ball on the police budget this year. Once again, the NYPD got increased funding. This is particularly infuriating, as the NYPD has failed to provide helmet numbers for some of the officers charged with using excessive force and making false arrests during last year’s Black Lives Matter protests. Surely the problem isn’t a lack of resources.
As I noted last week, the budget season overlapped with the primary elections in a way that made it difficult to keep our eyes on all of the action.
State Supreme Court Justice Rosemarie Montalbano scored a big win in her race for the Brooklyn Surrogate’s Court position, “handing a victory to reformers over the county party in a race that, in some ways, came to be a referendum on political patronage.” Montelbano’s race was not subject to ranked choice voting, because it is governed by state election law; with 62.2% of the votes and just one opposing candidate, it would not have mattered.
This may herald important changes; the key words here are “a referendum on political patronage.” You are no doubt aware of the snafu at the NYC Board of Elections involving the accidental count of a huge batch of test ballots from Queens.
The opponents of ranked choice voting (RCV) are trying to divert attention from the clusterfuck that resulted when the BOE reported ‘results’ on Tuesday from their preliminary, unofficial tabulation.
The BOE was warned by experts in the field not to proceed with a preliminary tabulation using RCV and not to release incomplete results; there are still roughly 125,000 absentee ballots to be counted.
[C]omplaints about the BOE are perennial and tend to vanish from the consciousness of lawmakers and the public as soon as elections are over. Yet still, state and city elected officials are saying this time is different as they commit to reforming the patronage-heavy board.
“The situation in New York City is a national embarrassment and must be dealt with promptly and properly,” said Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (D-Westchester), who promised to hold hearings in the coming weeks.
The bold text above is mine. There is already legislation in the NYS Assembly to require the state to define qualifications for members of the BOE, mandate proper training, and remove the power to appoint members from party leadership.
Call on your state representative to consider A05691, a bill to reform the BOE. Here’s a ready-made message!
Yesterday’s new unofficial RCV tabulation (which is based on in-person votes only) shows the following:
Eric Adams 358,521 51.1%
Kathryn Garcia 343,766 48.9%
If you want to know more about the likelihood of an upset, check out this comprehensive accounting of how ranked choice voting has played out elsewhere. The upshot is that a Garcia win would be the most unusual kind of upset, since of the “15 RCV races in the U.S. won by a candidate other than the first-round leader,” only two were won by a third-place candidate.
Then again, it may be inaccurate to call Garcia the third-place candidate because 15% of the initial ballots — the absentee votes — have not been counted.
The Board of Elections published this notice yesterday:
Let us be clear: RCV was not the problem, rather a human error that could have been avoided. We have implemented another layer of review and quality control before publishing information going forward.
Incredibly, they plan to issue more partial results, including some of the absentee votes, on July 6. But, why?!
When we complain about voting in New York, at least we get to vote. Even I forgot to call Chuck Schumer yesterday; let’s blame it on the heat. So today, let’s all remind him that the For the People Act is necessary legislation. It’s meaningless to celebrate Independence Day if we’re going to stand by and watch as fellow citizens are denied their voting rights.
Call Schumer’s offices (any or all of them!) every day to remind him that S1 must pass.
While you’re on the line, you can talk to Schumer’s staffers about the weather. It’s not unheard of to have 90-degree-days in June in NYC, but the temperatures in the Northwest and the raging wildfires are indisputably the result of climate change. It’s a matter of urgency that we invest in climate-resilient infrastructure.
While you’re on with Schumer’s office, use the script to talk about the infrastructure bill we need!
Have a good day!
with love,
L