By ALFREDO ALVARADO

In February and early March, DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts and a number of local leaders spoke out against devastating budget cuts before committees of the state Legislature and the City Council. More hearings were scheduled for late March as PEP went to press.

Testifying Feb. 3 on behalf of 125,000 members and 50,000 retirees before a joint State Senate-State Assembly hearing on aid to localities, Ms. Roberts charged that “the governor’s decision to concentrate only on the spending side of the budget equation will ultimately undermine the state and city economies.”

She said Gov. George E. Pataki’s proposed executive budget “fails to address the real needs of the state’s working people and the poor.” At the Albany hearing, Ms. Roberts criticized the governor’s Medicaid cuts that would take $200 million from the Health and Hospitals Corp., despite a recent survey that ranked five HHC hospitals among the best in the nation. “It is time to acknowledge HHC’s important role in providing quality health care to the vast number of uninsured New Yorkers,” said Ms. Roberts.

Ms. Roberts also pressed for revenue enhancements like the restoration of the commuter tax and a stock transfer tax. Those would generate an estimated $565 million in revenue annually. “We need the reinstatement of the commuter tax so that the burden for city services will be shared by all who use those services,” Ms. Roberts testified.

For New Yorkers, affordable housing and maintaining rent stabilization laws are a major concern. “Millions of tenants will face skyrocketing rent and possible eviction if New York City’s rent regulatory laws are allowed to expire on April 1, 2003,” said Ralph Carbone, president of Local 1359 before a joint committee on housing.

He cited a recent study showing that approximately 99,000 units of regulated housing have been lost since the advent of rent decontrol in 1993. “Tenants have been displaced and untold numbers of people search in vain for a decent place to live. That must change,” testified Mr. Carbone.

He also testified before the City Council, where he backed Resolution 692. The bill calls on the Legislature and governor to extend the rent regulatory laws until June 15, 2008, and repeal high-rent vacancy decontrol. The City Council was also urged to press for repeal of the Urstadt Law, which ties the city’s hands on rent control.

Alvin Carter, chapter chair for the Police Administrative Aides and Senior PAAs of Local 1549, presented several revenue generating ideas to the City Council. Testifying March 6 on the preliminary budget for 2004, he advocated hiring more civilians in the NYPD to free Police Officers from desk jobs.

“I strongly recommend that your committee urge the mayor to hire more Police Administrative Aides so that uniformed officers can be reassigned to patrol and law enforcement duties,” said Mr. Carter at the hearing. “An aggressive civilianization program in the Police Dept. would go a long way towards reducing the enormous deficit that plagues this city.”