Clinton says she not taking sides in potential Spitzer-Suozzi race

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

5:08 PM EST, February 15, 2006

New York state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer is seen after a fundraiser at the Glen Oaks Country Club in Old Westbury. (Newsday / Karen Wiles Stabile / February 15, 2006)

WASHINGTON - Sen. Hillary Clinton and Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi -- a potential candidate for governor -- appeared at the same event Wednesday advancing the same cause, but the senator insisted she's not picking sides in any potential Democratic primary.

"I've got my own race to run," Clinton, D-N.Y., told reporters after giving an opening address at the Brookings Institution about the growing needs of aging suburban developments in New York and around the country.

Suozzi, who said he'll decide in a matter of weeks whether to challenge Attorney General Eliot Spitzer for the Democratic nomination, spoke after Clinton as part of a panel of suburb executives facing rising costs, an aging population and a lack of affordable housing.

"People have reached the point where they're being crushed" by high property and state taxes in New York, said Suozzi, repeating a mantra that has gained him some measure of popularity among local officials pressing for relief from Albany.

Suozzi said he agreed with Clinton's assessment that upstate cities like Rochester, Buffalo, Niagara Falls and Schenectady "are really under tremendous pressure economically" and that they share the same burden imposed on them by Albany.

The two New York politicians spoke as Brookings released research finding that close-in suburbs are being shortchanged by federal housing and transportation policies that favor central cities and outer suburbs.

The report notes that nearly one-fifth of the U.S. population lives in what the think tank calls "first suburbs" -- cities and towns adjacent to inner cities.

They are between fast-growing outer suburbs and slow-growing or declining inner cities and are often neglected by both urban and suburban policies, the report said.

"Politically, they are less than the sum of their parts," said Bruce Katz, director of the metropolitan policy program at Brookings.

The program hosted a symposium that featured county leaders from the metropolitan areas of Seattle, Pittsburgh, Dallas, New York and northern Virginia.

The leaders complained that their communities face many of the social and economic problems of larger cities, but get fewer resources to address them.

They said the highway system has encouraged people to move to outer suburbs in search of bigger, less expensive homes. Federal housing programs, however, have neglected the need for affordable housing in inner suburbs, they said.

Ron Sims, county executive of King County, Wash., said he could not get federal money to fight homelessness outside Seattle until he got help from the mayor of Seattle.

"We wanted to help poor people throughout the entire area," Sims said.

Dallas County Judge Margaret Keliher said suburban Dallas does not have many services for the homeless because federal grants target the city of Dallas.

"We are watching all of the money go to primary cities," Keliher said.

The study identified 64 counties as homes to first suburbs, and analyzed demographic changes in those counties from 1950 to 2000.

Such suburbs still have high levels of home ownership, household income and education attainment, but those achievements are in jeopardy, the report said.

Faced with deteriorating roads, expensive housing and increasingly diverse populations, first suburbs "are staring down a set of looming challenges" that threaten their stability, the report said.

Among the findings:

--While concentrated poverty is on the decline nationally, it is increasing in first suburbs.

--Overall household incomes increased nationally in the 1990s, but declined in first suburbs.

--The share of racial and ethnic minorities living in first suburbs more than doubled from 1980 to 2000. Minorities now make up one-third of their populations.

Rep. Michael Turner, R-Ohio, told the audience at Brookings that House Republicans have formed a group to address the needs of cities and inner-ring suburbs.

Turner said he is promoting a bill that would offer tax breaks to developers who clean up and build on contaminated sites in cities and inner-ring suburbs.

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Associated Press writer Devlin Barrett contributed to this report.