By Dustin Brown
In his bid to replace Mayor Rudy Giuliani, the man popularly credited with slashing New York’s crime rate, City Council Speaker Peter Vallone (D-Astoria) is intent on taking appropriate credit for his own role in transforming the city under several administrations.
“While it was my idea, I couldn’t have done Safe Streets, Safe City without Mayor Dinkins,” he said. “I certainly couldn’t have done campaign finance reform without Mayor Koch.”
As he now tries to shift gears from council leader to mayor, Vallone is presenting himself as an architect of initiatives that reformed public safety and campaign finance.
In an interview with the TimesLedger last week, Vallone discussed his legacy in the City Council and detailed his new proposals for education and health care, which he said will be as visionary as the measures he has already put in place.
Before he can enact his plans, however, Vallone must face his three major Democratic opponents — Public Advocate Mark Green, City Comptroller Alan Hevesi and Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer — in the Democratic primary on Sept. 11 to determine which candidate will make it onto the ballot in November. If no candidate receives more than 40 percent of the vote, a runoff will be held later in the month between the top two vote-getters.
Contending for the Republican nomination are billionaire media mogul Michael Bloomberg and former Bronx Borough President Herman Badillo.
In the latest poll released by Quinnipiac University, Vallone sits in third place among registered Democrats in the city with 15 percent of the vote, compared to 32 percent for Green, 18 percent for Hevesi and 14 percent for Ferrer. Although Vallone dropped in the standing by one percentage point from last month, he surpassed Ferrer and now for the first time is in third place.
A member of the City Council since 1974 and the Democratic majority leader since 1986, Vallone was instrumental in passing the “Safe Streets, Safe City” program under former Mayor David Dinkins, allocating tax dollars to significantly increase the size of the police force in 1991, the year before Giuliani took office.
While many credit Giuliani with the drop in crime during his tenure, the Safe Streets program is widely viewed as generating the funding that made that decline that possible.
“It was not an easy thing for Peter to say to his colleagues, ‘We have to be able to provide more police and we’re going to have to raise taxes to do it,’” said City Councilman Walter McCaffrey (D-Woodside), who is supporting Vallone’s bid for mayor. “That demonstrated his leadership.”
As the author of a campaign-finance initiative considered the most comprehensive in the nation, Vallone takes credit for democratizing city elections and opening the races for 14 council seats in Queens to a flood of candidates. The reforms provide matching funds to candidates who collect small donations from many individuals, allowing them to wage competitive campaigns without large personal bankrolls.
“Can you imagine convincing other council members that it’s OK to pay for people to run against you?” asked Vallone, who put campaign finance laws through the Council in 1988, 1996 and 1998. “That’s basically why you don’t have a campaign finance law in the rest of the country. It’s the best in the country.”
Building on the legacy of programs he put through the Council, Vallone has set his mayoral candidacy on a platform of new initiatives based on the same principles he advocated as speaker.
Vallone has taken the example of “Safe Streets, Safe City” as a blueprint for his educational reform proposal called “Smart Kids, Smart City,” which would secure funding for the schools and restructure leadership of the school system to increase accountability.
“We would abolish this inane Board of Ed, which lost $2 billion in one month, which not only can’t count money but is not accountable,” Vallone said, referring to the deficit recently disclosed in the construction budget for new schools.
His program would also dedicate certain real-estate taxes to school instruction — increasing local school funding by over half a billion dollars — and require that a fair share of state aid be provided to city schools.
“That is a far-range plan which would mean in less than the amount of time that it took to make this city safe, we can repair, fix and make the education of our children where it should be — excellent,” Vallone said.
Vallone sees himself as a sort of political visionary, creating revolutionary programs long before other American leaders are capable of tackling such concerns.
As with his campaign finance reform, a health care proposal he unveiled last week is designed to pave the way for more comprehensive improvements outside the city.
At a total cost of more than $400 million, Vallone’s health care plan would cover all out-of-pocket costs for children whose families earn up to 250 percent of the poverty line while providing prescription drug coverage for all senior citizens with incomes up to 500 percent of the poverty line. The plan would be paid for in part by funds from increased rent from the airports and by the tobacco settlement.
“The whole point of the plan is while the president talks about it and Congress talks about it and they all fiddle and fiddle about it, we’ll do it,” he said.
Reach reporter Dustin Brown by e-mail at Timesledger@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 154.
