Queens Voters Facing Election Doldrums

With voter attention fixed on the yet-to-come Senate race between Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Rodham Clinton, charter changes are getting the scantiest attention from the electorate.
Queens voters will also vote on a number of candidates for judgeships and a predicted shoo-in for District Attorney Richard A. Brown, who faces only token opposition.
At a briefing for the media last week conducted by former deputy mayor Randy Mastro, Chair of the Charter Review Commission, only four reporters representing out of the City’s 29 community weeklies, turned out to hear the CRC’s case for passage of the proposals.
According to a spokesperson for the Commission, it will make a last-ditch attempt to mobilize voters this week. It will include a mailing to voters due to arrive in voter mailboxes before Tuesday’s election.
Mastro, who resigned from his deputy mayor post in July of 1998 to join the Manhattan law firm of Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher, outlined the key proposals on the Charter Revision ballot on Nov. 2.
He was teamed up at the briefing with a former colleague at City Hall, Colleen A. Roche, former press secretary and now executive vice president of the public relations firm of Linden Alschuler & Kaplan, Inc. She now represents the Charter Revision Committee, a pro bono account of her agency.
"There’s been so much progress in the City since Mayor Giuliani assumed office," he said, "now we want to make that progress permanent fixtures in the Charter."
Mastro said the proposals seek to ensure fiscal responsibility.
He also urged support for such proposals as gun-free school safety zones and gun safety-locking devices that would make it illegal for individuals to possess or discharge any weapon within 1,000 feet of any school in the City.
Mastro said other Giuliani advances in the budget, human rights, immigrant affairs, reorganization of City Government, the Organized Crime Control Commission and the merger of the Department of Public Health and mental hygiene services and domestic violence services coordination were on the ballot.
The CRC Chair took sharp issue when a Queens Courier reporter noted that City Council Speaker Peter Vallone of Queens had charged the budget proposals "will weaken the system of checks and balances by centralizing power with the Mayor and eroding the Council’s Power. Without the Council’s leadership in budgeting, the City would not have had the Safe Street/Safe City program responsible for dramatically reducing crime."
Mastro challenged the Vallone statement.
"Vallone’s views confound me," Mastro said. "He’s crying wolf. These proposals don’t diminish the power of the Council. He’s just concerned about turf."
The former deputy mayor said the proposals are actually a restraint on mayors.
"Vallone hasn’t fully analyzed the proposals," Mastro said.