Provocative Proposals for New York, Missing From the Campaign Trail We've hit the bell lap, in which our mayoral candidates calibrate, recalibrate and yap until they are ready to plotz. Seeking shelter from the din, I place a call to Harvey Robins. A top veteran of two mayors, he is an incisive mechanic of government, with ideas and shards of ideas all but falling out of his pockets. He grooves on peel-your-skin-back candor, and he hasn't heard that yet from the candidates. "We need to hear their aspirational goals, so we'll know when they fall short," he says. Otherwise they'll reach a big decision and fold like cheap rugs in humid weather. He cackles. The latter is Mr. Robins's favorite saying, of the printable variety. His is a proud liberal of the city-that-works variety. After serving as deputy schools chancellor under Mayor Edward I. Koch, he ran the Office of Operations for Mayor David N. Dinkins as a more-or-less permanent eye over the shoulders of commissioners. He turned schools into after-hour community centers, removed abandoned cars from parks and revolutionized that bible of good management, the Mayor's Management Report. "It affirms government," he says, "to make public the good, the bad and the ugly." To talk with the candidates is to hear excellent ideas, like affordable housing, inclusionary zoning and a plan to keep tuition at public colleges and universities down with tax proceeds from legalized marijuana. But their narratives leave a sense of overarching vision half expressed. Under Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, Mr. Robins says, "our city's become a trading post; when you talk of public housing, public hospitals, public parks - with elite exceptions - too many are subpar." "If the wealthy, the unions, the elite nonprofits, all feel entitled to more," he continued, "we crowd out the common good." Mr. Robins would begin with law and order, which is to say wage theft and worker safety. To wander our neighborhoods is to see laborers, restaurant employees and food delivery workers without basic protections. Much of this is illegal. Officials say state and federal government must help. Mr. Robins shakes his head. Treat it as you would crime. Wage theft alone runs close to $1 billion a year. "We've gotten comfortable seeing low-wage workers as sharecroppers," he says. When was the last time the mayor blew a blood vessel about the systematic violation of wage protections? It's theft. Stop it. New York cut tens of millions of dollars from the libraries in the past five years - and spent twice as much on the High Line, a park that ignited a luxury real estate price explosion in Chelsea. New Yorkers do not lack for self-regard. Mr. Robins, born here and living still in Brooklyn, would play to this: "Why do Chicago and Boston keep libraries open 50 hours a week while New York doesn't do five days a week?" Mr. Robins asks. Let's aspire to 60 hours. To pay for this, he would commence a slaughter of sacred cows. He would extend the business tax to insurance companies, currently exempt for no good reason. That would reap $300 million, the Independent Budget Office says. He would end the $17 million property tax abatement for Madison Square Garden and its wealthy teams. He would toll bridges to help mass transit. He would end property tax exemptions for elite nonprofit entities, like Columbia and New York Universities, and our big hospitals; they offer grand salaries and oversee vast real estate empires yet skip free of taxes. "The Daily News wrote about Mount Sinai Hospital giving mortgage forgiveness to doctors," he says. We leave money on the table, and yet we are pushing an austerity agenda and putting our parks in the wood chipper. Tourism is at historic highs; travelers pile into hotels in far-flung neighborhoods. Would anyone notice another 1 percent on the rooms tax? He turns his eyes to labor. Municipal contracts expired years ago. Ask candidates, desperate for labor's hand, about their negotiating plans and their mumble sounds like this: Iwon'tnegotiateinpublic. Iwon't. Mr. Robins rolls his eyes. "If we're going to talk about retroactive pay, they have to talk about paying into health care," he says. Then talk about sick time. That advocates had to pummel Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker and Democratic candidate for mayor, to obtain a bare handful of sick days for low-wage workers justifiably dogs her campaign to this day. Municipal workers suffer no such problems. Most cash out when they retire, getting at least one day of pay for every three of unused sick days. So a progressive benefit turns into an expensive going-away present. There's more. Many teachers, firefighters and police officers get automatic raises; lower-paid workers, who labor for District Council 37, do not. In the hierarchy of need, Mr. Robins suggests starting there. "D.C. 37 workers are the McDonald's workers of the labor force," he says. "A mayor could say: "We have to start making distinctions within our aspirational framework." " Mr. Robins has more provocations than I have words in this column. "Candidates are too afraid to step beyond the water's edge," he says. What's exciting is when you really take risks.