BHB Exclusive: Doug Biviano Talks About His Campaign for the 52nd AD Seat

By on August 26, 2014 12:34 pm in Brooklyn Heights, Election 14

BHB: What is a pragmatic expectation for the future of LICH?

[W]e need to restore [LICH] with a functional emergency room that can handle heart attacks, strokes and car accidents, especially for our children and our seniors.

DB: Again, BerlinRosen, Working Families Party, Mayor de Blasio, Peter Sikora skirted the law in their deception over the fate of LICH. That’s a huge problem in trying to go forward with this and should be addressed. With the community’s support we can start doing that. Until we gain some control over the issue, we can’t protect ourselves with an emergency room in a full-service hospital….

[W]e need to restore the hospital with a functional emergency room that can handle heart attacks, strokes and car accidents, especially for our children and our seniors.

[LICH] can be re-imagined, it can be different. It’s not going to be the same quality…. People are going to die and people [representing] other special interests from outside our community are going to make a profit off of it and it’s disgusting.

BHB: Let’s talk about public school capacity in Brooklyn Heights.

DB: Again, to answer this question, it must be understood that our elections are controlled by the developers and special interests who have allowed our community to be, in this case, overbuilt. These special interests, with the help of the public officials they helped to elect, have given enormous tax breaks to the developers.

And that’s the problem. Those tax breaks are just moved into the profits of the developers. The price of real estate is so through the roof they don’t need our subsidies…. Those tax breaks should go for more teachers and to bring back Pre-K where it’s been eliminated because of the overcrowding and to end the waitlists. Every parent that I talk to in this community, every school [the response is] “I can’t believe it, I’m waitlisted. What am I going to do?” It’s a real problem and it relates directly to overbuilding.

BHB: Will you make a campaign promise that one of the things that you will address is to solve the overcrowding at P.S. 8?

DB: Yes, I would aggressively address the overcrowing issue, the Pre-K issues. The irony is so alarming: on one hand, de Blasio is talking about universal Pre-K in the city, and in every neighborhood in our district, there’s a wait list. You can’t go [to your local public school]. It makes no sense. But it’s because we don’t control our neighborhoods.

Nobody challenges this [the special interests]. Nobody. Does Sikora challenge this? Does Jo Anne Simon challenge this? Let’s see if they’ll take on Mayor de Blasio and his ironic rhetoric.

BHB: What’s your position on the Brooklyn Heights library?

DB: It breaks my heart. My kids spent a lot of time there, especially in the winter, with those big windows. It’s just a great facility. [For] everybody in our community it’s vital. Again, what I’m saying is complicated, but it’s reality. What’s going on with the institution is sickening. These lobbyists have no shame, they have no moral compass. It’s outrageous that the same people who are controlling LICH and Pier 6, they want to close our library as well. Lobbyist, consultant BerlinRosen, who is involved in the deception about closing LICH, also represents Forest City Ratner; it’s right on their client [listing] on their website.

Forest City Ratner, who’s gotten millions of dollars in public money—and we haven’t seen any affordable housing from them yet—they now want to tear down our beloved library. Here we go again in the realm of conflict of interest chutzpah. In terms of conflict of interest, BerlinRosen also represents the Brooklyn Public Library and they represent Peter Sikora…. They are working to get Sikora elected—they also work for Levin, Lander, all these people, and the WFP—they’re working to get him elected, and obviously he’s going to be loyal to them. How does BerlinRosen get him [Sikora] elected and they’re PR lobbyist for Forest City Ratner, they all worked out the whole de Blasio scenario. How is he going to say “We’re not doing this” [selling the library]?

Again, it’s a huge conflict of interest. He’s going to alienate [BerlinRosen]? He’s going to challenge them when the cameras go away? It’s complicated, but the conflicts of interest aren’t. They’re right there.

Whether it’s the library, the hospital or the park, whether it’s Simon or Sikora, the public has been cut out of these decisions. That’s why I’m running: to empower the public, so we can make the decision about these institutions in our community.

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  • miriamcb

    Thank you to BHB for putting together interviews of each of the candidates before the primary election.

  • Doug Biviano

    Until we get power of governing back to community with big issues hammering our neighborhoods (and that requires an independent candidate not backed by same special interests holding the hammer and controlling election system) legislative issues are not as helpful as the harm being done to our voters. The Assembly seat is quite powerful to stop this harm. That said here are a few legislative goals:

    1. Expose and Stop tax breaks, tax abatement for developers and public asset giveaways to them (developers will do fine without them and development will continue but will be harder to target public service institutions like hospitals, libraries, parks, etc). We do not have to subsidize because the affect is the tax payers take a double hit. We get overcrowded (schools, services) while at the same time our services get cut or can’t expand (schools, libraries, hospitals, parks) because our tax money goes to the developers. The tax breaks and abatement to developers also drives up rent at accelerated rates and pushes out good poor, middle class, and senior residents from our community. Affordable Housing as we know it is a band-aid on a cancer invented by politicians to make you think they are trying fix the problem. Homeless children are at record numbers under de Blasio. Ironically, the system the Pols have creacted has accelerated and amplified the problem of gentrification and uprooting folks. Voters tell me this all day. It’s time to reboot.

    2. I would have a big focus on election and campaign finance law reform to build walls between special interests, lobbyists, consultants, campaigns and elected officials to bring the balance of power back to the voter. We’re the only candidate to talk about this in real terms how bad Pols protect themselves while slaughtering our quality of life and our services. We did an op-ed in Brooklyn Paper in 2010:

    http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/33/24/all_opedbiviano_2010_06_11_bk.html

    3. I’m a fairly progressive guy supporting Woman’s Equality Act among other good legislation. I would never endorse Joe Hyne’s like Jo Anne Simon did last year knowing he covered up domestic violence and child abuse cases. I’m happy to talk to anyone and I’m very accessible and will remain that way.

    I ask for your vote on Sept. 9 and to help spread my message. Thank you.

  • miriamcb

    Thank you for answering with some thoughts!

  • Michael D. D. White

    One thing regarding the Brooklyn Heights Library- Sometimes I would take issue with a question’s premise rather than simply answering it- I don’t think the “reality” actually involves a “fatal flaw” of “decrepit infrastructure.”

    I promise some scoops on this coming up.

  • bethman14

    Anyone who actually thought that BDB getting himself arrested at LICH was anything other than a PR stunt by a low-polling Mayoral campaign was deluded. Biviano isn’t breaking any ground on that one. DeBlasio never had any real, financially viable solution to the LICH issue, and clearly neither does Biviano. LICH was a poorly managed, underutilized facility that fell victim to the larger macroeconomic forces that shape the health care industry in the US. The Mayor of NYC was never going to be able to save it, and neither will a freshman member of the State Assembly.

    On the library its unfortunate that Biviano appears to have bought the Mike DD White fear mongering. I wonder if he even reached out to the BPL people to hear there side of the story or just acccepted the DD White BS without bothering to do any independent research or fact checking. We certainly don’t need anymore politicians in NYC who just follow along with special interests uncritically.

    I don’t see anything in this interview about concrete proposals for practical action on any issues that seem to concern Biviano….just paranoid conspiracy theories. Definitely not constructive leadership.

  • bethman14

    Thats right Mike….because when you are forced to confront the reality of the library situation instead of the imaginary “facts” that you “report” on your crazy blog it becomes obvious that you don’t have a leg to stand on.

    Its sad that your fear-mongering, truth twisting and demagoguery has made it so difficult for those of us in the community who really care about the library to have a constructive conversation about its future. Your strategy of pretending to care about libraries in order to advance your deeply conservative anti-development, anti-affordable housing political agenda is very smart and seems to work for you….unfortunately the biggest victim of your crusade will be our public library and the thousands of children and seniors who rely on it. So sad.

  • miriamcb

    Doug is fairly accessible – I’m pretty sure you can ask on the blog as I did (see above) about practical action, if you are actually interested. He’s likely to answer you.

  • Remsen Street Dweller

    You know nothing about what happened to LICH so kindly refrain from spreading the lies that New York State used to murder that hospital.

  • davoyager

    Doug is absolutely right about the tax breaks given to developers. These are policies conceived during recession in order to encourage growth and create jobs. NY and Brooklyn specifically is growing out of all proportion and the current climate of over development is going to blow up soon so if anything government needs to implement policies to slow housing growth. Additionally since the city needs to make up some of the revenue shortfall, the taxes of small property owners continue to rise at an unsustainable rate which directly causes rents to rise and owners to sell.
    On Brooklyn Bridge Park I agree it doesn’t need additional residential high rises near Pier 6 but what it does need is a subway station at the foot of Atlantic Avenue. Any thoughts?

  • davoyager

    I would like to see the Pier 6 ferry dock to be an access hub gateway to a 12 month a year, 7 days a week Governor’s Island Park with a subway stop and additional parkland on 6 instead of the 2 unneeded luxury high rises currently planned.

  • ujh

    Mr. Biviano may be accessible for the time being and while he’s campaigning. If elected, he’ll spend the week in Albany like his colleagues in the Assembly and State Senate and commute home for the weekend to do more work and maybe to spare a few minutes for his family.
    Mr. Biviano has a habit of not answering questions and may believe that his unceasing litany of what’s wrong in politics and society is all he needs to successfully represent his constituents, who will comprise a lot more people in the 52nd Assembly District than those to whom he’s obviously pleasing, to judge from the comments on this blog. Making speeches is not enough; converting concepts and proposals into bills, finding co-sponsors and getting them enacted takes more than standing on a soapbox. Awareness of this struggle is not apparent in anything he’s been saying.
    I urge all who encounter him on the street to question him what he plans to do to “clean up Albany” and how he plans to go about it – while juggling a myriad of other matters he’ll have to attend to.