The sheer magnitude of the human suffering and economic cost of Superstorm Sandy gets clearer every day. The initial responses of individual New Yorkers, and of elected officials, were mostly well-intentioned, somewhat effective and a prelude for the big decisions coming.
That is where our decent impulses, our intelligent management of government, and raw politics will intersect. And politics there will be, as Gov. Andrew Cuomo uses the moment to change the political conversation for 2013.
You can assume that there will be much elbowing for control of the reconstruction effort amongst three powerful New York elected officials, Cuomo. Michael Bloomberg and Chuck Schumer, with an active interest from Obama. It would be nice to avoid the internecine battles that defined the rebuilding of the World Trade Center. That debacle yielded an unaccountable state authority, the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., that explains a decade of delay and false starts
But some sort of super-authority is likely to emerge as a rebuilding vehicle. That's not good news, but there are few governance alternatives out there.
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From Cuomo's point of view, he's looking at that rarest of things, a pile of free money that he might be able to control. Whether the cost is $41 billion or less, a lot of it will come from the feds. For a governor facing major budget gaps, free money is a financial windfall with enormous political consequence.
On the other hand, Bloomberg views the rebuilding process as a city task (with some legal backing — more on that below), and Schumer will demand a real say in the use of federal money he helps secure. Shelly Silver and Dean Skelos (or whoever's the Senate majority leader) will have to appropriate the federal money, so look for them, too. The pushing and shoving has begun, largely because of Cuomo's very public pressuring of Obama and Schumer to produce big money.
It's a real opportunity for Cuomo. Rebuilding and improving are the right things to do. But it's also a welcome opportunity to redefine himself politically. His first two years were marked by "progractionary" politics, left on social issues but hard right on taxes and spending. It's been very popular in New York.
But, especially after the November election results, being the Grinch who cut spending and taxes is not a smart place for a Democrat to be in 2016. A sharp pivot to an FDR-ish, Bob-The-Builder image is just what's needed. Look for the State of the State speech come January to emphasize the state's moral and economic leadership in rebuilding, budget gaps be damned. Again, it's the right thing to do, but it's savvy as well.
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There are three things Cuomo can do to move things along:
• First, stop muddying the distinction between federal dollars to repair storm damage and federal dollars to improve infrastructure, it's aggravating everyone. He's got a real good shot at housing, building, transit, beach, business and homeowner money. But it's going to be much harder to get the feds to spring for billion-dollar flood preventers or "smart" electrical grids.
• Second, see if a power-sharing agreement can be negotiated among the four or five big players. Power-sharing is not a hallmark of the Cuomo administration. But the public wants action and "my way or the highway" is politically dangerous.
• Third, own up to some responsibility for the failure to prevent the worst of the storm damage. While it might be fun to excoriate LIPA and Con Ed, there's a state law saying that the governor, not just the mayor, should have had an effective storm-surge prevention plan in place, and it seems like that didn't happen. Candor helps credibility-wise, and also with Bloomberg's correct assertion that the same state law makes rebuilding a city responsibility.
What will likely happen is that the three players will reach an impasse and President Barack Obama will decide who and how the federal money gets spent. That's good for Bloomberg, whom the President owes for the endorsement.
It's in Cuomo's interest to resolve all this before then, to compromise, and approach Obama with a united front. He's shown flexibility before, like on the millionaires tax. It's a test of his governing abilities as well as his political skills.
If he can't get it done, no Bob The Builder.
Brodsky is a former state assemblyman from Westchester County. He is now a fellow at the Demos think tank in New York City and at the Wagner School at NYU.