De Blasio Pledged to Enhance Inequality in New York. Did He?

Some former allies grew disillusioned. Mr. de Blasio waited till late in his second time period to phase out the gifted and talented program for elementary colleges, and to open supervised drug injection sites. A plan to create 100,000 jobs that paid $50,000 or extra confronted criticism for not doing sufficient to include New Yorkers in the city’s poorest neighborhoods.

Bertha Lewis, president of the Black Institute, who helped Mr. de Blasio win over progressives through the 2013 Democratic main for mayor, stated it turned tough to defend Mr. de Blasio as a result of he did not act on key points. His allies wished the all-hands on deck strategy that the mayor had used to win prekindergarten to confront different points like public housing however Mr. de Blasio typically appeared unwilling to threat the political capital to take action.

Ms. Lewis referred to as common prekindergarten “an incredible accomplishment,” however stated that this system alone was not sufficient to declare victory in opposition to inequality.

“How long are you going to ride that surfboard?” she stated.

James Parrott, an economist with the Middle for New York Metropolis Affairs on the New Faculty, stated Mr. de Blasio doesn’t get sufficient credit score for “actively using policy to actually reduce poverty,” together with instituting different labor protections like settling union contracts.

Staff within the backside half of the financial system noticed a 15 p.c enhance in wage share from 2013 to 2019, whereas the remainder of the nation held regular, based on Mr. Parrott’s evaluation of information from the Unbiased Price range Workplace.

The low cost MetroCard proposal appeared to suit squarely inside Mr. de Blasio’s left-wing rhetoric. Mr. Jones pitched the concept to the mayor, and Mr. de Blasio favored it a lot that he referred to as Mr. Jones and stated he was going to nominate him to the board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to assist see it via.

“Almost immediately after that, he began moon-walking away from it,” Mr. Jones stated.

Mr. de Blasio unsuccessfully argued that Mr. Cuomo ought to pay for this system since he ran the subway. On the identical time, the mayor introduced important metropolis funding for a closely sponsored ferry system that’s used largely by prosperous, white New Yorkers.