With Patience and Fortitude: A Memoir

by Christine Quinn

  Nothing takes up more time on the City Council’s calendar than the budget. In January the mayor presents his preliminary budget. Then we review the budget and hold hearings—it’s a very involved process. The mayor then takes into consideration (or doesn’t) what comes out of the hearings and presents his executive budget in May. Between May and the end of June, it’s all budget all the time, but the real negotiations don’t start until June because you have to have a series of public hearings first. I’ve always thought it was rude to the public to be engaged in significant negotiations on the budget while the public hearings were still going on, because they’re coming to tell us what they think about the budget. And what the public thinks about the budget should in part inform our priorities.

  As lead negotiator for the City Council, I’m in constant motion. My life is a steady litany of input and decisions. “This is where we’re at.” “Do you think we should push on this?” “Should we accept that?” “I need you to think about this.” “We’re nowhere!” “Go back and try again!” And on and on. My first year was brutal, and not just for me. In addition to specific issues, my staff and I had to deal with all the broader budget issues. Should we raise taxes? If so, what kind? Should we cut this? Does the Department of Transportation need more funding because it was a bad winter and the roads are a mess? Does the Department of Education need more money for this or that? Should we put more dollars into the police? Should we keep all the firehouses open? And what about the specific requests from councilmembers? And what about my own priorities. I lost my temper from time to time negotiating all these issues, but somehow we all got through it, and it got easier each year: not because the decisions were necessarily easier to make, but because I learned how to work with my staff so that they could work with the mayor’s staff and we could have more effective and less contentious negotiations. Still, by definition the budget process is not easy and it’s messy. And each year’s budget presents its own problems because of the specific issues the city faces, and this changes from year to year.

  I was quickly reminded that no one in city government, including the Speaker, has absolute power. The mayor proposes the budget, and we negotiate and then adopt. Over the course of negotiating seven budgets, we struggled to keep tax increases to a minimum, and to limit layoffs, and the budget was always balanced. The heartbreak for me was that the financial collapse in 2008 forced us to make painful cuts, but none that I believed would put lives at risk. It’s extremely difficult when you don’t have enough money to do everything you’d like to do and you’re not able to fully fund the social services that you know are good and necessary. It’s excruciating to have to tell people, “You’re not going to get the amount of money you need to do the work you do.”

  There have also been wonderful times. Housing is a passion of mine. In a city the size of New York, there are invariably going to be a handful of landlords who let their buildings fall apart. They’re interested in collecting rent and don’t care about anything else, and they just assume they’ll never get caught. So you wind up with buildings where tenants are living in appalling conditions.

  The problem was—and had been for a long time—that the city didn’t have strong enough laws in place to force these owners to do what needed to be done.

  Before I became Speaker, given my history as a housing organizer, fixing up dilapidated housing was one of my major priorities. So once I became Speaker and was in a position to do something, we drafted and passed the Safe Housing Law. It focuses on the landlords who owned the two hundred worst buildings—the ones that have the most violations. This wasn’t just a matter of peeling paint and broken faucets. I remember visiting one building in Brooklyn and it was disgusting. I almost vomited from the garbage and the maggots. The conditions were unsafe and inhuman.

  To come up with an effective bill, my staff and I worked for a year with both tenant advocates and real estate folks, all in the room together. You couldn’t do it without the landlords, because they know how the buildings work. They’re not interested in protecting the slumlords, but they’re also not interested in letting all landlords get painted with a broad brush. We went about writing the bill with the recognition that not every building in the city of New York needs a big hammer, or that much attention, but that we should be targeting the worst buildings with greater attention.

  Everybody said there was no way we could come up with a meaningful bill that all sides would support, but we did. The bill gave the Department of Housing’s code-enforcement unit more latitude to arrange the necessary repairs on these buildings, and it gave the city the ability to sue these landlords and seize their assets to pay for the work that the city had done. And at the end of the day, if a landlord didn’t pony up and fix things, we could take away the building and sell it to a responsible nonprofit or to the tenants or to some other entity that would manage and maintain it properly.

  The bill passed and was signed into law. We held a press conference at a building in Brooklyn that was in really bad condition but was about to enter the new program as the first building to fall under our new law. A few months later we went back to see the building after it was redone, and it really looked nice.

  We visited another building about ten blocks away that was a horror show, and we were able to tell the people there that we’d done something that would help them. I could see skepticism in their eyes, and I didn’t blame them, because I could only imagine how many times their government had said it’d do something to help them and then nothing had happened. But I was able to say, “Don’t believe me. Go see what the city did to your neighbors’ building. This community organizer can take you there.” And they went. Knowing that their building would get to be as livable as the other one because of the Safe Housing Law was just a remarkable feeling.

  My only disappointment was that I wanted to do that press conference in Brooklyn with everybody—with both tenant organizers and landlords. But they refused to stand at a press conference with each other! I learned a long time ago that you never get everything you want, and this was one of those occasions where I had to be satisfied that I got nearly everything. And now we have a powerful weapon in the fight against deadbeat landlords.

  PHOTOGRAPHIC INSERT

  Just married! My parents, Larry and Mary Callaghan Quinn, on their wedding day at Good Shepherd Church, Inwood, New York, June 14, 1952.

  All dressed up with my family on the boardwalk at Rockaway Beach, Queens, New York, January 1968. From left to right: Aunt Julia, my mom, and my grandparents, John and Nellie Callaghan.

  A stylish threesome on Fifth Avenue in 1971, with my aunt, Julia (left), and my sister, Ellen (right).

  With my mother at my home away from home, the Glen View Farms stables in Glen Head, New York, in the mid-1970s.

  At a horse show my sister was in in the late 1970s.

  My father and I managed a little sightseeing while looking at colleges in Maine in the summer of 1983.

  Who is that under all those feathers? Dressed up as the Bantam, the Trinity College mascot, Hartford, Connecticut, mid-1980s.

  With my father on graduation day at Trinity College, 1988.

  While I was executive director of the New York City Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project, I held a joint news conference with then City Councilman Tom Duane to raise the alarm about an increase in anti-gay violence, June 1998.

  On a Hudson River pier in Chelsea with my friend Wayne Kawadler and our coparented dog, Andy, 1998.

  Steven Macauley

  We won! Celebrating my first election to the City Council with my political consultant, Mark Guma (far left), and Maura Keaney, my campaign manager, February 16, 1999.

  It’s official! The 1999 swearing-in for new members of the City Council. From left to right, with hands raised: Michael Nelson, James Oddo, and me. Witnessing are former City Council Minority Leader Thomas Ognibene (far left) and the former Speaker of the City Council Peter Vallone Sr. (far right).

  Dan Luhmann />
  Marching in the New York City LGBT Pride parade during Hillary Clinton’s first run for the United States Senate in June 2000. It was like being with a rock star! From left to right: former mayor Ed Koch (deceased), State Assemblyman Richard Gottfried, former City Councilman Phil Reid (deceased), Hillary Clinton, and me.

  For the 1992 Democratic National Convention, I got together with friends, including Laura Morrison, and members of the Gay & Lesbian Independent Democrats (a Democratic club serving New York County) to make posters (from this silkscreen). We handed them out to LGBT delegates as they entered the convention hall so for the first time ever there would be a visible LGBT presence on the convention floor.

  My father came to Dublin with me in 2007, and we marched in that city’s St. Patrick’s parade (wearing Irish/LGBT stickers). Maybe we’ll get to do that one day in the New York City St. Patrick’s Day parade!

  On a hayride with Kim in New Jersey, 2002.

  On vacation in western Canada, summer 2004.

  Sadie’s first night with us, and she was right at home, 2002.

  Meeting President Bill Clinton with my father and sister at the White House Christmas party, December 2000.

  White House photos

  Celebrating pride with President Barack Obama at the White House, June 2012, where we spoke with him about the fact that he’d announced support for marriage equality during the week of our wedding. No president has done more for the LGBT community!

  White House photos

  Relaxing after a press conference on an East River ferry with Mayor Michael Bloomberg where we discussed expanded service, 2010.

  Spencer Tucker

  As Speaker of the City Council, I deliver an annual State of the City Address. Here I am on February 11, 2013, delivering my final address as Speaker.

  William Alatriste

  March, 10, 2013: Announcing my run for New York City mayor, across the street from Good Shepherd Church, where my parents were married, surrounded by my family, friends, and supporters, including Kim’s father, Kim, my father, Ellen, our grand-nephew Jase, and our grand-niece Jordan.

  William Alatriste

  March 10, 2013: the first official day of my campaign for mayor as I kick off a five-borough “Walk and Talk Tour,” meeting voters in the Bronx.

  William Alatriste

  With my father on my wedding day, May 19, 2012.

  William Alatriste

  Kim on the arm of her proud father, Anthony Catullo.

  William Alatriste

  Judge Judith Kaye signs our marriage license while our wedding party looks on. Seated at table, from left to right: Wayne Kawadler, Judge Judith Kaye, and me. Standing, from far left to right along the back wall: Kelley Wisenger, Kevin Catullo, Robert Catullo, Audra Catullo, James Catullo Jr., James Catullo Sr. Standing, in the middle row behind Wayne Kawadler: Diane Catullo, Ellen Quinn, Larry Quinn, Anthony Catullo Sr., Dr. Robert Rohrbaugh, Vincent Catullo, John Wisenger, Kim Catullo, Deborah Wisenger. Standing behind Kim, but not visible: Terri Catullo.

  William Alatriste

  I’ve met my match! Dancing at the wedding reception with my friend and anti-gun violence advocate Jackie Rowe-Adams.

  William Alatriste

  Just married! I’d never been happier in my life, and I think it shows.

  William Alatriste

  PART III

  The Circle of Joy and Sorrow

  CHAPTER 12

  A Day in the Life

  The pace of social change sometimes moves at warp speed, yet sometimes it’s hard to remember what things were like before the change occurred. For many of us, marriage equality is an example of the acceleration of events. It seems so obvious to us now, and public opinion across the country has changed radically. But it doesn’t take a feat of memory to recall the time before everything changed.

  There was never a question in my mind that I would take an active role in lobbying state officials to vote in favor of granting same-sex couples the legal right to marry, because first and foremost I believed that passing marriage equality in New York was the right thing to do. Here’s why: if you have part of a law that affirmatively excludes a group of people—that says one group of people is less significant than another, and that it’s okay for that group to be left out of the framework of society—then it’s not only bad for that group, it sends the message to the larger society that it’s okay to have second-class citizens. But beyond that, it’s a kind of cancer on the law books, because if a law can affirmatively set aside the rights of one group of people, what’s going to stop discrimination from spreading to other groups that are out of favor with the larger society?

  As long as marriage is available, it should be available to everyone and anyone who wants it. It’s very important for the state to make certain that each family knows that it is recognized and supported and taken into consideration in the same way as every other family. The laws of the State of New York have to reach their arms out and wrap themselves around people in order to change a discriminatory policy into a legal affirmation. And for the State of New York to do this would send an affirmative message that it is a jurisdiction that is inclusive of everyone. That would have a ripple effect across the country. And that’s extremely important from both a political and a societal perspective.

  At a personal level, I see legal marriage as the way we in society affirm relationships. You could ask, “Shouldn’t relationships be a private thing?” But the truth is that some events are so significant that society has to witness and affirm them in order to really recognize them, whether it’s the swearing-in of the president of the United States or a marriage ceremony. That was something I thought LGBT people deserved and was going to be a powerfully good thing for people and families.

  Once the formal effort to pass marriage equality legislation in New York got under way in 2008, I felt compelled to participate for reasons beyond the fact that it was the right thing to do. First, before I was elected Speaker, I believed it was my responsibility, as one of the few openly LGBT members of the City Council, to represent the interests of all LGBT people in New York City. Each LGBT elected official out there feels that responsibility to a different degree; I believed it strongly. And I don’t think it’s any different for any other elected officials: You have your geographic constituency, which is based on the boundaries of the physical area you represent. And then you have a constituency based on who you are, to which you may feel a particular responsibility—to take a leading role on women’s issues or Irish issues or LBGT issues or African American issues or Latino issues or wherever you feel your particular voice can have a positive impact in representing the interests of your constituents.

  Also, as the highest-ranking LGBT elected official in the city, it was part of my broader job description to get directly involved in lobbying for the marriage equality bill by meeting with the state senators who held the keys to the bill’s passage. (By this point it was clear that the state assembly and the governor were on board and that only the senate was standing in the way.) And as Speaker, just by showing up I would be sending a far more powerful message to the senators than I could have as an elected official from Greenwich Village: the message that this was important legislation for the City of New York and, not incidentally, important to me personally. And as a gay woman who was partnered and wanted to be legally married, I could use my personal story in a way that I hoped would be persuasive with senators who needed persuading. For a lot of these senators, our meeting would be the first time they’d had to engage a high-ranking gay official, one who contradicted their perception that being LGBT was a negative, at least in terms of running for higher office.

  In some ways the fight for marriage equality was the end point of a two-decade effort to get domestic partnership recognition and benefits for same-sex couples. Years before marriage equality was even on the radar, when I was still a tenant organizer, I was involved in helping couples with basic issues, like protecting housing rights. New York is a cit
y of renters, and quite often for gay and lesbian couples, only one partner’s name is on the lease. So if that partner dies—and huge numbers of gay men were dying in the 1980s through the mid-1990s—the surviving partner had no succession rights and could be evicted.

  When I began my job for ANHD in 1989, a case working its way through the appeals process—Braschi v. Stahl—involved a gay man, Miguel Braschi, whose long-term partner had died. He was being evicted from the rent-controlled apartment they’d lived in together for more than a decade. (New York City has different kinds of rent regulations, the strictest being laws that were put in place during World War II to keep rents from spiking during a time when housing was in short supply.) In 1989, New York City’s rent regulations stated that upon the death of a rent-protected tenant, the landlord might not dispossess “either the surviving spouse of the deceased tenant or some other member of the deceased tenant’s family who has been living with the tenant.”