By Jeremy Walsh
Hundred-watt personalities clashed under the studio lights as the city’s four Democratic public advocate candidates faced off at a televised debate last week.
The debate, sponsored by the Community Newspaper Group, the parent company of TimesLedger Newspapers, was held in Brooklyn at the BRIC Arts TV studios and included City Councilmen Bill de Blasio (D-Brooklyn) and Eric Gioia (D-Sunnyside), former public advocate Mark Green and civil rights attorney Norman Siegel.
It will air online at BoroPolitics.com, CNG’s new political news site, and on Brooklyn Community Access Television Aug. 20 at 9 p.m.
The most heated rhetoric came when the candidates differed on the issue of the massive Willets Point redevelopment and the use of eminent domain, the process by which a government can seize privately owned land for the public good.
De Blasio said he supported eminent domain in “very certain circumstances,” including the Queens project.
“I think it is valid if it creates a substantial number of new jobs and affordable housing, and I think Willets Point does that,” he said.
Gioia called the practice “absolutely wrong.”
“The very presence of it changes the terms of the bargain,” he said, comparing a municipality with eminent domain power to a gun-wielding Al Capone.
Green openly supported the Willets Point redevelopment.
“If it comes to eminent domain, the city should go out of its way to relocate those small businesses within the community, to the extent it can,” he said.
Siegel decried eminent domain abuse and called Willets Point “unconstitutional.”
“The city did not provide services to the businesses out there,” he said.
Sparks flew as the candidates spent some time squabbling over the finer points of the Supreme Court decision that enabled public-private redevelopments via eminent domain.
“I think Eric Gioia should be given a chance to retract his comparison of the mayor and Council to Al Capone with a gun,” Green said.
Gioia did not.
“Come on, stop it, Mark,” Gioia said. “You’ve been doing this for three decades, now you’re doing it with a new generation. Grow up.”
During less contentious portions of the debate, each candidate emphasized the importance of the public advocate’s office even as its budget has been slashed and Councilman Simcha Felder (D-Brooklyn) has put forward a bill to eliminate the public advocate’s office entirely.
De Blasio called for the office to be independently budgeted to eliminate improper influence from the mayor and Council, noting he had introduced such legislation to the Council.
Siegel suggested setting up a nonprofit organization that would secure grants to help fund the public advocate’s work. De Blasio emphasized the importance of checks and balances in municipal government.
Gioia emphasized his work with tenants during his tenure in the Council and suggested he would bring the same perspective to the new office. “People in this city need at least one person at the highest levels of city government who sees things the way they see them,” he said.
Green was confident he could pick up where he left off at the end of his previous term as public advocate.
“I know firsthand how much you can get done,” Green said. “I can understand how powerful people in City Hall like the mayor and speaker don’t want an independent voice in city government.”
The topic also turned to the reports of the skyrocketing number of summonses issued by police for minor violations.
“We’ve got to stop the revenue approach,” de Blasio said, noting how the upturn in tickets has hurt businesses in his district.
Gioia also said he would move to stop ticket quotas among the city’s law enforcement agencies.
Green suggested a progressive income tax as a better way than increased ticketing to fill the holes in the budget.
Siegel accused the mayor of “getting more revenue off the backs of the working people” and proposed shaming the city agencies into behaving by publishing a “worst fine” example every month.
Reach reporter Jeremy Walsh by e-mail at jewalsh@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-229-0300, Ext. 154.
