https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-york-city-mayor-bill-de-blasio-is-handed-political-defeats-by-city-council-and-albany-1435109433
New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio Is Handed Political Defeats by City Council and Albany
Mayor does about-face on more police officers and won't get changes on 421-a tax break
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, right, with Police Commissioner William Bratton on Tuesday after the mayor addressed the police department's Urban Ministers Symposium.
Photo: Claudio Papapietro for The Wall Street Journal
Mara Gay
@MaraGay
Mara.Gay@wsj.com
Josh Dawsey
@jdawsey1
Joshua.Dawsey@WSJ.com
Updated June 24, 2015 6:00 pm ET
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio had been handed three defeats on two political fronts in less than 24 hours, and he wasn't eager to talk about it.
First, he had agreed Monday to increase the size of the city's police force by 1,300 officers, an about-face that came under pressure from New York Police Commissioner William Bratton and the City Council.
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Then, on Tuesday, came the news from Albany: Mr. de Blasio wouldn't be getting the immediate changes he wanted to the developers' tax break known as 421-a to advance his affordable-housing goals.
Rent regulations covering more than a million apartments had been extended, but only marginally strengthened. And Gov. Andrew Cuomo and state lawmakers had answered his call for permanent mayoral control of city schools by granting him just one year of control.
By Tuesday afternoon, Mr. de Blasio was a mayor of few words.
"We'll have more to say when we hear the whole situation," he said when asked about the deal in Albany, striding past a group of reporters who waited for him outside a meeting with council members.
Flanked by aides, he headed toward the direction of his office.
The mayor's briskness hinted at the general gloom and frustration that settled around his administration over what went wrong in the state capital.
A senior City Hall official familiar with the negotiations said city officials had tried "everything they knew" to push their agenda in Albany and attributed their poor showing to a Legislature rife with dysfunction.
The senior City Hall official said legislators in Albany "have no agenda or no vision" and can't be engaged on the issues "because the whole place is broken."
"You have two indicted former leaders and a ... governor who is not very effective right now. They can't get anything done," the senior official said.
A Cuomo administration official responded to the criticism from City Hall: "What we're dealing with is a mayor who is universally acknowledged to be bumbling and incompetent," the official said.
The mayor's defeats in Albany came after his aides made frequent trips there and Mr. de Blasio courted business leaders as unorthodox allies.
But many of the Senate Republicans had no urgency to advance the city's agenda and were ideologically opposed to the liberal mayor.
Closer to home, the mayor's camp emphasized he had won policy points on the police issue even if his desire went unmet to keep the head count unchanged.
An aide to the mayor said Mr. de Blasio had agreed to hire the extra officers only after Mr. Bratton agreed the NYPD would commit to a so-called neighborhood policing model that would encourage officers to patrol on foot and increase positive interactions with residents.
The aide said the department's acceptance of a cap on overtime costs was also part of the deal.
Mr. Bratton emerged from the City Hall meeting with a smile.
"There's nothing I have asked for that I haven't gotten," he said.
Earlier, Mr. Bratton said he and top NYPD officials determined they needed more than the 1,000 officers floated by the City Council.
"We determined it was a lot more," he said at a news conference after a scheduled gathering of ministers from across the city.
Mr. Bratton said many of the new officers will be used to bolster the department's community policing efforts.
He described a plan to have the officers spend a third of an 8-hour shift out in the neighborhood.
The mayor cited two factors behind his change of position: the push by the City Council; and a "much deeper conversation" with Mr. Bratton about making the kinds of changes to policing Mr. de Blasio advocated during his 2013 campaign, namely improving the relationship between police and minority communities.
"I thought we had a moment here where we could do something very big and lasting," Mr. de Blasio said.
The mayor's decision to hire the additional officers as part of the city's $78.5 billion budget deal also came as he faced immediate pressure over an uptick shootings and homicides.
"That has everything to do with the perception that safety and crime are an issue again," said Kathy Wylde, president and chief executive of the business association Partnership for New York City, on the 1,300 new officers.
"Nobody wants to take that risk, least of all the mayor."
In Albany, the one-year extension on mayoral control was particularly stinging for City Hall. In 2009, former Mayor Michael Bloomberg had won mayoral control of the city schools for six years.
But this year, Mr. Cuomo said Tuesday, a one-year extension was "the best that we could do."
—Pervaiz Shallwani contributed to this article.
Write to Mara Gay at mara.gay@wsj.com
Corrections & Amplifications:
As part of budget negotiations, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio agreed to hire more police officers when Police Commissioner William Bratton committed to a so-called neighborhood policing model. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said the commitment would be made in a written contract. (June 24, 2015)