Howie Hawkins, 49, of Syracuse has been active in movements for peace, justice, the environment, and independent progressive politics since the late 1960s. He was a co-founder of the anti-nuclear Clamshell Alliance in 1976 and the Green Party in the United States in 1984. He currently is one of the New York representatives to the Green Party national committee and is president of the Green Alliance, a national network of Green Party clubs.
The Green Party also ran Hawkins for State Comptroller in 1998. Hawkins has also been the Green Party’s candidate for Syracuse Common Council, Syracuse Mayor, Onondaga County Executive, and US Congress from Syracuse. He received 9% of the vote in his most recent campaign in 2001, a three-way race for Syracuse Common Council against a Republican and an incumbent Democrat.
After attending Dartmouth College, Hawkins worked as a carpenter and co-founded a construction workers cooperative that specialized in energy efficiency and solar and wind installations.
Since 1991, Hawkins has been the Director of CommonWorks, a federation of cooperatives that provides technical assistance to the cooperatives in Syracuse and advocates for an economy that is cooperatively owned, democratically controlled, and ecologically sustainable. Hawkins also works as a truck unloader at United Parcel Service, where he is a member of Teamsters Local 317 and active in Teamsters for a Democratic Union.Hawkins’ articles on social movements, cooperative economics, and independent politics have appeared in many publications, including Against the Current, Green Politics, Green Perspectives, The Guardian, In These Times, Independent Politics News, International Socialist Review, Left Green Notes, Liberation, Left Turn, New Politics, Our Generation, Resist, The Socialist, Society and Nature, Synthesis/Regeneration, Win, and Z Magazine.
SUMMARY OF PLATFORM PLANKS:
END LEGALIZED BRIBERY AND KICK-BACKS IN THE COMPTROLLERS OFFICE:
- End "Pay-To-Play" Contributions to the Comptroller—No Contracts for Contributors to Comptroller Candidates
- Public Campaign Financing
- A Worker/Community-Elected Pension Board
ECOLOGICAL SUSTAINABILITY:
- Environmental Audits
- Ecological and Social Accounting
- Eco-Taxes
ECONOMIC JUSTICE:
- Democratic and Ecological Investment of State Pension Funds
- Progressive Tax Reform
- Universal Health Insurance
- Jobs for All—Living Wage Jobs, Not Workfare
ECONOMIC DEMOCRACY
- Public Investment, Not Corporate Welfare
- Affordable, Renewable, Public Power
- A Public Banking and Insurance System
- Cooperatives
- Elected Enterprise Boards
DISCUSSION OF PLATFORM PLANKS:
END LEGALIZED BRIBERY AND KICK-BACKS IN THE COMPTROLLERS OFFICE
Legalized corruption has come characterize the Comptroller's Office. The Comptroller is a tempting target for corruption as the sole trustee of the over $100 billion public employee pension fund and its many lucrative contracts. No other pension fund of comparable scale is governed by a single trustee. Well-heeled special interests only have to buy off one person.
And that is what appears to have happened under both the current Comptroller, Democrat Carl McCall, as well as his Republican predecessor, Edward Regan. Both awarded contracts with the Comptroller's Office to campaign donors, frequently within weeks of receiving sizable donations. The New York Times (October 3, 1998) identified $1.8 million in campaign donations McCall received from donors to which he awarded state pension fund contracts. Regan was investigated by federal and state prosecutors for possible illegal "pay-to-play" campaign donations from contractors with the Comptroller's Office. The scandal continues with McCall's gubernatorial campaign: a March 27, 2001 memo by McCall that was leaked to AP instructed his campaign finance committee to ask for contributions from the investment banking, real estate, and venture capital firms that do business with the state's public employee pension fund.
Explicit quid pro quos do not have to be proven for the aura of bribery and kickbacks to hang over the Comptrollers Office. Three reforms are needed to remedy this problem:
1. End "Pay-To-Play" Contributions to the Comptroller—No Contracts for Contributors to Comptroller Candidates. The immediate way to end even the appearance of "Pay-To-Play" contributions to Comptroller candidates is to bar such contributors from being awarded contracts with the Comptroller's Office. I pledge to do so and call upon the other candidates for Comptroller to make the same pledge.
2. Public Campaign Financing: Public elections have been privatized. “Pay-to-Play” contributions to Comptroller candidates are just one of the more obvious examples of how the system of private campaign financing is legalized bribery of public officials. Public elections should be publicly financed: all ballot qualified candidates who agree not to accept private contributions should receive equal allotments of public campaign financing at a level reasonably sufficient to inform every voter in their district about their candidacy.
3. A Worker/Community-Elected Pension Board: The over $100 billion state pension fund is too important to leave in the hands of one individual. Public workers and retirees, whose deferred earnings are in the state pension fund, and the taxpayers, who would have to bail out a failing pension fund, should elect the state pension board. Let the people most affected, through their elected board, decide where their interests really lie on such issues as investment strategies, targeted economic development investments, shareholder resolutions, divestment from companies that violate human rights or the environment, and contracts with the pension fund.
Ecological sustainability
Environmental Audits:
The Comptroller's Office should begin a program of environmental audits to run parallel to the fiscal audits it conducts. Environmental audits would set benchmarks for "eco-efficiency" -- the efficient use of energy, paper, and other materials, which will save taxpayers money and reduce adverse impacts on the environment.
Ecological and Social Accounting:
The Comptroller's Office should develop ecological and social accounting systems to enable audited governmental units to track their eco-efficiency and social impact and to assist state government in making ecologically and socially intelligent policies.
Beneath the governmental financial statements of revenues, expenditures, and fund balances -- the state of the public economy -- is a much vaster area of economic activity on which the public economy depends. This larger area includes not only the private market economy which the government also tracks, but the household and ecological foundations of the public and private economies which feminist and ecological economists have been calling to our attention.
A system of ecological and social accounting would cover the non-monetary household economy, and the state of the natural, human, and social capital upon which the public, private, and household economies rest. Natural capital is renewable and non-renewable resources and the integrity of ecological systems that produce renewable resources. Human capital is the knowledge, skills, and health of the people. Social capital is the organizational capaicities of such institutions as businesses, trade unions, non-profit organizations, and the like.
All of these resources should be tracked to give us a realistic picture of the real economy, the whole economy, not just the public and private-market sectors. Summary indicators should be developed that that use these additional data. One that has been developed, the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare, uses income distribution, natural capital stocks, the value of household labor, and personal consumption to measure the ecological sustainability and social welfare provided by the economy. Such an indicator gives us a much better picture of our economy than the gross domestic product, which is increased by both growth in polluting industries as well as money spent the health care for people made sick by those industries. Or to take another common indicator, per capita income takes no account of income distribution and the fact that, in New York, the top 20% makes 20 times what the bottom 20% does.
With social and ecological accounting and indicators based on them, we will have much more intelligent measures of our progress toward ecological sustainability and a just distribution of economic means.
Eco-Taxes:
The regressive across-the-board sales should be replaced with selective eco-taxes on socially harmful products.
The sales tax is the most regressive tax in New York. The bottom 20% of income earners pay 7.4% of their income in sales taxes. The middle 20% pays 4.7%. The top 1% pays just 1.1%. (Citizens for Tax Justice, Who Pays? A Distributional Analysis of the Tax Systems in All 50 States, June 1996).
Eco-taxes will bring the prices of harmful products closer to their true social and environmental costs by forcing private firms to internalize social and environmental costs into their prices rather than continuing to externalize these costs on to society and the environment. Eco-taxes will create consumer disincentives to the purchase of harmful products and producer incentives that enable ecologically sustainable products to compete with and replace harmful products.
ECONOMIC JUSTICE
Democratic and Ecological Investment of State Pension Funds:
A Worker/Community-Elected Pension Board would create a democratic form for determining the investment policies of the pension fund. However, democracy is no guarantee that Green policies would be implemented. But within these democratic forms, a Green Comptroller as a member of the board would advocate that investments be targeted to support what New York needs to develop a just, democratic, and ecologically sustainable economy and that the fund use its shareholder votes and selective divestment to promote human rights and protect the environment.
Specifically, a Green Comptroller would promote investments in:
1. revitalization of New York's wealth-creating primary production economy, namely, agriculture and manufacturing,
2. worker-, consumer-, and community-owned enterprises that anchor capital and wealth to our communities under democratic control, and
3. conversion to ecological technologies that promote sustainable economies, such as renewable energy, organic agriculture, the infrastructure for a hydrogen fuel system, and the substitution of toxic materials with safe, biodegradable materials in products and production technologies.
In addition, a Green Comptroller would use shareholder votes and selective divestment to promote these same objectives -- revitalizing agriculture and manufacturing, democratic enterprises, ecological technologies -- and to promote human rights and environmental protection.
Finally, and preferably in conjunction with new state programs providing technical assistance to new cooperatives and public enterprises, and consistent with a prudent investment strategy to keep the pension system adequately funded, a Green Comptroller would advocate for a much higher proportion of direct investment in New York enterprises as opposed to portfolio investment through capital markets. The pension fund already does this to a small degree, helping to finance new businesses by investing in venture capital funds and by lending to housing projects. But much more could be done.
Progressive Tax Reform:
* Build a guaranteed minimum income above the poverty line into the state income tax system.
* Restore higher income tax rates on the highest incomes in New York.
* Restore state revenue-sharing with municipalities.
The Comptroller issues regular reports on the fiscal health of New York State and its municipalities. It is incumbent upon the Comptroller, especially a Green Comptroller, to advocate for a better system of raising and sharing revenues. Many changes should be made to make the tax structure more progressive, but the three discussed here are central.
New York's Earned Income Tax Credit is one of the few state policies that helps low-income New Yorkers. But it does not help people who cannot, should not, or cannot find work and who therefore must turn to the welfare system for assistance, notably single parents with young children. A guaranteed minimum income above the poverty line would end poverty. It would be especially helpful to single parents who could focus on the job of raising their children instead of leaving them to be raised by the streets while they must work at a job or a workfare assignment.
To raise the funds needed for the guaranteed minimum income and other needed social programs -- especially a universal state health insurance program, equitable funding of public schools, and a public jobs program -- the rich must pay their fair share of taxes.
The tax rates on the highest income tax brackets have been cut repeatedly over the last 25 years, under the Cary, Cuomo, and Pataki administrations, Democrat and Republican alike, falling from 15.375% to 6.85%.
These tax cuts for the rich are an important reason why the rich have gotten richer and the poor poorer in New York State over the last 25 years. The richest 20% now take home on average 20 times more than the poorest 20%, making New York the most unequal state in the most unequal industrialized country in the world. Child poverty in New York is 26%.
Cutting rich folks' taxes was supposed to stimulate investment and create jobs. It didn't work. Over these same 25 years, New York ranks 48th among the states in job creation. It's time to make the rich pay their fair share again.
All of New York's major cities except Albany face chronic structural fiscal deficits that are forcing them to cut schools and city services and raise regressive property taxes. Until a few years ago, New York had laws requiring the sharing of state revenues with municipalities, although in practice the state repeatedly passed laws for one-year exemptions from the revenue-sharing law as part of state budget deals.
It is time to restore the revenue-sharing law and comply with it. The original form of sharing 9% of state income tax revenues with all municipalities and another 9% with the bigger cities where social costs are greater should be restored.
Revenue-sharing has many advantages for municipal financing. Beside the extra money needed to deal with city fiscal crises, revenue-sharing is a more progressive tax structure for municipal financing. The money is raised by the state income tax, which is progressive, while other municipal revenues depend on the regressive sales and property taxes. Centralized collection by the state is efficient and undermines tax jurisdiction competition between municipalities seeking investment through escalating corporate welfare giveaways. Decentralized spending by municipalities is more responsive to the varied needs of varied communities.
Universal Health Insurance:
Create a universal state health insurance program funded by a single public payer through progressive taxation. The health insurance program should be democratically structured and administered by a system of locally elected boards (1/3 elected by health care workers, 2/3 by the general public), which in turn elect representatives to the state board administering the program.
The State Assembly passed a single-payer plan in 1992, but it died in the State Senate. The program is needed more now than it was then.
Today, millions of New Yorkers are without health insurance. And those who do have it are faced with ever increasing deductibles and difficulty getting insurance companies to provide the services they promised. Doctors and health care workers find themselves forced to short-change the treatment of their patients according to the decisions of insurance company cost accountants rather then their own medical judgment. Employers face dramatically escalating premiums to keep their employees covered, forcing many companies do drop coverage.
Every other industrial country provides health coverage through a social insurance program. New York should do likewise and lead the US into creating a rational health care system.
Jobs for All—Living Wage Jobs, Not Workfare:
New York needs to create more than 1 million jobs to employ everyone willing and able to work. Private jobs are good, but public jobs are necessary to provide full employment.
To encourage private investment, New York State should replace corporate welfare and tax break incentives with direct public investment in new or expanding enterprises: public, private, and cooperative.
The public jobs component should be directed by elected local Enterprise Boards with the responsibility of developing public employment projects that employ unused labor to meet unmet public needs. These public jobs should be real jobs, protected by labor laws, and paying a living wage, not the forced labor of workfare to earn welfare benefits.
ECONOMIC DEMOCRACY
Public Investment, Not Corporate Welfare:
Instead of $2.5 billion a year in corporate welfare hoping to indirectly stimulate job creation, New York should invest that money directly as loans and equity in New York businesses, especially worker- and community-run cooperatives.
New York has tried to stimulate job creation with corporate welfare subsidies and tax breaks. The theory was that by giving the rich even more money, they would invest it and create jobs, and the benefits would "trickle down" to the rest of us. "Trickle Down Economics" has been tested for 25 years and it has failed badly.
When government gives a private corporation "corporate welfare," the risk is socialized but the profits are privatized. Like other investors, if the public takes the risk, it should get the reward. Economic development moneys should be invested with the state having the same rights as other investors to share in the profits and governing of the enterprise.
If we take the rich off welfare, we can provide living wage jobs for all.
Affordable, Renewable, Public Power:
We need a public power system in New York that is decentralized and democratic, with a two-tier structure of governance:
- Public Energy Districts: Towns and cities, alone or in contiguous combination, will form their own local power company with the power to build, acquire (by eminent domain if necessary), and operate power generating and distribution facilities and to issue revenue-producing bonds. Their boards would be elected by their workers (one-third of the seats) and the citizens of the public energy district (two-thirds of the seats).
- State Energy Board: The State Energy Board would be composed of representatives elected by the Public Energy Districts boards (two-thirds) and representatives elected in public elections (one-third). It would take over governance of the New York Power Authority and transform it from a top-down, patronage-ridden, corporate-oriented agency to a democratic, competent, public interest-oriented agency. Its responsibilities would include:
- Trusteeship of the state’s natural energy resources
- Operation of statewide energy infrastructure
- State energy planning based on the coordination of local PED plans
- Allocation of state energy research and development funding
Energy deregulation in NYS has failed to deliver the lower prices it promised. To the contrary, prices are rising and consumers are bailing out private utilities’ bad investments in nuclear power and so-called “independent power producers,” which are often different subsidiaries of the same parent companies. The state legislature and governor have been AWOL on this issue. New York is the only state to deregulate its power utilities solely by agreements between the regulatory agency and the private companies they regulate, without any legislative guidelines or intervention of any kind. Under this regulatory regime, energy conservation has plummeted, renewable energy production has stagnated, pollution continues, and energy costs have surged. It is a complete failure.
Politically, the Democrats and Republicans are unalterably compromised by campaign contributions from the utility companies and their close allies in the banking industry. Bank financing charges for power plant construction amount to 40% of all utility costs. Historically, 60% of the entire underwriting business in the US has come from the utilities industry. The Democrats and Republicans don’t want to rock that boat, especially in New York, the principal investment banking center in the county.
Meanwhile, the general public is raging over skyrocketing utility rates and loan-shark style intimidation to collect overdue bills. The environmentally conscious are upset that conservation, efficiency, and renewables have stalled while nuclear power plants receive bailouts and license extensions, and that fossil fuels remain the principal planned source of future transportation fuels as well as electric power generation while global warming continues without a serious public policy response.
But the problem is deeper than deregulation. The problems of polluting energy sources and the highest utility rates in the country did not start with deregulation. They were created prior to deregulation. Deregulation has really been a cover for a state-enforced ratepayer bailout out of the private utilities. Now that the agreements with the Public Service Commission have restored their solvency with guaranteed high rates, they are being bought up by transnational utility holding companies.
A democratic, public power system will give the people the democratic power to choose solar power, but it is no guarantee. In addition to a democratic form for our energy system, Greens advocate the following policy content:
1. Affordable Prices: All energy products should be priced at the minimum level consistent with the costs of production and ecologically sound use.
2. Energy Lifelines: Each citizen is guaranteed a minimum fair share of energy regardless of ability to pay.
3. No Nukes: Rapid phase out of New York’s six nuclear power plants.
4. Renewable Energy: A rapid transition to clean, renewable energy sources, including wind power, solar-thermal, solar-electric, geothermal, biofuels, and solar-hydrogen fuels. Energy planning to rapidly replace imported, polluting, and nonrenewable nuclear and fossil fuels with indigenous, clean, and renewable energy sources.
5. Public Power: Conversion of investor-owned utilities into locally-owned and controlled Public Energy Districts (PEDs), which will coordinate statewide energy planning through a democratized New York Power Authority, whose board would be composed of representatives of the PEDs and at-large members elected at public elections. The natural energy resources of the New York State, as well as the production, transmission, and distribution infrastructure of energy, should belong to all the people of New York state.
6. Freedom of Information: All information regarding the activities of every energy agency and all data on reserves and consumption publicly available on a timely basis to facilitate the fullest possible public participation in the preparation of energy plans and to monitor their implementation.
It is only through democratic public ownership that the people will have the power to provide energy at affordable prices and make the transition from dirty nuclear and fossil fuels to clean renewables. We already know from decades of experience that public power provides energy at about 25% lower cost than private investor-owned utilities (IOUs) because public power systems don’t have to pay profits to shareholders, but they do have to answer to their customers who elect their boards. We also know from such examples as the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) and the Eugene Gas and Water Department that public power systems have made the transition from nuclear and fossil fuels to renewables while private IOUs still say we must remain dependent on nukes and fossils. And in the recent California energy crisis, only the customers of SMUD and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power were spared utility rate hikes and service black outs.
A Public Banking and Insurance System:
To keep more of New Yorkers' savings in bank deposits, pension funds, and insurance reserves invested in New York, and to provide a competitive yardstick for private banks and insurance companies, New York should set up a public banking and insurance system. It should provide banking services and auto and life insurance, and invest its assets, including state cash assets, under the direction of elected local, regional, and state Enterprise Boards.
Deregulation and merger mania in the financial and insurance industries means that locally-owned businesses have difficulty getting loans, consumers are hit with ever increasing bank changes, people can't afford exorbitantly high auto and health insurance, and much of New Yorkers' savings are invested outside New York. New York needs financial and insurance institutions they own and control to serve their needs.
The New York Assembly adopted a state bank bill in 1975, but it died in the Senate. It is time to revive this idea. New York should create a state bank, with a competently staffed trust department to act as fiduciary agent and manager of the public pension fund portfolio and other state cash assets, including economic develoment funds and state insurance reserves, as well as receive the deposits of ordinary citizens.
We have a working model to learn from in this endeavor in the "socialist" state of North Dakota. Since 1919, the state-owned Bank of North Dakota has consistently made money for the state (over $100 million in recent years for their general fund) while offering below market interest rates on loans. It serves as a yardstick forcing private banks to offer better services in order to compete and survive.
The New York state bank should be democratic, governed by a federation of local, regional, and state Enterprise Boards elected by the public. These boards would hire management and set policies for investments. The state pension funds investment policies would be decided independently by its own board, elected by state workers and retirees and the public, but it would use the state bank services.
The state insurance system would manage a single-payer health care system as well as offer auto and other forms of insurance. Insurance is a system of socializing risk. A state insurance company would also socialize the rewards of providing this service. Again, we have a great model to learn from in the state-owned Wisconsin State Life Insurance Fund. Since 1917, it has provided the least expensive life insurance policies in the nation with premiums 10 to 40% below comparable private insurance policies. It can do this because it runs at cost without the need to make profits and with far less overhead -- no stockholder dividends to pay, no advertising and sales commissions to pay, no outrageous executive compensation packages to pay. The state insurance assets would be managed by the state bank and governed by the elected Enterprise Boards.
Within these democratic forms, Greens would advocate that investments be targeted to support what New York needs to develop a just, democratic, and ecologically sustainable economy, particularly wealth creating agriculture and manufacturing, democratic enterprises, and ecological technologies.
Cooperatives:
New York State should create a technical assistance program to help New Yorkers create cooperatives and convert existing businesses to cooperatives.
During the massive deindustrialization of New York during the 1980s, the state set up a small employee ownership office to help workers buy out manufacturing businesses that were shutting down or moving out of state. The intent was good, but the resources were grossly inadequate and its emphasis on ESOPs (Employee Stock Ownership Plans) was inferior co-ops, although democratic ESOPs, which have a democratic cooperative structure inside an ESOP form that can benefit from enormous federal tax advantages, should be part of the program. This program needs to be restored on a much larger scale with a focus on fostering democratic enterprises: cooperatives, democratic ESOPs, and community-owned enterprises.
Cooperatives are businesses owned by the people that use them: their workers and/or consumers. They operate at cost, rather than for profit to absentee owners. Net income not used to capitalize the co-op is returned to members as a “patronage dividend.” In a worker cooperative, the patronage dividend is distributed to the workers in proportion to their contribution of labor. In a consumer cooperative, they patronage dividend is rebated to consumers in proportion to the purchases they made though the co-op. Co-ops should be favored over traditional capitalist ownership structures for economic development for several reasons:
- Co-ops anchor wealth to communities because worker and consumer owners have no reason to hurt themselves by moving the business elsewhere
- Co-ops are non-exploitative: each worker receives income in proportion to the work they contribute.
- Because co-ops are non-exploitative, income distribution is more equal.
- Because workers receive income in proportion to their labor, this incentive structure means that co-ops tend to have higher labor productivity than exploitative business structures. They more effectively a worker works in a co-op, the more money that worker will make. In a capitalist firm, the harder a worker works, the more money the worker makes for the owners because the wage scale is a fixed cost and all net income accrues to the owners.
- Co-ops are democratic, based on one person, one vote, in contrast to capitalist ownership structures where voting power is proportional to ownership shares (one dollar, one vote).
- Because co-ops are democratic, they develop their members' capacities, their "human capital," as well as the economy.
Elected Enterprise Boards:
The creation of elected Enterprise Boards and the local, regional, and state levels, with responsibility for directing investments with state cash assets, including budgeted economic development funds, a public jobs program, and bank deposits and insurance reserves from the state banking and insurance system, will give the public control over the direction of investment and development in their communities.
The elected Enterprise Boards would replace the Industrial Development Agencies and other appointed boards that now dole out corporate welfare and tax breaks to corporations and developers. Instead of the indirect incentives of subsides and tax breaks that characterize corporate welfare, Enterprise Board investments would be direct in the form of loans and equity and will give the public a say in the development of such enterprises.
Publicly Elected Enterprise Boards will democratize the economic planning process that is now the exclusive province of corporate boardrooms with assistance from economic development bureaucrats well-insulated from public accountability.
