by Andrew Rasiej

When I ran for Public Advocate I pledged that if elected I would make my official schedule (who I meet with) available online and that I would make sure that NYC residents would be able to find their Public Advocate easily if needed in real-time. Some of you may also remember that I asked Betsey Gotbaum to make her past schedule available and she refused.

I believe that that elected officials have a responsibility to let their constituents know how they spend their hard earned tax dollars and should be accountable like the majority of Americans who either punch a clock or submit time sheets to get paid.

Therefore, I am particularly happy that the New York Times endorsed my idea which I took to the Sunlight Foundation (full disclosure: they pay me as a strategic consultant) and which was embraced by Kirsten Gillibrand when she ran and won her seat in Congress.

By Council Members David Yassky, Annabel Palma and Letitia James, representing Brooklyn and the Bronx

Recently, we introduced legislation in the City Council to reform the 421-A tax code with 18 of our colleagues. We wish to make two points about the resultant 421-A debate on this blog and in other forums.

First, on the substance: 421-A is really two very different programs joined at the hip. Inside the so-called “exclusion zone,” the goal of the program is to use tax breaks to encourage affordable housing. In this area, which currently includes only “core Manhattan” (14th Street-96th Street) and a small slice of the Greenpoint-Williamsburg waterfront, developers get a tax break for projects that include affordable housing. Some of the issues in reforming this part of the program are how much affordable housing to require in exchange for the tax break (20%? 30%? more?), what counts as “affordable,” and whether the affordable apartments need to be in the same building as the market-rate apartments.