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A Loyal Friend to the Latino Community

Bill Thompson is widely seen as a friend and champion of Latino New Yorkers. Bill has a strong working relationship with the many organizations representing Latino issues and concerns in New York, and he has frequently recognized their many contributions to the health and vitality of our City.

Bill is also a champion of immigrant rights-an issue affecting many Latino New Yorkers. Bill knows that foreign-born immigrants, who make up 43 percent of all people employed in New York City, play a critically important role in shaping our City's economy.

As City Comptroller, Bill has advocated relentlessly for Latino New Yorkers and their families by:

• Documenting the health disparities that affect Latino communities in a report called "Health and Wealth: Assessing and Addressing Income Disparities in the Health of New Yorkers" and calling for equal access to health care.

• Helping to institute requirements that hospitals provide language access services in all departments that routinely interact with the public.

• Spearheading an initiative that puts City funds in new bank branches in under-served communities. With total deposits of $200 million, these bank branches have helped many Latino-owned small businesses grow and prosper with new access to financing.

• Supporting immigration reform that would provide undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship.

• Fighting the U.S. Congress' 2007 efforts to make an undocumented immigrant's presence in the United States a federal crime, and speaking out against a provision in the bill criminalizing the act of assisting those who undocumented.

• Working with community, immigrant, and worker advocacy groups to launch an aggressive immigrant outreach initiative to ensure that contractors that do business with the City do not exploit workers by skirting prevailing wage and living wage laws.

• Advocating for English Language Learners (ELL)/dual language education, closing the achievement gap, and building more schools.

• Fighting against the lack of minority representation in senior positions at City agencies.

• Filing shareholder resolutions, as a trustee to the New York City Pension Funds, to call for human rights abroad. He also expressed concern for the safety of female workers toiling in maquiladora factories in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico and called for an investigation into alleged violence against union officials and employees at Coca-Cola's bottling affiliate in Columbia.

• Demanding the resignation of Betsy Perry-Mayor Bloomberg's Appointee to the NYC Committee on Women's Issues-who published an online essay stating that swine flu is an "excuse to close our borders" to Mexico.

As Mayor, Bill will work to protect and defend the rights of Latino New Yorkers and:

• Work to expand access to healthcare.

• Work to grow our City's many immigrant-owned small businesses.

o Stop the ticketing harassment of small businesses that has resulted in legally double-parked trucks-making store deliveries-receiving parking violations.

o Ensure that drivers first receive a warning when they are illegally double parked and inside their car-instead of automatically receiving a ticket.

o Create a Citywide Local Retail Retention Taskforce where employers, workers, and the City collaboratively develop new mechanisms to better support small, retail sector employers.

o Create new zoning tools, such as Retail Retention Zones, that restrict the type and size of retail establishments in targeted areas in order to prevent large, national chains from putting locally-owned retail establishments out of business.

• Tell the truth and make our school system accountable to the public.

o Increase parental involvement and ensure that parents are equal stakeholders in their children's education and future.

o Streamline options to encourage parental involvement.

o Expand the number of District Family Advocates.

o Work to increase access to ELL/dual language programs.

o Fix the curriculum so that we are not just teaching to the test but teaching the whole child.

o End the privatization of our schools.

o Design public school choices that work for all students.

• Use all of the City's tools, including inclusionary zoning, financing, tax incentives and City-owned land to expand affordable housing.

o Create a 21st Century Mitchell-Lama Program.

o Work in partnership with the City's labor unions to develop workforce specific housing to ensure that our City's economy has the local workforce it needs and working New Yorkers can afford to live in the City.

o Work to repeal the State Urstadt Law and return control of the City's rent law to New York City residents.

o Work to repeal Vacancy Decontrol that allows landlords to charge market rate rents after the apartment's rent reaches $2,000 a month and becomes vacant.