NY State Senator Joe Bruno
BRUNO THE BEAST
On Monday, March 31, the New York
State Senate voted by a margin of 33 to 27
not to begin discussion on a bill to renew
New York State's rent regulations, which
expire on January 15, 1997. The
corresponding bill has already been passed
by the New York State Assembly, but
requires a majority vote in the Senate
because, unlike other laws, the New York
City rent regulations must be renewed
every two years. A law extend-ing rent
regulations was also passed by the New
York City Council on March 25, but this
has no force without a similar vote by
the State Legislature, as New York City is
not permitted by the State Legislature to
make its own rent laws. The New York rent
regulations, in one form or another, have
been in effect since 1948 and protect two
and one half million tenants in New York
City from evictions and excessive rent
increases. This year, however, the
picture has changed, mostly through the
efforts of one man, State Senate
Republican Majority Leader Joseph Bruno.
This time, indeed, it is personal, as
Bruno tests his ability to form a
Republican machine in Albany to replace
the Democratic one that departed with
Mario Cuomo. Bruno began his campaign
against the rent laws with a December 15
speech before a landlord group at the
Sheraton Hotel in Manhattan, where he
vowed that the laws would not be renewed.
Bruno is using his overwhelming power as
majority leader to blackmail Republican
State Senators into backing his measures.
Bruno is capable of denying choice
committee assignments to Senators who defy
his authority; the Majority Leader also
has the power to withhold essential
funding for roads and other public works
from dissident Republican Senators'
consti-tuencies. Hence, the landlords have
placed their faith in this Caesar-like
authority to destroy New York's rent
regulations at a point where New York
rents have soared to their highest levels
in history.
PUSSILANIMOUS POLS
NEED PRESSURE
All but two of the thirty-five
Republican members of the Senate
voted Bruno's line. Two Republicans, both
representing New York neighborhoods with
many apartment dwellers, voted against
their leader to bring the rent regulation
bill to the Senate floor. These were Roy
Goodman, Senator from part of Manhattan's
East Side, and Frank Padavan of Queens.
Neither Goodman nor Padavan made a speech
or said anything to defend rent
regulations in general. Two Republicans
with a lot of tenant constituents voted
against bringing rent regulation to the
floor, but paradoxically said that they
supported the renewal of the rent
regulations, telling reporters that they
did not want to vote against Bruno. The
word from Senator Serphin Maltese,
Republican and Right-to-Lifer from Queens
who also voted with his lord and master,
answered with doubletalk, saying that the
bill did not mean anything because it was
just a "procedural measure." State Senator
Guy Vellella, who represents a district in
the Bronx with 40,000 rent regulated
tenants, voted with Bruno and told the
press "Senator Bruno told me to do what I
thought was right to do." Several other
Republican Senators from the New York area
voted against rent regulations and
remained silent. All of these pols are
being heavily targeted for constituent
pressure by tenant activists and have been
forced, for the most part, to re-frain
from committing themselves on the issue of
rent control, even though they have voted
with Bruno out of fear. If they are this
susceptible to a little pressure, they
might be very susceptible to more. Hence,
we advocate that SHADOW readers express
themselves in any way they way to press
these bland and cowardly men to do what is
right. The names, street addresses, phone
numbers, and E-mail addresses of key State
Senate pols are included below. Use them
wisely.
NYC POLS WASH THEIR HANDS
ON RENT CONTROLS
Though Bruno lives in far north
Renssalaer county where the moose run free
and men from New York City live in cages,
he has his allies right here in Gotham.
One of them is City Councilman Antonio
Pag‡n, of the Lower East Side. This
ratfink, who sent out letters to
constituents who wrote to demand that he
represent them in the struggle to preserve
their homes, saying that he had been the
co-sponsor of "two impor-tant pieces of
legislation drafted to protect...rent
regulations--the one that
extends the current rent stabilization law
and the one that recognizes the
continuation of the housing emergency."
Anthony [I'm a good Puerto Rican] Pag‡n,
under the cover of supporting the routine
provisions of rent control that no City
politician would ever dare not support,
actually hindered efforts to strengthen
rent regulations by reinstating them for
apartments renting for over two thousand
dollars per month. As a member of the
influential Housing Committee, Pag‡n
supported efforts within that committee to
table amendments offered by Councilmember
Virginia Field of Harlem and
Councilmember Stanley Michel, that would
have strengthened rent regulations by
getting rid of "luxury decontrol" a
measure introduced in 1994 that weakened
rent regulations. Instead of forcing
wealthy tenants to pay their "fair share
of the rent," luxury decontrol mostly
affected multibedroom apartments with
middle class roomates and resulted in a
great deal of displacement. Pag‡n's letter
to the concerned citizens who had humbly
petitioned him ended with: "although the
final decision will be made at the State
level, I believe the City's strong stand
on rent regulations will send a strong
message to those legislators"--in other
words, "I've done as little as I can for
you and it isn't up to me anyway."
REPORT FROM CITY HALL
Pag‡n, whose carefully coiffed visage
once graced the front cover of the
newsletter of the Rent Stabilization
Association (the oxymoronic name for NYC's
landlord lobby) sucked up to the landlord
lobby on every flank. As chairman of the
Abandonment, Foreclosure, and
Disinvestment Subcommitte of the City
Council and a member of the Council's
Housing and Buildings Committee, Pag‡n
exchanges large volumes of bodily fluids
with landlords. On March 25, Pag‡n
strutted up and down the aisles of the
Council, passing notes and putting his arm
around the shoulders of his fellow
councilpersons. About 500 tenants waited
on line for over ninety minutes outside.
At two o'clock, about fifty of us were
allowed into the gallery to witness the
work of the important men below. Inside
already were about 50 landlords who had
apparently been allowed into City Hall via
another entrance. The crowd of tenants on
the steps of City Hall was an amicable
scene: hippies mingled with Harlem
churchladies; an old well-dressed guy from
the West Village eyed the windows
of City Hall and asked if anyone had a
brick. Only a fraction of the crowd,
however, ever got near the proceedings.
The tenants who were allowed to enter were
passed through a metal detector, which
made the wait interminable, and were
surrounded by guards as speeches were
given on the Council floor. The Council
was overwhelmingly in favor of rent
regulations. To keep a long story
short--Stanley Michaels, Virginia Fields,
Tom Duane, Enoch Williams, and a couple of
other pols gave good speeches in favor of
rent regulations. Fields even said that
New Yorkers "will defend themselves" if
faced with the loss of their homes. A
couple of influential councilpeople who
are closer to Speaker of the Council
Vallone gave watered down speeches
expressing perfunctory support for the
rent regs; Vallone echoed Pag‡n in
emphasizing, several times in his speech
before the Council, that the final
decision would be "made at the State
level," thereby covering his landlord and
tenant flanks at the same time. As a final
insult, Pag‡n wheeled and dealed to
postpone the vote on the rent laws until
two hours after the end of the floor
discussion, with a lot of incredibly
boring council business in the middle. As
few tenants expected to have to sit there
all day, the gallery was almost empty when
the final vote was taken. Of course, it
was a foregone conclusion because the
City Council members, even boneheads like
Vallone and Pag‡n, had nothing to lose by
voting for the rent regulations because
the State Legislature makes the final
decision, but everything to gain because
no politician threatens to evict his own
constituents.
THE BIG PICTURE
What we face in New York City today
is an impending total rearrangement of
our surroundings, the final objective of
which is the total displacement of
ourselves. The impending abolition of
rent regulations, combined with public
housing "reform" measures amounting to the
eviction of a substantial percentage of
housing project tenants, are the
culmination of a fifteen year government
effort to reshape the urban landscape from
a human habitat to a high-turnover slot
machine in the global casino. Picture a
New York City without New Yorkers, where
all of the neighborhoods are but hotels
for those who have come to reap big bucks
in the big apple.
What about the thousands of human
beings with their economic fortures
suddenly changed as the landlord is
allowed to reap two or three times the
rent that they are paying now? What about
the thousands of people who will be
dis-placed to far-off suburbs? What about
the pets that will have to be
slaughtered, the city kids whose spirits
will wither in bleak suburban landscapes?
Does Joseph Bruno, the State Senate
Speaker who has vowed that New York City's
rent regulations will be renewed this June
15, "over his dead body," know or care
what he is doing to us?
Is there anything encouraging at the
State level? Well, it is said that Bruno
is receiving death threats. Although the
terms of the anti-Terrorism and Death
Threat Act of 1996 force the SHADOW to
swear solemn opposition to all death
threats, death threats have proven to be
effective in a number of notable cases.
Perhaps without quite threatening to kill
them, let us all be sure to remind the
following pols how much people in New York
City enjoy living in their home town and
how mad they will be if they get evicted
from their homes. Remember, these New
York area Republicans all admitted that
they voted against your rights as a tenant
for fear of a political paddling by Joe
Bruno, yet they claim to support rent
control. So let's scare them into
representing us for real. Don't ask 'em,
tell em':
Serphin R. Maltese
803 L.O.B.
Albany, NY 12247
(518)455-3281
and
71-04 Myrtle Avenue
Glendale, NY 11385
(718)497-1800
MALTESE@SENATE.STATE.NY
Guy J.Velella
915 L.O.B
Albany, NY 12247
(518) 455-3264
and
2019-2021 Williamsbridge Rd
Bronx, NY 10461
(718) 792-7180
VELELLA@SENATE.STATE.NY
Nicholas A. Spano
509 L.O.B.
Albany, NY 12247
(518) 455-2390
SPANO@SENATE.STATE.NY
Dean G. Skelos
609 L.O.B.
Albany, NY 12247
(518) 455-3171
SKELOS@SENATE.STATE.NY
John J. Marchi
416 Capitol Building
Albany, NY 12247
and
358 St. Marks Place
Staten Island, NY 10301
(718)447-1723
MARCHI@SENATE.STATE.NY
The following pols, from deep inside
New York City, actually voted against
Bruno and for your regulations, but didn't
speak up for you. Tell 'em what you think
of their lukewarm, lily livered support,
or give them more encourage-ment,
depending on which way you look at it:
Roy M. Goodman
913 L.O.B.
Albany, NY 12247
and
270 Broadway, Rm 2400
New York, NY 10007
(212)417-5563
GOODMAN@SENATE.STATE.NY
Frank Padavan
505 Capitol Building
Albany, NY 12247
and
89-39 Gettysburg St.
Bellrose, NY 11426
(718) 343-0255
PADAVAN@SENATE.STATE.NY