Gary Schiff
Gary Schiff is an American politician and activist who represented Ward 9 on the Minneapolis City Council. A member of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, he was first elected in 2001 and re-elected in 2005 and 2009. Prior to his political career, Schiff was involved with a variety of activist groups and causes ranging from human rights with the Human Rights Campaign, to historic preservation with Save Our Shubert.
During his city council tenure, Schiff worked to ease ordinances prohibitive to small businesses, especially microbreweries, and strongly advocated against a publicly funded stadium for the Minnesota Vikings. In January 2013, Schiff began a campaign for mayor of Minneapolis in the 2013 election but after an unsuccessful DFL endorsement convention, dropped out of the race and backed eventual winner Betsy Hodges in mid-June. His third and final term on the City Council ended in January 2014.
Schiff took over as president of the Council on Crime and Justice the following July but he was dismissed from the organization the next year. The organization closed abruptly following his termination. Schiff again ran to represent Ward 9 on the City Council in 2017 but lost to incumbent Alondra Cano.
Early life
Schiff was born Gary J. Schiffhauer on February 3, 1972, and grew up the youngest of six children in Western New York State. In 1990, the American Civil Liberties Union represented Schiff after he graduated from Lewiston-Porter High School in his hometown of Youngstown, New York. According to The Buffalo News, Schiff had painted a mural along the school's stairwell that referenced "drugs, safe sex, AIDS and racism" in the style of artist Keith Haring. In September of that year, the school's superintendent, Walter S. Polka, decided that parts of the mural's text were objectionable. The American Civil Liberties Union became involved in an extended legal fight over the constitutionality of Polka's censorship, and a New York Supreme Court Justice sided with the Lewiston-Porter School Board. In 1991, the school board voted 5–1 to paint over the mural. The board cited Schiff's involvement in a recent ACT-UP demonstration at the school—where demonstrators gave condoms and safe sex literature to students—as a major influence on their decision.As part of a transition that included moving from Youngstown to Minneapolis to attend college at the University of Minnesota, Schiff shortened his name from the original Schiffhauer as a result of his parents' shame and refusal to acknowledge his sexuality in the small conservative town of Youngstown NY where the family attended church in a conservative Roman Catholic Parish. However, Robert and Rita Schiffhauer, Gary's parents, soon joined the PFLAG Chapter in nearby Buffalo, NY in order to understand and support their son which they continued to do throughout their lives. Schiff's official public statement is that he shortened his name in an effort to move the memories of bullying that he said made his youth "an act of survival". In October 1992, he and six other students protested against the Reserve Officers' Training Corps and its compliance with a longstanding ban on homosexuals in the military. The seven protesters interrupted a meeting of the University Board of Regents, demanded the expulsion of the ROTC from campus, and handcuffed themselves to the Regents' chairs. Wearing signs that read "$old," suggesting that their human rights had been traded for Federal grant money, Schiff and the six other students were arrested by University Police and each charged with misdemeanors.
From 1993 to 1995, Schiff directed the Progressive Student Leadership Exchange, a program modeled on the Civil Rights Movement's Freedom Summer. The Human Rights Campaign took interest in the program, and invited Schiff to direct it as the newly named "Youth College for Campaign Training" in Washington, D.C. The HRC-funded program invited people aged 18–24 to participate in workshops, and sent the participants to "target states" where they worked in groups as campaign staff members. The program was still in operation as late as 2006.
After graduating in 1994 with a B.A. in women's studies, Schiff moved to Washington, D.C. to work with the Human Rights Campaign. He returned to Minneapolis to work with Progressive Minnesota, "a grassroots group focused on community organizing and electoral politics." In December 1997, he became involved in a fight to save the Shubert Theater, a former vaudeville house on "Block E" in downtown Minneapolis, after the Minneapolis City Council approved a redevelopment plan that called for the theater's demolition. Within days, Schiff organized "Save Our Shubert," a grassroots effort to preserve the theater. After eight months, during which time Save our Shubert acted as a media contact, lobbied the city council, and "kept the Shubert in the public eye", the Minneapolis City Council voted 9–3 to move the theater to a space adjacent to the Hennepin Center for the Arts at a cost of $3.9 million.
Minneapolis City Council
Schiff, at the time working as a teaching assistant in the University of Minnesota's Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs on his way to earning a master's degree in urban planning, took a leave of absence to run for a seat on the Minneapolis City Council against Michael Guest and Kathy Thurber in 2001. He won unanimous DFL endorsement on September 11, 2001, and, in a race that was overshadowed by the 2001 terrorist attacks, he ran against Lucky Rosenbloom, an African-American Republican. Schiff received the endorsement of the Star Tribune, which noted his "first-hand knowledge" of light rail systems in other U.S. cities. Elected by a large majority in November 2001, Schiff became one of seven newly elected members on the 13-member city council, joining two Green Party members, two other openly gay council members, one African-American council member, and four women. He was sworn into office on December 17, 2001, earlier than his fellow councilmembers, when Thurber resigned from her seat to assume the position of deputy director of Perpich Center for Arts Education.First term (2001–05)
In his first term, Schiff sponsored and cosponsored numerous legal reforms to the Minneapolis Zoning Code that reduced bureaucratic obstacles for small businesses and housing developers, including a measure that permitted sidewalk cafes to use permanent outdoor furniture and a change in city zoning code that facilitated the construction of denser and more affordable housing. He also sponsored an ordinance to add domestic partnerships to the Zoning Code's definition of "family" in terms of housing.In 2003, with colleagues Barbara Johnson and Sandy Colvin Roy, Schiff developed a last-minute plan to restore $2 million in proposed cuts to the Minneapolis Fire and Police Departments, following a $26 million cut from Local Government Aid by former Governor Tim Pawlenty. That same year, he sponsored an ordinance that effectively blocked police officers, city inspectors, and other city employees from inquiring about a resident's immigration status. The ordinance forbids police officers from arresting a suspect solely on the grounds of a suspected immigration status violation.
Second term (2005–09)
In July 2004, the Minneapolis City Council passed a ban on indoor smoking in bars, restaurants, pool halls, and bowling alleys by a 12-1 margin. In March 2005, the ban took effect alongside other indoor smoking bans passed by other cities in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area. Subsequently, during the 2005 Minneapolis City Council elections, a write-in candidate named Dave Shegstad received 10 percent of the ninth ward vote under a "Smoke Out Gary" campaign slogan—a reference to Schiff's role as a co-author of the smoking ban. 59 percent of voters re-elected Schiff to a second term; his main opponent, Green Party candidate David Bicking, won 30 percent of the vote.In 2006, Schiff sponsored eliminating a cap on taxi licenses in Minneapolis. The move angered some local taxi drivers, who noted that an attending increase in licenses would lead to greater competition in the local taxicab business. The City Council passed the cap lift, and the number of Minneapolis taxis doubled between 2010 and 2012.
Beginning in 2008, Schiff and other city leaders contended with local ramifications of the Great Recession, which included spate of foreclosures in economically distressed neighborhoods. In April 2008, the city council approved a pilot mortgage assistance program called Minneapolis Advantage. The program, which passed the council 10–2, offered forgivable loans to homebuyers who were interested in properties on the same block as foreclosed or city-owned properties within targeted neighborhoods. Schiff argued that the initiative was not targeted enough to have the designed effect and voted against it, along with fellow councilmember Paul Ostrow.
The city also strictly regulated non-motorized pedicabs; it first permitted the bicycle-powered taxis in 1984, but there were no active pedicab licenses in the city by 2008. Schiff proposed eliminating some restrictions, and the city council passed ordinances allowing pedicabs to operate on downtown streets, downtown bridges, and on the Nicollet Mall, at any time except the morning and evening rush hours. In October 2011, when the city permitted pedicabs to operate during rush hours, eight licensed pedicab companies operated forty cabs in the downtown area.
Third term (2009–13)
In February 2012, a reporter for the Minnesota Daily wrote that Schiff is "possibly the most active and popular City Council member" and noted that 60 percent of Ward 9 voters reelected him to a third term in 2009.An avid supporter of microbrewing in Minneapolis, Schiff sponsored the "Brew Beer Here" ordinance that allowed the sale of 64-ounce "growlers" of beer on Minneapolis brewery premises. Passed in August 2010, the ordinance facilitated brewery operation within Minneapolis city limits and led to the opening of Harriet Brewing Company, the first Minneapolis brewery to open in decades. With colleague Elizabeth Gidden, Schiff co-sponsored the "Surly Bill," an ordinance that permits breweries to sell pints of their products on-site. Schiff also proposed eliminating zoning constraints against establishments serving alcohol within 300 feet of a house of worship outside of the downtown area. The ordinance change was inspired by a struggle between Rob Miller, a brewer interested in opening a "pico brewery" called Dangerous Man Brewing in Northeast Minneapolis, and the church of Saints Cyril and Methodius Church, located across the street from the brewery's proposed location. Citing his work to ease ordinances prohibitive to the microbrewing industry, Twin Cities Business named Schiff the most business-friendly city councilor in Minneapolis in 2012.
In 1997, before he became a member of the city council, Schiff co-authored an amendment to the City of Minneapolis Charter that mandated a voter referendum on city stadium subsidies that cost taxpayers over $10 million. As of 2009, the Minnesota Vikings were moving forward on a $870 million plan to rebuild a downtown stadium on the site of the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome. The team also considered building a new stadium in other cities, including Anoka, Minnesota and Los Angeles, California. Though supportive of the Vikings remaining in Minneapolis in 2012, Schiff became an outspoken critic of the financing plan for the stadium when it came to a vote before the Minneapolis City Council, in part because it bypassed the charter amendment. Schiff also argued that the plan's estimated cost to Minneapolis taxpayers, cited at $150 million in construction costs, failed to account for interest, maintenance costs, and upgrades over the course of the stadium's expected 30-year lifespan. In a Star Tribune editorial, Schiff quoted figures presented by the city's chief financial officer, Kevin Carpenter, which estimated a cumulative, 30-year cost that could range from $675 million to $890 million. Despite Schiff's objections, the Minneapolis City Council approved the stadium financing 7–6. Subsequently, the football team moved forward with plans to demolish the Metrodome and rebuild a new stadium on the site, and Governor Mark Dayton signed a financing plan approved by the legislature.