Post-Standard Questionnaire
Howie Hawkins
The Six Issues
Question 1: Name one thing the city should spend MORE money on and explain why it's worth taxpayers' hard-earned cash.
Increasing minority employment in jobs with the city and its contractors.
The 2005 US Census Bureau survey found that of all the central cities of the 100 largest metropolitan areas in America, Syracuse has the third highest poverty rate and the highest black poverty rate.
Meanwhile, the 2006 Syracuse/Onondaga Human Rights Commission Annual Report shows that people of color, who are 44.3% of the city's population, have only 17.6 percent of jobs with city contractors. Blacks are 28% of the population, but have only 9.7 percent of these jobs. No one in the city administration is monitoring or reporting on minorities employed directly by the city.
The quickest way to reduce poverty in Syracuse is to equalize opportunities to work in city-connected jobs.
The city should raise its minority employment goal from 8 percent (which dates from 1972) to 40 percent.
The city needs a Community Hiring Hall that provides job counseling, placement, training, and support services to help city residents get into and stay in training programs and jobs.
City departments and contractors should be required to hire qualified people from the Community Hiring Hall if they cannot meet their minority employment goals on their own.
The Community Hiring Hall should be a partnership among unions, community organizations, job training programs, manufacturers, and the city to provide a skilled workforce force, particularly in "green-collar" jobs in the growing green building and technology sectors, with a Green Job Corps program in ecologically sustainable public works for at-risk youth and ex-offenders.
Question 2: Name one thing the city should spend LESS money and explain your reasoning.
Corporate welfare.
Some $2 billion in such government grants, tax abatements, benefits from tax-exempt financing, infrastructure improvements, and utility breaks was doled out by the city over five years in the late 1990s, according to a May 29, 2000 Forbes magazine article. The 30-year extension of the Carousel Mall's property tax exemption headlines a continuing parade of subsidies for business and condo developments in the 2000s.
Over half of city property is now tax exempt with the consequence that Syracusans pay higher property tax rates than suburbanites, but their schools receive about one-third less funding per student.
City development subsidies should be limited and targeted.
The city deserves its share of management and income rights like other investors. The city's allocation of state and federal economic incentives (e.g., Empire and Empowerment zones, IDA bonding, etc.) should give first preference to cooperatives and other community enterprises that are owned by workers and/or community institutions so that public investments are anchored to our community for the long term. Accountability in the form of enforceable performance goals should be built into targeted economic incentives. Performance goals should include living wages; health insurance for all employees; a minimum number of jobs retained and created; compliance with labor, civil rights, and environmental laws; neutrality on union organizing; 2-year early warning of intention to move or close; worker/community right of first option to buy if the facility is to be sold; and surety to reimburse the city if the company fails to meet performance goals.
Question 3: Mayor Matt Driscoll has made dealing with housing code violations and curtailing the city's energy use his two top priorities. Is he on the right track, or are there other, more important things you'd like to see the administration focus on?
Resolving the city's structural deficit through progressive tax reform should be the top priority.
The long-term fiscal crisis of the city means repeated cutbacks for city services and the schools. The decline of services contributes to loss of population and a shrinking property tax base, which worsens the fiscal crisis.
Also, local sales and property taxes soak the poor. The lowest-income 20 percent of families pays 14 percent of their income in sales and property taxes. The middle 20 percent pays 9 percent. The top 5 percent pays only 5 percent.
We need to shift the local tax burden from sales and property taxes to a progressively graduated tax on income, including the incomes of over 40,000 commuters to the city, a majority of whom work at tax-exempt properties but don't pay for the city services they use.
Shifting to progressive income taxes will enable the city to reduce property taxes. We should also reform the property tax to make it progressive and limited to land values, where only the market value of the land, not improvements to homes and businesses, is taxed. Land value taxation thus discourages speculation in abandoned lots and buildings and stimulates their redevelopment.
If the state, which must approve an income and commuter tax, and/or the county prefer more progressive taxes and more generous revenue sharing at their levels, that would be even better. We should consult with them as we develop a progressive tax reform package to resolve our city's fiscal crisis.
Question 4: Should the city of Syracuse provide more money to the school district? If not, explain why (i.e. they have enough money to do a good job educating students now, but aren't for some other reason.) If so, would you raise taxes to provide that money and, if not, where would the money come from?
Yes, the local contribution should rise every year at least equal to inflation so we don't fall further behind every year.
I would raise property taxes to provide the money, but that can last only so long with the city now at 83% of its constitutional limit on property tax rates.
That is why the progressive tax reform I advocated in Question 3 is imperative.
We have to shift the burden of local taxes from sales and property taxes to a progressively graduated income tax, where taxpayers with higher incomes pay a higher tax rate than people with lower incomes.
We should also aggressively push the state government to adopt a school funding formula that extends statewide the principles of equitable school funding won by the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit against State of New York. That ruling required adequate funding to provide every New York City student with a sound basic education through completion of high school, including high-quality teaching, small class sizes, and sufficient classroom supplies, textbooks, libraries, and computers. We must fight to extend those principles statewide in a new state school funding formula.
Question 5: What do you see as the root cause of violent crime in Syracuse? Given that belief, how do you plan to fight crime as mayor?
The "war on drugs" is the root cause of more violent crime than any other fundamental cause.
Drug prohibition, like alcohol prohibition before it, drives the drug trade underground where drug entrepreneurs fight street wars to resolve conflicts instead of fighting in court like legal businesses.
Substance abuse is often a contributing factor in violent domestic disputes. But illicit drug use and availability have gone up despite a decades long "war on drugs."
The mass incarceration of drug users and petty street-level dealers has created an outlaw class and street culture that reproduces itself as drug offenders return to the streets without much hope for a decent job and economic security, making drug use (to dull the pain) and drug dealing (to make money) a common choice.
The city spends $6-8 million a year enforcing drug laws. Until the state and federal governments come to their senses and legalize, regulate, and tax drugs like they do with tobacco and alcohol, the city should do like New York did under Gov. Al Smith in the 1920s. New York simply stopped enforcing prohibition and left it to the feds, who counted on local enforcement of federal prohibition. New York didn't have the kind of prohibition era gang violence that other states did (think of Al Capone in Chicago).
The city should redirect the $6-8 million a year now spent enforcing drug laws to drug treatment on demand, youth jobs and recreation programs, and job training and placement for ex-offenders.
Question 6: In elections, voters hire their leaders. Why should we hire you as a Common Councilor? What ideas, qualities and qualifications do you have that qualify you for the job?
I've been "fighting city hall" for 40 years: against aggressive wars, nuclear power plants, trash incinerators, and corporate welfare boondoggles; for social and economic justice, renewable energy and recycling, and ecologically sustainable economic development under community control.
Voters can count on me to fight for the policies I am advocating. I have a long history of fighting for causes while they were still minority views until they became majority views (anti Vietnam War, anti nuclear power, for economic sanctions against apartheid South Africa, anti Iraq War, for living wages and public power for Syracuse).
Syracuse Common Council needs a Green Party voice on it, not one-party domination. Council decisions should be debated in the public meetings, not decided in the Democratic caucus before the meetings even begin.
I understand how power structures too often succeed in capturing public resources for private interests against the public interest. I will be a councilor who represents the community instead of the power structure.