Deconstructng Brian Kavanagh's Issues

Today is a day to tear apart a Democratic candidates "Issues" page. In Manhattan, the 74th Assembly District looks to be another fun campaign, with three candidates already set to win your votes this November. The Republican will once again be Frank Scala, who ran against Sylvia Friedman in the February Special Election and lost.

I guess, the Democratic establishment feels Ms. Friedman will not be the best representative for the 74th, so the younger Brian Kavanagh is planning on primarying her. Mr. Kavanagh ran for City Council last year and came in a distant second to Rosie Mendez. Now, he's taking his stab at State office so he can be the next career politician like Steven Sanders (28 years in office) and Sheldon Silver (30 years in office).

So, today, Brian Kavanagh's message will be picked apart by me, a fiscal-minded East Village resident of his district. I've met Mr. Kavanagh and he's a nice man, so going forward I'm going to refer to him as Brian.

Tough fights require strong leadership.
It's been many years since our community-and all of New York State-had so much hanging in the balance in Albany. We need State government to be both more cost-effective and more responsive to the needs of ordinary New Yorkers. And we need to make sure that the political and legislative processes are open and fair so that our government is more accountable and more receptive to new ways of doing business. Brian Kavanagh won't just vote right-he’ll work day and night to provide strong leadership on the issues we care most deeply about.

- Brian's introduction on his Issues Page is simple and well written and gives the impression that he'll be a "progressive reformer." Unfortunately, as you will see, he takes very few progressive positions on many issues the district faces.

His talking points are the same as Democrats who are already in Albany and since 63 of the 65 Assembly Districts making up the five boroughs already have Democrats, I can’t see any real reform occurring.

Protect and expand affordable housing.
In Albany, Brian will work to reverse the weakening of our rent laws that has taken place in recent years. He'll bring renewed vigor to the fight to repeal the Urstadt Law and give New York City officials-not upstate Republicans-control over our own rent regulations. He'll introduce legislation to expand the Senior Citizen Rent Increase Exemption (SCRIE) program to protect more seniors and people with disabilities struggling to pay their rent. He'll fight for State funding for production of new housing affordable to New Yorkers at all income levels, including a new Mitchell-Lama-style construction program.

- Everything in Brian's housing blurb has been argued time and time again by Democrats. Every year, Democrats talk about affordable housing, then when they are elected, they become an advocate for tenants, but get nothing done. Why? Because government controlled housing doesn’t work. Housing should be left to the free market. Government can set standards to protect people who choose not to buy their own home because they are unable to afford it, but the market should dictate the housing crop. The argument is available housing, not affordable. As long as government dabbles in building homes for people instead of letting the private sector take over, we will continue to have the "affordability" problem we've had over the last twenty years, regardless of whether the state or city controls housing. For a solution to the housing situation, see my blog entry at the New York Young Republican website.

Stand up for neighborhood residents.
Here in our community, Brian will be a tireless fighter to protect the rights of all Mitchell-Lama residents facing buyouts, stand up for StuyTown and Peter Cooper tenants in their battles with MetLife, and demand that the New York City Housing Authority provide public housing residents with the services and facilities they're entitled to.

- Mitchell-Lama, PCV/ST and NYCHA, three housing matters in the 74th. Brian is hoping to get votes for throwing in these tenants into his talking points. Unfortunately, his argument is not progressive, but more of the same.

Mitchell-Lama is a failed program that has locked up housing availability that was meant to be temporary. Its limited stock remains occupied by New Yorkers and prevents finding available units at reasonable rents for those seeking apartments.

Peter Cooper Village Stuyvesant Town is a private community owned by Metropolitan Tower Life Insurance Company (a division of MetLife). There are more than 10,000 units available for New Yorkers who wish to live in the Lower East Side community. Brian makes out as if the landlord hates having tenants. "Tenants in their battles," he says. Every large residential community will have a small number of tenants who have issues. In Peter Cooper Village Stuyvesant Town, there is less than 3% of the tenant population that are not complying with the law and these are the legitimate "battles" between landlord and tenant. Is Brian defending tenants that might very well be doing something illegal under the Rent Regulation Laws?

The various other complaints can be considered typical when dealing in a tenant-landlord relationship, especially with a property this size. Now, I'm a renter in the East Village. I don't own my apartment. No one in PCVST owns their apartment. MetLife owns it. The owner should be allowed to do what it wants to provide the best possible environment for its tenants within the laws. As a renter, I understand that if I want control over my housing, I should look to buy.

Lastly, NYCHA is brought up by Brian. It stands for New York City Housing Authority. If I remember my political science, an Assembly seat is State, not City. If he wants to solve the problems in NYCHA, he should advocate selling the housing to its residents and tell the City to let a private managing company to bid on running these buildings. NYCHA is said to retain a percentage of units as unoccupied. This is government controlling housing for you. Time to let the private sector solve this problem. If government gets out of the business of providing housing, think of all the billions of dollars that can be removed from city and state budgets. Instead of a $55 billion city budget, perhaps it would only need to be $45 billion and you and I can get our taxes cut. We can start in property taxes, so landlords could provide more "affordable" units.

Demand adequate funding for our schools.
Brian will work to ensure that every child in our neighborhoods has the opportunity for a quality education. He'll stand up to Republicans in Albany who have refused to support our public schools and comply with a court-ordered $5 billion payout to our City schools. He will fight to equalize the school funding formula, reduce class sizes, and deliver our hard-working teachers the compensation they deserve.

- Brian again pits the issue as a problem with "evil" Republicans. I’m sorry Brian, but New York is a Democratic state. If you see problems in this state, it's more than likely the "evil" Democrats who wish to keep the status quo. Republicans have solutions to education. It's not about throwing more money into a broken system, but opening the educational market by providing more choices to parents. Government can't do anything right, so why make it sound like government will know what to do with education? The court ordered funding is a sham. The courts never gave a dollar amount. The CFE did, so the $5 billion is not a real number. You want schools to get what they need financially? Then let school districts and community boards run the schools in their district, not the city or the teachers union. If you want to reduce class size, how about allowing parents to send their kids to the small classes in private and parochial schools by advocating a voucher program. Catholic schools are closing all throughout New York City because they have only six or seven kids in a class. You want government to raise taxes and spend money on building more schools, when schools are (or were) there in neighborhoods? Government can't even build buildings down at the World Trade Center site, what makes you think they'll be able to build enough schools to accommodate all the kids that are now school-less because their private or parochial school closed because of their "reduced class size" due to lack of enrollment?

Protect our community's quality of life.
Brian will press for new laws and better enforcement to stop bars and nightclubs from overwhelming our residential neighborhoods. He will work closely with other officials and community residents in the fight to prevent irresponsible and out-of-scale development. He will preserve and increase our access to open space by protecting our parks from development and excessive commercial use, facilitating greater access to the waterfront, and supporting community gardens.

- I like Brian's talking point here, but I'm sure I'd disagree with him if we got into specifics. I believe in the free market, but I do understand that neighborhoods need to provide a variety of small businesses and not just one type, such as bars and clubs, which are overburdening Alphabet City. Parks and gardens are definitely aspects of the district that make the East Side a great place to live. If a candidate ran on my platform and reduced some of the spending, maybe he or she could provide a percentage to protecting the natural aspects of the district.

Help keep us safe in our neighborhoods.
Brian will join with police precincts and community residents to create more effective police-neighborhood partnerships to keep our streets and parks safe from crime, while also working to repeal laws that mandate expensive, ineffective, and unjust prison terms for non-violent, drug-related offenses. He will also push State agencies, especially the MTA, to take all appropriate steps to ensure our safety and security.

- Brian contradicts himself here when he advocates keeping the streets safe, but then advocates allowing drug-related offenders to return to our streets. Fifteen years ago, the East Village was an area with drug addicts, drug dealers, high crime and blight. The city's crime prevention policies of the 1990s got these criminals off the street and sent them to jail. Now we're concerned with overdevelopment. Maybe this is Brian's solution to scare people out of the district. Allow the crime to return, so no one wants to come here anymore.

Guarantee access to affordable, quality healthcare.
Brian will work to ensure that all New Yorkers have access to quality affordable health care.

- One sentence that says, "I'll be another "yes" man in Sheldon Silver's State Assembly.

Ensure that hard work is rewarded by a living wage.
Working families need a living wage that adequately compensates hard work and enables full-time workers to provide for their children. Brian will never stop fighting for working families.

- Ah, the "living wage" term. It's really a joke. Lower our taxes, allow us to work for what we earn instead of having government take four months of our earnings. New York State's minimum wage is already $2 more than the National standard. It wouldn’t have to be if New York City didn't have a budget over $55 billion and a State budget over $110 billion.

Protect our civil and human rights.
Brian will work to protect and expand our civil and human rights here in New York State, regardless of what happens at the national level. That means ensuring that our state respects and protects the rights of racial and ethnic minorities, women's rights, LGBT rights, rights of people with disabilities, and the rights of all of us to privacy, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, and other rights that are central to our American democratic tradition.

- Brian, leave this to the Norman Siegels of New York. Our constitution protects us already and if there is a case I feel my rights have been wronged, I'll be calling a lawyer, not my Assemblyman.

Fight the reform battle-on every front.
Brian will be an outspoken voice for campaign finance reform. For redistricting reform. For election reform. For lobbying reform. For reform of the closed process that selects interim replacements when legislators retire. And for just about any proposal that puts power in the hands of people, not the special interests.

- One thing where New York City Republicans fail on is advocating reform. There are many Democrats that understand the importance of reform and if Republicans fail to use reform as a platform issue, then Democrats will continue to win. There are two key points for New Yorkers. Our taxes are too high and government is too corrupt to trust on every issue. Though the Democrats fill their talking points with government doing things for us, they also talk about basic reform matters such as redistricting, election reform, lobbying reform and campaign finance reform. Sadly, if Brian wants to truly reform Albany, he should be living in the 64th AD and primary Sheldon Silver. Unfortunately, I don’t know if any Democrat has the guts to do so.

Will Brian be more effective than Sylvia Friedman? Probably. Brian has more actual government experience. Ms. Friedman has been a local community activist over her many years, but I'm not too sure she could effectly work within and against her own party. If Brian wins the primary, then he'll likely win in November. If he really wants to advocate reform, he should quietly search for a candidate to challenge Sheldon Silver in 2008. As it stands, even if Brian wins and becomes our next Assemblyman, I don't see much progress in the district, in Manhattan, in New York City. It will simply be continuing the status quo.