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      Senate Begins Budget Political Theater With $3.5 Trillion at Stake

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      Once again, the Senate will begin a marathon “vote-a-rama,” dealing with dozens of nonbinding amendments before the one vote that counts, passage of a $3.5 trillion budget blueprint.WASHINGTON — Some senators have tried to ban the process. Others simply say it’s the worst part of their jobs.Even Senator Robert C. Byrd, a West Virginia Democrat who created and fortified some of the chamber’s most complex rules before his death, warned the so-called vote-a-rama process could “send some old men to their deaths.”Still on Tuesday, as the Senate turned to a $3.5 trillion budget blueprint that begins the Democrats’ push to expand the social safety net, the tradition of considering hours upon hours of nonbinding budget amendments will once again get underway — with senators forcing politically sensitive votes on their rivals as campaign operatives compile a record for possible attack ads.Only one vote really matters: If all 50 Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents give final approval to the blueprint, Senate committees can begin work this fall on the most significant expansion of the safety net since the 1960s, knowing that legislation cannot be filibustered under the Senate’s complicated budget rules.But before that final vote, which looked set to come either late Tuesday or early Wednesday, senators were having to deal with a blizzard of advisory amendments, and like every vote-a-rama that preceded it, it was painful.“It’s a little bit like an extended visit to a dentist,” said Ross K. Baker, a professor of political science at Rutgers University. “The whole process is an exercise in ‘gotchas.’”The Budget Act limits Senate debate to 50 hours on a budget resolution, but over time the Senate has developed its vote-a-rama custom, which allows for an accelerated voting procedure on amendments even after the 50 hours have expired. In recent years, the practice has allowed just minutes of debate for each amendment followed by a short vote.In practice, any senator can prolong the process by offering new amendments for votes until he or she runs out of steam. The result is a procedural food fight with a silly name that does little other than keep Capitol denizens up past their bedtimes and cause twinges of political pain. (Vote-a-RAHM-a? Vote-a-RAM-a? Depends on the senator.)The amendments can range from the serious to the absurd. During a debate over health care in 2010, Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, forced a vote banning coverage of erectile dysfunction drugs for convicted sex offenders as a way to try to embarrass Democrats who supported the legislation. That prompted Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, to condemn the amendment as a “mockery of this Senate.”But the power of the political “gotcha” is diminishing with overuse. This is the third vote-a-rama this year alone. During the last episode in March — the longest open vote in modern Senate history — the Senate entertained 37 votes on amendments. During February’s vote-a-rama, there were 41.Should Democrats successfully pass the blueprint and draft a multi-trillion-dollar package, a fourth vote-a-rama is expected in the fall.“The budget resolution is usually the platform for political theater, and both sides having votes that are designed to make a statement because none of it is binding,” said Senator Patrick J. Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania, who plans to retire next year.Both parties have historically lamented the vote-a-rama process, but neither wants to give it up. Typically, the party in the minority — in this case, the Republicans — revels in the uncomfortable votes it can force upon the majority party that typically controls the chamber, its floor time and what gets voted on.Republicans hammered Democrats on Tuesday over the size of the spending package, the planned tax increases to pay for it and liberal proposals to rein in climate change, which they deride as part of the “Green New Deal.”Senator Bernie Sanders, who is in charge of the Senate Budget Committee, said his plan was simply “to defeat all of the poison pill amendments.”T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York TimesSenators filed hundreds of amendments, including a list from Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, setting up votes to, among other things, add to the budget 100,000 police officers and promote a “patriotic education in K-12 schools” that teaches “students to love America.”Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, had previously vowed “to ferociously attack” the Democrats’ plans. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, said on Tuesday that Senate staff members had processed hundreds of amendments and pledged that “every single senator will be going on the record over and over and over.”Democrats largely appeared sanguine before the whole exercise. Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent in charge of the Senate Budget Committee, said his plan was simply “to defeat all of the poison pill amendments.”“That’s the whole point,” said Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts. “They want to try to make us take what they think will be votes that they can use in television ads. This isn’t about legislating. This is just about jockeying for political advantage.”“We’ll have to endure a certain amount of that,” she added, “but we’ll get the budget resolution passed.”Even Republicans acknowledged that, at least with the budget blueprint, it would ultimately be a fruitless endeavor to derail a proposal that Democrats said they had the votes for.“We just continue to have conversations with colleagues on the other side of the aisle, encourage them not to support it, but I just think we’re going to get rolled,” said Senator Joni Ernst, Republican of Iowa. “They’ll wipe the slate clean at the end of the process.”Occasionally, though, a binding vote can take place. Republicans, for instance, could try to insist the Judiciary Committee be cut out of the budget reconciliation process, thus blocking the inclusion of a pathway to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants. (But the committee’s inclusion also meant a wider array of amendments could be considered under Senate rules, given the committee’s expansive jurisdiction.)The votes also occasionally produce a moment of truth for politicians. After many Democrats hemmed and hawed over stating their views on a $15 minimum wage this year, a forced vote on an amendment during the vote-a-rama in March revealed seven of the chamber’s more centrist Democrats opposed the increase.Despite the political risks, Mr. Baker said the votes during a vote-a-rama did not typically end up substantially hurting political candidates. Constituents tend to judge their senators on major policy issues, not votes that fly by, often after midnight.“Those kinds of votes can prove to be problematic but in a torrent of amendments, I think it becomes part of the noise,” he said. “That doesn’t mean they’re not going to be scared about it.” More

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      Brad Lander Unites Progressives to Lead Comptroller’s Race

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      Brad Lander holds a lead over Corey Johnson, the speaker of the City Council, after the first ranked-choice voting ballot.As Maya Wiley fought to unite progressives to catch the presumed front-runner, Eric Adams, in the New York City Democratic primary for mayor, Brad Lander was doing the same in another citywide contest, for comptroller.Members of the city’s progressive movement have had success in capturing City Council, state legislative and congressional seats over the past few years, but they have struggled to stretch that influence across the five boroughs in citywide races.As Primary Day approached, that trend seemed to apply to the comptroller race: A recent poll showed Mr. Lander, a councilman from Brooklyn, trailing Corey Johnson, the speaker of the City Council and a late entrant into the race, by nine percentage points; 44 percent of likely voters, however, were undecided.But after the first round of first-place votes was counted on Tuesday night, Mr. Lander had an almost nine-point lead over Mr. Johnson. Michelle Caruso-Cabrera, a former CNBC anchor, was in third, another nine points behind Mr. Johnson, with seven other candidates finishing in the single digits.Mr. Lander had the support of the city’s progressive movement, with endorsements from Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; Jumaane Williams, the public advocate; and Tiffany Cabán, a former candidate for Queens district attorney who is currently leading in her race for a City Council seat.Ms. Ocasio-Cortez also endorsed Ms. Wiley late in the mayoral race, well after she had endorsed Mr. Lander. He was also supported by other prominent progressive leaders like Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, enabling him to firmly establish himself on the left — unlike Ms. Wiley, who vied for that status with other candidates.Mr. Johnson was supported by several labor unions, which usually translates into on-the-ground support and money for advertisements. But Mr. Lander had one of the more memorable campaign ads of the race, featuring his daughter making fun of him for being a “policy nerd.”Mr. Johnson led the Primary Night vote count in Staten Island and the Bronx; Mr. Lander leads in Queens, Manhattan and Brooklyn.Ms. Cabán said that progressive groups had campaigned aggressively for Mr. Lander and that he had returned the favor, endorsing 12 progressive candidates for City Council and campaigning with them.“It’s a huge deal,” Ms. Cabán said. “His campaign and the execution and the outcome is a beautiful model of how progressive movements can build power.”The race for comptroller, one of only three citywide elected positions, flew under the radar at a moment when the position has never been more important.As the city’s chief financial officer, the comptroller is the primary auditor and fiscal watchdog, and will help oversee New York’s record-high $99 billion budget as deficits loom in the coming years, as well as at least $14 billion in federal aid coming because of the coronavirus pandemic. The comptroller is also responsible for $250 billion in pension funds covering 620,000 people.Mr. Johnson was a late entrant to the comptroller contest after he dropped out of the race for mayor, citing his mental health.While Mr. Lander proposed being more of an activist comptroller, Mr. Johnson was proposing a “thoughtful, strategic and prudent” comptroller to focus on the city’s finances. He cited his experience shepherding three $90 billion budgets during his time as speaker as an example of his experience and leadership.Anthony Perez, Mr. Johnson’s campaign manager, said they were in a “strong position” as the vote count continued.“We’ve built a broad, diverse coalition with support from communities of color and organized labor, as well as second-choice endorsements from dozens of elected officials and community groups in Brooklyn and Queens, putting us on the path to consolidate support in future rounds of ranked-choice voting,” Mr. Perez said.Mr. Lander said he felt good about his position but that he was a strong proponent of ranked-choice voting, and urged people to wait until all the votes were tabulated.“This is not a race that people paid a lot of attention to, and that left room to be out communicating with voters,” Mr. Lander said. “We had a strong ground game. We were out there.” More

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      With Billions of Dollars at Stake, a Critical Race Vies for Attention

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      Candidates to be New York City’s next chief financial officer are straining for attention from the public during a crucial moment.One candidate, Brad Lander, landed a potent one-two political punch: the coveted endorsement of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and a successful campaign ad using the time-honored strategy of deploying one’s child.Another candidate, Zach Iscol, has support from Hillary Clinton, who is a mentor to him, and is the best friend of her daughter, Chelsea.A third candidate, Corey Johnson, had his own measure of star power, as a former front-runner in this year’s critical race for mayor.None of that has helped elevate the race for comptroller of New York City beyond the din of news and noise that surrounds the mayor’s contest, even with the June 22 primary just days away.As New York emerges from the pandemic, the role of comptroller is especially crucial. Whoever succeeds the current comptroller, Scott M. Stringer, will have a role in making sure at least $14 billion in expected federal stimulus assistance over the next few fiscal years is properly spent, while auditing a $99 billion budget that faces significant gaps in the coming years. Also at stake is the management of roughly $250 billion in pension fund money that covers 620,000 people.But it has not been easy for the candidates to gain attention.A recent debate had to compete with a hastily scheduled mayoral debate, all but guaranteeing a limited audience. The second and final debate was taped this week and will air at a less-than-ideal time: Sunday morning.“That’s prime time for church,” said Brian Benjamin, a state senator from Harlem who is running for comptroller. “No one will be watching.”Mr. Johnson, the City Council speaker and a late entrant in the comptroller’s race, is the current front-runner, according to available polling. He was a leading candidate for mayor but dropped out, citing mental health issues.Trailing close behind are Mr. Lander, a progressive councilman from Brooklyn who has also won endorsements from Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, and Michelle Caruso-Cabrera, a former CNBC anchor who ran unsuccessfully against Ms. Ocasio-Cortez last year.The race seems relatively wide open; a recent NY1/Ipsos poll found that 44 percent of likely voters were still undecided about their first choice for comptroller — a potentially worrisome development this year when voters will be allowed to rank up to five choices.The NY1/Ipsos poll had Mr. Johnson at 18 percent and Mr. Lander and Ms. Caruso-Cabrera tied at 9 percent.Other candidates in the race include David Weprin, a state assemblyman from Queens, who polled at 7 percent; Kevin Parker, a state senator from Brooklyn who polled at 6 percent; and Mr. Benjamin, who polled at 5 percent. Mr. Iscol, a nonprofit entrepreneur and former Marine who also dropped out of the mayor’s race to enter the comptroller’s race, registered at 1 percent.The limited attention is no fault of the candidates, who have spent millions of dollars on advertisements and have been crisscrossing the five boroughs at all hours to seek out voters.Mr. Johnson was spotted this week in front of the Fairway supermarket on the Upper West Side campaigning until midnight. Mr. Lander participated in a bike ride around City Hall with delivery workers fighting for better wages and working conditions.Brad Lander, left, has been endorsed by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.Victor J. Blue for The New York TimesMr. Lander said he had felt interest in the campaign surging as the city moved toward a full reopening. He received the endorsement of The New York Times editorial board and has collected the most support from progressive elected officials.“Voters will come up and say, ‘I’ve seen your ad,’” Mr. Lander said. “That’s an opportunity to say, ‘This is a critical moment for our city; let’s talk about how the government can work better for all of us.’”Ms. Caruso-Cabrera, who is the daughter of Cuban and Italian immigrants, has focused intensely on Latino voters. She released an ad that she narrates in Spanish.Ms. Caruso-Cabrera has portrayed Mr. Lander and Mr. Johnson as government insiders, allowing the budget to grow under Mayor Bill de Blasio.“We need a fresh set of eyes,” Ms. Caruso-Cabrera said. “We need someone who is independent and who doesn’t want to be the mayor.”Michelle Caruso-Cabrera, a former CNBC anchor, unsuccessfully challenged Ms. Ocasio-Cortez last year.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesMr. Weprin, who received the endorsement of the city’s police unions and The Daily News, is leaning on his finance experience in the public and private sectors.Mr. Benjamin said he was leaning on his experience as someone with a Harvard M.B.A. and experience as a money manager at Morgan Stanley. His campaign has focused largely on consolidating support in the Black community, which has been difficult given the candidacy of Mr. Parker, who, like Mr. Benjamin, is Black.“The people who are going to vote in this election will pay more attention, and that helps someone like me, who is the qualifications candidate versus the name-recognition candidate,” Mr. Benjamin said.The reference seemed to be a swipe at Mr. Johnson, who, as the race’s most recognizable candidate and its leader, has been the frequent subject of attacks.During the first official debate this month, Mr. Lander accused Mr. Johnson of having been absent from leading the budget process. Ms. Caruso-Cabrera said he had not done enough to keep the budget from growing under Mr. de Blasio.Mr. Weprin questioned whether Mr. Johnson, a high school graduate who recently enrolled at the School of General Studies at Columbia University, was qualified for the job.“Corey Johnson only has a high school diploma,” Mr. Weprin said. “I was on Wall Street for over 25 years, and you can’t get a job on Wall Street without getting a college degree.”Mr. Johnson dismissed the criticism as the desperate tactic of candidates who are trailing in the last days of a race.“After negotiating three on-time, balanced, $90 billion budgets, I know this city’s finances better than anyone in this race,” Mr. Johnson said.Yet as he stood in front of the Fairway on Friday evening, several voters were more interested in Mr. Johnson’s choice for mayor than in his candidacy for comptroller.“What does the comptroller do?” Mar Dominguez, 60, said to Mr. Johnson, asking for a quick refresher. Ms. Dominguez, a hospitality worker, said the election season had been simply overwhelming. “Everyone’s harassing me. There’s too much mail, and too many people are calling my phone. This morning, they were ringing my doorbell,” she said. More

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      Brad Lander for Comptroller

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      The New York City comptroller serves as the fiscal watchdog, which is serious business in a city with a budget of nearly $99 billion. The office oversees the city’s roughly $240 billion in pension funds, approving its contracts and investigating its agencies.As New York recovers from the Covid-19 pandemic, it will need a steady and experienced hand focused on ensuring that its residents and businesses recover from the trauma caused by the disease. The health and vitality of the city’s economy isn’t just a local matter; New York is a major economic engine that the entire nation needs firing on all cylinders for recovery to succeed. This is a job for Brad Lander, a veteran councilman from Brooklyn who is among the hardest-working and most effective public servants in the city.Plenty of legislators in the 51-member City Council simply show up. Mr. Lander’s work has often changed New York for the better. Early in his career, he was one of two council members behind the Community Safety Act, among the first significant efforts to curb stop-and-frisk policing under Mayor Michael Bloomberg. In the following decade, Mr. Lander sponsored legislation that expanded paid sick leave, strengthened protections for tenants and increased rapid bus service for New Yorkers. He also took on common-sense measures, like getting air-conditioners into city schools, that made life easier.Mr. Lander has repeatedly risked his political career to take unpopular stances. Perhaps most significant was his skillful, dogged support of a plan in recent years that successfully integrated Brooklyn elementary and middle schools in his district.The editorial board does not agree with all of Mr. Lander’s stated positions, such as his call to defund the New York Police Department. (The comptroller does not set the police budget.) While several of the other candidates in the race are attractive, Mr. Lander stands above them as best suited to this particular job. Corey Johnson, the City Council speaker, jumped into the race at the last moment after deciding not to run for mayor. Brian Benjamin, a state senator from Harlem and the Upper West Side, and Zach Iscol, an entrepreneur and U.S. Marine, would be new to city government at a moment when experience counts. David Weprin, a state assemblyman, has some of that experience but lacks Mr. Lander’s intensity. Then there is Michelle Caruso-Cabrera, a former Republican and CNBC anchor who moved to Queens in 2019 to wage an unsuccessful bid against Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.This is no time to elect a political novice or someone who might have preferred a different office. There is a temptation to use the position of comptroller to enact larger agendas that more properly belong with the mayor. We were won over by Mr. Lander’s prudence and competence, and we hope that he keeps his attention focused on the job at hand.Early voting in the Democratic primary lasts from June 12 to June 20, and Primary Day is June 22. The winner of that contest for comptroller will likely win the general election.Mr. Lander hopes to use the office’s long reach to make climate-friendly investments that create well-paying jobs. He also promises to audit the city’s public schools more aggressively and ensure that federal aid from the pandemic is invested wisely for future generations.Mr. Lander has our endorsement.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      New York City's Post-Covid Recovery

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      One year after the terrifying first wave of Covid swept the city, the availability of federal aid has helped buoy New York through the pandemic. It’s likely that the city will even see a budget surplus for 2022.Still, New York has been shaken by the pandemic. Unemployment remains high, especially among low-wage workers in the service industries. Many fears remain: Will companies leave the city, no longer wanting to pay high rents if their workers can telecommute? Will property taxes plummet, decimating the city’s revenues? Will restaurants and theaters and bars reopen to the same packed crowds?Viewed through a lens focused on these problems, the city has not faced this much existential uncertainty since the 1970s. As unemployment skyrocketed during last year’s lockdown and as the number of homicides rose, it seemed quite possible that New York might be headed for a prolonged crisis — similar to the one that brought the city to the edge of bankruptcy in 1975.Today, in the midst of a race to pick a new mayor, New York seems at a turning point. Although the uptick in crime has garnered the most attention from the candidates, this obscures the extent to which a larger set of political questions are at stake in the election. Just as in the 1970s, New York faces a daunting challenge in which the old way of organizing the city’s life no longer seems viable, but it is not clear what the new one will be.But there are lessons to be learned from that earlier time of crisis and transformation — and from the social vision that characterized New York City earlier in the 20th century.For much of the post-World War II period, New York City had an ambitious local government. It ran a free system of higher education (and added new campuses over the 1950s and 1960s), an expansive public health department and more than 20 public hospitals. The city’s leaders embraced the idea that local government could play an important role in building a city open to all.The fiscal crisis of the 1970s brought an end to these politics. As the city fell into an economic recession — one that emerged in part as a result of national trends and policies with origins far beyond the five boroughs — it was no longer able to generate the revenues that it needed to sustain the public sector. Bankruptcy seemed likely.It was averted only when the city government agreed to sharp budget cuts in order to obtain federal aid. Tens of thousands of city workers were laid off, class sizes in schools swelled, public hospitals closed, routine maintenance stopped. The city university began to charge tuition for the first time.Today, New York has been able to avoid a fiscal crisis for reasons that go beyond the availability of federal aid. The city’s economy was in better shape before the pandemic than in the 1970s.But the bigger difference between then and now is political. After the fiscal crisis, many of the city’s political and economic leaders insisted that budgetary health depended on finding more ways to reach out to business, while relinquishing its old emphasis on the needs of poor and working-class New Yorkers. As the investment banker and city leader Felix Rohatyn put it, “Business has to be supported and not just tolerated.”In the late 1970s, this approach to city governance led the city to offer Donald Trump (and the Hyatt Corporation) tax abatements worth hundreds of millions of dollars to redevelop the Commodore Hotel near Grand Central Terminal. More recently, it has justified the billions spent on the Hudson Yards complex.The idea that the city must appeal to the affluent has shaped policy in subtler ways as well. For example, the city’s gifted-and-talented program, with its emphasis on testing 4-year-olds — a program that has disproportionately served children of white and Asian backgrounds — seems designed to keep families who might otherwise go to private schools or the suburbs in the public system. The “stop-and-frisk” police strategy (ruled racially discriminatory by a federal judge in 2013) emphasized the comfort of tourists and well-off New Yorkers over the civil rights of young Black and Hispanic ones.These underlying assumptions about city government are being challenged. The experience of the pandemic has called into question the old consensus that a focus on retaining business and the wealthy should guide city policy.As a result, the State Legislature has raised taxes on millionaires, which has helped make it possible for the city to win funding for schools long promised by Albany. The city also plans to use some of its federal money to increase spending on initiatives that will especially affect people who are working-class, middle-class or poor — like public health and early childhood education.New York’s finances remain perilous; sales taxes and hotel taxes are down, though personal income taxes are up, buoyed by the stock market and also by federal stimulus. The federal funds that have supported recovery will not always be there, raising the question of how programs they fund today will be paid for in the future. The city’s own predictions forecast budget shortfalls in a few years, though these may well disappear if growth resumes. (The Independent Budget Office, a watchdog organization, suggests that the gaps are manageable.)But a new mayor will take charge in a city where the terms of political debate are changing fast, and in which more and more New Yorkers are asking what they can expect from their local government. Out of the pandemic, is it possible to build a more equal New York?These concerns have been percolating through the mayoral race, even as they have been overshadowed by fears of crime, scandal, personality and the age-old question of how to define a bodega. But they will be at the heart of the city’s politics over the next four years.Following the near-bankruptcy of the 1970s, the city turned away from its old traditions of social justice. Today, we might take a different set of lessons from that earlier crisis — this time, from the New Yorkers who slept in fire stations and libraries to keep them open. A city belongs to those who are willing to fight for it, whose lives and whose labor make it run.Kim Phillips-Fein, a historian at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University, is the author, most recently, of “Fear City: New York’s Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics” and “Invisible Hands: The Businessmen’s Crusade Against the New Deal.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      California Budget: Recovery, Recall and Record Revenue Drive Newsom Plan

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      Tuesday: Gov. Gavin Newsom’s $267.8 billion budget proposal reflects the wish list of a state “just flush with cash.”Prekindergarten students at West Orange Elementary School in Orange, Calif., in March. Jae C. Hong/Associated PressGood morning.Six-hundred-dollar checks. Universal prekindergarten. Forgiveness for back rent, traffic tickets, utility bills. Big investments in the electrical grid, broadband, wildfire prevention, drought mitigation. Tax breaks for small business and Hollywood.Flush with a huge surplus and threatened by a campaign to recall him from office, Gov. Gavin Newsom last week proposed a state budget that was the government equivalent of that time everyone in the studio audience got a Pontiac on Oprah. This week, state legislators took up the $267.8 billion plan.With a mid-June budget deadline and Newsom’s fellow Democrats dominating the Legislature, the broad priorities are unlikely to change much. Still, like all those free cars, it’s a lot to process. Here are a few things to know:This budget is about both the recovery and the recall.Newsom has been in campaign mode for months, since it became clear that the Republican-led recall effort would most likely lead to a special election. Polls show that an increasing majority of voters disapprove of the recall. But he’s still in a vulnerable position with lawmakers and lobbyists.Last week’s budget rollout was a cavalcade of photo ops for big-ticket line items: Rebate checks of up to $1,100 on Monday for middle-income Californians; historic spending on homelessness on Tuesday; an expansion of preschool to all 4-year-olds on Wednesday; a major small-business grant program on Thursday.For the teachers’ unions that helped elect him, the governor proposed a record $14,000 in per-pupil school funding. For parents furious that more than half of the state’s public school students remain learning remotely, that funding was contingent on an in-person return to classrooms.Progressives who get out the vote for Democrats in California elections got repayment of billions of dollars in back rent and utility bills for low-income renters, funding for pilot universal-basic-income programs, and forgiveness of some $300 million worth of traffic tickets for low-income drivers. Newsom also proposed extending Medi-Cal to undocumented workers over 60 and significantly expanding housing for homeless Californians.Businesses have already received a $6.2 billion tax cut. But the governor also proposed hundreds of millions of dollars in incentives for companies to relocate to California, for tourism marketing and for tax credits to lure filming back from, he said, “places like Georgia whose values don’t always align with the production crews.”Bicyclists ride past a homeless encampment at the Venice Beach Boardwalk.Jessica Pons for The New York TimesIt is also about record revenue.State officials expected the virus to be devastating. But they overestimated the economic damage to skilled workers and underestimated the flood of money that would arise from the booming stock market. Now the state’s progressive tax system, which relies heavily on the well-off, has delivered about $100 billion more than had been projected. The Biden administration’s stimulus plan also channeled some $27 billion in federal aid to the state.All but about $38 billion of that revenue, by law, must go to public schools, various budget reserves and other obligations. Some, too, must be rebated to taxpayers by mid-2023. The governor’s proposal included some $11 billion to pay down the state’s long-term liability for public employee pensions. And he took some heat from an independent state analyst on Monday for holding onto about $8 billion he had pulled from cash reserves last year, instead of repaying it.Still, the situation is a far cry from 2003, when the dot-com bust and tight state budgets fueled the recall of Gov. Gray Davis, said Rob Stutzman, a Republican political consultant.“Politicians rarely lose when they’re handing out money,” Stutzman said. “And the state is just flush with cash.”It also may reflect a new resolve about government spending.Raphael Sonenshein, the executive director of the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at California State University, Los Angeles, regards Newsom’s proposal as part of a new embrace of government largess in the Democratic Party. Gone, he said, is the split-the-difference frugality of, say, Gov. Jerry Brown.“Partly it’s the country coming out of the pandemic, and partly it’s what is coming out of Washington, D.C.,” he said. “But states — and not just California — are in a position not to just repair but to even reverse the decline in the social safety net. And that’s a big deal.”President Biden’s New Deal-inspired plans to help the nation recover from the pandemic have paved the way for sweeping state-level proposals such as Newsom’s, Sonenshein said. So has the sense among financial experts that government could and should have intervened more aggressively to head off the Great Recession in 2008.“I think the hold of austerity politics has been so strong for so long that people didn’t question a lot of the orthodoxy. But that has changed,” he said.Here’s what else to know todayPier 39 in San Francisco in March soon after the state reopened from a strict lockdown.Jim Wilson/The New York TimesCalifornia will wait until next month to adopt the new C.D.C. guidance that fully vaccinated people can drop their masks in most settings. State health officials said on Monday they wanted to give Californians more time to get vaccinated and prepare for the change, The Los Angeles Times reports.The Palisades fire in western Los Angeles was 23 percent contained on Monday. Experts called it a warning that California faces an unusually early fire season this summer as a severe drought takes hold.After an extraordinary 14-month hiatus caused by the pandemic, Robert Durst’s murder trial was set to resume this week in Los Angeles.Governor Newsom and his wife saw their income rise in 2019 during his first year in office. The couple made $1.7 million, much of it from Newsom’s winery and restaurant businesses that he put in a blind trust when he became governor, The Associated Press reports.Rob Bonta, California’s first Filipino-American attorney general, keeps a photo in his office of a sign hung in a Stockton hotel lobby in 1920: “Positively no Filipinos allowed.” In an interview with The Los Angeles Times, Bonta said he was called racist names as a child in the Sacramento area, and he described the recent anti-Asian attacks as a “full-on state emergency.”Relatives of George Floyd and their lawyer Ben Crump attended a rally at Pasadena City Hall on Monday, calling for the firing of the police officer who shot and killed Anthony McClain, a Black man whose death last year has angered Black Lives Matter activists. KTLA reports that more than 100 people rallied outside City Hall, and officials reacted by shutting the building and canceling a scheduled City Council meeting.The California lumber town of Weed was named for a 19th-century timber baron, Abner Weed. For years, Weed the town refused to embrace that other more famous weed. But no longer. The town had a change of heart, opened the door to the pot industry and now leverages the cosmic humor of its name.Relations have soured between John Cox, the Republican recall candidate, and conservative recall organizers. Cox pledged to make a $100,000 donation to the campaign to recall the governor, but has given only half of the money, The San Francisco Chronicle reports.The demand for Covid-19 vaccine shots for adults has declined in Ventura County, where officials announced that two of the county’s largest vaccination sites will cut back their hours and be open three days a week instead of six, The Ventura County Star reports.California Today goes live at 6:30 a.m. Pacific time weekdays. Tell us what you want to see: CAtoday@nytimes.com. Were you forwarded this email? Sign up for California Today here and read every edition online here. More

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      How New York’s Mayoral Hopefuls Would Change the N.Y.P.D.

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      Some candidates in the Democratic primary want to cut $1 billion or more from the police budget, while others have more moderate proposals, frustrating activists.When the former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was found guilty this week of murdering George Floyd, the Democrats running for mayor of New York City, unsurprisingly, offered a unanimous chorus of support.The two leading moderates in the race — Andrew Yang and Eric Adams — said that justice had been delivered, but that the verdict was only the first step toward real police accountability. Maya Wiley and Scott Stringer, two left-leaning candidates, seized the moment more overtly, appearing with other mayoral hopefuls at a rally at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, the site of many of last year’s Black Lives Matter protests.“For once, we got a little bit of what we deserve — to be seen as people who deserve to breathe,” Ms. Wiley said to a crowd, within hours of the verdict.But the candidates’ unanimity disappears when it comes to their approaches to running the New York Police Department, the nation’s largest. From the size of the police budget to disciplining rogue officers, the candidates offer starkly different visions.In the wake of the Floyd case and other recent police killings, several candidates on the left, including Ms. Wiley and Mr. Stringer, have adopted the goals of the “defund the police” movement and want to significantly cut the police budget and divert resources into social services.Another candidate, Dianne Morales, a former nonprofit executive who also attended the rally at Barclays, has embraced that movement more fully, calling for slashing the $6 billion budget in half and for eventually abolishing the police altogether. She and others argue that having fewer officers would reduce violent encounters with the police.But Mr. Yang and Mr. Adams, more centrist candidates, strongly oppose reducing the police force and instead are calling for more expeditious decisions on police discipline and for improving accountability.The debate is happening at a precarious moment for New York City, which is facing a troubling rise in gun violence: Last year was the city’s bloodiest in nearly a decade, and the number of shooting victims doubled to more than 1,500.Shootings typically spike as the weather gets warmer, and the coming months will reveal whether the increase in violence over the last year was an aberration linked to the pandemic or the beginning of a worrisome trend.If gun violence increases in May and June, in the weeks leading up to the June 22 primary that is likely to decide the city’s next mayor, it could have an outsize impact on the race. And it may help moderate candidates like Mr. Yang, a former presidential hopeful, and Mr. Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, who tied for first when voters were asked in a recent poll which candidate would best handle crime and public safety.Mr. Adams, a Black former police captain, has positioned himself as a law-and-order candidate, saying that he is far better equipped than his rivals to make the city safer — a key step in its recovery from the pandemic.“Public safety is the prerequisite to prosperity in this city,” Mr. Adams often repeats on the campaign trail.Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, is a former New York City police captain who strongly opposes reducing the size of the force.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesMr. Adams is allied with moderate Black lawmakers who have criticized the defund movement and have argued that their communities do not want officers to disappear. Similarly, Mr. Yang supports some police reform measures but has not embraced the defund movement.Chivona Renee Newsome, a co-founder of Black Lives Matter Greater New York, said she feared that Mr. Yang or Mr. Adams would not bring meaningful changes to the Police Department.“I want a mayor who will listen,” she said, someone who was “not at the mercy of the N.Y.P.D.”Calls for sweeping changes and a push to defund the police last summer led to laws banning chokeholds, limiting legal protections for officers facing lawsuits and opening police disciplinary records to the public. But elected officials did not make substantial cuts to the police budget or limit the types of situations officers respond to.“We’re long past the time where people are going to be satisfied with cosmetic reforms or some attempts that really don’t get at the root question around reducing police violence and surveillance, increasing police accountability and transparency, and basically divesting from the N.Y.P.D.’s bloated budget and reinvesting that into our communities,” said Joo-Hyun Kang, the director of Communities United for Police Reform.Left-wing activists are already applying a fresh round of pressure on the City Council and Mayor Bill de Blasio to reduce police spending in next year’s budget.The death of Eric Garner in Staten Island in 2014 put a particular focus on holding officers accountable. Daniel Pantaleo, the officer who put Mr. Garner in a chokehold, was not criminally charged, and it took the city five years to fire him from the Police Department.Mr. Garner’s mother, Gwen Carr, endorsed Raymond J. McGuire, a former Wall Street executive who has more moderate views on policing. Ms. Carr said the next mayor would only be able to tackle police reform if the city’s finances were stabilized. Mr. McGuire supports measures like increasing funding for the Civilian Complaint Review Board, which investigates accusations of police brutality and misconduct and makes disciplinary recommendations.The next mayor and his or her police commissioner will have to resolve a host of thorny issues: how to discipline officers; whether the police should respond to calls involving the homeless and mental health issues; and how to address protests over police brutality. To put it more simply, in the post-Floyd era, what is the correct form and function of the police force and its 35,000 officers?When it comes to firing an officer, Mr. Yang believes the police commissioner should continue to have final say; Mr. Adams argues it should be the mayor; and Mr. Stringer wants it to be the Civilian Complaint Review Board. Ms. Wiley has not given a clear answer.The left-leaning candidates want to prevent police officers from responding to mental health emergencies and remove them from schools; Mr. Yang and Mr. Adams are reluctant to do so.While Mr. Stringer, the city comptroller, and Ms. Wiley, a former counsel to Mr. de Blasio and former chair of the Civilian Complaint Review Board, have distanced themselves from the word “defund,” they both want to cut the police budget. Ms. Wiley has suggested cutting $1 billion per year. Mr. Stringer says he would trim at least $1 billion over four years and released a detailed plan to transfer 911 calls for issues involving homelessness and mental health to civilian crisis response teams.Scott Stringer, the city comptroller, has proposed removing police officers from public schools in New York City.Benjamin Norman for The New York TimesMs. Morales has called for the most sweeping changes to the criminal justice system: She wants to decriminalize all drug use, eliminate bail and build no new jails. Two other candidates — Kathryn Garcia, the city’s former sanitation commissioner, and Shaun Donovan, the former federal housing secretary — have more moderate positions that are nuanced enough that activists have created spreadsheets to keep track of where the candidates stand.Mr. Yang and Mr. Adams have their own proposals, but activists are skeptical. Earlier this month, when Mr. Yang attended a bike vigil for Daunte Wright, a young man killed by the police in Minnesota, an organizer recognized him and grabbed a bullhorn.“You’re pro-cop — get out of here,” she said. “Boo! Shame on you, Andrew Yang.”Mr. Yang said in an interview that he decided to leave after that, and that he had spent more than an hour with the group biking from Barclays Center to Battery Park in Lower Manhattan.“I wanted to join this event in order to really have a chance to reflect and mourn for Daunte Wright’s unnecessary death at the hands of law enforcement,” he said.Mr. Yang said he supported measures like requiring officers to live in the city and appointing a civilian police commissioner who is not steeped in the department’s culture. He said officers like Mr. Pantaleo should be fired quickly. But he rejected the idea that he was pro-police or anti-police.“I think most New Yorkers know that we have to do two things at once — work with them to bring down the levels of shootings and violent crimes that are on the rise, and we also need to reform the culture,” Mr. Yang said.Andrew Yang has said that he would choose a civilian police commissioner if elected mayor.Spencer Platt/Getty ImagesProtesters were upset that Mr. Yang called for an increase in funding for a police task force in response to anti-Asian attacks. They also have doubts about Mr. Yang because Tusk Strategies, a firm that advises him, has worked with the Police Benevolent Association, the police union, which embraced President Donald J. Trump.Mr. Adams attended the same vigil for Mr. Wright, and he was peppered with questions over his support of the stop-and-frisk policing strategy. Such stops soared under Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, and they disproportionately targeted Black and Latino men. Mr. Adams said he believed stop-and-frisk could be a useful tool, but that it was abused under Mr. Bloomberg.Mr. Adams has offered his own ideas: diversifying the Police Department, where Black officers are underrepresented; disclosing the department’s own internal list of officers with records of complaints and giving communities veto power over precinct commanders.He also argues that he is the only candidate with the credibility to transform the force. Mr. Adams has said that he was beaten by the police as a young man and that inspired him to push for changes when he later joined the Police Department.In an interview, Mr. Adams said that it took the city too long to fire Mr. Pantaleo and he would move more quickly on disciplinary matters if elected.“I’m going to have a fair but speedy trial within a two-month period to determine if that officer should remain a police officer,” he said. “And if not, we’re going to expeditiously remove him from the agency. The goal here is to rebuild trust.”Mr. Adams wants to appoint the city’s first female police commissioner, and he has spoken highly of a top official, Chief Juanita Holmes, whom the current police commissioner, Dermot F. Shea, lured out of retirement. Mr. Yang is also considering Ms. Holmes or Val Demings, a congresswoman from Florida and a former police chief, according to a person familiar with his thinking.Mr. de Blasio has praised a new disciplinary matrix that standardizes the range of penalties for offenses like using chokeholds and lying on official paperwork. But while current leaders settled on these rules, the agreement signed by the police commissioner and the chairman of the Civilian Complaint Review Board is not legally binding, allowing the next administration to set its own policies.Many of the mayoral candidates have called for changing how the city handles mental health emergencies. Since 2014, N.Y.P.D. officers have killed more than 15 people with histories of mental illness. The city is currently conducting a small experiment that sends social workers instead of police out on calls with emergency medical technicians in parts of Harlem.As the Police Department says it is trying to build trust with the community, one recent decision appeared slightly tone deaf: bringing a robot dog to an arrest at a public housing building. The candidates criticized the use of the device, which costs at least $74,000.Mr. Adams said the money would be better spent “stopping gun violence in communities of color.”“You can’t build the trust we need between those communities and police with a robot,” he said. More

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      How a Surprise Candidate Has Shaken Up a Key New York City Election

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      The late entry of the City Council speaker, Corey Johnson, inserted tension, money and name recognition into the comptroller’s race. The winner will guide New York’s post-pandemic economic recovery.The phone call came earlier this month, not long after Corey Johnson made his surprise late decision to join the New York City comptroller’s race.It was a message delivered on behalf of Representative Jerrold L. Nadler, New York State’s most senior House member, and it was hardly a welcome-mat rollout: Would Mr. Johnson, the City Council speaker, reconsider his decision to run?Mr. Nadler, whose congressional district overlaps with Mr. Johnson’s, had already given his endorsement to Brad Lander, a progressive councilman from Brooklyn.“Brad really wants the job,” said Mr. Nadler, adding in an interview that he was unaware of the call, which was made by a senior staff member. “It’s not a second job because he dropped out of anything.”For much of last year, Mr. Johnson was considered a leading candidate in the 2021 mayor’s race. He dropped out in September, citing the toll that the isolation of the coronavirus pandemic had taken on his mental health. Doing his job as the leader of the City Council while running for mayor would be too much, he said.But by February, Mr. Johnson said his mental health had significantly improved, and he concluded that he wanted to run for city comptroller, partly because he thought he was best qualified to help guide the city’s recovery from the pandemic.Like the race for mayor, the contest for comptroller may be the city’s most consequential in decades, and the June 22 Democratic primary will most likely decide its winner. One of only three citywide elected positions, the comptroller is the fiduciary for five pension funds that are valued at $248 billion and cover almost 620,000 people. The office is responsible for approving public borrowing, serves as the city’s chief auditor and reviews tens of thousands of contracts.Those roles will be even more important given the financial difficulties caused by the pandemic. The city had a 20 percent unemployment rate, and is still projecting hefty future budget gaps. The comptroller will have an important role in overseeing how $6 billion in federal stimulus is spent.“The next comptroller will be the eyes and ears of how the mayor brings back the economy,” said Scott M. Stringer, the current comptroller, who is running for mayor. “We’re on the edge.”The late entry of a well-known Democratic contender into the comptroller’s race bears similarities to the 2013 contest. Mr. Stringer, then the Manhattan borough president, was the front-runner after he — like Mr. Johnson — dropped out of the race for mayor. The former governor Eliot Spitzer, who had resigned from office after a sex scandal, then entered the contest late — like Mr. Johnson. Mr. Stringer prevailed in a close primary election.This year’s contest had seemed to revolve around four elected Democratic officials: Mr. Lander; Brian Benjamin, a state senator representing Harlem and the Upper West Side; Kevin Parker, a state senator from Brooklyn; and David Weprin, a state assemblyman from Queens. State Senator Brian Benjamin is focusing his campaign for comptroller on communities of color and pension-fund retirees who still live in the city.Dave Sanders for The New York TimesTwo newer candidates, Michelle Caruso-Cabrera, a former CNBC anchor who ran in a congressional primary against Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Zach Iscol, a nonprofit entrepreneur and former Marine who dropped out of the mayor’s race, recently joined the race. But neither has affected it in the way Mr. Johnson has.“He will have the same disruptive effect on the comptroller’s race that Andrew Yang had on the mayor’s race,” said Representative Ritchie Torres of the Bronx, who has endorsed both men. “Corey’s a juggernaut given his overwhelming name recognition and fund-raising.”Upon entering the race, Mr. Johnson immediately announced the endorsements of three fellow Council members, and the head of the Hotel Trades Council showed up at Madison Square Park, where Mr. Johnson announced his bid, to endorse him in person. District Council 37, New York City’s largest public sector union, recently gave Mr. Johnson its endorsement, which would otherwise have gone to Mr. Benjamin, according to multiple sources.“No disrespect to Brian because he is a rising star within the party, but Corey’s experience, having led the City Council and having worked with us, changed the dynamics of this race,” said Henry Garrido, the executive director of D.C. 37.And yet, Mr. Lander may be the candidate with the most to lose from Mr. Johnson’s entry.Mr. Lander has been planning a run for comptroller since shortly after he was re-elected to the City Council in 2017. He is a co-founder of the City Council’s progressive caucus who wrote of his privilege as a white man. He was recently endorsed by Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, and he might be the only person in New York City who speaks gleefully of having met recently with every living former city comptroller.His plans to use the office to address climate change and ensure an equitable recovery from the pandemic earned him early endorsements from unions, progressive groups and politicians such as Representative Jamaal Bowman and Tiffany Cabán, a candidate for the City Council who nearly pulled off a long-shot campaign for Queens district attorney.But at least two endorsements that Mr. Lander was expecting were withheld after Mr. Johnson’s announcement.Mr. Lander has responded with an aggressive effort to counter Mr. Johnson. His campaign released a list of endorsements from transportation advocates, some of whom had previously supported Mr. Johnson for mayor. One of Mr. Johnson’s signature proposals as speaker was a master plan to upgrade city streets, bike lanes and pedestrian spaces, which the City Council approved in 2019. In early March, Mr. Lander unveiled a list of endorsements from leaders in the L.G.B.T.Q. community. Mr. Johnson is openly gay.The day after Mr. Johnson announced his candidacy, Mr. Lander campaigned in Mr. Johnson’s Council district in Hell’s Kitchen.“Attention to the race is good,” Mr. Lander said, while soliciting petitions to get on the ballot. “This is a very high-stakes moment for the city. We need leaders who have shown up for this crisis and are prepared for the job.”Part of Mr. Johnson’s difficulties last summer followed the City Council’s failure to cut $1 billion from the Police Department budget and shift the money toward social services, as he had promised to do in the wake of the protests spurred by the killing of George Floyd.“When the chips were on the table, he folded,” said Jonathan Westin, director of New York Communities for Change, a progressive advocacy group for low- and moderate-income New Yorkers that has endorsed Mr. Lander. “It leads to the question of how capable he will be in standing up to those massive forces pushing back against progressive change as comptroller.”The anger among advocates of the police budget cuts was palpable: Protesters gathered outside Mr. Johnson’s boyfriend’s apartment building, and it was vandalized.Brad Lander, center, has been planning a run for comptroller since shorty after he was re-elected to the City Council in 2017.Victor J. Blue for The New York Times“It was hard last spring and last summer and early fall,” Mr. Johnson said. “But I don’t feel like I’m anywhere near the place I was because I took the time to focus on myself and my well-being and my recovery.”Mr. Johnson said he had been feeling healthy for months when in February colleagues and union leaders began encouraging him to enter the race.“I know the city’s finances better than anyone after negotiating multiple budgets and serving as speaker,” Mr. Johnson said. “I feel ready to be the city’s chief financial officer.”As of the most recent filing period, Mr. Lander had $3.4 million on hand, double the $1.7 million Mr. Benjamin had in his account, and was on his way to reaching the $4.5 million spending cap. Mr. Johnson, based on his fund-raising from the mayoral race, will most likely receive the maximum $4 million matching-funds payment, automatically placing him at the spending cap without his having to make a single fund-raising call. Mr. Lander is also likely to raise the maximum allowed.Helen Rosenthal, a Manhattan councilwoman who dropped out of the race for comptroller and endorsed Mr. Johnson, noted that he had negotiated three budgets while prioritizing reserves that the city was able to use during the pandemic-induced economic downturn.“When he was negotiating the budget, everything was coming at him,” Ms. Rosenthal said. “People were throwing paint at his boyfriend’s door. It was too much.” She added, “If any of the candidates want to say, ‘I know this budget inside and out,’ it’s Corey who actually does.”Mr. Benjamin, who earned degrees from Brown University and Harvard University, and worked as an investment adviser at Morgan Stanley, may benefit if the battle between Mr. Johnson and Mr. Lander turns off voters, or compels some to list only one of them in ranked-choice ballots. His campaign is focusing on communities of color and the thousands of pension-fund retirees who still live in the city.“In 2013, Christine Quinn had the most name recognition in the mayor’s race and she didn’t make it,” Mr. Benjamin said. “Eliot Spitzer had significantly more name recognition than Scott Stringer. He didn’t make it either.” More