N.Y. TIMES
Mayor Bill de Blasio charted a robust liberal agenda for New York City on Monday, pledging to bypass Washington to address economic and social disparities by expanding benefits for illegal immigrants and pressing for a higher local minimum wage.
In his first State of the City address, Mr. de Blasio said New York would become the largest municipality to offer identification cards to residents regardless of their legal status, making it easier for undocumented immigrants to open bank accounts, lease apartments or borrow library books.
And he vowed to bring New York in line with other liberal strongholds, like San Francisco and Washington, that already set their own minimum wage, although Mr. de Blasio will need approval from legislators in Albany to enact his version.
Mr. de Blasio is hoping to follow in the steps of other local leaders who have brought about liberal reforms in the face of congressional gridlock. Seattle’s new mayor is pushing a measure to make the city’s minimum wage among the highest in the nation. Mr. de Blasio’s proposal of municipal ID cards for undocumented immigrants, novel in New York, is based on similar measures already in place in several other municipalities around the country, including New Haven, Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Mayor de Blasio said he and the City Council, whose new leaders are closely aligned with him, would also work to expand New York’s “living wage” law to cover tens of thousands of workers whose employers receive city subsidies.
In promising to move quickly with his plans, the mayor made clear that he had lost patience with federal lawmakers, whose efforts to enact similar policies have stagnated, and that he was undaunted by the resistance he is already encountering among officials in the State Capitol.