Mayor Michael Bloomberg

The Limits of Power

Lynne A. Weikart

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781501756375
• eBook ISBN: 9781501756382
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Lynne A. Weikart dives into the mayoralty of Michael Bloomberg, offering an incisive analysis of Bloomberg's policies during his 2002–2014 tenure as mayor of New York and highlighting his impact on New York City politics.

Michael Bloomberg became mayor of New York just four months after the 9/11 terrorist destruction of the World Trade Center and he lead the rebuilding of a physically and emotionally devastated city so well that within two years, the city had budget surpluses. Weikart reveals how state and federal governments constrained Bloomberg's efforts to set municipal policy and implement his strategic goals in the areas of homelessness, low-income housing, poverty, education, and crime. External powers of state and federal governments are strong currents and Bloomberg's navigation of these currents often determined the outcome of his efforts.

Weikart evaluates Michael Bloomberg's mayoral successes and failures in the face of various challenges: externally, the constraints of state government, and mandates imposed by federal and state courts; and, internally, the impasse between labor unions and Bloomberg. Weikart identifies and explores both the self-created restrictions of Mayor Bloomberg's own management style and the courage of Mike Bloomberg's leadership.

1

BLOOMBERG’S PLACE IN URBAN THEORY AND IN THE CITY’S HISTORY

Urban political theory provides an analytical perspective to view the leadership strategies and tactics of Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The perspective of the history of mayors in New York City provides a gauge to measure Bloomberg’s successes and failures. The classic pluralist studies, Edward Banfield’s Political Influences (2007), Robert Dahl’s Who Governs (1961), and Wallace Sayre and Herbert Kaufman’s Governing New York City (1960), focus on interest group analysis. Pluralists argue there was no one elite that dominated urban decision making; rather, “the bargaining among a multiplicity of groups defined the urban power structure” (Mollenkopf 2010, 383). Opposing these pluralists are the structuralists, who emphasize “the power of the state and the underlying socioeconomic system” in shaping “the political agenda,” rejecting interest group competition (Mollenkopf 2010, 383). Structuralists focus on the power of corporate elites in urban policy making: Peter Bachrach and Morton Baratz in “Two Faces of Power” (1962); John Logan and Harvey Molotch in Urban Fortunes (1987); and Clarence Stone in Regime Politics (1989).

Structuralists are divided into different camps. One camp relies on class analysis, “a capitalist-centered class structure in which economic inequality was dominant and neoliberalism the hegemonic ideology” (Stone 2019, 1536). In this camp, capitalism is the sole driver. The other camp thinks that “a class analysis fails to fit in the evolving post industrialism in urban America” (Mollenkopf 2010, 386). Stone leads the polity approach “beginning with multiple structures that coexist through a variety of particular mechanisms” (2019, 1537). He uses V. O. Key’s work on southern politics to explain “a political order” that encompasses a multi-element setting including race and intergovernmental politics (Stone 2019, 1536). Mollenkopf comes to a similar conclusion: “Cities can no longer be taken as independent entities isolated from the larger economic and social forces that operate on them” (2010, 386).

Michael Bloomberg’s policies fall within Stone’s analysis—the polity approach. Yes, Bloomberg is of a long line of pro-growth reformers (Logan and Molotch 1987). Growth policies are the efforts of local governments to improve their economies by attracting mobile wealth to invest in their cities. Logan and Molotch describe growth policies as intended “to strengthen the tax base, create jobs, provide resources to solve existing social problems meet the housing needs caused by natural population growth and allow the market to serve public tastes in housing, neighborhoods and community development” (1987, 202). This certainly describes Michael Bloomberg.

Bloomberg, however, was not an economic determinist, such as Paul Peterson, who saw “how external economic conditions shaped and constrain the urban political arena” (Mollenkopf 2010, 386). Peterson went so far as to say that “political variables no longer become relevant to the analysis” (1981, 12). Rather, Bloomberg believed in the power of elected officials to improve citizens’ lives. As mayor of New York City (2002–14) he advocated economic growth achieved by local government working side by side with the private sector and with the state government when possible. Bloomberg went further than growth theorists.

Bloomberg’s mayoral decision making under Stone’s polity approach reveals a more complex view of power than that of growth theorists or other structuralists (Harding and Blokland 2014, 105). The polity approach emphasizes the role of politics over markets. “Coalition,” Stone says, emphasizes “bringing together various elements of the community and the different institutional capacities they control” (Stone 1989, 5). Stone called these “urban regimes” that work cooperatively. Bloomberg excelled in creating urban regimes. In addition to enlisting business people, Bloomberg created strong coalitions with cultural institutions, religious leaders, and officials in higher education. He also created a strong alliance with many Black leaders in the city who supported him throughout his mayoralty even in the midst of the stop-and-frisk controversy.

Stone has observed that cities had an identifiable urban regime, “a set of arrangements by which a community is actually governed” (Stone 1989, 6). “An urban regime may thus be defined as the informal arrangements by which public bodies and private interests function together in order to be able to make and carry out governing decisions” (1989, 6). Participants may come from government and business. Stone identified “four types of regimes”: caretaker or maintenance regimes that make “no effort to introduce significant change”; economic development or corporate regimes; middle-class progressive regimes (i.e., with liberal goals of “environmental protection, historic preservation,” affordable housing, etc.); and “lower-class opportunity-expansion” regimes (Stone 1993, 18). “The dominant form of urban regimes is a corporate regime,” notes Mirya Holman, “where the coalition can tap into resources provided by private actors to pursue development policies” (2014, 3). Pursuant to this typology, Bloomberg led a corporate regime for twelve years. But he had a far more comprehensive view of leadership than simply focusing on economic development. Stone lamented, in his case study of Atlanta, that the Atlanta corporate regime did not address the “needs of the lower-income population in ways that would enhance their economic opportunities” (1993, 205). It was Marion Orr and Valarie Johnson, writing about Stone’s contributions to urban theory, who pointed out that “if Atlanta and other cities [had] pursued a broader economic redevelopment strategy of education and training, safe and affordable housing and other policies,” it would have made for “a socially healthier community” (2008, 20). This broader umbrella distinguished Bloomberg, who created such an umbrella for a corporate regime of several coalitions. Another way of thinking about him was that he led both a corporate regime and a middle-class progressive regime.

An important consideration is that both pluralists and structuralists do not sufficiently take into consideration powerful state actors—the governor, the state legislature, and state courts. When Jeffrey L. Pressman wrote his groundbreaking essay, “Preconditions of Mayoral Leadership,” he observed that mayoral leadership depended “to a large extent on the type of governmental and political system in which he operates” (1972, 513). This is an arena on which Gerald Frug and David Barron focus: “Every city in the United States has state-established legal boundaries—as well as state-established geographical boundaries—that circumscribe its powers” (2008, xii). And it is the exertion of political power by New York State that handed Bloomberg his most difficult defeats. The state said no to the sports stadium on the West Side of Manhattan (Schragger 2016, 92). The state said no to congestion pricing (charging high fees for automobiles) in parts of Manhattan. The state said no to Bloomberg’s efforts to use state dollars to subsidize apartments for homeless people. The state recalibrated state education tests, making them harder, wiping out all the gains that the city had seen in annual state educational testing. And the list goes on. As Frug and Barron note, “Cities … only have power to the extent they are given it by statutes and constitutional provisions adopted by the state government” (2008, 231). The Bloomberg administration represents an excellent case study of a strong mayor constrained and limited by powerful state institutions. The governor, state legislature and state courts were the powerful institutions that dictated constraints on Bloomberg’s policymaking.

The 1989 New York City Charter revisions, which were required by the US Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling in Board of Estimate v. Morris that the structure of the city’s Board of Estimate (the power center for the borough presidents) was unconstitutional, shifted power to the mayor and the New York City Council, thereby reducing the power of the borough presidents. The city council retained power over land use and zoning, which it shared with the mayor. When Bloomberg was elected mayor, two-thirds of the city council members were new, and thanks to term limits many experienced members were gone. The mayor had power over almost all the municipal boards, including the powerful City Planning Commission. The mayor’s office now controlled procurement and, most important, it controlled the revenue projections for next year’s operating budget. James Bowers and Wilber Rich noted “the importance of mayors’ controlling the existing governing and political infrastructure or building new ones that they can control” (2000, 222).

Bloomberg benefited from the additional powers gained through the city charter revisions. Yet even with these enhanced powers, the agency of the mayor was still relative to, and constrained by, other powers. Benjamin Barber shows that state legislative sovereignty had many ways to block city initiatives (2014, 8–9). As Bloomberg took the reins of city government, he met the mighty powers of state government. He quickly faced the reality that Governor George Pataki controlled the ruined World Trade Center site (Ground Zero)—and the mayor was effectively shut out of decision making for rebuilding a part of Lower Manhattan after the devastation of the 9/11 attacks. As Kubler and Pagano explain, “City governments are constrained entities, as their autonomy is limited by authority at higher levels” (2012, 116). The rebuilding at the World Trade Center site lay in the hands of Governor Pataki, who created the eleven-member Lower Manhattan Development Corporation three weeks after Mayor Bloomberg was elected and before he was sworn into office (Sagalyn 2016, 40). The corporation consisted of seven people chosen by the governor and four chosen by outgoing mayor Rudolph Giuliani. Consequently, a large chunk of Manhattan’s economic development was controlled by the state.

Bloomberg had to deal with the reality that the city did not control its own revenue streams. The New York State Constitution is so constrained that New York has been identified as one of seven states in which its cities have little control over their own finances and personnel (Zimmerman 2012, 39). Article VIII, Section 12 of the New York State constitution demands the state legislature “restrict the power of taxation, assessment, borrowing money contracting indebtedness, and loaning the credit of counties, cities, towns, and villages, so as to prevent abuses in taxation and assessment and in contracting indebtedness by them.” The city’s only opportunity to control its own income was through property taxes, and even that was only within strict parameters. The city could not increase sales tax, corporate income tax, or any of the other means of municipal taxation without state legislation.

Bloomberg also discovered the limits to his control over the city’s other resources; the state retained legal authority to take a wide variety of actions. The mayor could not even increase the number of security cameras on city streets without state legislative approval. The state legislature could increase the pension of city workers and force the city to pay for it. The list of the State of New York’s encroachments in city affairs seemed endless. Bloomberg discovered there is “no such thing as local autonomy” (Frug and Barron 2008, 41). Judge John F. Dillon of Iowa declared in City of Clinton v. Cedar Rapids and Missouri River Railroad (1868), “Municipal corporations owe their origin to, and derive their powers and rights wholly from, the legislature” (Richardson, Gough, and Puentes 2003, 8). In 1872, Dillon (2010) expounded the principle, which was adopted by other jurisdictions. The New York State Constitution does just that in Article IX: “In addition to powers granted in the statute of local governments or any other law, (i) every local government shall have power to adopt and amend local laws not inconsistent with the provisions of this constitution or any general law relating to its property, affairs or government.” Cities in New York State have only those powers not denied them by state legislatures or the state constitution. And the state legislature can add to those demands at any time. In 1929, Article IX was enforced when the highest court of New York ruled in Adler v. Deegan that “the conclusion follows that the life, health and safety of the inhabitants of the city of New York are not, under the Home Rule Amendment, a city concern which can be localized and delimited by the city boundaries, but are the concern of the whole State” (Adler v. Deegan 251 N.Y. 467 N.Y. 1929). Needless to say, this encompasses most governmental actions. It is a fiction that New York is a home rule state. The reality is that New York municipalities can make laws only within the boundaries drawn by state law.

And the courts rained hard on Mayor Bloomberg’s municipal governance parade. Even before Bloomberg’s time as mayor, the city was sued in many policy areas, and the suits often continued for years. City officials often agreed to settlements (consent decrees) and oversight by special masters rather than risk losing in court. Callahan v. Carey (No. 49- 42582 Sup. Ct. N.Y. County, Cot. 18, 1979) successfully challenged the city for a shortage of shelter beds for single men: “The Court is of the opinion that the Bowery derelicts are entitled to board and lodging.” Later the suit was broadened to include women and children. Both of these lengthy lawsuits resulted in consent decrees requiring the city to improve services and the appointment of special masters to enforce the court orders and settlement agreements. These suits, which attempted to right existing wrongs, limited mayoral options. As Schragger points out, “The city’s vertical political fragmentation [state and federal government authority] limits the ability of its leaders to effectuate public policy” (2016, 96). Douglas Yates (1977) went so far as to examine cities under the lens of “the ungovernable city” and asserted that, externally, the city was too dependent upon the state and, internally, power was too fragmented among city officials and labor unions. Indeed, New York City remains an international economic powerhouse, yet it remains within the constraints dictated by New York State, which has its own priorities and is a powerful impediment to every mayor’s plans and aspirations (see Frug and Barron 2008; and Sassen 2001).

Past mayors, who had been politicians before they were mayors, were well aware of limits imposed by the state and the courts. But Bloomberg came from the private sector, had built and run his own company. Such limitations were very new to him. This context is what makes Bloomberg’s policy successes remarkable. External constraints on mayors are considerable, but Bloomberg prevailed in some of his policy choices, with some notable successes in dealing with the state.

Within the constraints of federal and state governments, Bloomberg also had to face internal constraints: service demanders (labor unions) and money providers (the business community). Sayre and Kaufman (1960) explain that internally strong interest groups, such as labor unions, can overwhelm city officials. The external constraints are real, but so are those constraints found within the city: Bloomberg was called upon to balance the labor demands with the limited resources of the city, particularly after 9/11. He achieved a balance in his first two terms between the two, but in his third term he demanded far more from labor and the result was an impasse. The polity approach developed by Stone can be broadened to focus on the external constraints of state government and state judiciary. Urban theory can focus on both external and internal constraints, which is much more reflective of what city officials actually experience—not just in New York but around the nation.

Then comes the issue of race separate and distinct from capitalism. Far from being saddled under the analysis of economic class, race must be recognized as a powerful influence permeating so much of the mind-set of our governing actors and institutions. Often the insidious role of race is underplayed or denied in its entirety. But the influence of race remains “one of the enduring pillars in American political development” (Stone 2019, 1540). Race is interwoven not only in policing, stop-and-frisk, and other parts of the criminal justice system but also in decisions involving resource allocation, educational options, and zoning (to name a few). Bloomberg attacked racism through his willingness to improve the educational system and to develop meaningful education programs for young men of color without understanding that he needed to focus on racism within his policing policies.

Bloomberg had the personality and the skills to be far more assertive than previous mayors about social policy innovation. This was clear when he sought to pay attention to redistributive issues, such as reducing poverty. As Barber notes, “Bloomberg incarnates the idea that mayors are practical rather than ideological, bridging politics and business with non-politics of practical science and numbers” (2014, 26). The mayor believed that state and federal government had failed his city and that city officials had to respond to the challenge. He demonstrated over twelve years that, regardless of the fragmentation of authority, the city was indeed governable and that he could promote economic development and also promote an agenda that diminished poverty, even though external constraints of the state and the internal constraints of the labor unions sometimes defeated his aspirations.

Stone examined urban mayors, understanding that the “New Deal days of haves versus have-nots have yielded to a politics in which race and culture have become pervasive elements” (2019, 1538). Although some analysts saw a “capitalist-centered class structure in which economic inequality was dominant and neoliberalism the hegemonic ideology,” “they miss how people organize politically is influenced by race and culture” (Stone 2019, 1536). There is a richness to Stone’s urban theory that surpasses the progressive approach of blaming capitalism; it explains so much more.

Bloomberg also had something else: money. He financed his own campaigns for mayor, not beholden to anyone. His money gave him a freedom of choices that previous mayors did not enjoy. He spent $108 million in his 2009 mayoral campaign while his opponent, William Thompson, spent $10 million. Bloomberg’s spending surpassed his $84 million war chest of 2005 (NYC CFB, n.d.). Because he financed his own campaign, Bloomberg was not dependent on powerful interest groups, either capitalist or labor.

Yes, Bloomberg was a capitalist, but he was also a pragmatist who believed that growth would solve many of the city’s problems. Ronald Coan (2014) said it best:

Neoliberals were supposed to cut taxes and fees—Bloomberg increased them a lot. They are supposed to deregulate and Bloomberg, among other things, stopped me from driving through Times Square, and took away my salt and Slurpee. His affordable housing program may not have been all that everyone wanted it to be—it certainly was large in scale and expensive. His takeover of the...

Table of contents

• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. Bloomberg’s Place in Urban Theory and in the City’s History
• 2. Setting the Tone
• 3. Creating Long-Term Fiscal Health
• 4. Growing the City and Protecting the Environment
• 5. The Staggering Growth in Homelessness
• 6. The Lack of Low-Income Housing
• 7. Antipoverty Initiatives
• 8. Successes and Failures in Education Reform
• 9. Crime and Punishment
• Conclusion
• Appendix 1
• Appendix 2
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index