For Immediate Release:
October 29, 2009
For More Information:
Te Revesz: [email protected]
Marc Landis: [email protected]
New York, NY – As a grassroots organization dedicated to social, economic, racial and environmental justice, Citizen Action of New York recognizes that Bill Thompson has been a champion for the working men and women of New York City. He has a proven track record and an understanding of the issues that affect all five boroughs.
In every position that he has held in City government, Bill has worked toward strengthening the safety and success of children and youth.
While the incumbent has proposed making budget cuts to services vital to our most vulnerable communities, Bill Thompson understands that ensuring all New Yorkers have access to health care, housing and other core supports is essential to our economic recovery. Bill Thompson has always fought for the needs of struggling New Yorkers.
Bill Thompson has consistently and effectively supported affordable housing. As Comptroller, he invested in low-cost housing by using City pension money to finance the preservation and construction of thousands of units of affordable housing, and also increased the role of the Economically Targeted Investments program (ETI) in housing programs Citywide. In contrast, the incumbent supports vacancy decontrol and has allowed thousands of apartments, including entire Mitchell-Lama developments, to be removed from the City’s dwindling stock of affordable housing. We applaud Thompson’s plan to create a 21st Century Mitchell-Lama program that focuses public resources on ensuring that our affordable housing stock remains affordable.
We appreciate Thompson’s efforts to support Latino and immigrant communities. He has spearheaded an initiative that puts City funds in new bank branches in underserved communities of color throughout the five boroughs, thereby nurturing the growth of new business, creating new jobs, and promoting community revitalization through total deposits of $200 million.
Further, Citizen Action finds that Michael Bloomberg has consistently acted in a manner that is detrimental to the democratic process.
- Imperiling campaign finance reform: Having worked for campaign finance reform for nearly 15 years, we believe that Mr. Bloomberg’s use of his personal fortune in such an excessive manner in this and previous campaigns taints the entire electoral process. This expenditure of funds gives Mr. Bloomberg the appearance of buying political influence, if not outright buying the office.
- Discarding ballot results: While Citizen Action has no official position on the subject of term limits, we are outraged that Mr. Bloomberg chose to discard the votes of millions of our City’s citizens by overturning the results of not one referendum (1993), but of the two referendums. He himself condemned this as “wrong” only a few years earlier. By using the City Council and cutting the public out of the decision, Mr. Bloomberg subverted the democratic process New Yorkers hold dear.
We believe that in William Thompson, the people of the City of New York will have a mayor who will respect, support and be honest with its people. Therefore, we urge New Yorkers to vote for Bill Thompson on November 3rd.
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