In a chaotic City Council meeting punctuated with explosive verbal exchanges among the members, the council agreed Wednesday night to repeal a controversial rent control reform measure it had passed in March. The meeting then degenerated into arguments over who should get the credit for junking the contentious ordinance and what should go in its place. The original reform measure, which was sponsored by Councilman Stephen Hudock and had the backing of Mayor Anthony Russo and his administration, was considered potentially dangerous by many mile-square tenant activists, who subsequently spent the weeks since its passage collecting more than 1,800 signatures to block its implementation. The original ordinance was passed because certain federally-subsidized apartment buildings in town are now coming out from under federal control. The ordinance would have allowed landlords of some of these complexes to raise the rents on 30 percent of the units once the current tenants left. The other 70 percent of the units would be subject to the city’s 1973 Rent Control Law, which limits rent increases for most apartments in the city to a few percentage points each year. The ordinance also would have allowed the landlords of two-family owner occupied homes to be exempt from rent control laws. Tenants advocates argued that this reform rolled back tenants’ rights and provided landlords with an added incentive to force people out of their apartments. They said that it would be easier if the city just passed a law to make all of the units subject to rent control. The fact that the tenants gathered enough signatures on the petition meant that the council was in the uncomfortable position of having to either repeal the law that they had passed earlier or allow it to go to a citywide vote. Only a day away Wednesday night, Hudock swallowed his pride and asked the Council to begin taking action to repeal his ordinance, one day before state law would have required the city clerk to put the issue into the voters’ hands. In the coming weeks, council members will have to vote on the repeal a second and third time to make it law, just like they do with all ordinances. After the meeting, anti-Russo councilmen Tony Soares, Dave Roberts and Ruben Ramos Jr. were quick to claim credit for the turnaround. Roberts had submitted a council ordinance asking for a repeal, and ever since Hudock had originally introduced his measure, the three councilmen have led the fight in the council chambers against it. “They blinked,” said the normally-loquacious Soares. “That’s all I am going to say. They blinked. They blinked. They blinked.” During the meeting, though, the relative unanimity among the views of the council members on repeal did not lead to a smooth, easygoing legislative session. Instead, Roberts and Hudock argued over whose repeal ordinance would be considered. Although there was no substantive difference between them, the symbolism seemed to be important to both men. While Roberts argued that his amendment should be considered first since he submitted it first, Hudock said that his should be considered first since he was the author of the original ordinance. Council President Nellie Moyeno ruled that Hudock’s repeal ordinance should be considered. After voting unanimously for it, the council moved to consider another Hudock ordinance that would replace it. Again, Roberts objected, saying that he had also drafted a reform ordinance that could stand in the old one’s place. “I asked for this first,” he told his colleagues, pointing out that Hudock’s was not even on the agenda that the city clerk types up the Friday before meetings. “Councilman Hudock’s should be voted on second. If that is not the case, something unfair is being perpetrated here.” Moyeno waved off his complaints, and the council went ahead to begin consideration of Hudock’s new ordinance. Hudock explained that his only concern was to ensure that the people who live in the Clock Towers apartment building have their rents come under the purview of the 1973 Rent Control Law. “I want to be 100 percent sure that Clock Towers, Marine View Plaza residents and other tenants of project-based buildings are protected,” he said. The Clock Towers apartment building, whose rents had been under regulation by the federal government for more than 20 years, is in the process of being sold. Hudock and others are concerned that the new owner may be in a position to jack rents up to market rates if the council does not take action. Clock Towers is not the only building affected by changes in how the federal government manages some types of low- and moderate-income subsidized housing. Under a new voucher management program, the federal government no longer regulates the rents that landlords charge, and the state takes over. Still some objections Hudock’s new ordinance states that the properties that come out of federal control will come under the purview of rent control. But it also includes a number of other provisions to which tenants advocates and some councilpeople objected. Among those provisions was language that would update the way that the tax burden can be shifted from a landlord to his tenants. Under current law, a landlord can pass the difference between the amount that he actually pays on his property taxes and the amount that was paid in 1973 to his tenants. The new change will limit this amount. City officials said this change would be a boon for tenants. “A ten unit building may have had a tax bill of $1,300 in 1973,” explained Carole McLaughlin, the city’s rent control and rent stabilization chief. “But we want to move it up to 1987, when the taxes might have been as much as $3,000. That way, there is less that the landlords can pass on to the tenants.” But tenant advocates were not happy. “I’ve seen how this works,” tenant activist Dan Tumpson told the council. “It looks like you are putting something in good for the tenants, but then you take something away. That’s like a horse trade, and we don’t want any rollback of tenants’ rights.” Landlords will go to a hardship hearing to get rents jacked up if that provision becomes law, he warned. How’d that get in there? Roberts also complained that a provision in the new ordinance would eliminate the Department of Housing Inspection – long a target of the Russo administration, which considers it a redundant city office – and transfer its responsibilities to the Construction Department. Despite the criticism, the council voted 6-3 to introduce Hudock’s ordinance, with Roberts, Ramos and Soares voting no. Like the repeal ordinance, this measure awaits a second and third reading. When Roberts was finally given the floor, he tried to get the council to consider his ordinance in place of the repealed measure. His ordinance also would have put properties coming out of federal control under rent control, but would not have the attachments that Hudock’s did. But he was stymied yet again, this time by Robert Murray, the council’s lawyer. Citing Council Rule 21, Murray told Roberts that his motion could not be considered since council rules state that all ordinances have to be written by the council’s lawyer, and Roberts had apparently written this one with Tumpson. Shellshocked, Roberts was reduced to begging. “Mr. Murray, don’t do this,” he said. “You are playing around with all these ordinances.” But Murray stood his ground, and Robert’s ordinance was not heard. Throughout each of the setbacks, Roberts became increasingly frustrated with his political opponents, who he believed were trying to claim credit for a political fight he had won. Since he was unable to forward his legislative agenda, he delivered several speeches dressing down his political foes for usurping what he thought was rightfully his. “We have seen a 360 degree reversal brought to you by the same group that hailed rent control reform originally,” he said during the meeting, more to the public than to his colleagues. “This new ordinance is now being proposed by the people who wanted the original complex amendment. They are singing a new song that is more pleasant to the people of Hoboken’s ears. While it was unacceptable before, you are now racing to be heard on ordinances before the original proposers themselves.” After one of Roberts’ soliloquies, Councilman Michael Cricco, who has been quiet in recent meetings except for some disgruntled-under-his-breath mumbling which he aims at Roberts and Soares when they speak, had had enough. “You come up here with a political agenda that is so obvious,” he said, pointing at Roberts, who is thought to be considering a mayoral bid. “I want to talk about other things here other than Dave Roberts’ ambition. Who did it first? Who really cares? I could be over at my daughter’s science fair, but instead I have to listen to you go on and on.” q Kissing babies, throwing stones Some would say that the opponents of Hoboken’s feisty mayor will criticize him no matter what he does, so it should come as no surprise that his political foes are skewering him again. This time, it’s over the fact that he was playing with a 4-year-old boy. On Wednesday night, Mayor Anthony Russo spent half an hour during the City Council meeting holding 4-year-old David Malchuca in his lap, hugging him and occasionally planting a kiss on his cheek. The event was so out of character for the hard-charging mayor, who often pops up from his seat off to the side of the council dais to join the political debate, that the Reporter took photos of the mayor with the boy. The next morning, two of the mayor’s staunch political opponents called the Reporter to say that they thought the event was staged, and that it would be a disservice to the public to put pictures of it on the front page. “That kissing the baby thing went out with Reagan,” said County Freeholder Maurice Fitzgibbons, who had sat among the crowd during the meeting. “It was a staged event. If that is what he needs to do to make him look warm and fuzzy, it’s pathetic.” When asked if the event was actually staged, Michael Korman, the city’s Director of Public Information, appeared to be in shock. “That’s ridiculous,” he said. Korman said the boy is the cousin of Russo’s son Anthony’s girlfriend. “The mayor loves this child like he is his own,” he added. “David always seems to be around during events. I think he even has spent the night at the mayor’s house. To say that it was staged is just ridiculous.”
Rent reform repealed: Controversial measure nixed in raucous council meeting
