THE INAUGURATION OF A NEW PRESIDENT IS TYPICALLY A TIME
of great hope, and this year is certainly no exception. But the advent of the
Obama administration offers residents of New York and other city-dwellers
special grounds for optimism: that the period of years, if not decades, when
the federal government all but turned its back on the needs of urban communities
is finally at an end. President-elect Obama’s early pronouncements,
from creating a White House Office of Urban Policy to promising bold new
investments in infrastructure, education and alternative energy, suggest that
the new president understands something that many of his recent predecessors
clearly did not: what’s good for cities is good for America. New York is
the nation’s biggest city by population, economic activity, and cultural importance;
its success is inextricably linked to that of the country.
But if the Obama administration and the 111th Congress appear to present an
exciting opportunity for cities, exactly how should policymakers in New York
and other urban centers seek to capitalize on this?
In the pages that follow, we lay out 51 specific recommendations for what the
federal government could do to help New York City. These ideas range from
taking immediate steps to ensure that the 2010 Census does not undercount
New York and providing anti-terror funds to localities based on risk rather
than politics, to accelerating the rollout of new air traffic control technology
to reduce flight delays and streamlining the visa process to make it easier for
artists to enter the country. While our recommendations are squarely focused
on New York, many if not most of them would bring great benefit to cities and
metropolitan regions across the United States.
There’s no question that New York could use a helping
hand from Washington. Even before the current
economic downturn, the city lacked the resources to adequately
address mounting problems of aging public infrastructure,
housing shortages, traffic congestion, environmental
pollution and growing economic inequality.
Over the last eight years, however, these and other issues
were eclipsed in Washington by other priorities.
Cities fell short in the small print of budget documents
as well as the large headlines of politics and policy: as
this report details, New York has been repeatedly shortchanged
in federal funding formulas. The late Senator
Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York documented in
his annual “balance of payments” reports that New York
sends much more to Washington in tax payments that
it receives back in spending; the imbalance is now estimated
at $10.9 billion per year.
The new president takes office after a stretch when
cities were repeatedly and systematically disadvantaged
in federal policymaking. Just a few examples are sufficient
to illustrate the general trend of painfully inadequate
federal resources to address issue areas of vital
importance to New York City:
• Federal support for mass transit has stayed roughly
flat since the start of the decade, even as ridership nationwide
surged by approximately 13 percent over the
same period. New York City, with a mass transit system
equal in size to the next ten largest systems combined,
has seen a much larger percentage increase as its population
surged; total ridership on buses and subways rose
by 36 percent between 1995 and 2005, and subway ridership
has continued to rise since then, setting an alltime
record in 2007. While the federal government is
not primarily to blame for the Metropolitan Transportation
Authority’s current fiscal problems, Washington’s
chronic failure to adequate support public transportation
has sorely limited the MTA’s ability to expand and
maintain the system.
• On housing, the Bush administration drastically reduced
funding for public housing, contributing to rent
hikes, service cutbacks and a nearly $6 billion backlog
in capital work at the New York City Housing Authority
(NYCHA), whose buildings are home to 403,500 lowincome
New Yorkers. The administration also badly
neglected the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban
Development (HUD) and underfunded the projectbased
Section 8 program by nearly $3 billion, dealing
a profound blow to one of the nation’s most critical affordable
housing programs at a time when demand for
low-income housing in New York and the nation far outstrips
supply. Additionally, President Bush repeatedly
attempted to cut off funds to the Community Development
Block Grant program, which provides roughly $200
million a year to New York City for affordable housing,
subsidized day care services and economic development
in low-income communities.
• Despite near-universal recognition that the smarts and
skills of American workers will determine the country’s
success or failure in the globally competitive knowledge
economy, Washington in this decade has cut funding for
the country’s education and job training infrastructure
virtually across the board. The Bush administration reduced
funding for the Workforce Investment Act (WIA)
by roughly $2 billion, with New York City’s job training
and employment services programs taking among
the biggest hit. The administration also did virtually
nothing as the gap continued to widen between average
household wages and the cost of a college degree.
In New York City, where the high cost of doing business
places even greater importance on knowledge and
skills, this pattern of indifference or hostility to federal
programs that build human capital has been especially
damaging.
In many instances, the Bush administration proposed
to eliminate or drastically reduce funding for
programs vital to everyday life in New York and other
cities, from Amtrak to microenterprise programs. More
often than not, Congress restored some or all of the proposed
cuts, but the constant defensive posture of urban
mayors and legislators in the annual federal budget fight
rendered them unable to craft new initiatives to address
other priorities. Partly as a result, longtime areas of
need, from interventions to reduce poverty to shoring
up infrastructure, went largely or entirely unaddressed.
Washington’s disdain for the priorities of cities like
New York was not limited to traditional areas of concern
to urban advocates. The absence of federal leadership
on a number of additional issues has meant that many
problems not generally thought of as “city issues” continued
to fester, to the point that they too now command
the attention and concern of leaders at the local level.
These include health care, energy policy, and immigration.
New York City’s health care costs are among the
highest of any local areas, and the state’s Medicaid obligations—
determined by an illogical federal formula—
now threaten to overwhelm a budget under severe strain
from the recession. The city’s energy infrastructure, famously
shown to be vulnerable during the blackout of
2003, remains precarious, and the fluctuating price of
fuel has placed an additional burden on the budgets of
working families. And the stalemate at the federal level
on immigration policy has meant that immigrant gateways
like New York City, where 37 percent of the population
is foreign born, face the real costs and challenges
of educating immigrant students and integrating workers
with limited or no English language mastery into the
local workforce without significant federal help.
In the 2008 presidential campaign, some candidates
offered much talk about “the real America,” often
with an implied—or explicit—sneer at urban centers
like ours. But the outcome of that election reaffirmed
the centrality of cities to our national life and culture.
Indeed, we settled on 51 recommendations in this report—
and used the title “50+1”—as a reference to New
York’s singular stature and importance to the rest of the
nation. As just one example, the U.S. Bureau of Economic
Analysis recently found that the New York City
metropolitan area’s economy contributed 9.1 percent of
the nation’s gross domestic product—far more than any
other region—even though it contained only 6.6 percent
of the U.S. population.
President-elect Obama, himself a lifelong resident
of cities, has sent some encouraging signals that he understands
this dynamic and intends to free up more resources
to strengthen urban areas. But having a friendlier
audience in Washington is only the first step.
Next
up is delivering on a range of laws, policy initiatives and
funding formulas.
We thought New York would be well-served to have
a set of policy recommendations ready to go when the
new president takes office. Our aim was to develop a
set of policy recommendations derived from independent
research that encompass a wide range of the most
critical issue areas affecting New York—including public
safety, transportation infrastructure, economic and community
development, housing, immigration, education,
workforce development, reducing poverty and building
assets, energy and the environment, health, the arts and
consumer protection. Indeed, the recommendations in
this report—the inaugural publication of the Center for
an Urban Future’s Fair Share New York project, an initiative
that will include ongoing research about whether
New York City is treated equitably by the federal and
state governments—were selected after considerable
background research, including several dozen interviews
with academics, nonprofit practitioners, business
leaders and city and state government officials.
Clearly, these 51 recommendations represent only a
small share of the actions the federal government could
take to positively impact New York. And undoubtedly,
the nation’s precarious economic and fiscal situation
will preclude the Obama administration from acting on
many of these recommendations early in his term. But
with change in Washington just around the corner, our
hope is that these recommendations serve as a menu of
what can be done to bolster New York and the nation.
The Center for an Urban Future is a New York City-based think tank dedicated to independent, fact-based research
about critical issues affecting New York’s future including economic development, workforce development,higher education
and the arts. For more information or to sign up for our monthly e-mail bulletin, visit www.nycfuture.org. This
report is the inaugural publication of the Center for an Urban Future’s Fair Share New York project, an initiative that
will feature ongoing research about whether New York City is treated equitably by the federal and state governments.
This report was written by Jonathan Bowles, Tara Colton, David Jason Fischer, David Giles and Jim O’Grady. Research
assistance provided by Roy Abir, Anne Gleason, Kyle Hatzes and Morgan Schofield.
The Center for an Urban Future is a project of City Futures, Inc. General operating support for City Futures has
been provided by Bernard F. and Alva B. Gimbel Foundation, The Citi Foundation, Deutsche Bank, The F.B. Heron
Foundation, Fund for the City of New York, Salesforce Foundation, The Scherman Foundation, Inc., and Unitarian
Universalist Veatch Program at Shelter Rock.
City Futures Board of Directors: Andrew Reicher (Chair), Margaret Anadu, Michael Connor, Russell Dubner, Ken Emerson,
David Lebenstein, Gail O. Mellow, Gifford Miller, Lisette Nieves, Ira Rubenstein, John Siegal, Stephen Sigmund,
Karen Trella, Peter Williams and Mark Winston Griffith.
