A political point that used to be made in a phone call now takes a public demonstration. Budget information once routinely distributed now requires a legal request. And you can just forget about the pleasantries.
With Republicans running the show in Washington, Albany and City Hall, borough Democrats are finding their pleas for budgetary mercy falling on deaf ears. Relying more on public pressure than private persuasion to combat cuts, budget battles have been public food fights, complete with marches and a public relations drive with television and subway ads.
"There's a 200 percent difference between this year and last year," said Jose Rivera, a city councilman who represents Fordham, Belmont and Crotona Park.
"We learned our lesson last year, when there were only a few small demonstrations against the first Giuliani budget cuts. This year, we've sent a clear message."
Indeed, there have been several major protests since the city and state budget cuts were proposed earlier this year, including a march from City Hall to Wall Street last Tuesday and Al Sharpton's well-publicized 170-mile, 15-day walk to Albany last month.
The state budget, which should have been approved by April 1, is being held up by a budget cut dispute between the Republican-controlled state Senate and Democratic Assembly. At City Hall, Mayor Giuliani is expected to announce his final budget plan later this month.
When Mario Cuomo and David Dinkins also rammed through their share of painful cuts, the difference was in size as well as scope. According to activists, the former governor and mayor worked closely with local officials and activists to craft the cuts in ways that would cause the least harm to their shared political constituencies. But they say that Governor George Pataki and Mayor Rudolph Giuliani are under no such pressure: they were elected to dramatically cut government spending and taxes.
"At this moment, we have an administration in Albany that doesn't care at all about the cuts, that's the difference between this and other years," said Dennis Rivera, president of Local 1199 of the National Health and Human Service Employees union and a key member of the coalition fighting the budget cuts. "So we've changed tactics. It's more dramatic and public."
Rivera leads a coalition of labor, the elderly and the disabled who have published �MDUL�The Weekly News �MDNM�to mobilize opposition to the cuts. The paper, along with related subway advertisements, has articles with headlines that scream: "Don't Kill Us" and "Pataki's Cuts are Murder."
Fernando Ferrer, the borough president, recently gave college students a minilesson on power politics.
"You need to get to those members of the Senate and Assembly who are on the fence and remind them that you're capable of mounting the mother of all voter-registration drives and that you have the ability to reward your allies and punish your enemies," Ferrer counseled.
But Raymond Horton, president of the Citizens Budget Commission, a fiscal watchdog group, questions the effect of increased activism.
"While there certainly have been more mass demonstrations this year, I don't think it will greatly affect the final outcome," he said. "On the state level it will still be a closed-room affair, and on the city level, the mayor and council will eventually sit down and work out a deal."
Elected officials complain that even getting timely information from the new administrations is like pulling teeth.
"We actually used to learn things at meetings with administration officials," said Clint Roswell, Ferrer's spokesman. "Now they only tell us things that we already know."
The borough president's office had to file a Freedom of Information Law request to get information from the Giuliani administration on cuts in the Division of Youth Services.
"There isn't a sense of collegiality that existed in years past," Roswell said.
The real test for the change in strategy may come later this month, when the mayor responds to the city council's budget proposal. Says Rivera, the city councilman: "That's when we'll put on our gloves -- some will put on brass knuckles -- and take on the mayor."