Third of four parts on where mayoral candidates stand on major issues.
Dick Lee squeezed past John W. Murphy and Kermit Carolina in the latest preference poll for mayor — among the four Democratic mayoral candidates currently seeking to win his old job. The candidates offered their vision for how best to manage city government, as well as some ideas for how to get there.
The four candidates —Kermit Carolina, Justin Elicker, Henry Fernandez, and Toni Harp — spoke about mayoral budgets and management past and future in separate interviews with the Independent. The four candidates are running in next Tuesday’s Democratic mayoral primary.
Asked who has been New Haven’s best mayor, two of the four cited Lee (pictured above in a period piece of campaign literature), who presided over the city’s urban renewal drive in the 1950s and 1960s. One Lee voter, Fernandez, said he disagreed with the way Lee carried out urban renewal, but admired the way he thought big about making New Haven a great city.
In the management and budget interviews, one of the candidates offered names of two people he might appoint as chief of staff; another hinted at a top official she might not reappoint. The candidates offered varying takes on how to address a brewing pension crisis. Harp split from some of her campaign backers in opposing a move to require the Board of Aldermen to approve top mayoral appointees. And pressed, the candidates offered specific ideas for how they’d cut the budget in order to avoid tax increases.
Their answers from the interviews follow:
Who would be your chief of staff?
Harp: “I don’t know. I haven’t decided.”
Carolina: “I haven’t made commitments to anything or anyone.”
Elicker: No answer.
Fernandez: “I haven’t made an offer to anybody. I’ve always been extremely impressed by [former housing authority official and former schools chief operating officer and former Yale law prof] Robin Golden. A very strong manager, a person with integrity.” Also mentions “super smart” and “super committed” Fair Haven accountant Ed Cleary, who previously chaired the Junta for Progressive Action and Youth Continuum boards of directors.
Name three budget cuts you’d make to keep taxes from rising.
Harp: Reconfigure maintenance operations by consolidating public works and parks and other clean-up crews. Disband the Livable City Initiative (LCI) and spread its functions to other departments. Reduce the number of non-certified staff in public schools (such as “deans” at Hillhouse High). Reduce police and fire overtime by hiring more cops and firefighters, including by starting salaries that are competitive with suburban departments’ starting salaries.
Carolina: Cut police overtime. Reduce money for new school construction. Would that include the plan to build a new home for the Engineering & Science University Magnet School (ESUMS)? (Read about that controversy here.) “I’d have to look closer at that. That would be on the table.”
Elicker: Cap newly issued city debt at $20-$25 million a year. Switch to three-to-five-year rather than annual budgeting; use that as a way to spread some jobs, like street center-lane striping, over three years rather than one while still ensuring money exists to get the job done. Create incentives for employees to save energy long-term — for instance, by calculating energy costs at Wilbur Cross High School and rewarding the principal if she cuts them by convincing teachers to close windows at the end of the day in the winter.
Fernandez: Seek to prevent cops or other city employees from being able to retire with full pensions while still in their mid-40s. Cut costs in the finance department, perhaps partly by doing more work in-house rather than hiring as many outside consultants. Cut energy costs by creating a single massive energy-buying entity that includes city government, local businesses, and everyone else who buys electricity in New Haven; that entity would negotiate with utility companies for reduced rates.
Should all city workers shift to defined-contribution retirement accounts?
That question has arisen because of fears about the future solvency of two city employee pension funds, which are about 50 percent unfunded.
Harp: A mix of conventional pensions and 401k-style defined contribution plans. Going fully to defined contribution plans would be “unstable for the retirees. When the market has been so unstable over the past two years, you could have lost a lot in defined contribution [plans]. I think there should be a hybrid.”
Carolina: “My gut tells me” that rather than switch to 401k-style market-dependent plans, the city should seek to increase employee contributions to the current plans in order to shore up the system.
Elicker: Would explore the idea for higher-paid employees but preserve defined-benefit plans for lower-paid employees.
Fernandez: First try instead to the strengthen current plans rather than leaving employees to “the mercy of the markets” by switching to 401k-style plans. He has floated a proposal to seek a three-way deal with the state legislature, city unions and City Hall to have New Haven’s state Payments In Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) reimbursed to a 100 percent level, with the new money used to shore up pension funds, while unions would agree to plan changes that would also shore up the funds. (Read about that here.)
Do you plan to seek the current people in the following jobs? If not, whom would you rather appoint as … City economic development director? Livable City Initiative (LCI) director? Housing authority director?
Carolina: Has nobody in mind yet for jobs. Will review each existing appointee based on his or her effectiveness in the job. Does question the reasons for the housing authority chief’s recent 5 percent raise.
Elicker: “At this point in the election, I don’t want it to get personal,” so he won’t state which officials he would or wouldn’t keep. LCI chief “Erik Johnson is someone that has a lot of creative ideas on how to address problems in the city. I don’t want to surround myself with people who say, ‘No, we’ve tried that before.’” He declined to comment on whether the economic development and housing authority chiefs fit that description.
Fernandez: “I will seek undated letters of resignation from every department head when I enter as mayor. I intend to build a team from the ground up.” That said, he considers it “inappropriate” to “say negative things” about any current department heads.
Harp: “A lot” of economic development chief Kelly Murphy’s “supporters have come to me and asked me to keep her,” but it “is not apparent she has my vision of neighborhood development” in corridors like Dixwell Avenue, Whalley Avenue, and Howard and Columbus Avenues. Rather than appoint an LCI director, she might “look at whether or not we need LCI” and instead consolidate its functions with other city departments. As for housing authority chief Karen DuBois-Walton, “she’s my [campaign] chairman! Of course I would keep her. She’s really smart. She’s done an excellent job.”
Do you support the proposal to have the Board of Aldermen approve top mayoral appointees?
The Charter Revision Commission drew up a proposal that city alderman have placed on the Nov. 5 general election ballot to require aldermanic approval of fire and police chiefs, as well as the “coordinators”: chief administrative officer, head of economic development, head of community services, and the budget director. Aldermen would also approve all mayoral appointments to all boards and commissions.
Harp: No. A mayor “should be accountable for her staff.” People supporting Harp’s mayoral campaign were behind this proposal; she still disagrees with it, she said. She worries about this change leading to the kind of political maneuvers seen in the U.S. Senate, where opposition lawmakers block the appointments of qualified people to settle other scores with the president. She said she doesn’t expect to have those kinds of problems with the Board of Aldermen, a majority of which will likely have been supporters of her campaign; but she worries about what would happen with future mayors.
Carolina: “Not in the current environment” with the Board of Aldermen controlled by lawmakers backed by Yale’s UNITE HERE system. Sees too much potential for counterproductive political posturing.
Elicker: No. “The mayor should be able to choose the leadership of the city.” He, too, worries about D.C.-style political maneuvering.
Fernandez: Prefers an alternative option: The mayor can make the first appointment of new top officials. When those appointees’ terms expire, the Board of Aldermen would have to approve their reappointments, based on their performance. That would give a mayor the needed freedom to appoint a cabinet but also give lawmakers a chance to hold the appointees accountable.
Who has been the best New Haven mayor in history? Why?
Fernandez: Dick Lee. “He had a grand vision for the city. When I was [city] economic development administrator, I spent a lot of time redoing that vision and dealing with the idea of ‘super-blocks’ and the focus on the automobile instead of people walking. What I liked about Mayor Lee was that he had a bigger vision. He believed that New Haven should stand apart as one of the great cities in America … Unfortunately he thought that started with big construction that was not at a human scale. That really required quite a bit of work to rebuild the old Legion Avenue neighborhood, which was all knocked down and is now highway, Route 34. We’re slowly rebuilding that. The next mayor will have to take a lot of responsibility for that. It took decades to replace the old Malley’s and Macy’s, which had fallen into disrepair and the had to be demolished [and replaced] with Gateway Community College. The Coliseum site is another example of the big development strategy that really failed. … I happen to disagree with the vision. I don’t think it worked. But it was a willingness to try big things. I think New Haven is at a point where it can try big things. It will have to listen more, engage neighborhoods quite a bit more, and look to new approaches the make the city walkable, streets bikeable, accessible for all people who live here.”
Harp: Dick Lee. “The reason that he was the best mayor was the economy was better. There was a lot more federal resources that came directly into cities. So there was a lot more that could happen … In the memory of most people the best times in New Haven were during his mayoralty.”
Carolina: “I want to speak in future tense: I was the best mayor of New Haven!”
Elicker: “Considering the times we’re in right now, we’re facing incredible budget challenges, John Murphy in the 1930s is a great example of a mayor who responds effectively to the cards that he is dealt. During the Great Depression, … we weren’t getting the kind of support from Yale we are lucky to have more of today. (Click here for an illustration.) But given the cards we’ve been dealt with today, I would aspire to be someone like John Murphy.” A working-class Irishman from Fair Haven, Murphy organized cigar workers, went on to lead the local labor movement, then served as mayor from 1931 – 1945. He was a conservative Democrat who convinced his labor allies to accept contract concessions while scrambling to refinance city debts and find new sources of revenue during fierce economic times. (Murphy’s grandson, Mark Mininberg, wrote a book about Murphy’s mayoralty, entitled Saving New Haven: John W. Murphy Faces The Crisis Of The Great Depression. See also, “Recalling John Murphy: The ‘People’s Mayor,’” an article by Carole Bass on page 3 of the June 9, 1988 of the old print edition of the New Haven Independent.)
Previous installment in this series:
• Where the candidates stand on housing and neighborhood development
• Where the candidates stand on public safety
LCI is one of the city agencies that I use the most. I can count many times that I've called them because a landlord was illegally kicking a family out on the street, or because a family was living in absolutely unsafe housing. They respond quickly for people in crisis and make sure that people get safe housing.