Results
Select Results as Commissioner of Consumer Affairs
& Public Advocate
"I want you to think about Mark Green's title a minute. [It's] the Public Advocate. I don't know if there's another city in America that has an elected public advocate.
But think about what that means. Someone who is standing up for people at large, right? Now, it was in that connection that Mark Green created this day, Kick Butts Day, all across the United States."
- PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON, 1997
Protecting Health
Tobacco: Petitions the FTC to prohibit cartoon characters in cigarette ads and to end the “Smooth Character” Joe Camel poster campaign. In April 1996, the FTC rules that Joe Camel ads illegally target children and the next month R.J. Reynolds ends that ad campaign.
Hospitals: Exposes how hospitals are routinely and illegally violating the law restricting working hours in For Whom the “Bell” Tolls: How Hospitals Violate the “Bell” Regulations Governing Resident Working Conditions.
Drugs: Exposes how drug companies and pharmacists are misleading consumers into taking the wrong or more expensive drugs in Pharmaceutical Payola: How Secret Commercial Deals are Dictating Your Next Prescription and Harming Your Health.
Standing Up For Women
RU-486: Organizes 20 big-city mayors to pressure French manufacturers to allow RU-486 to be exported to the United States for testing and sale.
Women in Divorce: Publishes the study Women in Divorce, urging courts to pursue systematic reforms so that women aren’t victimized by divorce lawyers in divorce court -- and state’s highest court and chief judge adopt many of reforms.
Fertility Clinics: Successfully files a first-of-its-kind legal action against Mt Sinai Hospital for deceiving hopeful parents at its fertility clinic.
Rape Survivors: Helps rape survivors get treatment in City hospitals in Treating Rape Survivors: Progress in the Treatment of Sexual Assault Survivors in HHC Emergency Rooms.
Gender Price Discrimination: Proposes and enacts a Gender Pricing Bias Bill (Intro 804) requiring that stores post any difference in charges to men and women for the same services.
Domestic Violence: Reveals how some victims of domestic violence are fired and drafts/enacts a law (Intro 400) prohibiting discrimination against domestic violence victims.
Consumers & Environment
Kosher Food: Launches a city-wide “Kosher Coalition” of 22 organizations and 34 wholesalers and retailers which, for the first time, formally pledge to restrain Kosher-for-Passover prices.
Home Improvement Contractors: Exposes crooked home improvement contractors (HICs), working in tandem with shady finance companies, which prey on thousands of mostly minority NYC homeowners, and begins the largest crackdown ever against unlicensed HICs.
Environmental Fraud: Charges six companies with deceptive environmental claims duping environmentally-concerned consumers through “green collar fraud.”
Recycling: Explains why New York City Council should oppose Giuliani’s attempt to undermine recycling in Trashing Jobs and the Environment: How Retreating from Recycling Would Hurt NYC.
Justice
Minorities in Ads: Publishes report, Invisible People: The Depiction of Minorities in Magazine Ads and Catalogs, finding that black people were underrepresented in ads and mostly depicted in stereotypical roles such as athletes or musicians.
Police Misconduct: Releases major study documenting how the NYPD rarely punishes police misconduct and successfully sues Commissioner Safir to obtain NYPD disciplinary files – and the rate of discipline triples.
Brooklyn Museum Lawsuit: Leads 38 elected officials in amicus briefs in supporting the Brooklyn Museum against funding cuts because of the Mayor’s strong disapproval of the paintings in the “Sensation exhibit.”
Business
Organized Crime: As regulator of the industry, forced members of the City’s Trade Waste Association – many with links to organized crime – to open their books, then reduced their permitted rates, saving city businesses hundreds of millions of dollars; later worked with Mayor Giuliani to tighten regulation of industry.
Government
311: Proposes in 2001 a dedicated 311 phone number that taxpayers can call to obtain essential information and report problems. The next year Mayor Bloomberg successfully implements it.
Campaign Finance Reform: Writes law (Intro 344) increasing matchable contributions to 4-1 for gifts up to $250 for participating candidates in the Campaign Finance program if they do not accept corporate contributions and lowering the contribution limits of such program.
What Leaders Have Said About Mark Green
2009: Speaker Nancy Pelosi – “Mark Green has assembled some of our nation’s best minds, and their best ideas, into a book [Change for America] packed with innovative, practical and progressive solutions that will take America in a new direction.”
2009: James Roosevelt, Jr – “Change for America is one of the most important books to be published this year. It’s a handbook for restoring the New Deal’s social compact with our citizens over Obama’s First Hundred Days and the next 1360.”
2006: The Nation magazine – “He is something unusual in the city’s politics – a classy, smart, articulate public servant, seasoned and tested.”
2006: Bill Moyers - “Mark Green has the faith through long and tough years of fighting for social and economic justice. Let’s put Mark Green’s ideas to work!”
2006: Arianna Huffington – "'Losing our Democracy' is a must-read for anyone who cares about America finding its true self again."
2006: Marty Markowitz – “As a people’s lawyer, Mark has been a crusader on behalf of consumers for more than 30 years. He has stood up – like David – to one Goliath after another, from big banks to big tobacco to big-time mob crime and corruption.”
2006: Judith Hope, former Democratic Party Chair – “What he’s concretely accomplished in his lifetime of advocacy is remarkable, especially for women… Mark’s a great family man with a beautiful family, which helps explain why he’s been a people’s lawyer for everyone’s family.”
2001: The New York Times – “He has always had political courage and he does not buckle under fire… He has demonstrated a deep understanding of the issues, a sensible approach to public policy and the soul of a fighter.”
2001: The New York Daily News – “As the city’s No. 2 official, Green teamed with Mayor Giuliani to break organized crime’s hold over the private carting industry, was the author of key reforms in the city’s model campaign finance program and worked to streamline the civilian complaint review process, thereby protecting both cops and citizens.”
2001: The Village Voice – “Mark Green [is] the hardest working man in politics. The author and editor of 16 books, he is one of the preeminent analysts on obstacles to democracy.”
2000: Rep. Henry Waxman – “Selling Out is the best book written on the political influence of big money because Mark Green knows the subject literally inside out, as both an author and candidate.”
1998: Esther Peterson (Consumer advisor to President Kennedy, Truman, Carter) – “The Consumer Bible is the Dr. Spade of consumer books.”
1992: President-elect Bill Clinton – “The advice and analysis in Changing America – grounded in the primary value of Democracy – will be used to help America live up to her highest ideals.”
1976: John Kenneth Galbraith – “The Other Government on Washington lawyers is altogether persuasive… an excellent book.”
1972: Ferdinand Lundberg, author of The Rich and the Superrich – “Who Runs Congress? Is the best book ever done on Congress – about 10 billion light years ahead of its nearest competition… should be memorized word for word by every citizen.”
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