Touring New York

Daily Point

The great NY urban-suburban compromise

The State Senate is taking another shot at getting a permanent property tax cap passed this year. While the Senate’s new Democratic majority sought to make a statement in the opening days of this year’s session by passing a one-house bill, it also made a strategic mistake in not using its leverage to get the Assembly to pass it at the same time.

Now, the Senate is planning to include the cap in its budget bill expected to be released on Monday but the Assembly will not, The Point has learned. Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, who is being pushed by NYSUT to thwart the effort, will use enacting a cap as leverage in the final budget negotiations or will attempt to weaken the Senate bill by adding exemptions that will result in percentage increases higher than the current 2 percent tax cap.

Heastie, however, has made criminal justice reform his No 1 item. He will need the cooperation of the Senate, where some members are adamant about including criminal justice issues in the state budget.

And that may be the great 2019 urban-suburban compromise.

Rita Ciolli

Talking Point

Landing in Long Island City

Sen. Elizabeth Warren is due to arrive Friday evening in what could’ve been Amazon country -- hours after announcing that if elected president she would use new regulatory tools to break up Amazon.

Warren’s “organizing event” in Long Island City is free and open to the public. It  will be held at The Arc, a new performing arts venue not far from where Amazon was planning to build its second headquarters.

Weeks ago Warren, of course, had celebrated Amazon’s decision to back away from the deal, tweeting at the time that Amazon “just walked away from billions in taxpayer bribes, all because some elected officials in New York aren’t sucking up to them enough.”

And then earlier Friday, Warren unveiled a proposal to break up dominant tech companies like Amazon, Google and Facebook by undoing recent acquisitions and instituting stricter regulations on those companies’ activities.

It’s venues like The Arc that likely would’ve played host to many of the expected 25,000 Amazon employees, when they were seeking an evening out in the neighborhood near their offices. And while Warren is courting voters and volunteers at The Arc, the warehouses and industrial spaces where Amazon’s campus might’ve been still lie empty.

Perhaps Warren can make one of them the site of her next campaign event.

If she is running on an anti-Amazon campaign, that might not get her very far here since the vast majority of the community, the borough and the city supported Amazon’s plans, and many advocates across the region are still hoping Amazon will reconsider - and return to Long Island City.

A Warren visit, however, might be enough to dash those hopes.

Randi F. Marshall

Pencil Point

Not coming to dinner

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Final Point

Vagabond shoes are longing to stray

Warren is coming to Queens. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders just passed through Brooklyn. New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand is trying to shore up homestate support.

While major Democratic presidential contenders have their eyes on New York in their early campaign rollouts, New York City’s own Mayor Bill de Blasio is… going to South Carolina.

De Blasio has very pointedly not ruled out a run for president, and now he and his wife, Chirlane McCray, plan to spend the weekend making appearances in the key early primary southern state.

He was in Iowa late last month and canceled a trip to New Hampshire only after the friendly-fire death of an NYPD detective.

South Carolina has a much higher proportion of African-American voters than other states that draw early presidential contenders. De Blasio made his biracial family central to his first mayoral campaign, and he has historically had a lot of support from African-American voters in NYC.

When asked at an unrelated news conference this week about his South Carolina trip, the mayor noted that people are struggling and want to hear about “solutions,” such as the things that NYC is doing.

Back home, McCray’s centerpiece mental health initiative, ThriveNYC, has come under scrutiny. And de Blasio’s big joint effort to save the subways with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo was rebuked by City Council Speaker Corey Johnson’s 104-page plan for the city to take over its transit itself.

Life might be simpler on the road.

Mark Chiusano