11:22 am Jun. 13, 20121
Early Tuesday morning, Mayor Michael Bloomberg spoke at a City & State-sponsored forum at N.Y.U. about what his administration was doing to help minority- and woman-owned companies in the city.
A few hours later, at what was billed as the first official 2013 mayoral forum, six politicians vying to replace him in 2013 spoke about what he wasn't doing.
City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, commonly thought to be Bloomberg's preferred candidate for mayor, at first tried to avoid the exercise altogether. But, asked to grade the administration's efforts, she said the results were "not satisfactory," a phrase she repeated several more times.
"They're not satisfactory because they don't even begin to come up to meeting the level of talent and skill that is out there," she said.
David Chen, the Times' City Hall bureau chief and the forum's moderator, intervened.
"Madame Speaker, if I may … 'unsatisfactory' is kind of a big field," he said.
"I went to Catholic School, so the grades were either E excellent, S satisfactory, U unsatisfactory," said Quinn, before finally arriving at a "C/C-."
The three candidates who preceded Quinn in answering the question had also given Bloomberg poor grades.
Tom Allon, who said that when he was a teacher he had a reputation as an "easy grader," gave the mayor a B- "for effort" and a C- "for results."
Public Advocate Bill de Blasio gave the mayor an "F," explaining, "We haven't seen results."
Comptroller John Liu likewise gave the administration an "F."
Chen had less success getting precise responses from the final two candidates on the dais: Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer and former comptroller Bill Thompson.
"I would say in all fairness to the mayor that it's an incomplete," said Stringer.
"So Scott, 'incomplete' is fine and good but it doesn't really do a lot for me or my many reporters who are here," replied Chen.
"David Chen, this is not the lightning round of the NY1 debate," replied Stringer.
He then offered an explanation, of sorts: "At the end of the day, the totality of the effort was never fully realized, and that's really why I feel it's an incomplete."
Thompson said, "The efforts on the behalf of the Bloomberg administration and the mayor have been failing."
"So I take that as an 'F,' correct?" asked Chen.
"I took that as a failing grade," said Thompson.
It seems to me that it is not fair to ask the current candidates to give the Mayor such a grade. For good basic reasons, this has not been his primary focus in office. He did, show up and give a speech at the beginning of the event and show support for the Women and Minority Small Businesses. It somewhat depends on the relative importance of Women and Minority Small Businesses in the pie chart of everything that goes on in NY, including the children in K-12 schools, the pension reform, the transportation, the NYPD and crime stats, etc.
I don't know if helping small women and minority businesses is more important than having a city with a higher violent crime rate (which the Mayor and the NYPD have prevented by far, compared to Philadelphia and DC. The Mayors office delivers statistics and related messages to us which are either true, or credible enough for people to therefore be able to easily do business in person in the city
For the small percentage of the job that the Mayor should be doing for Minority and Women Businesses, perhaps it should improve to be more of a focus of his current politics so he can make progress there. It may be a good idea for growing businesses to include as Owners Minority and Women in order to take advantage of this Eye on Women and Minority Businesses from the Mayor's Office.
So basically, for what % of his agenda it is, he maybe can take a grade such as C since he hasn't really done the job but showed up with the idea that it is something to do. It may even be less than 1% of his political agenda.
Perhaps this should improve to between 2%-5% of his political agenda. Maybe more like 3%. Then, he could attempt to prioritize this and earn his A, or B if there are crises elsewhere, while benefiting the businesses directly and indirectly.
More practically, he maybe could change some of his many other political decisions to include things which may help Minority and Women Businesses further. For just a few examples, this could include taxes, transportation, training programs, diversity training, client referral services, subsidies for many types and not just this type of business, economic development in general in the City and the USA, offering non-monetary awards to quite a few small businesses to help their marketing efforts, working on crime rates and school systems so people can save on related individual costs to then use their own regular money to invest in their companies and be consumers of other small businesses, etc.