Green, Mark J. (1945–)

MARK GREEN HAS served as New York City's consumer affairs commissioner and public advocate. He is the author or editor of numerous books on government, business, and consumer issues, including Who Runs Congress? (1972), Corporate Power in America (1973), Winning Back America (1982), and The Consumer Bible (1995). His most recent book, Selling Out (2002), focuses on how corporate money corrupts elections in America.

Green has spent most of his career exposing the crimes and misdeeds of large businesses. After graduating from Harvard Law School, Green worked with Ralph Nader from 1970 to 1980 as a public interest lawyer, ultimately becoming head of the Public Citizen's Congress Watch. From 1990 to 1993, he served as Consumer Affairs Commissioner, leading a $17-million agency that handled 23,000 consumer complaints annually.

Agency initiatives included investigating how minority consumers were forced to pay more for groceries, auto insurance, and home improvement contracts; laundries and hair salons engaged in gender-price discrimination by charging women more than men; and tobacco companies targeted children in their marketing efforts. Green also helped garner support for a new law that banned cigarette vending machines.

Green was elected as the first New York City public advocate in 1994 and served for two terms. He was an early critic of the New York Police Department's (NYPD) failure to discipline abusive cops, and he won a lawsuit against the NYPD for[Page 380] blocking access to internal files on the disciplinary process. Green co-authored New York City's landmark campaign finance reform law. He was also active in curbing healthcare abuses, hospital non-compliance with limits on resident working hours, and nursing-home health violations. His initiative to improve the child welfare system was a semi-finalist in the Innovations of American Government awards.