The Transactional Bill de Blasio
13th July 2015
Most of the water de Blasio carries for his backers these days flows from city reservoirs. He has awarded the richest labor contracts in city history, and support for his 2017 reelection bid from the union recipients of his public largesse may ward off any primary challenge.
SEIU signed one of those contracts — valued, when combined with the nurses union, at $879 million. Hotel workers don’t have a city contract, but are pleased no doubt by the mayor’s enforcement war against hotel competitor Airbnb. And de Blasio, whose chief of staff used to work for Wilhelm at HTC, backed a bill this year that banned the residential conversion of hotels for two years, an unprecedented restriction on property rights championed by the union.
In another bow to a backer, de Blasio didn’t just deliver big bucks to the teachers union, he’s effectively surrendered the management of the schools to it, even letting it vet the parents chosen to sit on school committees. The mayor has a nonprofit that collects gobs of donations to support his policy initiatives, and the American Federation of Teachers is its biggest donor, giving $350,000 shortly before de Blasio announced the new teachers contract.
SEIU contributed its own, equally timely, $250,000 to what’s called the Campaign for One New York — though it, too, may require a name change, to the Campaign for One New Yorker.
Further evidence that every ‘reformer’ is actually for sale to the highest bidder.