County Executive Candidates Throw Verbal Jabs During White Plains Debate

Westchester County Executive Robert Astorino and New Rochelle Mayor Noam Bramson shook hands and smiled prior to the start of Wednesday evening’s debate in White Plains.

But as pleasant as the event started, it didn’t take long for the two candidates in this year’s county executive race to start taking verbal shots at each other.

“If you want to talk about facts, I’m more than happy to talk about it,” Astorino said while criticizing Bramson for failing to rein in property taxes as mayor of New Rochelle. “I wouldn’t want to talk about your tax record either if I were you. But we’re going to talk about it and you’re going to have to face that over the next five weeks. ”

Said Bramson: “I’m not telling you to dislike Rob. We have to get out of the business of thinking that it’s necessary to dislike someone in order to disagree with them. But it is important that you recognize that this is the most right-wing and extreme administration in the modern history of Westchester County.”

Astorino, a Republican running for his second term as county executive, and Bramson, a Democrat who has served as New Rochelle’s mayor since 2006, were both in attack mode during the debate, which was organized by the Business Council of Westchester and hosted inside the The Reckson Metro Center on Hamilton Avenue. Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion at Marist College, moderated the event.

A panel composed of April Horton, director of external and government affairs at Verizon; Robert Cioffi, president of Progressive Computing; Cindy Rubino, vice president of government of affairs at Berkeley College; and Richard Swierat, executive director of Westchester Arc. Attendees were also given the opportunity to write questions to ask the candidates.

Video footage of the debate can be seen here on LoHud. Video footage from last month’s candidates forum on the environment can be found here.

Below are some the issues the candidates discussed.

Job Growth in Westchester County

Both candidates gave their ideas for creating jobs, attracting new businesses and retaining businesses in the county.

Bramson said it isn’t enough to give tax incentives and low-cost financing to prospective businesses. He said the county needs to focus on planning, infrastructure and skill training for future employees

“Unless we’re addressing all those things in a thoughtful, forward-looking way, we don’t have an economic strategy and I think it’s critical that we get one right away,” Bramson said.

Astorino pointed to that fact 27,000 new private sector jobs have been created in the county since he took office in 2009. The county had lost 10,000 prior to that, he said.

“We don’t take credit for all of those in anyway, but that means that businesses are seeing that Westchester is a bright spot again,” Astorino said. “It’s a place to actually settle down, do business, create jobs, expand or stay here when they were thinking of leaving.”

Astorino said Pepsico, which has its headquarters in Purchase, NY, was on the verge of leaving the county when he took office.

“They were ready to go to Plano, TX and we stepped in and met with senior executives,” Astorino said. “And we also lobbied very strongly against the sugar tax, which was proposed by Gov. Patterson, which was the last straw for Pepsi.”

After meetings with Pepsi executives, state officials and the county Industrial Development Agency, Astorino said his administration was able to persuade Pepsico to stay.

“Pepsico is not only staying here, along with their 1,100 jobs that would have gone somewhere else, but they’re staying here and they’re doubling down on Westchester County,” Astorino said. “They are knocking down their complex, building a whole new one. A $250 million investment, 1,100 construction jobs...that’s what it means to be a leader and to see a problem and to deal with it.”

But Bramson said there is 6 million square feet of vacant office space in the county along with a significant brain drain that needs to be addressed.

“It’s not enough to be focusing on specific deals, because the interactions that government is directly involved, that Rob mentioned, will always be dwarfed by those that occur on a purely private basis,” Bramson said. “So we have to have a broader vision that encompasses the things I brought up earlier.”

Taxes

When the topic of lowering taxes and maintaining services came up, Astorino pointed to his record of cutting the tax levy by 2 percent the past three years. He also accused Bramson of raising every tax he could think as mayor in New Rochelle and creating new taxes.

“That may not even by a cup of Starbucks for the next year, but you know what?,” Astorino said. “The arrow is going in the right way. It’s been stabilized as opposed to, under the Spano administration the previous five years, taxes had gone up 17 percent. Under Mr. Bramson, in New Rochelle, in his tenure he has raised taxes 109 percent...there is no reason for something like that.”

Bramson said the 109 percent tax increase happened during an 18 year period and he accused Astorino of intentionally misleading people by using the numbers out of context. Bramson also mentioned a ruling by the Westchester County Fair Campaign Practices Committee in August that said five claims Astorino made against against him in a television ad were unfair.

“If you look at the same period of time in all the big cities in Westchester County, it turns out that the rate in New Rochelle was the lowest and today New Rochelle has the lowest municipal tax rate of those same cities,” Bramson said.

Astorino said a 109 percent tax increase, even over an 18 year period, is still unacceptable.

“That is over 6.5 percent a year as a tax increase...people can’t live in this county with 6.5 percent tax increases,” Astorino said.

Rye Playland

Bramson said he is open-minded to different ways of managing Rye Playland, including private management. But he said that there needs to be an independent analysis of the financial terms, business plans and proposed capital investments that presented so far. He blamed the county government for failing to do its due diligence and set up a clear, open decision-making process.

“Unfortunately, what has occurred in the last year or two is a textbook example of how not to make decisions and it’s been unfair to everyone involved, to those who enjoy Playland and the applicants themselves,” Bramson said.

Astorino said the Rye Playland project has been open, with a citizens advisory committee and information readily available online. He said the current plan is one that will save taxpayers from having to spend $3 million to $5 million a year to subsidize the park and make sure it is viable through capital improvements and other enhancements.

“This is what’s going to turn around Playland,” Astorino said. “We’re bringing in the professionals to run Playland. The county has proven it can’t run an amusement park. We can’t, so what we’re going to do is take down the debt—the $32 million—we’re going to pay off that debt, and we’re going to bring in the professionals to actually manage the amusement park.”

Bramson called Astorino’s vision for Playland speculative.

“There is no timetable within the Playland improvement plan indicating when, in fact, we will be able to wean ourselves off that $3 million to $5 million annual subsidy,” Bramson said. “There’s no guarantee that any of the physical improvements that Rob spoke about will actually materialize. They are all phrased as maybes and in conditional terms.”

Affordable Housing Settlement

Astorino said he still doesn’t agree with the settlement brokered by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development in 2009 that requires the county to build 750 units of affordable housing in 31 of its predominantly white communities and to market those units to the nine counties surrounding Westchester.

But Astorino said the county has continued to comply with every term in the settlement.

“We’re doing things we don’t want to do, but we’re doing them,” Astorino said. “The housing that we’re building is good. We’ve been building affordable housing in this county for many decades. Towns have been building affordable housing on their own without the federal government marching in and dictating terms.”

Although the county is ahead of schedule in terms of building the 750 units, Astorino said the HUD has threatened the county, pushed the boundaries of the settlement and withheld Community Development Block Grant funds from local communities.

“Fundamentally, now the question comes down to who controls local zoning?” Astorino said. “Bureaucrats in Washington, DC on a national standard, as they are pushing now... or local communities? I will fight squarely with our communities to plan and zone for themselves and not bureaucrats in Washington, DC who want to dictate who lives where and how communities are built.”

Bramson said it was time to for the county to move on from the settlement and he called Astorino’s strategy for dealing with it a ‘self evident disaster’ that has prolonged the dispute. He accused Astorino of engaging in divisive rhetoric that is preventing the county from moving on.

“We need to start telling the truth,” Bramson said. “The requirement is 750 units and not the 11,000 that Mr. Astorino suggested in the state of the county address. When it comes to zoning, there is no requirement to aggregate out local zoning codes so that a high-rise building can be constructed on every block, which is a story that has been told repeatedly at town halls. Those are scare tactics intended to obscure the real issue that is in front of us.”

Tappan Zee Bridge

Bramson said it is his hope and expectation that there will be bus rapid transit on the Tappan Zee Bridge.

“The idea is not simply to speed people’s movement from the west bank of the Hudson to the east bank of the Hudson and vice versa,” Bramson said. “It has to be integrated into a larger system that we can actually use and that raises a whole series of critical questions.”

Bramson said those question include where to put connection points for mixed-use development and determining the infrastructure needed for those connection points.

“The fact is that this administration has not delved into those challenges the way that it has to,” Bramson said. “In fact, it’s taking us backwards.”

Bramson said the county planning department has been degraded too much to address these issues.

Astorino said he has been active with the Tappan Zee Bridge since he took office.

“My first year in office in 2010, I gave a very important speech at the Manhattan Institute in New York City and, to my surprise, it was picked by media all over,” Astorino said. “And I called for a replacement bridge to the Tappan Zee. Gov. Cuomo, who was then elected the following year and took office, to his credit said this was an important project and he has pushed this project forward and I’ve been with him every step of the way.”

Astorino said the one disagreement that he had with Cuomo was with the new bridge being designed without any mass transit on it.

“I had a vote on the New York Metropolitan Transit Council, it has to be unanimous, and I withheld my vote publicly and I told the governor that I would not support the bridge and the bridge would not be built unless there was mass transit on that bridge from day one,” Astorino said.

Astorino said he eventually changed his vote when the plan was altered to include lanes for bus rapid transit. He said the Tappan Zee Bridge Task Force is currently investigating ways is currently looking at ways to utilize bus rapid transit to move people to transit centers in White Plains or Tarrytown.

Bramson accused Astorino of not focusing enough on the planning steps that need to take place in the futures. He also accused Astorino of taking credit for all the work done by environmental and mass transit advocates to incorporate mass transit on the Tappan Zee Bridge.