On June 25th, County Executive Astorino vetoed a bill that sought to ban -- with significant exemptions -- discrimination in housing on the basis of lawful source of income. He did so in the face of a Settlement Order provision that required Westchester to "promote, through the County Executive, legislation currently pending before the Board of Legislators to ban 'source-of-income' discrimination in housing" (Settlement Order, ¶ 33(g)).
This non-compliance is just the tip of the iceberg. In other words, the veto is merely a symptom of a deeper underlying problem. Through the submission of profoundly deficient proposed "Implementation Plans" and otherwise, the County Executive has made clear that, contrary to the requirements of the Settlement Order, he has no plans to require municipalities to do anything.
Westchester submitted its second proposed "Implementation Plan" to the Monitor on March 12th. A warmed over version of the first proposal, the March 12th proposal was quickly dismissed by HUD as inadequate. The Monitor remained silent.
On March 25th, ADC submitted to the Monitor a detailed draft Implementation Plan in response to Westchester's March 12th submission. Since that time, ADC has urged the Monitor to focus on the essential principles that must be contained in a plan designed to succeed. These include reaffirmation of the central de-segregating purpose of the consent decree; establishing strict Census Block level demographic criteria so that the housing, as intended by the Settlement Order, actually gets built on the blocks with the lowest concentrations of African-Americans and Latinos; and directing Westchester to proceed with a concurrent two-track strategy (rewarding cooperative jurisdictions on the one hand while simultaneously acquiring land and taking other the steps necessary to mount legal challenges to resistant jurisdictions on the other).
ADC has pointed out the harm that the vacuum of oversight has been causing, and has repeatedly urged the Monitor to issue a partial implementation plan that focuses on the most essential elements of a successful plan.
More than three months have elapsed since Westchester's submission -- indeed, more than three months have passed since ADC submitted its response -- and the Monitor still has failed to report any action (comprehensive or partial) to the Court.
The Monitor, of course, serves at the pleasure of HUD. The agency has not made clear to the public just how long it intends to stand by while the Monitor fails to act; has not made clear to the public what specific elements of an implementation plan it is demanding that the Monitor include (if any); and has not made clear to the public how long it intends to permit Westchester to flout lawful federal authority as embodied in a legally binding consent decree without seeking the judicial intervention built-in to the Settlement Order as a safeguard.
Perhaps the County Executive's latest act of defiance will cause the Monitor and HUD to come to understand that effective implementation is not found in a process of painstakingly drafting the minute details of an implementation plan, nor in hoping and praying that the "pretty please" method will miraculously work in the context of seeing that lawful federal authority is obeyed.
A consent decree represents the end of a negotiation, not the beginning. Implementation means insistence on an acceptance of each and all of the principles underlying the decree. The relevant principles are clear; whether there is sufficient will to act is not.
