If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg Testifies Before the New York State Financial Control Board Meeting. July 31, 2003
Source: www.nyc.gov photo gallery (Photo Credit: Kimberlee Hewitt)

Mayor Bloomberg is like an inquisitive, but slightly incompetent mechanic, who wanders around the repair shop tinkering with all the new machines. As soon as he begins to fix a machine, it soon breaks down, and malfunctions. The Mayor has been tinkering with various aspects of social policy in the City of New York, and his foray in the field of social engineering has been an abysmal failure. Some of the Mayor's close advisors should whisper in his ear, "We admire your energy and enthusiasm, Mr. Mayor, but if the machine ain't broke, please don't fix it."
The Mayor's foray in the field of school governance has not exactly been an unqualified success. He transferred the Central Board from Livingston Street to Chamber Street, fired the old Superintendent and appointed new ones, and abolished the 32 school boards. Instead of improved efficiency and services, there has been widespread confusion and chaos. Parents are confused about the curriculum of their children's schools, they are unsure of the new transfer policy, and people are general unsure of who is in charge of what at the Central Board of education.
The Mayor's foray in the field of budgetary policy has met with disastrous consequences. Intimidated by the prospect of a large budget deficit, the Mayor became like the Texas chainsaw slasher, cutting, slashing and chopping every program in sight, from firehouses and libraries, to museums and senior citizen centers. It took courageous action by the State Legislative and the City Council, to restore some sanity to this momentary fit of fiscal madness.
The Mayor's excursion in the field of immigration policy has also been an unmitigated disaster. For some unexplained reason, the Mayor decided to rescind an Executive Order that had been regarded as the Holy Grail of progressive immigration policy- Executive Order 124-enacted by former Mayor Koch in 1989. This Executive Order prohibited city employees from enquiring about a person's immigration status, and from transmitting that information about a person's immigration status to the federal immigration authorities. It was called the "Don't ask, don't tell" policy.
The Mayor's decision to rescind Executive Order 124 brought howls of protest from virtually every immigrant group in the city. They wondered how the Mayor could tinker with an Executive Order that was so clearly protective of immigrants' rights of confidentiality and had been followed by every Mayor and city official since 1989. The Mayor's response was somewhat disingenuous. He pointed to the new Executive Order that he had enacted, Executive Order 34. However, Executive Order 34 merely prohibited city employees from "enquiring about a person's immigration status," but it does not explicitly prohibit these city employees from transmitting the information to the Department of Homeland Security. It is called the "Don't ask, just tell" policy. 

 The Mayor seemed surprised by the vocal response from the immigrant organizations. He sarcastically stated that his opponents "don't know how to read" and insisted that Executive Order 34 was the same as Koch's Executive Order 124. "No, Mr. Mayor, your opponents not only know how to read, but they know how to read behind the fine print." They know that there is a fundamental difference between "don't ask, and don't tell" policies; between a policy which merely prohibits an official from asking about an individual's immigration status, and a policy which explicitly prohibits that official from disseminating that information to the federal immigration authorities. The Mayor's decision to rescind Executive Order 124 was a political decision that came as a direct response to pressure from a conservative, anti-immigrant, lobbying group by the Orwell's euphemism called the "Friends of Immigration Law Enforcement (FILE)." On January 18, 2003, this group wrote a letter to the Mayor, condemning Executive Order 124 for providing sanctuary for illegal aliens predisposed to committing violent crimes. It linked Executive Order 124 to a gang rape perpetuated by illegal aliens near Shea Stadium on December 19, 2002. The letter ended by calling upon the Mayor to rescind Executive Order 124. On May 13, 2003, four months later, Mayor Bloomberg obediently followed FILE's demand and explicitly revoked Executive Order 124.
What makes the Mayor's Executive Order so intellectually dishonest, is the fact that the Mayor and immigrant advocates have been meeting for over a year to get the Mayor to support a Freedom of Access bill that Councilman Hiram Monserrate, Chairperson of the Civil Rights subcommittee, was introducing in the City Council. This bill, called Intro 326, was crafted to overcome the constitutional objections to Executive Order 124 raised by the US Court of Appeals in a case called City of New York v United States of America. The Mayor broke off the negotiations with Councilman Monserrate and the immigrants' advocates, and like Nicodemus, he enacted Executive Order 34, in the dead of night.
Intro 326, which reflects a generalized confidentiality policy, would prohibit city officials from disseminating "confidential information" to anyone except another city employee. Included in the definition of "confidential information" is information about a person's immigration status. This legislation reflects the progressive immigration policy enacted by Mayor Koch, while at the same time overcomes the constitutional objections raised by the Court of Appeals. It is a piece of legislation that is obviously superior to Bloomberg's Executive Order 34. So, I would urge the Mayor not only to heed the admonition, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it", but if he decides to fix it, at least fix it not with an inferior product such as Executive Order 34, but with a patently superior product, such as Intro 326.t

 

 

 

 

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