I was completely stunned by: Criticized as Too Sedate, Public Advocate's Office Intends to Get Louder

New York City

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In a challenge to the administration of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, the city’s new public advocate, Bill de Blasio, will unveil a plan on Monday to train aggrieved residents to organize petition drives, demonstrations and civic actions against City Hall.

Moving swiftly to redefine a sedate office at the periphery of New York City government, Mr. de Blasio is creating a department of community organizing, which will seek to turn those who grouse about city policies and practices into advocates who band together to reshape them.

In an interview Sunday night, he said the new department could be especially effective in mobilizing parents of children in the city’s schools, a group he says has been consistently ignored by the Bloomberg administration.

The move represents a significant rethinking of the office, which has traditionally served as a quiet problem solver, responding to scattered complaints about everything from unfilled potholes to unresponsive city officials. But Mr. Bloomberg has largely filled that task with 311, the popular information hot line, and Mr. de Blasio’s predecessor, Betsy Gotbaum, kept a low profile over the past eight years. For much of that time, the office had been criticized as ineffectual, so much so that the City Council slashed its financing and Mr. Bloomberg called the job “a waste of everyone’s money.”

In the interview, Mr. de Blasio vowed to take the office “to a new activist level.”

“This is what government is supposed to do — channel energy and activism and achieve results for our constituents,” he said.

Mr. de Blasio has repeatedly complained that the Bloomberg administration does not promote — or permit — enough citizen debate and engagement.

“This is a city that not long ago seemed ungovernable, so a very top-down style of government has taken shape, epitomized by the current administration,” Mr. de Blasio said. “But you have to engage the grass roots, and my office will be the leading edge of that.”

To promote activism, the office will hold workshops across the city to link residents with grass-roots organizations, offer toolkits for how to advocate for policy changes, create a page on the public advocate’s Web site to connect New Yorkers with similar problems and give out awards to those who “successfully fight on behalf of their neighborhoods,” according to a copy of a news release to be distributed on Monday.

Of course, whether citizens who have complaints want to become more active is an open question. Some may simply want their problems addressed.

But the strategy is intended to broaden the public advocate’s influence when its financing is at an all-time low, with an annual budget of $1.7 million, down from $3.5 million a decade ago.

It also reflects the considerable ambitions of Mr. de Blasio, who is viewed as a possible mayoral contender in four years. The idea is not entirely new: Norman Siegel, a lawyer who also ran for public advocate last year, has called for similar outreach efforts.

In a gesture rich in symbolism, Mr. de Blasio will announce the plan with eight new City Council members, many of them community organizers elected in a wave of anti-incumbency.

Neither Mr. Bloomberg nor the Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn, was invited to the news conference. Margaret Chin, a newly elected councilwoman from Manhattan, said it was time for elected officials to adopt the tactics of the groups that lobby for change.

Mr. de Blasio said the focus of community organizing would be city agencies “where there is evidence of systemic failures.”

He criticized the Department of Education, citing its announcement, with scant warning, that half of a neighborhood public school would shut down and its space be given to a new charter school. “I am going to fight to make sure there is community involvement,” he said. And if the administration’s plans hurt residents, he said, “I will fight to reverse it.”

Mr. de Blasio also suggested pressuring the mayor to require that publicly subsidized development projects employ nearby residents and contain greater benefits for their neighborhoods.

Mr. de Blasio said that the public advocate would still resolve many complaints quietly, by reaching out to City Hall commissioners. But if those officials fail to respond, he pledged, he will rally residents to put public pressure on the agencies to act.

“The traditional vision was to call a press conference, issue a report, file a lawsuit,” he said. “I don’t think any of those tools, which are typically used in a drive-by manner, have the same impact as organizing communities.”