In State of the City Speech, Mayor Calls for Improved Democracy

NEW YORK — In the first State of the City address of his second and final term, Mayor Bill de Blasio on Tuesday night pledged to enact policies to make New York City the “fairest big city in America,” renewing a theme familiar from his re-election campaign.

New York, with its diversity and grit, he said, is “the antidote to the sickness that is gripping our nation.”

The mayor called for expanding public financing of elections as part of a push to re-energize electoral politics and said he would register 1.5 million new voters as part of an initiative to encourage greater participation in democracy.

The mayor gave himself a deadline to achieve his vision, noting that there were 3 years, 10 months and 15 days left in his term.

“That’s how long this administration has to ensure that we become the fairest big city in America,” de Blasio said.

The speech was long on oratory and vision, but it had less to offer in the way of details, new ideas or measurable goals. And some of the city’s most pressing needs, like the subway crisis and near-record homelessness, got only cursory mentions in the speech, delivered in Kings Theater in Brooklyn.

In the prepared text of de Blasio’s speech, which was provided to reporters in advance, the words “fairness,” “fair,” “fairer” and “fairest” appeared a total of 38 times. The subway was mentioned four times, and homelessness was mentioned only once.

De Blasio has already been criticized as he enters his second term for perhaps being more interested in his national profile and whatever may come after City Hall than in the day-to-day management of government.

And his focus in the speech on the big picture, while skimming more lightly over some of the gritty problems of city life, might have left some of his listeners wondering if he was seeing the fairest but not the trees.

Several dozen people demonstrated in the cold outside the theater, in protest of issues where the mayor has been vulnerable, including the lack of reliable heating in public housing and the slow pace of reform at the Rikers Island jails complex, which he has said he wants to close.

When, at the start of his speech, de Blasio mentioned a Rikers Island guard who was injured recently when he was attacked by inmates, a protester in the theater shouted: “You gotta do more! You’re not doing enough!” He was escorted out.

De Blasio talked about the need to work with the state government in Albany to achieve many of his policy goals — but he offered no glimpse of how he expected to break the crippling deadlock between himself and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and state Republican lawmakers.

The four-year journey to fairness that de Blasio envisioned mostly ran along a road that he began paving in his first term: community policing, early childhood education, the construction of more affordable housing, an ambitious but vague jobs program, a pledge to combat global warming, steps to fight the epidemic of deaths from heroin overdoses and expanded mental health services.

The new in de Blasio’s speech came in a 10-point plan to strengthen democracy by improving the way the city carries out elections and encouraging more voting and citizen participation.

“We must re-democratize a society that is losing its way,” he said.

De Blasio said that he would appoint a commission to recommend changes to the City Charter, in order to create a more far-reaching program for public financing of election campaigns (the city already has what is considered to be one of the most robust in the country).

“Our goal is for elections to be funded primarily by public dollars, thereby greatly reducing the power of big money,” de Blasio said. He said that the goal was to get “big money out of politics.”

De Blasio was the target of multiple investigations during his first term into his political fundraising and the favors that donors sought in return. He often dodged questions about his ethics by saying that the role of money in politics should be reined in.

De Blasio was roundly criticized in his first term for the access that he gave to lobbyists seeking favorable city actions on behalf of their clients. He said that he had ordered all commissioners and other top city officials to make their contacts with lobbyists public. The mayor already reveals his lobbyist meetings.

The mayor said that the charter revision commission would also propose ways to better reach out to voters to provide them information about elections, candidates and the location of polling places. He said that was necessary because the Board of Elections, which is governed by state law, does not do an adequate job. The commission’s recommendations would have to be approved by voters.

De Blasio also said that he would budget $500,000 a year for electronic and digital security to protect the city’s voting system.

The mayor said that he would name a “chief democracy officer,” whose job would be to solve “the problem of shrinking voter participation.” The job will come with the goal of registering 1.5 million New Yorkers to vote in the next four years. There are currently about 4.6 million registered voters in New York City — so de Blasio’s goal could mean an increase of nearly one-third.

The plan calls for a registration push among high school students 17 and older, and an expanded civics curriculum that would be used at all grade levels.