Weekend News Summary
Special City Council election in diverse Bronx district
City & State
Feb. 19, 2021
With the June primaries still months away, special elections continue to fill recently vacated seats on the New York City Council. Among them, the District 11 City Council seat is to be decided by ranked-choice-voting during a special election on March 23. The contest, triggered by former Councilmember Andrew Cohen's resignation in December, after he was elected to be a judge in Bronx Supreme Court a month earlier, will decide who represents a district where a diverse group of residents are almost polar opposites when it comes to incomes.
Six candidates are vying for the open seat. The winner of the non-partisan special contest will still have to run again in the June primary with a party designation, and then once more in the November general election.
The district's unique makeup is made up of both low-income residents -- the majority people of color in areas like Wakefield, Bedford Park and Kingsbridge in the Bronx, and higher-income, white New Yorkers living in the Fieldston, Riverdale and Spuyten Duyvil sections of the borough. The district is 38.9% white, 18.1% Black, and 33.1% of Hispanic origin. But the neighborhoods vary wildly: Wakefield is about 70% Black, and Fieldston is almost 60% white. And while median household income in the Bronx clocks in at around $38,000, it's close to double that in Riverdale.
As candidates compete to appeal to residents across the socioeconomic spectrum, here are some fast facts about the contenders, in alphabetical order.
Carlton Berkley
Born: Harlem
Home: Back and forth between Wakefield and Harlem
Current job: Owns DCW Investigations and Security. He's also made some previous unsuccessful runs for office — twice for City Council in District 9 and 16, and once for Assembly under the self-created People 4 Chuck Party.
Previous jobs: College Assistant at John Jay College, served 20 years with the New York Police Department.
Fundraising: $7,705, according to most recent filings.
Endorsements: None known at press time.
Major policy proposals: Berkley doesn't have a website, but he told the Riverdale Press he's not a proponent of defunding the police — instead, he's for large cuts to NYPD's budget and lowering crime rates by investing money into communities. He supports calculating rent on a family's income, along with rent relief or cancellation for small businesses. He also wants to address transportation issues for Riverdale's senior citizens.
Eric Dinowitz
Born: Northwest Bronx
Home: Northwest Bronx
Current job: Special education teacher for 13 years, Chair of the Aging Committee on Community Board 8
Previous jobs: Former chapter leader in the United Federation of Teachers
Fundraising: $65,156.
Endorsements: United Federation of Teachers, Ben Franklin Club, Bronx Borough President Ruben Díaz Jr., Congressman Adriano Espaillat, U.S. Congressman Ritchie Torres, State Sen. Jamaal T. Bailey, New York City Central Labor Council AFL-CIO, New York City District Council 37.
Major policy proposals: According to his website, he supports rent stabilization, expanding the Senior Citizen Rent Increase Exemption, blocking purges of voters by Borough Boards of Elections, prohibiting anyone convicted of corruption from ever holding office again, and closing Rikers Island. Dinowitz, son of Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, wants to remove NYPD from classrooms and increase social workers and support services in schools, along with having increased accessibility in public transit and creating a Climate Caucus in the City Council. He's also against Airbnb expansion.
Jessica Haller
Born: Upper West Side
Home: Riverdale
Current job: Vice Chair of the Board of Hazon, board member of the Riverdale Nature Preservancy, and an advisory board member of Eden Village Camp
Previous jobs: Worked for MasterCard
Fundraising: $77,821
Endorsements: Former New York Attorney General Oliver Koppell, Women for the Win, Jewish Climate Action Network New York, North Bronx Racial Justice, Open New York, Vote Mama, Bronx Climate Justice North, NO IDC NY, former mayoral candidate Ruth Messinger.
Major policy proposals: According to her website, Haller wants to improve air quality "to reduce disproportionate impacts on BIPOC (Black and indigenous people of color) and low income communities," establish a Food Justice Committee on the City Council, support the New York Health Care Act, increase access to public transit, and make public education more equitable. She's also looking to legalize Accessory Dwelling Units, withdraw from the 1033 program to demilitarize NYPD, and ban fossil fuel infrastructure.
Mino Lora
Born: Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic
Home: Spuyten Duyvil
Current job: Executive Director of the People's Theatre Project, member of the New York Immigrant Coalition and Northern Manhattan Agenda councils
Previous jobs: Founder of the People's Theatre Project
Fundraising: $32,667
Endorsements: The Jewish Vote, Working Families Party, Citizen Action! of New York, NYIC Action, NO IDC NYC, Councilman Jimmy Van Bremer.
Major policy proposals: According to her website, she will promote civic engagement by immigrants, making sure arts funding reaches communities of color, increasing teacher wages, de-segregating city schools, and universal healthcare. Lora wants to shift billions from the NYPD budget and reinvest in communities, address climate change, and increase accessibility to public transit.
Daniel Padernacht
Born: Bronx
Home: Bronx
Current job: Works at his own law practice, and serves as chair of the Traffic and Transportation Committee and vice chair of the Land Use Committee on Community Board 8.
Previous jobs: Chair of the Board on Community Board 8, part of a project team creating affordable housing in the Bronx.
Fundraising: $39,986
Endorsements: Former Assemblyman Michael Blake, former City Council candidate Dionel Then
Major policy proposals: According to his website, Padernacht wants to develop affordable housing and support homeless populations, provide tax credits for long-term leases, support female and minority owned small businesses, increase special needs programs, advocate for trade high schools, increase monthly allowances for EBT holders, and advocate against political dynasties. His policies web tab also includes that he stands with Israel and the Black Lives Matter movement.
Kevin Pazmino
Home: Riverdale
Current job: Freelance videographer
Fundraising: None
Endorsements: None known at press time.
Major policy proposals: Kevin Pazmino doesn't have a campaign website, but the Riverdale Press reported that he generally leans more conservative.
Heastie's mum on Cuomo
Feb. 19, 2021
With the June primaries still months away, special elections continue to fill recently vacated seats on the New York City Council. Among them, the District 11 City Council seat is to be decided by ranked-choice-voting during a special election on March 23. The contest, triggered by former Councilmember Andrew Cohen's resignation in December, after he was elected to be a judge in Bronx Supreme Court a month earlier, will decide who represents a district where a diverse group of residents are almost polar opposites when it comes to incomes.
Six candidates are vying for the open seat. The winner of the non-partisan special contest will still have to run again in the June primary with a party designation, and then once more in the November general election.
The district's unique makeup is made up of both low-income residents -- the majority people of color in areas like Wakefield, Bedford Park and Kingsbridge in the Bronx, and higher-income, white New Yorkers living in the Fieldston, Riverdale and Spuyten Duyvil sections of the borough. The district is 38.9% white, 18.1% Black, and 33.1% of Hispanic origin. But the neighborhoods vary wildly: Wakefield is about 70% Black, and Fieldston is almost 60% white. And while median household income in the Bronx clocks in at around $38,000, it's close to double that in Riverdale.
As candidates compete to appeal to residents across the socioeconomic spectrum, here are some fast facts about the contenders, in alphabetical order.
Carlton Berkley
Born: Harlem
Home: Back and forth between Wakefield and Harlem
Current job: Owns DCW Investigations and Security. He's also made some previous unsuccessful runs for office — twice for City Council in District 9 and 16, and once for Assembly under the self-created People 4 Chuck Party.
Previous jobs: College Assistant at John Jay College, served 20 years with the New York Police Department.
Fundraising: $7,705, according to most recent filings.
Endorsements: None known at press time.
Major policy proposals: Berkley doesn't have a website, but he told the Riverdale Press he's not a proponent of defunding the police — instead, he's for large cuts to NYPD's budget and lowering crime rates by investing money into communities. He supports calculating rent on a family's income, along with rent relief or cancellation for small businesses. He also wants to address transportation issues for Riverdale's senior citizens.
Eric Dinowitz
Born: Northwest Bronx
Home: Northwest Bronx
Current job: Special education teacher for 13 years, Chair of the Aging Committee on Community Board 8
Previous jobs: Former chapter leader in the United Federation of Teachers
Fundraising: $65,156.
Endorsements: United Federation of Teachers, Ben Franklin Club, Bronx Borough President Ruben Díaz Jr., Congressman Adriano Espaillat, U.S. Congressman Ritchie Torres, State Sen. Jamaal T. Bailey, New York City Central Labor Council AFL-CIO, New York City District Council 37.
Major policy proposals: According to his website, he supports rent stabilization, expanding the Senior Citizen Rent Increase Exemption, blocking purges of voters by Borough Boards of Elections, prohibiting anyone convicted of corruption from ever holding office again, and closing Rikers Island. Dinowitz, son of Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, wants to remove NYPD from classrooms and increase social workers and support services in schools, along with having increased accessibility in public transit and creating a Climate Caucus in the City Council. He's also against Airbnb expansion.
Jessica Haller
Born: Upper West Side
Home: Riverdale
Current job: Vice Chair of the Board of Hazon, board member of the Riverdale Nature Preservancy, and an advisory board member of Eden Village Camp
Previous jobs: Worked for MasterCard
Fundraising: $77,821
Endorsements: Former New York Attorney General Oliver Koppell, Women for the Win, Jewish Climate Action Network New York, North Bronx Racial Justice, Open New York, Vote Mama, Bronx Climate Justice North, NO IDC NY, former mayoral candidate Ruth Messinger.
Major policy proposals: According to her website, Haller wants to improve air quality "to reduce disproportionate impacts on BIPOC (Black and indigenous people of color) and low income communities," establish a Food Justice Committee on the City Council, support the New York Health Care Act, increase access to public transit, and make public education more equitable. She's also looking to legalize Accessory Dwelling Units, withdraw from the 1033 program to demilitarize NYPD, and ban fossil fuel infrastructure.
Mino Lora
Born: Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic
Home: Spuyten Duyvil
Current job: Executive Director of the People's Theatre Project, member of the New York Immigrant Coalition and Northern Manhattan Agenda councils
Previous jobs: Founder of the People's Theatre Project
Fundraising: $32,667
Endorsements: The Jewish Vote, Working Families Party, Citizen Action! of New York, NYIC Action, NO IDC NYC, Councilman Jimmy Van Bremer.
Major policy proposals: According to her website, she will promote civic engagement by immigrants, making sure arts funding reaches communities of color, increasing teacher wages, de-segregating city schools, and universal healthcare. Lora wants to shift billions from the NYPD budget and reinvest in communities, address climate change, and increase accessibility to public transit.
Daniel Padernacht
Born: Bronx
Home: Bronx
Current job: Works at his own law practice, and serves as chair of the Traffic and Transportation Committee and vice chair of the Land Use Committee on Community Board 8.
Previous jobs: Chair of the Board on Community Board 8, part of a project team creating affordable housing in the Bronx.
Fundraising: $39,986
Endorsements: Former Assemblyman Michael Blake, former City Council candidate Dionel Then
Major policy proposals: According to his website, Padernacht wants to develop affordable housing and support homeless populations, provide tax credits for long-term leases, support female and minority owned small businesses, increase special needs programs, advocate for trade high schools, increase monthly allowances for EBT holders, and advocate against political dynasties. His policies web tab also includes that he stands with Israel and the Black Lives Matter movement.
Kevin Pazmino
Home: Riverdale
Current job: Freelance videographer
Fundraising: None
Endorsements: None known at press time.
Major policy proposals: Kevin Pazmino doesn't have a campaign website, but the Riverdale Press reported that he generally leans more conservative.
Heastie's mum on Cuomo
City & State
Feb. 19, 2021
The unfolding nursing home crisis that's got Gov. Andrew Cuomo sweating has left Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie in a tough position too. He's remained largely silent as outspoken members of his conference have increasingly supported repealing the governor's vast emergency powers and as Cuomo attacks one of his own members.
But ahead of what could potentially be a contentious conference on Monday about the governor's emergency powers, members of the Assembly still appear to be giving him political room to maneuver.
Heastie has for the most part stayed mum about the nursing home COVID-19 death scandal rocking the executive chamber, even as his state Senate counterpart is pushing ahead with legislation to curb Cuomo's extraordinary powers granted to him at the start of the pandemic. "I think everyone understands where we were back in March and where we are now," Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins said in a statement. "We certainly see the need for a quick response but also want to move toward a system of increased oversight, and review." The state Senate proposal, which still has not been officially introduced, would create a 10-person commission to approve of any directives Cuomo makes or any laws he suspends.
But even as his members express outrage over nursing homes and several have signed a letter expressing their support for repealing Cuomo's expanded emergency powers, Heastie's position on the matter has remained unclear. Asked about where the speaker stands on the issue, spokesperson Mike Whyland said members would conference on the issue "in the near future." Assembly Democrats are conferencing Monday, presumably on this issue.
Heastie has been similarly withdrawn about the governor's attacks on Assembly Member Ron Kim, who has been a frequent critic of the administration's handling of nursing homes during the pandemic. Cuomo ranted about Kim and accused the Assembly member of having a political vendetta against him over 6-year-old legislation during an unusual press conference on Wednesday. Not long after, CNN reported allegations by Kim that Cuomo threatened him over nursing homes during a phone call the previous week. Cuomo's senior adviser has denied the allegations Kim made.
While many fellow Assembly members issued strong statements of rebuke against Cuomo for targeting Kim and expressing their belief about his description of the call, Heastie has only made one public comment on the matter. "Now more than ever everyone involved needs to lower the temperature and work together to move this state forward and get past this pandemic," Heastie said in a statement Wednesday afternoon. "That should be our focus." The statement came soon after Cuomo's press conference when he targeted Kim, but before details about the alleged private phone call between the two emerged.
Some observers have said that Heastie's defense of Kim was far too weak. Michael Benjamin, a former Assembly member who now serves on the New York Post editorial board, suggested on Twitter that former Speaker Sheldon Silver would not have issued such a "milquetoast" statement that "didn't defend his Member or "The People's House." Former Assembly Member Joe Lentol, who served until the end of last year, also said he felt that Heastie could have gone to bat more when one of his members was under attack. "I would like to see the speaker maybe act in a different manner if it were I that were involved in this," Lentol said in an interview.
But Lentol also sympathized with the situation that Heastie finds himself in with trying to still maintain a collegial working relationship with the governor and control of his own chamber. "He should be protecting his member, while at the same time, the members have to understand that he has to work with the governor in order to pass a budget. … So he's very skilled at that aspect of the job of being the speaker." Jake Dilemani, a veteran political consultant at Mercury, offered a similar assessment. "Carl is between a rock and a hard place," Dilemani told City & State. "A legislative leader, to get things done, you have to have a decent relationship with the governor."
And despite the apparent lack of public support, Heastie's members seem to be sticking by him and his leadership – at least publicly. City & State reached out to a dozen Assembly members. Some declined to speak on the record. Others did not respond to requests for comment about Heastie's handling of the situation. Kim himself has said that all his colleagues have been offering him enormous support, and said that he had a personal conversation with Heastie about what's been happening. "He is 150% on my side," Kim said on "The Brian Lehrer Show" on Thursday. Kim did not return a request for comment elaborating on what he said.
But more tension may be bubbling under the surface of public facades. Although most did not want to comment on Heastie's leadership during this time, Assembly Member Yuh-Line Niou said she was disappointed that the speaker did not offer a stronger public defense of Kim. "(Heastie) should have … stood up stronger for Ron now," Niou told City & State. "It's not about lowering temperature, it's about accountability." Whyland, Heastie's spokesperson, did not respond to a request for comment about those who felt the speaker should have provided better public support for Kim.
Similarly, no lawmaker contacted by City & State would comment on Heastie's and the chamber's speed on addressing Cuomo's emergency powers, even as support for repeal grows. At the very least, they wouldn't before discussing it with the chamber. "Let me give you an answer after we conference on Monday," Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani told City & State when asked whether Heastie is moving fast enough on the issue. Mamdani is one of nine members to sign a letter calling to rescind Cuomo's pandemic powers. Assembly Member Emily Gallagher, who also signed the letter, said in a text she couldn't weigh in until the conference met on Monday.
Assembly Member Robert Carroll, another letter signatory, spoke against the Senate proposal to create a commission to oversee the governor's actions as opposed to a full repeal. But he too would not comment beyond individual conversations he's had with other members. "I don't know what Carl thinks," Caroll told City & State when asked about chamber leadership on the issue. "We've had conversations about it last week, and I think there were people of lots of different opinions." Although Carroll said he doesn't support the creation of a commission – "that's a terrible idea," he said – he suggested that there still might not be enough support for the clean repeal he's advocating for. "I think there is large support, I don't know if there's 77 votes to rescind the (governor's) emergency powers," Carroll said. Niou said that many in the chamber don't actually want to take any action. "There's a lot of people who want it to expire and sunset," Niou told City & State, referring to the April expiration date built into the law that expanded Cuomo's emergency powers. Niou also wants to see a full repeal.
Dilemani, the political consultant, said Heastie's actions of late in regard to fights with the governor, fit with his general leadership style, especially since the state Senate flipped and has taken a sharp leftward turn. Whereas the Assembly has traditionally been the more progressive of the two chambers, the dynamics have changed. "While a progressive, Heastie by nature of his leadership position serves as a moderating influence," Dilemani said. Whether it's a full-fledged, public defense of a member, or coming out in support of curtailing the governor's powers, Dilemani said the speaker is in a tough spot. It is no easy job weighing all the decisions he will likely have to make. "He's kind of a fulcrum," Dilemani said. "He plays a very key role here in balancing the outcomes, the policy outcomes and the political outcomes in Albany."
Government memo crushes Cuomo's defense in COVID nursing home scandal
Feb. 19, 2021
The unfolding nursing home crisis that's got Gov. Andrew Cuomo sweating has left Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie in a tough position too. He's remained largely silent as outspoken members of his conference have increasingly supported repealing the governor's vast emergency powers and as Cuomo attacks one of his own members.
But ahead of what could potentially be a contentious conference on Monday about the governor's emergency powers, members of the Assembly still appear to be giving him political room to maneuver.
Heastie has for the most part stayed mum about the nursing home COVID-19 death scandal rocking the executive chamber, even as his state Senate counterpart is pushing ahead with legislation to curb Cuomo's extraordinary powers granted to him at the start of the pandemic. "I think everyone understands where we were back in March and where we are now," Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins said in a statement. "We certainly see the need for a quick response but also want to move toward a system of increased oversight, and review." The state Senate proposal, which still has not been officially introduced, would create a 10-person commission to approve of any directives Cuomo makes or any laws he suspends.
But even as his members express outrage over nursing homes and several have signed a letter expressing their support for repealing Cuomo's expanded emergency powers, Heastie's position on the matter has remained unclear. Asked about where the speaker stands on the issue, spokesperson Mike Whyland said members would conference on the issue "in the near future." Assembly Democrats are conferencing Monday, presumably on this issue.
Heastie has been similarly withdrawn about the governor's attacks on Assembly Member Ron Kim, who has been a frequent critic of the administration's handling of nursing homes during the pandemic. Cuomo ranted about Kim and accused the Assembly member of having a political vendetta against him over 6-year-old legislation during an unusual press conference on Wednesday. Not long after, CNN reported allegations by Kim that Cuomo threatened him over nursing homes during a phone call the previous week. Cuomo's senior adviser has denied the allegations Kim made.
While many fellow Assembly members issued strong statements of rebuke against Cuomo for targeting Kim and expressing their belief about his description of the call, Heastie has only made one public comment on the matter. "Now more than ever everyone involved needs to lower the temperature and work together to move this state forward and get past this pandemic," Heastie said in a statement Wednesday afternoon. "That should be our focus." The statement came soon after Cuomo's press conference when he targeted Kim, but before details about the alleged private phone call between the two emerged.
Some observers have said that Heastie's defense of Kim was far too weak. Michael Benjamin, a former Assembly member who now serves on the New York Post editorial board, suggested on Twitter that former Speaker Sheldon Silver would not have issued such a "milquetoast" statement that "didn't defend his Member or "The People's House." Former Assembly Member Joe Lentol, who served until the end of last year, also said he felt that Heastie could have gone to bat more when one of his members was under attack. "I would like to see the speaker maybe act in a different manner if it were I that were involved in this," Lentol said in an interview.
But Lentol also sympathized with the situation that Heastie finds himself in with trying to still maintain a collegial working relationship with the governor and control of his own chamber. "He should be protecting his member, while at the same time, the members have to understand that he has to work with the governor in order to pass a budget. … So he's very skilled at that aspect of the job of being the speaker." Jake Dilemani, a veteran political consultant at Mercury, offered a similar assessment. "Carl is between a rock and a hard place," Dilemani told City & State. "A legislative leader, to get things done, you have to have a decent relationship with the governor."
And despite the apparent lack of public support, Heastie's members seem to be sticking by him and his leadership – at least publicly. City & State reached out to a dozen Assembly members. Some declined to speak on the record. Others did not respond to requests for comment about Heastie's handling of the situation. Kim himself has said that all his colleagues have been offering him enormous support, and said that he had a personal conversation with Heastie about what's been happening. "He is 150% on my side," Kim said on "The Brian Lehrer Show" on Thursday. Kim did not return a request for comment elaborating on what he said.
But more tension may be bubbling under the surface of public facades. Although most did not want to comment on Heastie's leadership during this time, Assembly Member Yuh-Line Niou said she was disappointed that the speaker did not offer a stronger public defense of Kim. "(Heastie) should have … stood up stronger for Ron now," Niou told City & State. "It's not about lowering temperature, it's about accountability." Whyland, Heastie's spokesperson, did not respond to a request for comment about those who felt the speaker should have provided better public support for Kim.
Similarly, no lawmaker contacted by City & State would comment on Heastie's and the chamber's speed on addressing Cuomo's emergency powers, even as support for repeal grows. At the very least, they wouldn't before discussing it with the chamber. "Let me give you an answer after we conference on Monday," Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani told City & State when asked whether Heastie is moving fast enough on the issue. Mamdani is one of nine members to sign a letter calling to rescind Cuomo's pandemic powers. Assembly Member Emily Gallagher, who also signed the letter, said in a text she couldn't weigh in until the conference met on Monday.
Assembly Member Robert Carroll, another letter signatory, spoke against the Senate proposal to create a commission to oversee the governor's actions as opposed to a full repeal. But he too would not comment beyond individual conversations he's had with other members. "I don't know what Carl thinks," Caroll told City & State when asked about chamber leadership on the issue. "We've had conversations about it last week, and I think there were people of lots of different opinions." Although Carroll said he doesn't support the creation of a commission – "that's a terrible idea," he said – he suggested that there still might not be enough support for the clean repeal he's advocating for. "I think there is large support, I don't know if there's 77 votes to rescind the (governor's) emergency powers," Carroll said. Niou said that many in the chamber don't actually want to take any action. "There's a lot of people who want it to expire and sunset," Niou told City & State, referring to the April expiration date built into the law that expanded Cuomo's emergency powers. Niou also wants to see a full repeal.
Dilemani, the political consultant, said Heastie's actions of late in regard to fights with the governor, fit with his general leadership style, especially since the state Senate flipped and has taken a sharp leftward turn. Whereas the Assembly has traditionally been the more progressive of the two chambers, the dynamics have changed. "While a progressive, Heastie by nature of his leadership position serves as a moderating influence," Dilemani said. Whether it's a full-fledged, public defense of a member, or coming out in support of curtailing the governor's powers, Dilemani said the speaker is in a tough spot. It is no easy job weighing all the decisions he will likely have to make. "He's kind of a fulcrum," Dilemani said. "He plays a very key role here in balancing the outcomes, the policy outcomes and the political outcomes in Albany."
Government memo crushes Cuomo's defense in COVID nursing home scandal
NY Post
Feb. 20, 2021
Gov. Cuomo has repeatedly defended his administration's directive for nursing homes to accept COVID-19 patients as the product of federal "guidance" — even though one of those government documents says only that infected seniors "can" be admitted to the facilities.
In contrast, the Health Department's since-rescinded, March 25 memo left little wiggle room to prevent "medically stable" patients from being transferred out of hospitals to nursing homes.
"During this global health emergency, all NHs must comply with the expedited receipt of residents returning from hospitals to NHs," the state directive said.
And if there was any doubt about what that meant, the following sentence was underlined: "No resident shall be denied re-admission or admission to the NH solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19."
But a March 13 memo from the US Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services — which the Health Department has cited as justification for its order — contains a Q&A on that very subject.
"When should a nursing home accept a resident who was diagnosed with COVID-19 from a hospital?" it says.
"A nursing home can accept a resident diagnosed with COVID-19 and still under transmission-based Precautions for COVID-19 as long as the facility can follow CDC guidance for Transmission-Based Precautions. If a nursing home cannot, it must wait until these precautions are discontinued."
The DOH directive — which cited an "urgent need to expand hospital capacity" — came under immediate fire from three health-care industry groups: AMDA-The Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Medicine, the American Health Care Association and the National Center for Assisted Living. In a March 29 statement, the organizations said they were "deeply concerned" with the underlined portion of the order.
"This is a short-term and short-sighted solution that will only add to the surge in COVID-19 patients that require hospital care," they said.
A former federal Health and Human Services official also told The Post that it was a potential recipe for disaster.
"[Cuomo] made this blanket requirement and some nursing homes may have not been prepared to have these patients and may have caused cross-contamination," the ex-official said.
And on Thursday, a draft report by the Empire Center for Public Policy tied "several hundred and possibly more than 1,000" nursing home deaths to the March 25 directive, which it said is "associated with more than one in six of 5,780 nursing home deaths statewide be-tween late March and early May."
A day earlier, Cuomo vehemently defended the policy, saying, "My health experts don't believe it was wrong" and that if they did, "I would sue the federal government for malpractice."
He stood by the policy again Friday, but at neither time ex-plained why he rescinded it under fire on May 10 and instead ordered that anyone being admitted to a nursing home had to first test negative for the coronavirus.
Health Commissioner Howard Zucker, who issued the March 25 directive, cited the March 13 Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services guidance during Friday's news conference.
He inexplicably quoted a portion that says, "Nursing homes should admit any individuals that they would normally admit to their facility, including individuals from hospitals where a case of COV-ID-19 was/is present." Zucker went on to refer to the part that says nursing homes "can" accept infected patients, noting that the need to follow "transmission-based precautions" was "very important."
Zucker further read aloud from a March 23 guidance from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, saying, "The COVID-19 patients from hospitals should go to the facility with the ability to adhere to infection prevention and control recommendations for care of COVID-19 patients."
"Preferably patients would be placed at a facility that has al-ready cared for COVID-19 cases," he added.
Zucker noted that when he issued his order, the state was "running out of ICU space" because hospitalizations were "doubling every three days."
"With the facts that we had at that moment in time, it was the correct decision at that moment in time," he said.
"His Thinking Is, Don't F--k With Me": Andrew Cuomo's Week From Hell Will Test His Political Stranglehold
Feb. 20, 2021
Gov. Cuomo has repeatedly defended his administration's directive for nursing homes to accept COVID-19 patients as the product of federal "guidance" — even though one of those government documents says only that infected seniors "can" be admitted to the facilities.
In contrast, the Health Department's since-rescinded, March 25 memo left little wiggle room to prevent "medically stable" patients from being transferred out of hospitals to nursing homes.
"During this global health emergency, all NHs must comply with the expedited receipt of residents returning from hospitals to NHs," the state directive said.
And if there was any doubt about what that meant, the following sentence was underlined: "No resident shall be denied re-admission or admission to the NH solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19."
But a March 13 memo from the US Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services — which the Health Department has cited as justification for its order — contains a Q&A on that very subject.
"When should a nursing home accept a resident who was diagnosed with COVID-19 from a hospital?" it says.
"A nursing home can accept a resident diagnosed with COVID-19 and still under transmission-based Precautions for COVID-19 as long as the facility can follow CDC guidance for Transmission-Based Precautions. If a nursing home cannot, it must wait until these precautions are discontinued."
The DOH directive — which cited an "urgent need to expand hospital capacity" — came under immediate fire from three health-care industry groups: AMDA-The Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Medicine, the American Health Care Association and the National Center for Assisted Living. In a March 29 statement, the organizations said they were "deeply concerned" with the underlined portion of the order.
"This is a short-term and short-sighted solution that will only add to the surge in COVID-19 patients that require hospital care," they said.
A former federal Health and Human Services official also told The Post that it was a potential recipe for disaster.
"[Cuomo] made this blanket requirement and some nursing homes may have not been prepared to have these patients and may have caused cross-contamination," the ex-official said.
And on Thursday, a draft report by the Empire Center for Public Policy tied "several hundred and possibly more than 1,000" nursing home deaths to the March 25 directive, which it said is "associated with more than one in six of 5,780 nursing home deaths statewide be-tween late March and early May."
A day earlier, Cuomo vehemently defended the policy, saying, "My health experts don't believe it was wrong" and that if they did, "I would sue the federal government for malpractice."
He stood by the policy again Friday, but at neither time ex-plained why he rescinded it under fire on May 10 and instead ordered that anyone being admitted to a nursing home had to first test negative for the coronavirus.
Health Commissioner Howard Zucker, who issued the March 25 directive, cited the March 13 Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services guidance during Friday's news conference.
He inexplicably quoted a portion that says, "Nursing homes should admit any individuals that they would normally admit to their facility, including individuals from hospitals where a case of COV-ID-19 was/is present." Zucker went on to refer to the part that says nursing homes "can" accept infected patients, noting that the need to follow "transmission-based precautions" was "very important."
Zucker further read aloud from a March 23 guidance from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, saying, "The COVID-19 patients from hospitals should go to the facility with the ability to adhere to infection prevention and control recommendations for care of COVID-19 patients."
"Preferably patients would be placed at a facility that has al-ready cared for COVID-19 cases," he added.
Zucker noted that when he issued his order, the state was "running out of ICU space" because hospitalizations were "doubling every three days."
"With the facts that we had at that moment in time, it was the correct decision at that moment in time," he said.
"His Thinking Is, Don't F--k With Me": Andrew Cuomo's Week From Hell Will Test His Political Stranglehold
Vanity Fair
Feb. 19, 2021
Andrew Cuomo has had a terrible week. The turbulence started last Thursday, when the New York Post broke the news that the New York governor's top aide, Melissa DeRosa, had confirmed in a private meeting with state legislators what had been suspected for the past year: that the governor's office had been withholding data on nursing homes deaths caused by the coronavirus. (Later she claimed the administration asked lawmakers last September for a "pause" in responding, due to a federal inquiry, an account that legislative spokespeople have questioned.) On Monday, Cuomo tried to lower the volume with a quasi demi-apology for a "delay" in turning over the numbers—only to exponentially escalate the furor on Wednesday afternoon, when he used a press conference to blast a state assemblyman who had accused him of obstruction of justice. Which was followed, hours later, by the Albany Times Union breaking the news of a federal investigation into Cuomo's pandemic nursing home maneuvers.
Cuomo has been on his heels several times before, especially in 2014, when he abruptly disbanded a commission investigating political corruption that had asked questions about the governor's associates, and in 2017, when he tried to dodge responsibility for the crumbling of New York City's subways. He rebounded fairly quickly from those, deploying a mix of horse trading, policy, and money, and he has remained far more popular with New York's voters than its political class.
The current nursing home mess has a couple of things in common with those episodes: Cuomo's obsession with controlling events and his willingness to strong-arm people made each of them worse. What's different this time are the life-and-death stakes of the pandemic, and the dynamic inside Albany. The 2018 and 2020 elections gave Democrats a supermajority in the State Senate, and younger, more progressive, more recently elected legislators are publicly pushing back on Cuomo's muscular style. Early in Cuomo's run as governor, a close aide said the administration operated at either of two speeds: "Get along and kill." Cuomo is capable of nuance, but a decade later, that's basically still true. "People are fucking scared to death of this man," says Alessandra Biaggi, a 34-year-old state senator who won her Bronx-Westchester seat in an upset in 2018. "A lot of legislators normalize the governor's abusive behavior. But this was such an egregious admission about what happened with nursing homes that if you stay silent, you're basically condoning it. Fifteen thousand people lost their lives, and their families deserve to know what happened here."
Cuomo has been trying to defend a state order requiring nursing homes to accept COVID-positive patients from hospitals pretty much since the moment his health department issued it last March. He amended the order in May 2020 and has argued all along that the policy did not increase the number of nursing home deaths. New York's attorney general, Letitia James, blew a hole in Cuomo's case in late January, issuing a report that estimated the administration had undercounted nursing home deaths by as much as 50%. DeRosa's two-hour Zoom meeting with state legislators was, in part, an attempt to repair some of that damage—but it backfired when she said Cuomo's team delayed turning over nursing home data because it had prioritized responding to a Department of Justice inquiry, and that it was worried the information "was going to be used against us" by President Donald Trump.
Which was an entirely realistic political concern—but it also looked like a cover-up. Even if the data delay was entirely benign, the tight control was characteristic of Cuomo. Nothing significant happens in state government—tax reform, school shutdowns, turning over data to the state legislature—until he determines that the timing is right (or, in the case of releasing the nursing home death count, a court orders him to do so). Biaggi and Ron Kim, an assemblyman from Queens, responded by introducing a bill to strip Cuomo of the emergency powers he was granted last March to deal with the pandemic. Kim followed up by accusing Cuomo of obstructing justice, in a letter cosigned by other lawmakers; he says the governor then called and threatened to "destroy" him (Cuomo's spokesman denies such a threat was made). Cuomo returned fire, accusing Kim of lying about the phone conversation and of running a "racket" involving donations from the owners of nail salons. "It is pathetic and sad that when at least 15,000 people died while the governor tried to hide the information, he thinks he can distract attention from it with a personal attack that was debunked years ago," Kim says. "It has absolutely nothing to do with the crisis we're facing right now. The facts are that he helped his large health care donors give nursing home CEOs immunity and hide nursing home casualty data, and now 15,000 people and counting are dead."
The intended audience for the governor's brushback pitch wasn't simply Kim, but the entire legislature. "His thinking is, Don't fuck with me. Remember who I am. Don't mess with me, and don't mess with my staff," a Cuomo insider says. "So far the polls suggest that the public has made a determination on nursing homes—and his numbers are fine. I think what he's banking on is that this stays a political noise fight, that people are done with the nursing home debate and just want their school open and their bar open and their taxes down. I don't know."
Cuomo is up for reelection in 2022, and he badly wants to win a fourth term, surpassing the three won by his father, Mario Cuomo, and giving him a chance to become remembered as the greatest governor in the history of the state. No plausible, well-funded challenger, either Democrat or Republican, has emerged. "He's got a bunch of lefties who hate him and a bunch of people on the right who hate him. He's not particularly vulnerable," says a senior New York Democrat who is no fan of Cuomo's. "The formula would be a woman of color who can tap into progressive energy. Does Tish James have it in her to go after him? My gut says not at the moment."
Political intrigue aside, there is also a large element of karma to Cuomo's current headaches. Last spring and summer daily televised pandemic briefings made him a national Democratic star because he appeared to be a comforting and logical and hardworking presence, in sharp contrast to the erratic, incompetent Trump. In New York, Cuomo's public approval rating crested at 77%, according to a Siena College poll. "Andrew will overreach," a longtime Cuomo associate told me at the time. "He always does." In October, with the pandemic still raging, the governor released a victory lap of a book, American Crisis: Leadership Lessons From the COVID-19 Pandemic. The paperback edition may need an afterword.
State Sen. Gustavo Rivera Says Cuomo Doesn't Need Emergency Powers to Respond to the Pandemic
Feb. 19, 2021
Andrew Cuomo has had a terrible week. The turbulence started last Thursday, when the New York Post broke the news that the New York governor's top aide, Melissa DeRosa, had confirmed in a private meeting with state legislators what had been suspected for the past year: that the governor's office had been withholding data on nursing homes deaths caused by the coronavirus. (Later she claimed the administration asked lawmakers last September for a "pause" in responding, due to a federal inquiry, an account that legislative spokespeople have questioned.) On Monday, Cuomo tried to lower the volume with a quasi demi-apology for a "delay" in turning over the numbers—only to exponentially escalate the furor on Wednesday afternoon, when he used a press conference to blast a state assemblyman who had accused him of obstruction of justice. Which was followed, hours later, by the Albany Times Union breaking the news of a federal investigation into Cuomo's pandemic nursing home maneuvers.
Cuomo has been on his heels several times before, especially in 2014, when he abruptly disbanded a commission investigating political corruption that had asked questions about the governor's associates, and in 2017, when he tried to dodge responsibility for the crumbling of New York City's subways. He rebounded fairly quickly from those, deploying a mix of horse trading, policy, and money, and he has remained far more popular with New York's voters than its political class.
The current nursing home mess has a couple of things in common with those episodes: Cuomo's obsession with controlling events and his willingness to strong-arm people made each of them worse. What's different this time are the life-and-death stakes of the pandemic, and the dynamic inside Albany. The 2018 and 2020 elections gave Democrats a supermajority in the State Senate, and younger, more progressive, more recently elected legislators are publicly pushing back on Cuomo's muscular style. Early in Cuomo's run as governor, a close aide said the administration operated at either of two speeds: "Get along and kill." Cuomo is capable of nuance, but a decade later, that's basically still true. "People are fucking scared to death of this man," says Alessandra Biaggi, a 34-year-old state senator who won her Bronx-Westchester seat in an upset in 2018. "A lot of legislators normalize the governor's abusive behavior. But this was such an egregious admission about what happened with nursing homes that if you stay silent, you're basically condoning it. Fifteen thousand people lost their lives, and their families deserve to know what happened here."
Cuomo has been trying to defend a state order requiring nursing homes to accept COVID-positive patients from hospitals pretty much since the moment his health department issued it last March. He amended the order in May 2020 and has argued all along that the policy did not increase the number of nursing home deaths. New York's attorney general, Letitia James, blew a hole in Cuomo's case in late January, issuing a report that estimated the administration had undercounted nursing home deaths by as much as 50%. DeRosa's two-hour Zoom meeting with state legislators was, in part, an attempt to repair some of that damage—but it backfired when she said Cuomo's team delayed turning over nursing home data because it had prioritized responding to a Department of Justice inquiry, and that it was worried the information "was going to be used against us" by President Donald Trump.
Which was an entirely realistic political concern—but it also looked like a cover-up. Even if the data delay was entirely benign, the tight control was characteristic of Cuomo. Nothing significant happens in state government—tax reform, school shutdowns, turning over data to the state legislature—until he determines that the timing is right (or, in the case of releasing the nursing home death count, a court orders him to do so). Biaggi and Ron Kim, an assemblyman from Queens, responded by introducing a bill to strip Cuomo of the emergency powers he was granted last March to deal with the pandemic. Kim followed up by accusing Cuomo of obstructing justice, in a letter cosigned by other lawmakers; he says the governor then called and threatened to "destroy" him (Cuomo's spokesman denies such a threat was made). Cuomo returned fire, accusing Kim of lying about the phone conversation and of running a "racket" involving donations from the owners of nail salons. "It is pathetic and sad that when at least 15,000 people died while the governor tried to hide the information, he thinks he can distract attention from it with a personal attack that was debunked years ago," Kim says. "It has absolutely nothing to do with the crisis we're facing right now. The facts are that he helped his large health care donors give nursing home CEOs immunity and hide nursing home casualty data, and now 15,000 people and counting are dead."
The intended audience for the governor's brushback pitch wasn't simply Kim, but the entire legislature. "His thinking is, Don't fuck with me. Remember who I am. Don't mess with me, and don't mess with my staff," a Cuomo insider says. "So far the polls suggest that the public has made a determination on nursing homes—and his numbers are fine. I think what he's banking on is that this stays a political noise fight, that people are done with the nursing home debate and just want their school open and their bar open and their taxes down. I don't know."
Cuomo is up for reelection in 2022, and he badly wants to win a fourth term, surpassing the three won by his father, Mario Cuomo, and giving him a chance to become remembered as the greatest governor in the history of the state. No plausible, well-funded challenger, either Democrat or Republican, has emerged. "He's got a bunch of lefties who hate him and a bunch of people on the right who hate him. He's not particularly vulnerable," says a senior New York Democrat who is no fan of Cuomo's. "The formula would be a woman of color who can tap into progressive energy. Does Tish James have it in her to go after him? My gut says not at the moment."
Political intrigue aside, there is also a large element of karma to Cuomo's current headaches. Last spring and summer daily televised pandemic briefings made him a national Democratic star because he appeared to be a comforting and logical and hardworking presence, in sharp contrast to the erratic, incompetent Trump. In New York, Cuomo's public approval rating crested at 77%, according to a Siena College poll. "Andrew will overreach," a longtime Cuomo associate told me at the time. "He always does." In October, with the pandemic still raging, the governor released a victory lap of a book, American Crisis: Leadership Lessons From the COVID-19 Pandemic. The paperback edition may need an afterword.
State Sen. Gustavo Rivera Says Cuomo Doesn't Need Emergency Powers to Respond to the Pandemic
NY1
Feb. 19, 2021
State Sen. Gustavo Rivera, chairman of the state Senate's Health Committee, weighed in on the growing controversy over Gov. Andrew Cuomo's handling of the pandemic in nursing homes.
During a Friday interview with anchor Errol Louis on Inside City Hall, Rivera said that he has long opposed the emergency powers granted to the governor last year because he believes that the executive office has the authority to be able to take care of the crisis without extraordinary powers.
The Bronx lawmaker also said that if the Cuomo administration had provided accurate data regarding the number of people who have died of COVID-19 in nursing homes, the state legislature would have been able to advance legislation to protect the residents of these facilities earlier.
"Obviously they had this information, when you consider that the attorney general put out the report and within hours the numbers magically appeared," Rivera said. "It kind of suggests that they had this information all along and they just did not want to release it to make sure the governor would look better."
Commenting on the alleged threatening phone call that Cuomo gave to Queens Assemblyman Ron Kim over his criticism regarding the nursing home issue, Rivera said that he has heard "dozens and dozens of versions of this story."
"This is the way the governor does business," he said. "I remember it was one of his staffers early on in his tenure, Mr. Cohen, who said, 'There is two speeds that we do here: Get along and kill.'"
Fiscal hawks push back on billionaire's tax
Feb. 19, 2021
State Sen. Gustavo Rivera, chairman of the state Senate's Health Committee, weighed in on the growing controversy over Gov. Andrew Cuomo's handling of the pandemic in nursing homes.
During a Friday interview with anchor Errol Louis on Inside City Hall, Rivera said that he has long opposed the emergency powers granted to the governor last year because he believes that the executive office has the authority to be able to take care of the crisis without extraordinary powers.
The Bronx lawmaker also said that if the Cuomo administration had provided accurate data regarding the number of people who have died of COVID-19 in nursing homes, the state legislature would have been able to advance legislation to protect the residents of these facilities earlier.
"Obviously they had this information, when you consider that the attorney general put out the report and within hours the numbers magically appeared," Rivera said. "It kind of suggests that they had this information all along and they just did not want to release it to make sure the governor would look better."
Commenting on the alleged threatening phone call that Cuomo gave to Queens Assemblyman Ron Kim over his criticism regarding the nursing home issue, Rivera said that he has heard "dozens and dozens of versions of this story."
"This is the way the governor does business," he said. "I remember it was one of his staffers early on in his tenure, Mr. Cohen, who said, 'There is two speeds that we do here: Get along and kill.'"
Fiscal hawks push back on billionaire's tax
Crain's
Feb. 19, 2021
New York fiscal experts are already giving reasons why a bill to tax New York billionaires annually on their unrealized capital gains assets is doomed to fail.
"It's hard to know where to start because it's so preposterous," said E.J. McMahon, senior fellow at Empire Center for Public Policy. "In the United States we have never taxed the unrealized gains of financial assets and property. It's sort of like an annual estate tax."
Senator Jessica Ramos' tax bill has 20 co-sponsors in the chamber, while Senator Jabari Brisport introduced legislation in February to repeal a section of the constitutional that calls into question the legality of taxes on securities and intangible personal property.
The Ramos bill looks to utilize tax assessments on the wealthiest New Yorkers to place an 8.82% tax on their unrealized capital gains, which Ramos expects to generate $23 billion within its first year, and $1 billion per year going forward. The bill includes a surcharge to incentivize upfront payment and a lookback period to nullify accounting tricks.
"The idea is to tax their unrealized capital gains because we know this is how billionaires and the wealthy tuck away their wealth," Ramos said.
But there are some fiscal experts who question the efficacy, and even the legality, of Ramos' proposal.
McMahon pointed out that Article 16, Section 3 of the New York Constitution prohibits the taxation on intangible property, including money credits and securities and that intangible personal property shall not be taxed "ad valorem," meaning proportionate to the estimated value of the goods transacted.
He said that Brisport's bill to amend this section of the constitution proves that the proposed tax would be unconstitutional.
"The Ramos bill is not a serious proposal," he said. "It would be extremely difficult to administer and to an almost utter certainly would drive away most of the people it would be imposed upon because there's nowhere else in the country that would even think of doing it."
While there is precedent for documenting one's income in New York State, there is no precedent for proving one's wealth is concentrated in New York State, explained Nicole Gelinas, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, who added jurisdiction claims become murky when trying to assess the location of assets.
"Capital has always been much more mobile than human beings and humans are showing they are much more mobile in this current environment," she said.
Ramos swatted away concerns that billionaires would flee the state or find ways to hide their money in the event her bill was passed and signed into law.
"They can't escape my bill," Ramos said, who added the existing tax assessment allows the Senate to determine the status of billionaires. "If and when enacted, we would know who owns what and how much, and they would be liable for that tax amount."
There are 120 billionaires in New York who hold over $600 billion in wealth, Ramos argued, and their profits grew by $88 billion during the pandemic.
"All I'm asking for is one-third of the profits they've made while the rest of us have lost loved ones, our jobs, and our homes," she said. "They will remain billionaires."
Another problem Ramos and Brisport face is a lack of support from Gov. Andrew Cuomo's office.
Tax increases should be done at a federal level so as not to pit states against one another, according to Freeman Klopott at the Division of Budget, and there are questions about the legality of the types of measures proposed by Ramos.
"The state constitution prohibits taxing unrealized gains, and even if you could, doing so presents significant challenges as assets could easily and quickly be shifted to any of the other 49 states, and territories, where no such tax exists," he said.
The bill may also face opposition to the fact that it is not intended to tame New York's budget crisis.
Despite the $8.5 billion budget deficit New York faces, the tax revenue acquired by the state through Ramos' proposal wouldn't necessarily be used to fill that hole. She conceded that the point of the bill is to provide a safety-net to workers who have been excluded from federal economic relief programs during the pandemic: undocumented immigrants, sex workers, street vendors, and the formerly incarcerated.
"The way the bill is written, is it goes into the general fund, but we want to see the state fill the void where the federal government failed to step up and that's to help these workers who have been excluded from every economic relief program," she explained.
The bill establishes the creation of a "worker bailout fund" that would replace the wages of workers and families unable to access traditional worker insurance with money drawn from the new capital gains tax.
There are also the hurdles associated with getting the necessary votes to override an almost certain veto from Gov. Cuomo.
In the event the bill passes both the Senate and Assembly, and Cuomo vetoes the legislation, Senate Democrats would need 42 votes in order for their 43-member supermajority to overrule Cuomo's veto.
"We're working very diligently to convince my colleagues of the merits of this bill," Ramos said. "Everyone is so worried about the rich leaving. When do we become worried about the middle class that's left?"
MTA Avoids Catastrophic Cuts, But Still Faces State Budget "Raid"
Feb. 19, 2021
New York fiscal experts are already giving reasons why a bill to tax New York billionaires annually on their unrealized capital gains assets is doomed to fail.
"It's hard to know where to start because it's so preposterous," said E.J. McMahon, senior fellow at Empire Center for Public Policy. "In the United States we have never taxed the unrealized gains of financial assets and property. It's sort of like an annual estate tax."
Senator Jessica Ramos' tax bill has 20 co-sponsors in the chamber, while Senator Jabari Brisport introduced legislation in February to repeal a section of the constitutional that calls into question the legality of taxes on securities and intangible personal property.
The Ramos bill looks to utilize tax assessments on the wealthiest New Yorkers to place an 8.82% tax on their unrealized capital gains, which Ramos expects to generate $23 billion within its first year, and $1 billion per year going forward. The bill includes a surcharge to incentivize upfront payment and a lookback period to nullify accounting tricks.
"The idea is to tax their unrealized capital gains because we know this is how billionaires and the wealthy tuck away their wealth," Ramos said.
But there are some fiscal experts who question the efficacy, and even the legality, of Ramos' proposal.
McMahon pointed out that Article 16, Section 3 of the New York Constitution prohibits the taxation on intangible property, including money credits and securities and that intangible personal property shall not be taxed "ad valorem," meaning proportionate to the estimated value of the goods transacted.
He said that Brisport's bill to amend this section of the constitution proves that the proposed tax would be unconstitutional.
"The Ramos bill is not a serious proposal," he said. "It would be extremely difficult to administer and to an almost utter certainly would drive away most of the people it would be imposed upon because there's nowhere else in the country that would even think of doing it."
While there is precedent for documenting one's income in New York State, there is no precedent for proving one's wealth is concentrated in New York State, explained Nicole Gelinas, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, who added jurisdiction claims become murky when trying to assess the location of assets.
"Capital has always been much more mobile than human beings and humans are showing they are much more mobile in this current environment," she said.
Ramos swatted away concerns that billionaires would flee the state or find ways to hide their money in the event her bill was passed and signed into law.
"They can't escape my bill," Ramos said, who added the existing tax assessment allows the Senate to determine the status of billionaires. "If and when enacted, we would know who owns what and how much, and they would be liable for that tax amount."
There are 120 billionaires in New York who hold over $600 billion in wealth, Ramos argued, and their profits grew by $88 billion during the pandemic.
"All I'm asking for is one-third of the profits they've made while the rest of us have lost loved ones, our jobs, and our homes," she said. "They will remain billionaires."
Another problem Ramos and Brisport face is a lack of support from Gov. Andrew Cuomo's office.
Tax increases should be done at a federal level so as not to pit states against one another, according to Freeman Klopott at the Division of Budget, and there are questions about the legality of the types of measures proposed by Ramos.
"The state constitution prohibits taxing unrealized gains, and even if you could, doing so presents significant challenges as assets could easily and quickly be shifted to any of the other 49 states, and territories, where no such tax exists," he said.
The bill may also face opposition to the fact that it is not intended to tame New York's budget crisis.
Despite the $8.5 billion budget deficit New York faces, the tax revenue acquired by the state through Ramos' proposal wouldn't necessarily be used to fill that hole. She conceded that the point of the bill is to provide a safety-net to workers who have been excluded from federal economic relief programs during the pandemic: undocumented immigrants, sex workers, street vendors, and the formerly incarcerated.
"The way the bill is written, is it goes into the general fund, but we want to see the state fill the void where the federal government failed to step up and that's to help these workers who have been excluded from every economic relief program," she explained.
The bill establishes the creation of a "worker bailout fund" that would replace the wages of workers and families unable to access traditional worker insurance with money drawn from the new capital gains tax.
There are also the hurdles associated with getting the necessary votes to override an almost certain veto from Gov. Cuomo.
In the event the bill passes both the Senate and Assembly, and Cuomo vetoes the legislation, Senate Democrats would need 42 votes in order for their 43-member supermajority to overrule Cuomo's veto.
"We're working very diligently to convince my colleagues of the merits of this bill," Ramos said. "Everyone is so worried about the rich leaving. When do we become worried about the middle class that's left?"
MTA Avoids Catastrophic Cuts, But Still Faces State Budget "Raid"
Gothamist
Feb. 19, 2021
The MTA will avoid catastrophic service cuts, layoffs, and fare hikes through 2022, but is still facing billions of dollars in shortfalls in the years ahead.
The reprieve was announced at the agency's board meeting on Thursday, and was made possible in part by a combination of $8 billion in federal aid last year, plus $3 billion more in borrowed money. On top of that, the agency will receive at least another $6 billion in the forthcoming pandemic relief package, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told the Times on Thursday, though CEO Pat Foye is still holding out for $8 billion.
"We continue to urgently request $8 billion in additional federal aid as part of the American Rescue Plan so we can serve as the economic engine leading New York's recovery from this devastating pandemic," Foye said in a statement.
This flow of money, along with modest toll hikes in April that will raise $178 million over two years, will also allow the MTA to maintain a decent level of service at a time when ridership is still down nearly 70% compared to last year. The MTA's consultants have estimated that it may not be until 2024 when ridership is 92% of what it was before the pandemic.
Earlier this week, Governor Cuomo announced that 22-hour subway service would begin on February 22nd, and that the stations and trains would be closed to riders for overnight cleaning from 2 a.m. to 4 a.m.
Despite the bleak forecast for fare revenues (and for the MTA's desperately needed, $51 billion modernization plan), the Cuomo administration is still poised to divert and withhold hundreds of millions of dedicated tax revenue from the agency.
"The ballpark is really $400 million total that the state has taken and plans to take from the MTA, altogether," said Rachael Fauss, a senior research analyst who studies the MTA for the watchdog group Reinvent Albany.
During the height of the pandemic last spring, the state legislature took the unprecedented step of giving the governor the power to "withhold" portions of the budget as a way of avoiding permanent cuts in an uncertain year. The MTA's budgeted withholding: $261 million.
Last week, Cuomo released plans for his upcoming budget due in April that showed that $145 million in dedicated MTA tax revenue would be diverted to the state's general fund. Transit advocates and lawmakers were outraged that the governor would conduct yet another "raid" on tax revenue that is explicitly meant for the MTA, and was already deflated because of the pandemic.
"It's not just that there's a little bit less tax revenue for the MTA, but that the state's actually taking it on top of an already contracted revenue source—it's a double hit," Fauss said.
The governor's budget director, Robert Mujica, told reporters last month that they would continue to "withhold" 5% of aid to all localities—down from the 20% they initially said would be necessary.
"We don't know how much they intend to pay back from that $261 million," Fauss said. "The raid for next year is crystal clear, but the way they've done this withholding process has been incredibly opaque."
As Streetblog reported, the MTA's leadership, many of whom are Cuomo appointees, do not appear inclined to claw back the state funding.
"While the MTA may incredibly be willing to accept less money to fulfill its mission, dedicated funds should remain dedicated," Senate Deputy Leader Michael Gianaris told the outlet. "I am committed to opposing any effort to appropriate less than what the MTA needs and deserves."
"As we've said, in the absence of federal funding to offset the state's devastating revenue losses, the state has no choice but to reduce spending by 5% across all local aid, including transit systems across the state," said Freeman Klopott, a spokesperson for the governor's budget division. "If the state receives the $15 billion in requested federal funding, many of these reductions can go away, and we are working to minimize impact as much as possible for both riders and transit employees."
Fauss pointed out that the withholdings and cuts have not been made evenly across the board—school districts were not hit as badly as initially predicted. As the April 1 budget deadline grows closer, it puts state legislators in a position of trying to figure out what funding will be restored from last year's budget this year, while also debating what is needed in this year's budget.
"Here we are, debating two budgets at once," Fauss said.
[UPDATE / 6:01 p.m.] In a followup email, Klopott revealed how much had been withheld from the MTA last year—$426 million—and how much was ultimately cut from their budget: $98 million. The $426 million will be restored this year, Klopott said.
"We are reducing funding across the board by 5%, which amounts to $98 million for the MTA in FY 2021, and we are releasing the $426 million that was previously withheld. We're waiting for final federal funding amounts to determine the final reductions that would be necessary," Klopott said.
MTA Leadership Declines To Fight Gov. Cuomo's $145M Transit Raid
Feb. 19, 2021
The MTA will avoid catastrophic service cuts, layoffs, and fare hikes through 2022, but is still facing billions of dollars in shortfalls in the years ahead.
The reprieve was announced at the agency's board meeting on Thursday, and was made possible in part by a combination of $8 billion in federal aid last year, plus $3 billion more in borrowed money. On top of that, the agency will receive at least another $6 billion in the forthcoming pandemic relief package, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told the Times on Thursday, though CEO Pat Foye is still holding out for $8 billion.
"We continue to urgently request $8 billion in additional federal aid as part of the American Rescue Plan so we can serve as the economic engine leading New York's recovery from this devastating pandemic," Foye said in a statement.
This flow of money, along with modest toll hikes in April that will raise $178 million over two years, will also allow the MTA to maintain a decent level of service at a time when ridership is still down nearly 70% compared to last year. The MTA's consultants have estimated that it may not be until 2024 when ridership is 92% of what it was before the pandemic.
Earlier this week, Governor Cuomo announced that 22-hour subway service would begin on February 22nd, and that the stations and trains would be closed to riders for overnight cleaning from 2 a.m. to 4 a.m.
Despite the bleak forecast for fare revenues (and for the MTA's desperately needed, $51 billion modernization plan), the Cuomo administration is still poised to divert and withhold hundreds of millions of dedicated tax revenue from the agency.
"The ballpark is really $400 million total that the state has taken and plans to take from the MTA, altogether," said Rachael Fauss, a senior research analyst who studies the MTA for the watchdog group Reinvent Albany.
During the height of the pandemic last spring, the state legislature took the unprecedented step of giving the governor the power to "withhold" portions of the budget as a way of avoiding permanent cuts in an uncertain year. The MTA's budgeted withholding: $261 million.
Last week, Cuomo released plans for his upcoming budget due in April that showed that $145 million in dedicated MTA tax revenue would be diverted to the state's general fund. Transit advocates and lawmakers were outraged that the governor would conduct yet another "raid" on tax revenue that is explicitly meant for the MTA, and was already deflated because of the pandemic.
"It's not just that there's a little bit less tax revenue for the MTA, but that the state's actually taking it on top of an already contracted revenue source—it's a double hit," Fauss said.
The governor's budget director, Robert Mujica, told reporters last month that they would continue to "withhold" 5% of aid to all localities—down from the 20% they initially said would be necessary.
"We don't know how much they intend to pay back from that $261 million," Fauss said. "The raid for next year is crystal clear, but the way they've done this withholding process has been incredibly opaque."
As Streetblog reported, the MTA's leadership, many of whom are Cuomo appointees, do not appear inclined to claw back the state funding.
"While the MTA may incredibly be willing to accept less money to fulfill its mission, dedicated funds should remain dedicated," Senate Deputy Leader Michael Gianaris told the outlet. "I am committed to opposing any effort to appropriate less than what the MTA needs and deserves."
"As we've said, in the absence of federal funding to offset the state's devastating revenue losses, the state has no choice but to reduce spending by 5% across all local aid, including transit systems across the state," said Freeman Klopott, a spokesperson for the governor's budget division. "If the state receives the $15 billion in requested federal funding, many of these reductions can go away, and we are working to minimize impact as much as possible for both riders and transit employees."
Fauss pointed out that the withholdings and cuts have not been made evenly across the board—school districts were not hit as badly as initially predicted. As the April 1 budget deadline grows closer, it puts state legislators in a position of trying to figure out what funding will be restored from last year's budget this year, while also debating what is needed in this year's budget.
"Here we are, debating two budgets at once," Fauss said.
[UPDATE / 6:01 p.m.] In a followup email, Klopott revealed how much had been withheld from the MTA last year—$426 million—and how much was ultimately cut from their budget: $98 million. The $426 million will be restored this year, Klopott said.
"We are reducing funding across the board by 5%, which amounts to $98 million for the MTA in FY 2021, and we are releasing the $426 million that was previously withheld. We're waiting for final federal funding amounts to determine the final reductions that would be necessary," Klopott said.
MTA Leadership Declines To Fight Gov. Cuomo's $145M Transit Raid
Streetsblog
Feb. 19, 2021
MTA leaders are the only people left in New York who won't fight Gov. Cuomo.
In response to the news that the governor's executive budget includes a $145-million raid from dedicated transit funds, MTA executives stuck to the old song and dance that the money is sadly part of an overall budget crunch involving what the state classifies as cuts in "aid to localities."
"The $145 million is not just hitting the MTA," agency CFO Bob Foran told reporters on Thursday. "If you recall, the budget director said if they got a certain amount of federal funds, they would do a reduction in aid to localities, about five percent. What's happening is we're seeing a proposed reduction in aid to localities, which the MTA is part of, so we're not being treated any differently than others."
The answer included a not-so-subtle push for the federal government to give New York State the full $15 billion Gov. Cuomo has asked for lest transit service be cut. And sure enough, Sen. Chuck Schumer said he's fighting for just that.
"Right now, I am working to deliver another $6 billion-plus, in addition to the $8 billion already delivered for the MTA, that will not just get us through this transit disaster, but energize the whole system for rebirth and revival," he said, not addressing the raid.
But advocates remain enraged that the MTA is rolling over rather than fighting the governor, especially when the agency is contemplating canceling raises for its workforce that were agreed upon just last year.
"They're taking the direction from the governor's office, that's what's going on here," said Reinvent Albany Senior Researcher Rachael Fauss.
According to an analysis of the Executive Budget done by the state Assembly, the governor is proposing to move a total of $145 million out of the MTA budget, most of which is supposed to go to the agency's devastated operating budget. The biggest portion of the raid — roughly $107 million — comes from the Metropolitan Mass Transit Operating Assistance Fund, a tranche of various tax revenues that's supposed to flow to mass transit exclusively.
"The intent of dedicated funds are every single dollar that gets raised go to the MTA. This is all part of the governor's play to show a lot of pain and try to get federal funding for the state. But the MTA's dedicated funds shouldn't be a bargaining chip for federal funding because they're dedicated for the MTA," said Fauss.
The MTA is also being raided at a time when the shared pain that Foran mentioned isn't true. Withheld school funding was repaid after being subject to aid to localities cuts.
The Cuomo administration has argued that $145 million is a small amount of the MTA's overall budget, but it matches up with the amount of money the MTA has said it will lose if it doesn't raise fares. MTA Board member and International President of the TWU John Samuelsen pointed out that the money could also "add 2,700 bus runs, remove every dangerous subway track defect for 10 years and stop unsafe booth closures."
Advocates have warned about dedicated fund raids for the better part of a year, starting with a warning that the state's aid to localities cuts in 2020 was a thinly veiled raid of dedicated funds, and actually a double hit to MTA finances since the tax receipts that make up funds like MMTOA were already drying up to the coronavirus' impact on the city and state. When the issue first came to light last April, MTA CEO and Chairman Pat Foye said it was "not okay" to raid dedicated funds, but did not comment on Wednesday beyond praising President Biden's proposed $1.9-trillion stimulus as a boon for cities and states.
The current funding raid is reminiscent of old MTA budget raids that the Cuomo administration did in 2010, 2014 and 2015, the exact kind of moves that led state legislators to pass a transit lockbox law. That law didn't prevent the governor from raiding mass transit funds, but it did require any raid to come with a statement explaining why it was happening. At the moment, the governor has not issued a such a statement.
But if the MTA won't ask for its money, it still has legislators in Albany who will fight on its behalf.
"While the MTA may incredibly be willing to accept less money to fulfill its mission, dedicated funds should remain dedicated," said Senate Deputy Leader Michael Gianaris. "I am committed to opposing any effort to appropriate less than what the MTA needs and deserves."
DECISION 2021: Meet the Council Candidates for Queens District 31
Feb. 19, 2021
MTA leaders are the only people left in New York who won't fight Gov. Cuomo.
In response to the news that the governor's executive budget includes a $145-million raid from dedicated transit funds, MTA executives stuck to the old song and dance that the money is sadly part of an overall budget crunch involving what the state classifies as cuts in "aid to localities."
"The $145 million is not just hitting the MTA," agency CFO Bob Foran told reporters on Thursday. "If you recall, the budget director said if they got a certain amount of federal funds, they would do a reduction in aid to localities, about five percent. What's happening is we're seeing a proposed reduction in aid to localities, which the MTA is part of, so we're not being treated any differently than others."
The answer included a not-so-subtle push for the federal government to give New York State the full $15 billion Gov. Cuomo has asked for lest transit service be cut. And sure enough, Sen. Chuck Schumer said he's fighting for just that.
"Right now, I am working to deliver another $6 billion-plus, in addition to the $8 billion already delivered for the MTA, that will not just get us through this transit disaster, but energize the whole system for rebirth and revival," he said, not addressing the raid.
But advocates remain enraged that the MTA is rolling over rather than fighting the governor, especially when the agency is contemplating canceling raises for its workforce that were agreed upon just last year.
"They're taking the direction from the governor's office, that's what's going on here," said Reinvent Albany Senior Researcher Rachael Fauss.
According to an analysis of the Executive Budget done by the state Assembly, the governor is proposing to move a total of $145 million out of the MTA budget, most of which is supposed to go to the agency's devastated operating budget. The biggest portion of the raid — roughly $107 million — comes from the Metropolitan Mass Transit Operating Assistance Fund, a tranche of various tax revenues that's supposed to flow to mass transit exclusively.
"The intent of dedicated funds are every single dollar that gets raised go to the MTA. This is all part of the governor's play to show a lot of pain and try to get federal funding for the state. But the MTA's dedicated funds shouldn't be a bargaining chip for federal funding because they're dedicated for the MTA," said Fauss.
The MTA is also being raided at a time when the shared pain that Foran mentioned isn't true. Withheld school funding was repaid after being subject to aid to localities cuts.
The Cuomo administration has argued that $145 million is a small amount of the MTA's overall budget, but it matches up with the amount of money the MTA has said it will lose if it doesn't raise fares. MTA Board member and International President of the TWU John Samuelsen pointed out that the money could also "add 2,700 bus runs, remove every dangerous subway track defect for 10 years and stop unsafe booth closures."
Advocates have warned about dedicated fund raids for the better part of a year, starting with a warning that the state's aid to localities cuts in 2020 was a thinly veiled raid of dedicated funds, and actually a double hit to MTA finances since the tax receipts that make up funds like MMTOA were already drying up to the coronavirus' impact on the city and state. When the issue first came to light last April, MTA CEO and Chairman Pat Foye said it was "not okay" to raid dedicated funds, but did not comment on Wednesday beyond praising President Biden's proposed $1.9-trillion stimulus as a boon for cities and states.
The current funding raid is reminiscent of old MTA budget raids that the Cuomo administration did in 2010, 2014 and 2015, the exact kind of moves that led state legislators to pass a transit lockbox law. That law didn't prevent the governor from raiding mass transit funds, but it did require any raid to come with a statement explaining why it was happening. At the moment, the governor has not issued a such a statement.
But if the MTA won't ask for its money, it still has legislators in Albany who will fight on its behalf.
"While the MTA may incredibly be willing to accept less money to fulfill its mission, dedicated funds should remain dedicated," said Senate Deputy Leader Michael Gianaris. "I am committed to opposing any effort to appropriate less than what the MTA needs and deserves."
DECISION 2021: Meet the Council Candidates for Queens District 31
Streetsblog
Feb. 19, 2021
District 31 is a "transportation desert," but it also filled with road violence: Since January, 2019, there have been 7,668 total crashes, injuring 59 cyclists, 270 pedestrians (killing five), and injuring 2,507 motorists (killing 11), according to Crash Mapper.
In the district, roughly 46 percent of commuters take public transit to get to work, According to the Tri-State Transportation Campaign.
Here's what the six candidates had to say about transportation issues in their district:
Shawn Rux
Deputy Superintendent for District 29 in Queens
So far raised $24,929, spent $33,845
Rux, an educator, said he sees transportation as an issue that connects to all others — a child being able to get to school, and get there safely, is just as important as the education he or she will receive.
"It's an intersection issue, it's connected to all issues. We're in a transportation desert," Rux said, adding that he would support banning cars in front of schools during pick-up and -off to ensure kids get into the classroom safely — a safety initiative used elsewhere in the world that Mayor de Blasio has opposed.
"I always see cars speeding past schools," he said. "If there's a way to limit cars from driving down certain streets I would be supportive of that."
On busways — points of contention on Merrick Boulevard and Archer Avenue — Rux said he does not want to inconvenience drivers.
"I would look more closely at while improving public transport, but I don't want to inconvenience those who are driving as well," he said. "Community members want more bus routes than the buses that currently exist [and] I hear so often that the buses come late or just not there. … I believe there are aspects of the budget where we can reallocate funds to ensure public transportation transportation in general is also quality and accessible."
LaToya Benjamin
Director of Economic Development for the New York State Senate
So far raised $22,909, spent $25,501
Benjamin framed the issue of transportation in the district as part of COVID recovery, saying the ability to get to a job is dependent on the ability to get there.
Benjamin says the focus shouldn't just be on getting residents into Manhattan, but into other parts of the distrcit as well, like JFK airport, which she says is among the district's top five employers. (Census figures show that only about 21 percent of district residents commute to Manhattan's business core.)
"Part of my role in the Senate has been looking at different transportation models we can introduce into our district," she said. "For example, residents in the Rockaways have a hard time getting to work at JFK — there's no single point of access to the airport."
Benjamin said residents of District 31 are concerned about the overall viability of commuter vans, a.k.a. dollar vans, that shuttle passengers to distant train stations for a few bucks. She said the city should support them to help make up some of the last miles in people's commutes.
"There's some opportunity to organize them in a way that responds to the transportation desert."
Benjamin said she's a supporter of Mayor de Blasio's ferry system, which has been underutilized in communities of color. She wants to expand it to other parts of the Rockaways, not just near the beach.
"Anything we can do to improve the ferry," she said. "I think it should be expanded. There's always issues with the Rockaways being left out of the process."
Benjamin says she's weary on expanding Citi Bike into the district — not that there's any near-term plan for that — since its docks would take up parking spaces.
"It has to be well balanced," she said. "One of criticisms of Citi Bike is it takes away parking. People drive. "There needs to be a well-rounded response to transportation. How do we create an inclusive plan that also includes drivers?"
Selvena Brooks-Powers
MWBE Project Manager with the JFK Redevelopment Program
So far raised 42,075, spent $96,257
Brooks-Powers, who was endorsed by Richards (though she lost to him in 2013), said she's thinking about transportation as it relates to COVID-19 recovery.
"I'd love to see a study on local transportation issues especially since COVID [which] definitely impacted this district on every level from small businesses to transportation," she said. "In this district, transportation centers around access and affordability and having alternative options. So that's the lens I look through when discussing transportation."
Brooks-Powers said her focus is on providing better transportation options for low-income families — though she was still weary about the busway that was created on Merrick Boulevard.
"I definitely would like to think outside the box of how we are able to provide access to transportation to lower-income residents and think outside the box on what that would look like," she said, touting her support for expanding the mayor's highly subsidized ferry service elsewhere in the district. "The busway that has been created down Merrick has received a lot of mixed reviews mostly because of the way it was rolled out — not much communication.
"These busways require working collaboratively to create plans that make sense," Brooks-Powers added. "What I've seen on Merrick is some bottlenecks since the busway was created."
But Brooks-Powers supports expanding protected bike lanes in the district, especially, she said, as more people are riding now.
"I know we have quite a few now [point of fact: District 31 has almost no protected bike lanes] and there's definitely been an increase in people riding bikes, especially Lime bikes in the community. I definitely see a need for it," she said.
And like her competitors, Brooks-Powers mentioned the need to support the commuter van industry, which is suffering even as people are relying on it to get around.
"They've been largely impacted more recently in terms of increases to certain criteria that's now being required on them," she said. "That's an industry that needs to be supported and protected."
Nancy Martinez
Founder of New York Career Training School and Rockaway Adult Social Center, both in Far Rockaway
So far raised $50,288, spent $41,120
Martinez, who told Streetsblog she's had her fair share of commuting hours from the Rockaways into Manhattan, said the city and state need to better coordinate the shuttle buses that run in place of the A train when it snows, and in bad weather.
"Public transportation out here, especially, in the Rockaways, it's horrible. It hasn't improved at all," said Martinez. "I don't see that they have done any sort of improvements for a train line coming into the Rockaways — the elevated train when it snows, if they know this is an issue every winter, you would think they would have another system in place. The shuttle bus is not coordinated properly either."
But when it comes to improving bus service for constituents, like on the controversial Archer Avenue, Martinez wasn't as supportive, unlike the last holder of the District 31 seat, who advocated for the busway.
"Archer Avenue busway, to be honest, I have to see about the busway when it comes to transportation — if it's what the constituents want or need I will support it," she said.
Martinez said she supports bike lanes.
"I'm for bike lanes in the district, it's good exercise, less fuel going around," she said.
Pesach Osina
Former Queens Borough Director for the NYC Comptroller
So far raised $22,794, spent $53,932
Osina, who also lost to Richards in 2013, said one of the most important steps for improving transit in the district is restarting the Queens Bus Network Redesign that was put on hold last year because of the pandemic — and getting "community input."
"We have to make our bus rides easier and better. There's been a lot of inequities shown by the pandemic. We need to revisit with more community input," he said.
But Osina wouldn't go so far as to endorse busways to make those bus rides "easier and better," repeating the age-old trope that taking away parking spots would hurt businesses' bottom lines.
"We have to see what are negative adverse effects on community business if you're taking away parking spots. We need to look at the whole bus redesign plan, need to make sure there's real community input moving forward," he said.
Osina also said that more outreach is needed to get more people on the ferry system, and figure out why it's been shown to cater more to the wealthy.
"Why are we not getting a more diverse population on the ferry? What needs to be done to create that outreach?" he said.
And on bike lanes and bike share, Osina said the pandemic also showed him how critical it is as a mode of transportation, and an enjoyable activity, and the need for better bike infrastructure in the district.
"The amount of people utilizing bikes was tremendous — a tremendous uptick. How do we get more people to utilize it?" he said. "We need a bike share program out here."
Manny Silva
Former chief of staff for then-Council Member Donovan Richards
So far raised $26,656, spent $86,024
Unlike his competitors, Silva was more critical of the ferry system that serves just one section of the Rockaways, saying it is not effective or equitable and that he'd rather see the money go towards improving train and bus service.
"Unless the city is going to build a ferry stop in Far Rockaway, it really is not benefiting us on our side of the peninsula," he said. "With the amount of money subsidizing the ferry, you'd think it would benefit a wide range of people. But the city refuses to build a ferry stop on our side of the peninsula," he said. "I'd like to see the money used for more creative options."
Silva also said he'd like to see bus options improved and expanded, but also wouldn't support busways due to what he says is a need for parking and driving.
"The problem is that our communities rely heavily on cars. Every district in NYC should be looked at individually when determining where we create bus-only lanes. In our district it doesn't work everywhere," he said.
Growing up, Silva said he was so broke that he relied only on his feet or bike to get around, and because of that, wholeheartedly endorses expanding protected bike lanes.
"I would walk or I'd have to bike around the district, literally would bike from one end of the district to the other — it was very dangerous. Bike lanes, we need to do much better," he said. "I see them happening all over Manhattan, and we barely have any bike lanes here and the ones we do have are very inconvenient. I would support an entire bike infrastructure that goes throughout the entire district."
And with an expanded bike lane network should come more micro mobility options like bike-share and scooter-share programs to help people get around, said Silva.
"We saw Lime bikes do extremely well out here [in a pilot program in Rockaway]," said Silva. "It created an opportunity for people to bike around and people with not a lot of money to bike around, especially young people I believe we need a comprehensive transportation plan for our district and all our districts in Southeast Queens, which have been highly neglected by the MTA and DOT and if we were to all come together with a comprehensive plan that included bike lanes, included electric charging stations, included new bus routes, we could change that narrative and have just as many options as the rest of the city."
The Bronx is Up … When it Comes to DOT's Scooter-Share Pilot Program
Feb. 19, 2021
District 31 is a "transportation desert," but it also filled with road violence: Since January, 2019, there have been 7,668 total crashes, injuring 59 cyclists, 270 pedestrians (killing five), and injuring 2,507 motorists (killing 11), according to Crash Mapper.
In the district, roughly 46 percent of commuters take public transit to get to work, According to the Tri-State Transportation Campaign.
Here's what the six candidates had to say about transportation issues in their district:
Shawn Rux
Deputy Superintendent for District 29 in Queens
So far raised $24,929, spent $33,845
Rux, an educator, said he sees transportation as an issue that connects to all others — a child being able to get to school, and get there safely, is just as important as the education he or she will receive.
"It's an intersection issue, it's connected to all issues. We're in a transportation desert," Rux said, adding that he would support banning cars in front of schools during pick-up and -off to ensure kids get into the classroom safely — a safety initiative used elsewhere in the world that Mayor de Blasio has opposed.
"I always see cars speeding past schools," he said. "If there's a way to limit cars from driving down certain streets I would be supportive of that."
On busways — points of contention on Merrick Boulevard and Archer Avenue — Rux said he does not want to inconvenience drivers.
"I would look more closely at while improving public transport, but I don't want to inconvenience those who are driving as well," he said. "Community members want more bus routes than the buses that currently exist [and] I hear so often that the buses come late or just not there. … I believe there are aspects of the budget where we can reallocate funds to ensure public transportation transportation in general is also quality and accessible."
LaToya Benjamin
Director of Economic Development for the New York State Senate
So far raised $22,909, spent $25,501
Benjamin framed the issue of transportation in the district as part of COVID recovery, saying the ability to get to a job is dependent on the ability to get there.
Benjamin says the focus shouldn't just be on getting residents into Manhattan, but into other parts of the distrcit as well, like JFK airport, which she says is among the district's top five employers. (Census figures show that only about 21 percent of district residents commute to Manhattan's business core.)
"Part of my role in the Senate has been looking at different transportation models we can introduce into our district," she said. "For example, residents in the Rockaways have a hard time getting to work at JFK — there's no single point of access to the airport."
Benjamin said residents of District 31 are concerned about the overall viability of commuter vans, a.k.a. dollar vans, that shuttle passengers to distant train stations for a few bucks. She said the city should support them to help make up some of the last miles in people's commutes.
"There's some opportunity to organize them in a way that responds to the transportation desert."
Benjamin said she's a supporter of Mayor de Blasio's ferry system, which has been underutilized in communities of color. She wants to expand it to other parts of the Rockaways, not just near the beach.
"Anything we can do to improve the ferry," she said. "I think it should be expanded. There's always issues with the Rockaways being left out of the process."
Benjamin says she's weary on expanding Citi Bike into the district — not that there's any near-term plan for that — since its docks would take up parking spaces.
"It has to be well balanced," she said. "One of criticisms of Citi Bike is it takes away parking. People drive. "There needs to be a well-rounded response to transportation. How do we create an inclusive plan that also includes drivers?"
Selvena Brooks-Powers
MWBE Project Manager with the JFK Redevelopment Program
So far raised 42,075, spent $96,257
Brooks-Powers, who was endorsed by Richards (though she lost to him in 2013), said she's thinking about transportation as it relates to COVID-19 recovery.
"I'd love to see a study on local transportation issues especially since COVID [which] definitely impacted this district on every level from small businesses to transportation," she said. "In this district, transportation centers around access and affordability and having alternative options. So that's the lens I look through when discussing transportation."
Brooks-Powers said her focus is on providing better transportation options for low-income families — though she was still weary about the busway that was created on Merrick Boulevard.
"I definitely would like to think outside the box of how we are able to provide access to transportation to lower-income residents and think outside the box on what that would look like," she said, touting her support for expanding the mayor's highly subsidized ferry service elsewhere in the district. "The busway that has been created down Merrick has received a lot of mixed reviews mostly because of the way it was rolled out — not much communication.
"These busways require working collaboratively to create plans that make sense," Brooks-Powers added. "What I've seen on Merrick is some bottlenecks since the busway was created."
But Brooks-Powers supports expanding protected bike lanes in the district, especially, she said, as more people are riding now.
"I know we have quite a few now [point of fact: District 31 has almost no protected bike lanes] and there's definitely been an increase in people riding bikes, especially Lime bikes in the community. I definitely see a need for it," she said.
And like her competitors, Brooks-Powers mentioned the need to support the commuter van industry, which is suffering even as people are relying on it to get around.
"They've been largely impacted more recently in terms of increases to certain criteria that's now being required on them," she said. "That's an industry that needs to be supported and protected."
Nancy Martinez
Founder of New York Career Training School and Rockaway Adult Social Center, both in Far Rockaway
So far raised $50,288, spent $41,120
Martinez, who told Streetsblog she's had her fair share of commuting hours from the Rockaways into Manhattan, said the city and state need to better coordinate the shuttle buses that run in place of the A train when it snows, and in bad weather.
"Public transportation out here, especially, in the Rockaways, it's horrible. It hasn't improved at all," said Martinez. "I don't see that they have done any sort of improvements for a train line coming into the Rockaways — the elevated train when it snows, if they know this is an issue every winter, you would think they would have another system in place. The shuttle bus is not coordinated properly either."
But when it comes to improving bus service for constituents, like on the controversial Archer Avenue, Martinez wasn't as supportive, unlike the last holder of the District 31 seat, who advocated for the busway.
"Archer Avenue busway, to be honest, I have to see about the busway when it comes to transportation — if it's what the constituents want or need I will support it," she said.
Martinez said she supports bike lanes.
"I'm for bike lanes in the district, it's good exercise, less fuel going around," she said.
Pesach Osina
Former Queens Borough Director for the NYC Comptroller
So far raised $22,794, spent $53,932
Osina, who also lost to Richards in 2013, said one of the most important steps for improving transit in the district is restarting the Queens Bus Network Redesign that was put on hold last year because of the pandemic — and getting "community input."
"We have to make our bus rides easier and better. There's been a lot of inequities shown by the pandemic. We need to revisit with more community input," he said.
But Osina wouldn't go so far as to endorse busways to make those bus rides "easier and better," repeating the age-old trope that taking away parking spots would hurt businesses' bottom lines.
"We have to see what are negative adverse effects on community business if you're taking away parking spots. We need to look at the whole bus redesign plan, need to make sure there's real community input moving forward," he said.
Osina also said that more outreach is needed to get more people on the ferry system, and figure out why it's been shown to cater more to the wealthy.
"Why are we not getting a more diverse population on the ferry? What needs to be done to create that outreach?" he said.
And on bike lanes and bike share, Osina said the pandemic also showed him how critical it is as a mode of transportation, and an enjoyable activity, and the need for better bike infrastructure in the district.
"The amount of people utilizing bikes was tremendous — a tremendous uptick. How do we get more people to utilize it?" he said. "We need a bike share program out here."
Manny Silva
Former chief of staff for then-Council Member Donovan Richards
So far raised $26,656, spent $86,024
Unlike his competitors, Silva was more critical of the ferry system that serves just one section of the Rockaways, saying it is not effective or equitable and that he'd rather see the money go towards improving train and bus service.
"Unless the city is going to build a ferry stop in Far Rockaway, it really is not benefiting us on our side of the peninsula," he said. "With the amount of money subsidizing the ferry, you'd think it would benefit a wide range of people. But the city refuses to build a ferry stop on our side of the peninsula," he said. "I'd like to see the money used for more creative options."
Silva also said he'd like to see bus options improved and expanded, but also wouldn't support busways due to what he says is a need for parking and driving.
"The problem is that our communities rely heavily on cars. Every district in NYC should be looked at individually when determining where we create bus-only lanes. In our district it doesn't work everywhere," he said.
Growing up, Silva said he was so broke that he relied only on his feet or bike to get around, and because of that, wholeheartedly endorses expanding protected bike lanes.
"I would walk or I'd have to bike around the district, literally would bike from one end of the district to the other — it was very dangerous. Bike lanes, we need to do much better," he said. "I see them happening all over Manhattan, and we barely have any bike lanes here and the ones we do have are very inconvenient. I would support an entire bike infrastructure that goes throughout the entire district."
And with an expanded bike lane network should come more micro mobility options like bike-share and scooter-share programs to help people get around, said Silva.
"We saw Lime bikes do extremely well out here [in a pilot program in Rockaway]," said Silva. "It created an opportunity for people to bike around and people with not a lot of money to bike around, especially young people I believe we need a comprehensive transportation plan for our district and all our districts in Southeast Queens, which have been highly neglected by the MTA and DOT and if we were to all come together with a comprehensive plan that included bike lanes, included electric charging stations, included new bus routes, we could change that narrative and have just as many options as the rest of the city."
The Bronx is Up … When it Comes to DOT's Scooter-Share Pilot Program
Streetsblog
Feb. 18, 2021
The Department of Transportation revealed today that The Bronx would be the site of the city's first scooter-share program — a Citi Bike for electric scooters, if you will — the result of a year-long effort to bring the revolutionary micro mobility mode to New York, which has lagged far behind other cities for scooter adoption.
The first zone of the two-phase program will be in the north Bronx, in an area basically border by Westchester (on the north, Pelham Bay Park (on the east), Parkchester (in the south) and the Botanic Garden and the Norwood section (on the west). (See map, right).
It is unclear what companies have "won" the bid; multiple companies, including Bird, Lime, Superpedestrian (with its Link scooters), Voi, Beryl and others, responded to a city request for expressions of interest on operating scooter-share programs, which are limited to the four boroughs beyond Manhattan.
The DOT statement did not name any of the companies that will participate in the scooter program — nor did it give any details about said program beyond the geographics — such as when the program will start and what it would even cost to rent a scooter.
"A forthcoming announcement will introduce the companies selected from amongst those who responded to the RFEI, along with details about equipment, accessible options, pricing, equity policies and discounts, features, and a launch schedule," the agency said in a vague statement. "DOT also plans to soon provide details of new bike lanes planned for the service area during 2021. Once announced, selected operators and DOT will conduct outreach to the communities within the pilot zone." (Like The Bronx zone itself, it's clear that DOT is treating its scooter-share rollout in two phases: first, identifying the zones and then naming the company or companies that will participate — indeed, some companies may drop out if they do not want to set up a Bronx program for some reason.)
What is known is that the Bronx zone meets some of what the DOT said it wanted in scooter share: The agency's goal was to support commuters who want to take transit, but are relatively long walks from stations. The phase 1 zone has multiple subway lines, but also significant subway deserts and exceptionally busy bus lines. If done correctly, for example, Co-op City residents could hop a scooter to get them to the Baychester Avenue 5 train station, and Williamsbridge residents could have an easier time getting to the 2 train.
And Zone 2 would add in greater access to the 6 train.
Neither zone is slated to get Citi Bike any time soon, so that likely provided an additional imputus for the DOT to choose this section of The Bronx (though City Council Member Antonio Reynoso, who was a driving force for the scooter-share RFEI, definitely wanted Brooklyn to be considered for the pilot. Similarly, some Council Members in Queens will likely also be disappointed).
"Ugh!" Reynoso said when contacted by Streetsblog just now, before adding, "I do believe we need to engage traditionally transit starved and neglected communities. Scooter share is lucky to be in the Bronx. I look forward to the expansion in the near future to come to Brooklyn."
Meanwhile, a resident of The Bronx told Streetsblog via Twitter that she's excited, albeit for a reason linked to the city's failure to expand bike share.
"I guess if they won't give us Citi Bikes, [so] I'll take scooters," said Megan Broderick.
The scooter company Voi indicated that it looks forward to participating in the program.
"In a city as dense and diverse as New York, starting in the Bronx and taking a phased approach to expansion is the right move," said the company's Chief Commercial Officer Carl Vernersson. "We hope to earn the opportunity to help make micromobility accessible to all New Yorkers."
Other scooter share companies were initially keeping their powder dry as they awaited more information from the DOT.
"We're excited to see this program taking shape, and even more so about the prospect of serving Bronx residents with accessible, equitable and safe transportation options," Lime Senior Director for Government Relations Phil Jones said in a statement.
"Bird applauds NYC DOT for announcing the East Bronx as the pilot area for Phase 1," the company said in a statement. "Having hosted a community event and met with leaders in the Bronx, we know that Bird can provide sustainable, equitable transportation and help transit deserts. As the only e-scooter operator in New York with a pilot nearby in Yonkers, we're confident we can contribute to the success of the New York City pilot."
One other detail was provided in a statement by new DOT Commissioner Hank Gutman, the former intellectual property lawyer and Democratic campaign donor appointed earlier this year by Mayor de Blasio to run the vital $1.3-billion agency. Gutman suggested that DOT will ensure that scooter riding is safe — something the agency has failed to do for cycling, as Streetsblog has repeatedly reported.
"DOT will require that scooter companies keep sidewalks and pedestrian ramps clear as well as closely track all crashes," said Gutman, promising, "new dedicated bike lanes to ease travel for e-scooters as well as bicycles in the east Bronx."
New York is very late to the e-scooter party. Dozens of American cities — for better but sometimes for worse — have invited, allowed or sometimes simply been inundated with scooters for years.
New York's tardiness might help it avoid some of the problems in other cities, such as limited use of scooters by people of color (though other studies show widespread use across gender, class and racial demographics). And ridership soared during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Scooter share analysts have warned of injuries, but also said crashes show the need for protected infrastructure for e-scooter riders — something that cities haven't done (and, indeed, the NYC DOT did not announce today). A study in Portland, Ore. revealed that better bike lane infrastructure encourages more use of e-scooters (though cyclists don't love competing for limited space with vehicles that can go five to 10 miles per hour faster).
Students in juvenile detention are finally being heard, but not seen
Feb. 18, 2021
The Department of Transportation revealed today that The Bronx would be the site of the city's first scooter-share program — a Citi Bike for electric scooters, if you will — the result of a year-long effort to bring the revolutionary micro mobility mode to New York, which has lagged far behind other cities for scooter adoption.
The first zone of the two-phase program will be in the north Bronx, in an area basically border by Westchester (on the north, Pelham Bay Park (on the east), Parkchester (in the south) and the Botanic Garden and the Norwood section (on the west). (See map, right).
It is unclear what companies have "won" the bid; multiple companies, including Bird, Lime, Superpedestrian (with its Link scooters), Voi, Beryl and others, responded to a city request for expressions of interest on operating scooter-share programs, which are limited to the four boroughs beyond Manhattan.
The DOT statement did not name any of the companies that will participate in the scooter program — nor did it give any details about said program beyond the geographics — such as when the program will start and what it would even cost to rent a scooter.
"A forthcoming announcement will introduce the companies selected from amongst those who responded to the RFEI, along with details about equipment, accessible options, pricing, equity policies and discounts, features, and a launch schedule," the agency said in a vague statement. "DOT also plans to soon provide details of new bike lanes planned for the service area during 2021. Once announced, selected operators and DOT will conduct outreach to the communities within the pilot zone." (Like The Bronx zone itself, it's clear that DOT is treating its scooter-share rollout in two phases: first, identifying the zones and then naming the company or companies that will participate — indeed, some companies may drop out if they do not want to set up a Bronx program for some reason.)
What is known is that the Bronx zone meets some of what the DOT said it wanted in scooter share: The agency's goal was to support commuters who want to take transit, but are relatively long walks from stations. The phase 1 zone has multiple subway lines, but also significant subway deserts and exceptionally busy bus lines. If done correctly, for example, Co-op City residents could hop a scooter to get them to the Baychester Avenue 5 train station, and Williamsbridge residents could have an easier time getting to the 2 train.
And Zone 2 would add in greater access to the 6 train.
Neither zone is slated to get Citi Bike any time soon, so that likely provided an additional imputus for the DOT to choose this section of The Bronx (though City Council Member Antonio Reynoso, who was a driving force for the scooter-share RFEI, definitely wanted Brooklyn to be considered for the pilot. Similarly, some Council Members in Queens will likely also be disappointed).
"Ugh!" Reynoso said when contacted by Streetsblog just now, before adding, "I do believe we need to engage traditionally transit starved and neglected communities. Scooter share is lucky to be in the Bronx. I look forward to the expansion in the near future to come to Brooklyn."
Meanwhile, a resident of The Bronx told Streetsblog via Twitter that she's excited, albeit for a reason linked to the city's failure to expand bike share.
"I guess if they won't give us Citi Bikes, [so] I'll take scooters," said Megan Broderick.
The scooter company Voi indicated that it looks forward to participating in the program.
"In a city as dense and diverse as New York, starting in the Bronx and taking a phased approach to expansion is the right move," said the company's Chief Commercial Officer Carl Vernersson. "We hope to earn the opportunity to help make micromobility accessible to all New Yorkers."
Other scooter share companies were initially keeping their powder dry as they awaited more information from the DOT.
"We're excited to see this program taking shape, and even more so about the prospect of serving Bronx residents with accessible, equitable and safe transportation options," Lime Senior Director for Government Relations Phil Jones said in a statement.
"Bird applauds NYC DOT for announcing the East Bronx as the pilot area for Phase 1," the company said in a statement. "Having hosted a community event and met with leaders in the Bronx, we know that Bird can provide sustainable, equitable transportation and help transit deserts. As the only e-scooter operator in New York with a pilot nearby in Yonkers, we're confident we can contribute to the success of the New York City pilot."
One other detail was provided in a statement by new DOT Commissioner Hank Gutman, the former intellectual property lawyer and Democratic campaign donor appointed earlier this year by Mayor de Blasio to run the vital $1.3-billion agency. Gutman suggested that DOT will ensure that scooter riding is safe — something the agency has failed to do for cycling, as Streetsblog has repeatedly reported.
"DOT will require that scooter companies keep sidewalks and pedestrian ramps clear as well as closely track all crashes," said Gutman, promising, "new dedicated bike lanes to ease travel for e-scooters as well as bicycles in the east Bronx."
New York is very late to the e-scooter party. Dozens of American cities — for better but sometimes for worse — have invited, allowed or sometimes simply been inundated with scooters for years.
New York's tardiness might help it avoid some of the problems in other cities, such as limited use of scooters by people of color (though other studies show widespread use across gender, class and racial demographics). And ridership soared during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Scooter share analysts have warned of injuries, but also said crashes show the need for protected infrastructure for e-scooter riders — something that cities haven't done (and, indeed, the NYC DOT did not announce today). A study in Portland, Ore. revealed that better bike lane infrastructure encourages more use of e-scooters (though cyclists don't love competing for limited space with vehicles that can go five to 10 miles per hour faster).
Students in juvenile detention are finally being heard, but not seen
Chalkbeat
Feb. 19, 2021
Nearly a year into the pandemic, children in city juvenile detention centers are finally having their voices heard by teachers during remote learning — but full video capabilities are still elusive, according to city child welfare and education officials.
In November, reporting by THE CITY showed that kids could not be seen or heard by teachers in remote classes while in juvenile lockup. At the time, both the city Department of Education and the Administration for Children's Services cited security and confidentiality concerns, while teachers and education advocates worried that vulnerable youth were being shortchanged.
A month later, education officials said they were looking into programs that would allow secure voice communication for pupils behind bars, as well as expanded tutoring services.
Now, with new voice capabilities built into online learning, teachers can initiate audio calls with individual students while teaching live lessons. But children still lack the ability to speak to each other or the teacher together as a virtual class, according to ACS.
And there's limited video — students can see the teacher, but the teacher can't see the students.
On Friday, the City Council's general welfare committee is holding an oversight hearing to explore these and other COVID-19-related issues affecting the juvenile justice system.
The city Department of Education is committed to supporting students in detention, Nathaniel Styer, a DOE spokesman said in a statement. Both he and ACS officials touted a 96% attendance rate by kids taking classes behind bars.
"We're currently working with DOE on a plan that would add video capability while protecting the confidentiality of these youth," said Marisa Kaufman, an ACS spokesperson.
Neither agency replied to questions from THE CITY regarding homework completion rates.
"We will continue to improve our ability to provide remote instruction and we look forward to fully reopening in-person learning for our students in detention when it is safe to do so," Styer wrote.
Pandemic Problems
When COVID-19 first hit New York, parents and advocates rallied to get kids in detention released, as THE CITY revealed that staffers had tested positive for the virus.
The Legal Aid Society quickly filed a lawsuit to get children back home to their families — part of a larger push for the release of vulnerable prisoners of all ages. Eventually, many youth began to be freed — mostly those locked up for nonviolent crimes.
The number of detained youth in the city's seven nonsecure centers has since remained relatively low. As of Thursday, 16 children were being held according to the state Office of Children and Family Services website.
But the number young people being held on more serious charges in the city's two secure juvenile facilities — Crossroads in Brooklyn and Horizon in The Bronx — have climbed from 74 in March to 106 on Thursday as their cases move slowly through virtual courts.
For those still stuck behind bars, programming at the facilities has been limited since the pandemic began, with in-person visits with family being replaced by virtual sessions.
In a recent issue of The Unionist, SSEU Local 371's newsletter, an article touted accelerated hiring at Crossroads and Horizon after staff complained of being "stretched incredibly thin" because of injuries and illness.
All of these issues could be helped by distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine, noted Nancy Ginsburg, the director of the adolescent intervention and diversion project at The Legal Aid Society.
Ginsburg credited the DOE and ACS with working to improve circumstances for both staff and youth during a "particularly challenging time"
"I would love to see people really going out and getting vaccinated, particularly the adults who work in the building," said Ginsburg.
City Hall Says No Decision Yet On Hiring 475 New NYPD School Safety Agents
Feb. 19, 2021
Nearly a year into the pandemic, children in city juvenile detention centers are finally having their voices heard by teachers during remote learning — but full video capabilities are still elusive, according to city child welfare and education officials.
In November, reporting by THE CITY showed that kids could not be seen or heard by teachers in remote classes while in juvenile lockup. At the time, both the city Department of Education and the Administration for Children's Services cited security and confidentiality concerns, while teachers and education advocates worried that vulnerable youth were being shortchanged.
A month later, education officials said they were looking into programs that would allow secure voice communication for pupils behind bars, as well as expanded tutoring services.
Now, with new voice capabilities built into online learning, teachers can initiate audio calls with individual students while teaching live lessons. But children still lack the ability to speak to each other or the teacher together as a virtual class, according to ACS.
And there's limited video — students can see the teacher, but the teacher can't see the students.
On Friday, the City Council's general welfare committee is holding an oversight hearing to explore these and other COVID-19-related issues affecting the juvenile justice system.
The city Department of Education is committed to supporting students in detention, Nathaniel Styer, a DOE spokesman said in a statement. Both he and ACS officials touted a 96% attendance rate by kids taking classes behind bars.
"We're currently working with DOE on a plan that would add video capability while protecting the confidentiality of these youth," said Marisa Kaufman, an ACS spokesperson.
Neither agency replied to questions from THE CITY regarding homework completion rates.
"We will continue to improve our ability to provide remote instruction and we look forward to fully reopening in-person learning for our students in detention when it is safe to do so," Styer wrote.
Pandemic Problems
When COVID-19 first hit New York, parents and advocates rallied to get kids in detention released, as THE CITY revealed that staffers had tested positive for the virus.
The Legal Aid Society quickly filed a lawsuit to get children back home to their families — part of a larger push for the release of vulnerable prisoners of all ages. Eventually, many youth began to be freed — mostly those locked up for nonviolent crimes.
The number of detained youth in the city's seven nonsecure centers has since remained relatively low. As of Thursday, 16 children were being held according to the state Office of Children and Family Services website.
But the number young people being held on more serious charges in the city's two secure juvenile facilities — Crossroads in Brooklyn and Horizon in The Bronx — have climbed from 74 in March to 106 on Thursday as their cases move slowly through virtual courts.
For those still stuck behind bars, programming at the facilities has been limited since the pandemic began, with in-person visits with family being replaced by virtual sessions.
In a recent issue of The Unionist, SSEU Local 371's newsletter, an article touted accelerated hiring at Crossroads and Horizon after staff complained of being "stretched incredibly thin" because of injuries and illness.
All of these issues could be helped by distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine, noted Nancy Ginsburg, the director of the adolescent intervention and diversion project at The Legal Aid Society.
Ginsburg credited the DOE and ACS with working to improve circumstances for both staff and youth during a "particularly challenging time"
"I would love to see people really going out and getting vaccinated, particularly the adults who work in the building," said Ginsburg.
City Hall Says No Decision Yet On Hiring 475 New NYPD School Safety Agents
Gothamist
Feb. 20, 2021
Despite an assertion that NYPD was considering a $20 million hiring spree of 475 new school safety agents amid a fiscal crisis by a city education official, City Hall and police leaders say there's been no official decision made.
Politico reported Thursday that Kenyatte Reid, executive director of the Department of Education's Office of Safety and Youth Development, said at a City Council hearing that he learned that NYPD is bringing in the two new classes.
"I am deeply concerned that our investment is in the wrong place," Reid testified Thursday at the Education Committee hearing, and added the funding could be better used for many other resources as the public school system is strained by the pandemic.
Reid's news surprised several Councilmembers at the hearing, which focused on moving oversight of school safety agents from the NYPD to the DOE, a move that will take several years to finish. The decision came following a contentious budget battle last year.
The mere discussion of hiring more school safety agents reflects the city's misplaced priorities when school communities desperately need resources to help their students during the pandemic, said Councilmember Mark Treyger who chairs the council's Education Committee. "To hear that they're on the verge of considering hiring 475 school safety agents, when many of our schools can't even hire a school psychologist or a school social worker, it was outrageous," Treyger said in a phone interview.
Council Speaker Corey Johnson, who has been an outspoken advocate of shifting funding from the NYPD to anti-violence initiatives and family and social services, said the new hires would be a "disingenuous" move after Mayor Bill de Blasio committed to reforming school security policies.
"Our schools have been over-policed for decades, which has exacerbated the school to prison pipeline and left students feeling more unsafe than ever," said Jacob Tugendrajch, a spokesperson for Johnson told Gothamist in a statement. "That's why the City Council successfully fought to initiate a major transformation in our approach to policing and student wellness. It's mind-boggling and disingenuous that the Administration would look to build up NYPD's school safety force now while we are amid this process. We need to move forward, not backward."
The funding for NYPD was a political flashpoint for de Blasio and the City Council after last summer's protests over police brutality. Several members of New York City Council, as well as some student advocates, called on de Blasio to transfer back to the DOE control of school safety, which was handed over to the NYPD in 1998, when Rudy Giuliani was mayor.
But both City Hall and NYPD cautioned discussion of new school safety hires were still preliminary, with DOE Deputy Chancellor LaShawn Robinson saying during the hearing that "my team members are talking about the possibilities," the Daily News reported.
"As Deputy Chancellor Robinson clarified during the hearing, no decisions have been made," said de Blasio's spokesperson Avery Cohen in an email statement.
"The NYPD has been speaking with the Office of Management and Budget and the Mayor's Office about replacing school safety agents that have been lost through attrition. No final decision has been made," said Sergeant Jessica McRorie, a spokesperson for the NYPD, in an email statement.
School safety agents play a variety of roles: greeting and signing in visitors to school buildings, deploying metal detectors at some schools, responding to fights, and even issuing arrests. In many cases, they're called to respond to student mental health crises. NYPD has about 5,000 school police in the city's 1,800 public schools, making New York City's public school officers by themselves one of the country's biggest police forces.
"We have 5,500 school safety agents. But we have only about 1,500 or so social workers," Treyger said. "And what does that tell you? We are failing to meet the safety needs of our kids, we're failing to meet the social emotional needs of our kids, and we need to broaden the conversation about safety."
NY Lawmakers Seek To Create A "Predictable Funding Stream" For Anti-Violence Programs
Feb. 20, 2021
Despite an assertion that NYPD was considering a $20 million hiring spree of 475 new school safety agents amid a fiscal crisis by a city education official, City Hall and police leaders say there's been no official decision made.
Politico reported Thursday that Kenyatte Reid, executive director of the Department of Education's Office of Safety and Youth Development, said at a City Council hearing that he learned that NYPD is bringing in the two new classes.
"I am deeply concerned that our investment is in the wrong place," Reid testified Thursday at the Education Committee hearing, and added the funding could be better used for many other resources as the public school system is strained by the pandemic.
Reid's news surprised several Councilmembers at the hearing, which focused on moving oversight of school safety agents from the NYPD to the DOE, a move that will take several years to finish. The decision came following a contentious budget battle last year.
The mere discussion of hiring more school safety agents reflects the city's misplaced priorities when school communities desperately need resources to help their students during the pandemic, said Councilmember Mark Treyger who chairs the council's Education Committee. "To hear that they're on the verge of considering hiring 475 school safety agents, when many of our schools can't even hire a school psychologist or a school social worker, it was outrageous," Treyger said in a phone interview.
Council Speaker Corey Johnson, who has been an outspoken advocate of shifting funding from the NYPD to anti-violence initiatives and family and social services, said the new hires would be a "disingenuous" move after Mayor Bill de Blasio committed to reforming school security policies.
"Our schools have been over-policed for decades, which has exacerbated the school to prison pipeline and left students feeling more unsafe than ever," said Jacob Tugendrajch, a spokesperson for Johnson told Gothamist in a statement. "That's why the City Council successfully fought to initiate a major transformation in our approach to policing and student wellness. It's mind-boggling and disingenuous that the Administration would look to build up NYPD's school safety force now while we are amid this process. We need to move forward, not backward."
The funding for NYPD was a political flashpoint for de Blasio and the City Council after last summer's protests over police brutality. Several members of New York City Council, as well as some student advocates, called on de Blasio to transfer back to the DOE control of school safety, which was handed over to the NYPD in 1998, when Rudy Giuliani was mayor.
But both City Hall and NYPD cautioned discussion of new school safety hires were still preliminary, with DOE Deputy Chancellor LaShawn Robinson saying during the hearing that "my team members are talking about the possibilities," the Daily News reported.
"As Deputy Chancellor Robinson clarified during the hearing, no decisions have been made," said de Blasio's spokesperson Avery Cohen in an email statement.
"The NYPD has been speaking with the Office of Management and Budget and the Mayor's Office about replacing school safety agents that have been lost through attrition. No final decision has been made," said Sergeant Jessica McRorie, a spokesperson for the NYPD, in an email statement.
School safety agents play a variety of roles: greeting and signing in visitors to school buildings, deploying metal detectors at some schools, responding to fights, and even issuing arrests. In many cases, they're called to respond to student mental health crises. NYPD has about 5,000 school police in the city's 1,800 public schools, making New York City's public school officers by themselves one of the country's biggest police forces.
"We have 5,500 school safety agents. But we have only about 1,500 or so social workers," Treyger said. "And what does that tell you? We are failing to meet the safety needs of our kids, we're failing to meet the social emotional needs of our kids, and we need to broaden the conversation about safety."
NY Lawmakers Seek To Create A "Predictable Funding Stream" For Anti-Violence Programs
Gothamist
Feb. 20, 2021
Lawmakers in the state's Democratically-controlled chambers have introduced a bill that would allow non-profit violence interruption groups to access a federally-funded resource to help expand its programming across New York City.
The bill sponsored by Brooklyn state Senator Zellnor Myrie would allow these programs, including the Cure Violence program—where reformed gang members are hired to defuse tensions between gangs before violence erupts—to access a portion of the federally-allocated funds through the state Office of Victims Services. The office administers the fund that was created following the passage of the 1984 Victims of Crime Act by Congress. The funding sources—made available those who've been the victims of a crime, which include victims under the age of 18 or those of a terror attack in New York—are often derived from fines, penalties, or donations and doled out to states yearly. In 2019, the state's federal allocation for the fund was $133 million, according to the Office of the Inspector General.
The bill would set aside either 10% or $10 million of those funds, whichever is greater, for anti-gun groups such as the Cure Violence program. They would have to apply for these monies in the form of a grant, serving as another revenue source for these programs often left scraping for funding. Such an expansion into this currently untapped resource would benefit Camara Jackson, executive director of Elite Learners, a Cure Violence group in Brooklyn operating within the 67th Precinct. On top of its credible messenger program, the group also offers dance, drama, and STEM classes.
"[This] means that more seniors will feel comfortable outside, more youth will have role models," Jackson said of the bill. "And [there]'ll be less violence happening in the district. So I would use it directly for staffing, which would grow the organization and make the community safer."
So far, Myrie's bill has garnered support from his senate colleagues, including Jamaal Bailey, Andrew Gounardes, Robert Jackson, Jessica Ramos, and Gustavo Rivera. A bill equivalent was introduced in the Assembly this past week. With Democrats having obtained a supermajority in Albany, and the cash-strapped state not having to allocate any more money to it, Myrie hopes the bill will easily be included in this year's budget that is expected to pass in April.
"In a challenging budget environment, our bill doesn't take away state money from other vital services," Myrie said in a statement. "It simply directs the state to use money it already receives from the federal government to address the gun violence epidemic in communities like the ones I represent."
Myrie added that the money would help create a "predictable funding stream" for these groups. Often, these groups can apply for funds, but are hamstrung by a bureaucratic process where it can take two years to receive state grants and a year for the city to come through with funding.
Cure Violence programs in New York City have become a staple in the de Blasio administration over the years, receiving $34 million in allocations while expanding into 17 precincts in high-crime neighborhoods. A study by John Jay College of Criminal Justice in 2020 found that the drop in shootings over the years coincided with increased use of Cure Violence programs across the city. The state's bill sponsors find that the funding resources for anti-violence program can fluctuate yearly, limiting a program's "ability to plan for long-term solutions while forcing them to compete with each other for shrinking resources," according to the bill's Senate version.
A 2019 report by Everytown Research, a policy think tank group, found that if the state dedicated 10% of its crime victims fund to Cure Violence programs there would be $13.2 million of available money.
For Jackson, the results have also proven fruitful, pointing to one section of Crown Heights as an example of progress.
"Hawthorne [Avenue] is an area in Crown Heights that we've been working on in decreasing the gun violence, and we're over 150 days with no gun violence," Jackson said. "It takes funding, it takes money, it takes resources to do that work."
Such work, according to Jackson, requires resources to pay mediators a decent salary with benefits.
Though de Blasio is a major supporter of the Cure Violence approach, it hasn't gained much traction with Pat Lynch, president of the Policeman's Benevolent Association. At a recent shooting of an officer in the Bronx, Lynch said pouring millions of dollars into the approach isn't "gonna work."
"What we need to do is put cops on the street doing the job we know how to do, train them, hire them, put them on the street, allow them to do the job, and then prosecute the cases when we bring them in," said at the news conference.
Rebecca Fischer, executive director New Yorkers Against Gun Violence, an advocacy group for anti-violence programs, noted that officers may not always be the first best option when resolving disputes.
"That is a role that needs to be reserved for someone who has trust within the community," Fischer said. "And the police have not been able to necessarily effectively establish that trust, some have. But law enforcement, as a general matter, we've seen do not necessarily have trust within communities that are most impacted by gun violence. And that is why community-based intervention groups are a necessary piece of of solving this problem."
The bill is currently being reviewed by the Crime Victims, Crime and Correction Committee.
How An NYPD Anti-Terror Squad Became A Tool For Cracking Down On Protests
Feb. 20, 2021
Lawmakers in the state's Democratically-controlled chambers have introduced a bill that would allow non-profit violence interruption groups to access a federally-funded resource to help expand its programming across New York City.
The bill sponsored by Brooklyn state Senator Zellnor Myrie would allow these programs, including the Cure Violence program—where reformed gang members are hired to defuse tensions between gangs before violence erupts—to access a portion of the federally-allocated funds through the state Office of Victims Services. The office administers the fund that was created following the passage of the 1984 Victims of Crime Act by Congress. The funding sources—made available those who've been the victims of a crime, which include victims under the age of 18 or those of a terror attack in New York—are often derived from fines, penalties, or donations and doled out to states yearly. In 2019, the state's federal allocation for the fund was $133 million, according to the Office of the Inspector General.
The bill would set aside either 10% or $10 million of those funds, whichever is greater, for anti-gun groups such as the Cure Violence program. They would have to apply for these monies in the form of a grant, serving as another revenue source for these programs often left scraping for funding. Such an expansion into this currently untapped resource would benefit Camara Jackson, executive director of Elite Learners, a Cure Violence group in Brooklyn operating within the 67th Precinct. On top of its credible messenger program, the group also offers dance, drama, and STEM classes.
"[This] means that more seniors will feel comfortable outside, more youth will have role models," Jackson said of the bill. "And [there]'ll be less violence happening in the district. So I would use it directly for staffing, which would grow the organization and make the community safer."
So far, Myrie's bill has garnered support from his senate colleagues, including Jamaal Bailey, Andrew Gounardes, Robert Jackson, Jessica Ramos, and Gustavo Rivera. A bill equivalent was introduced in the Assembly this past week. With Democrats having obtained a supermajority in Albany, and the cash-strapped state not having to allocate any more money to it, Myrie hopes the bill will easily be included in this year's budget that is expected to pass in April.
"In a challenging budget environment, our bill doesn't take away state money from other vital services," Myrie said in a statement. "It simply directs the state to use money it already receives from the federal government to address the gun violence epidemic in communities like the ones I represent."
Myrie added that the money would help create a "predictable funding stream" for these groups. Often, these groups can apply for funds, but are hamstrung by a bureaucratic process where it can take two years to receive state grants and a year for the city to come through with funding.
Cure Violence programs in New York City have become a staple in the de Blasio administration over the years, receiving $34 million in allocations while expanding into 17 precincts in high-crime neighborhoods. A study by John Jay College of Criminal Justice in 2020 found that the drop in shootings over the years coincided with increased use of Cure Violence programs across the city. The state's bill sponsors find that the funding resources for anti-violence program can fluctuate yearly, limiting a program's "ability to plan for long-term solutions while forcing them to compete with each other for shrinking resources," according to the bill's Senate version.
A 2019 report by Everytown Research, a policy think tank group, found that if the state dedicated 10% of its crime victims fund to Cure Violence programs there would be $13.2 million of available money.
For Jackson, the results have also proven fruitful, pointing to one section of Crown Heights as an example of progress.
"Hawthorne [Avenue] is an area in Crown Heights that we've been working on in decreasing the gun violence, and we're over 150 days with no gun violence," Jackson said. "It takes funding, it takes money, it takes resources to do that work."
Such work, according to Jackson, requires resources to pay mediators a decent salary with benefits.
Though de Blasio is a major supporter of the Cure Violence approach, it hasn't gained much traction with Pat Lynch, president of the Policeman's Benevolent Association. At a recent shooting of an officer in the Bronx, Lynch said pouring millions of dollars into the approach isn't "gonna work."
"What we need to do is put cops on the street doing the job we know how to do, train them, hire them, put them on the street, allow them to do the job, and then prosecute the cases when we bring them in," said at the news conference.
Rebecca Fischer, executive director New Yorkers Against Gun Violence, an advocacy group for anti-violence programs, noted that officers may not always be the first best option when resolving disputes.
"That is a role that needs to be reserved for someone who has trust within the community," Fischer said. "And the police have not been able to necessarily effectively establish that trust, some have. But law enforcement, as a general matter, we've seen do not necessarily have trust within communities that are most impacted by gun violence. And that is why community-based intervention groups are a necessary piece of of solving this problem."
The bill is currently being reviewed by the Crime Victims, Crime and Correction Committee.
How An NYPD Anti-Terror Squad Became A Tool For Cracking Down On Protests
Gothamist
Feb. 19, 2021
On a Thursday night in November, two days after the presidential election, hundreds of New Yorkers gathered outside the Stonewall Inn for a march against police brutality. The event was one in a series of Black Trans Liberation marches, a recurring protest and pride parade held each week since the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Unlike the previous iterations, which had proceeded without incident, this one was accompanied by scores of heavily armored officers with the NYPD's Strategic Response Group.
The conflict began almost immediately. As the march moved downtown, members of the SRG — equipped with bicycles and clad in combat-style chest plates and shoulder pads — quickly cleared the street, shoving nearby demonstrators, including NYC Public Advocate Jumaane Williams. Police arrested 18 protesters, including the organizer, Joel Rivera, who was tackled to the ground and charged with carrying a bullhorn.
Later in the evening, as the protest began to taper off in Union Square, a phalanx of SRG officers rushed into the crowd, deploying a controversial tactic known as kettling to pin the group inside the park. According to a sergeant at the scene, the crackdown was prompted by protesters throwing water bottles.
On the Brian Lehrer Show the following morning, Mayor Bill de Blasio denied allegations of police overreach, insisting that officers were responding to specific threats, not antagonizing peaceful protesters. "Mr. Mayor you seem to be missing the obvious point," a caller who attended the march informed him. "There are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of police officers in full military gear, chanting 'move' as if they're in the army, for a fraction of the protesters."
A few weeks later, the Department of Investigation would release their own assessment of the NYPD treatment of protesters following Floyd's murder, faulting the department for an "intimidating, confrontational" response that provoked, rather than reduced, tensions at the demonstrations.
The report attributed many of those issues to the central role of the SRG, a roughly 700-person unit that came to oversee a command of 2,000 officers during the Floyd protests. It urged the department to create an entirely new Protest Response Unit, and to rethink the mission of the SRG — recommendations that the Mayor's Office has vowed to follow.
But as the city faces growing external pressures to reform the NYPD, substantial questions remain about whether it can actually remake its protest policing force. According to law enforcement experts from across the political spectrum, understanding the rise of the SRG, and the ways in which it was allowed to evade accountability under the current administration, will be crucial to safeguarding the rights of New Yorkers in the future.
"The Original Sin"
In January of 2015, Police Commissioner Bill Bratton was outlining his new vision for the NYPD at a Midtown luncheon. Pointing to the recent terrorist attacks in Paris and Mumbai, Bratton said he had identified a need for an "elite" tactical force trained in "advanced disorder control." This new Strategic Response Group was to consist of 350 officers, with outposts in every borough, tasked with fighting domestic terrorism and overseeing large-scale events, including protests.
After advocates bristled at the idea of employing counter-terrorism tactics on Constitutionally-protected political demonstrations, Chief of Department James O'Neill — who'd soon replace Bratton as the city's top cop — attempted to walk back his boss's statement.
"They will not be involved in handling protests and demonstrations," O'Neill told reporters. "They'll have no role in protests. Their response is single-fold. They'll be doing counterterror work."
When the department did begin deploying SRG officers to protests later that year, the city's legislators didn't seem to notice. Melissa Mark Viverito, who served as Council Speaker, told Gothamist she couldn't recall any discussion of the unit or its role in demonstrations. "It's impossible for us to know the minutiae of every single decision they're making," Viverito said. "The NYPD has always been a rogue entity."
At the time, she was focused on the push to hire 1,000 new officers as part of a new community policing effort. Despite some initial opposition, de Blasio agreed to the request in May of 2015, unexpectedly throwing in an additional 300 officers, whom he said would be focused on counterterrorism. While the department does not release any personnel decisions, policing experts believe those officers were absorbed by the SRG.
By the end of its first year, the number of SRG officers had ballooned to twice its promised size. The unit's personnel budget, initially recorded at $13 million, soared to more than $90 million per year by 2016 — an expense that has remained basically steady in the years since, according to the Independent Budget Office. The pledge from department brass to separate its terrorism and protest policing was abandoned without acknowledgement.
"The arrival of the SRG completely changed the landscape," said Chris Dunn, the Legal Director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. New Yorkers who encountered the SRG at protests noticed a change in tactics immediately, dubbing the unit the "Goon Squad."
The group's predecessor, a smaller borough-based unit called the Disorder Control Unit, which was later folded into the SRG, had played a major role in high-profile events like Occupy Wall Street. While the DCU had left smaller demonstrations to the local borough patrols, the new group was showing up more frequently, deploying an aggressive military-style response that "pretty much invariably escalated tensions," Dunn said.
Those tactics exploded into the public view this past June, when armored SRG officers came to define the public image of the NYPD's violent response to Black Lives Matter protesters marching against police brutality. On top of its 700 officers, the SRG, and its commanding officer, John D'Adamo, also supervised an additional 1,300 officers deployed during the protests as part of the NYPD's Mobile Field Forces. The department's Community Affairs Bureau, according to the DOI report, was not part of the planning or strategy for policing the Floyd protests.
"The original sin of the SRG was that it married terrorism policing and protest policing," Dunn told Gothamist. "Predictably that resulted in very heavy-handed protest policing."
"A Strong Military Appearance"
Experts in crowd psychology have long embraced a philosophy known as the "Madison Method," in which officers policing protests are instructed to facilitate, rather than confront, First Amendment activity. The Task Force on 21st Century Policing, convened by President Obama in the wake of Michael Brown's killing in Ferguson, Missouri, was largely based on that paradigm. It recommends law enforcement agencies avoid military style formations and riot gear when policing protests, and communicate openly with participants in a demonstration.
Such a "guardian mindset" runs counter to the NYPD's historical approach to policing political speech — particularly when police are the subject of those protests. In previous years, the Disorder Control Unit was found to have endorsed tactics such as infiltrating demonstrations in order to spread misinformation, and making "proactive arrests" to set a "tone." During Occupy Wall Street, a memo from the unit reminded officers of the "psychological advantage" of maintaining a "strong military appearance" at protests.
While de Blasio has frequently touted the NYPD's evolution under his administration, critics of the department see the SRG as a continuation of that old school approach. Officers assigned to the bike squad are divided into platoons, with positions such as "linebacker" and "point officer" that make use of elaborate line formations to contain protests. In the early days of the Floyd protests, members of the unit began wearing full-body tactical gear, purchased from the motocross company Fox Head Inc. In addition to larger protests, the so-called "hard gear" has since appeared at demonstrations with just a few dozen people and post-election celebrations.
"For 100 years the NYPD managed to deal with protests with nothing more than helmets and in a few rare occasions riot shields," said Alex Vitale, a sociology professor at Brooklyn College and the author of The End of Policing. "Now they have heavily armored officers, water cannons, more frequent use of pepper spray, long range acoustic devices. It's an escalation of repression tactics."
Gothamist's Freedom of Information requests seeking crowd control training materials were denied by the NYPD. But materials viewed by the Law Department showed that the department's disorder curriculum is still focused on the discredited "mob mentality" theory. It describes participants in a protest as adrenalized, unpredictable actors who may be experiencing "emotional arousal created through contagion," according to an excerpt published by the Law Department in December.
Anthony Raganella, who spent eight years as the commanding officer of the NYPD's Disorder Control Unit prior to the creation of the SRG, said that officers policing protests face a unique set of challenges, and must be prepared for the possibility of unpredictable violence. He noted that dozens of NYPD officers sustained injuries during the Floyd protests, which at times devolved into unrest and looting.
"There has to be a balance between the First Amendment and the mandate of police to maintain public order, and that's a very delicate balance," Raganella told Gothamist.
Still, he acknowledged that the NYPD's approach to crowd control was largely "antiquated." Before retiring from the force in 2018, Raganella, who describes himself as a "visionary" of the SRG, presented the department with a 13-week training academy for the unit's officers, with best practices on crowd control that he'd pulled from European police departments. That got whittled down to a two-week program, half of which is spent on using heavy weapons, according to Raganella. "My idea of professionalization and specialization went right out the window," he said.
"Window Dressing"
As part of his promise to reform the department, de Blasio has pledged to implement a series of policy changes, outlined by the Department of Investigation, focused on the policing of protests. The document's first two items call on the NYPD to create a new Protest Response Unit that does not report to the SRG and to update its Patrol Guide with a policy on protests, developed with help from civil rights attorneys and community members.
The NYPD did not respond to a list of questions about the current status of those recommendations. In an email to Gothamist, a police spokesperson said that the department handles up to 10 protests on a daily basis, most of which do not involve the SRG. "The NYPD now positions Community Affairs Officers in front of protestors but also utilizes resources as warranted in a flexible manner," according to a spokesperson, Sergeant Jessica McRorie.
"Our first goal is protecting the safety and first amendment rights of protesters," mayoral spokesperson Avery Cohen added in a separate statement. "Consistent with the recommendations of DOI, we've made a tactical shift in our protest response, designating Community Affairs staff as the primary liaisons on the ground. We look forward to implementing DOI's broader set of recommendations."
Even after the recommendations took effect, the SRG has continued to respond forcefully to Black Lives Matter protests, most notably during a Martin Luther King Day demonstration last month. Reform advocates say that the agency's deeply ingrained attitude toward protesters means that many of the problems SRG will likely persist, regardless of which part of the agency is technically in charge.
"Putting a few officers in blue community affairs jackets in front of the police line isn't new," said Vitale, the Brooklyn College professor. "It's window dressing."
"The mayor gave free rein to the NYPD to dramatically expand their political policing with no public oversight or accountability," he added. "People have no choice but to take to the streets."
When NIMBYs attack: Why CoJo's master plan won't fly
Feb. 19, 2021
On a Thursday night in November, two days after the presidential election, hundreds of New Yorkers gathered outside the Stonewall Inn for a march against police brutality. The event was one in a series of Black Trans Liberation marches, a recurring protest and pride parade held each week since the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Unlike the previous iterations, which had proceeded without incident, this one was accompanied by scores of heavily armored officers with the NYPD's Strategic Response Group.
The conflict began almost immediately. As the march moved downtown, members of the SRG — equipped with bicycles and clad in combat-style chest plates and shoulder pads — quickly cleared the street, shoving nearby demonstrators, including NYC Public Advocate Jumaane Williams. Police arrested 18 protesters, including the organizer, Joel Rivera, who was tackled to the ground and charged with carrying a bullhorn.
Later in the evening, as the protest began to taper off in Union Square, a phalanx of SRG officers rushed into the crowd, deploying a controversial tactic known as kettling to pin the group inside the park. According to a sergeant at the scene, the crackdown was prompted by protesters throwing water bottles.
On the Brian Lehrer Show the following morning, Mayor Bill de Blasio denied allegations of police overreach, insisting that officers were responding to specific threats, not antagonizing peaceful protesters. "Mr. Mayor you seem to be missing the obvious point," a caller who attended the march informed him. "There are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of police officers in full military gear, chanting 'move' as if they're in the army, for a fraction of the protesters."
A few weeks later, the Department of Investigation would release their own assessment of the NYPD treatment of protesters following Floyd's murder, faulting the department for an "intimidating, confrontational" response that provoked, rather than reduced, tensions at the demonstrations.
The report attributed many of those issues to the central role of the SRG, a roughly 700-person unit that came to oversee a command of 2,000 officers during the Floyd protests. It urged the department to create an entirely new Protest Response Unit, and to rethink the mission of the SRG — recommendations that the Mayor's Office has vowed to follow.
But as the city faces growing external pressures to reform the NYPD, substantial questions remain about whether it can actually remake its protest policing force. According to law enforcement experts from across the political spectrum, understanding the rise of the SRG, and the ways in which it was allowed to evade accountability under the current administration, will be crucial to safeguarding the rights of New Yorkers in the future.
"The Original Sin"
In January of 2015, Police Commissioner Bill Bratton was outlining his new vision for the NYPD at a Midtown luncheon. Pointing to the recent terrorist attacks in Paris and Mumbai, Bratton said he had identified a need for an "elite" tactical force trained in "advanced disorder control." This new Strategic Response Group was to consist of 350 officers, with outposts in every borough, tasked with fighting domestic terrorism and overseeing large-scale events, including protests.
After advocates bristled at the idea of employing counter-terrorism tactics on Constitutionally-protected political demonstrations, Chief of Department James O'Neill — who'd soon replace Bratton as the city's top cop — attempted to walk back his boss's statement.
"They will not be involved in handling protests and demonstrations," O'Neill told reporters. "They'll have no role in protests. Their response is single-fold. They'll be doing counterterror work."
When the department did begin deploying SRG officers to protests later that year, the city's legislators didn't seem to notice. Melissa Mark Viverito, who served as Council Speaker, told Gothamist she couldn't recall any discussion of the unit or its role in demonstrations. "It's impossible for us to know the minutiae of every single decision they're making," Viverito said. "The NYPD has always been a rogue entity."
At the time, she was focused on the push to hire 1,000 new officers as part of a new community policing effort. Despite some initial opposition, de Blasio agreed to the request in May of 2015, unexpectedly throwing in an additional 300 officers, whom he said would be focused on counterterrorism. While the department does not release any personnel decisions, policing experts believe those officers were absorbed by the SRG.
By the end of its first year, the number of SRG officers had ballooned to twice its promised size. The unit's personnel budget, initially recorded at $13 million, soared to more than $90 million per year by 2016 — an expense that has remained basically steady in the years since, according to the Independent Budget Office. The pledge from department brass to separate its terrorism and protest policing was abandoned without acknowledgement.
"The arrival of the SRG completely changed the landscape," said Chris Dunn, the Legal Director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. New Yorkers who encountered the SRG at protests noticed a change in tactics immediately, dubbing the unit the "Goon Squad."
The group's predecessor, a smaller borough-based unit called the Disorder Control Unit, which was later folded into the SRG, had played a major role in high-profile events like Occupy Wall Street. While the DCU had left smaller demonstrations to the local borough patrols, the new group was showing up more frequently, deploying an aggressive military-style response that "pretty much invariably escalated tensions," Dunn said.
Those tactics exploded into the public view this past June, when armored SRG officers came to define the public image of the NYPD's violent response to Black Lives Matter protesters marching against police brutality. On top of its 700 officers, the SRG, and its commanding officer, John D'Adamo, also supervised an additional 1,300 officers deployed during the protests as part of the NYPD's Mobile Field Forces. The department's Community Affairs Bureau, according to the DOI report, was not part of the planning or strategy for policing the Floyd protests.
"The original sin of the SRG was that it married terrorism policing and protest policing," Dunn told Gothamist. "Predictably that resulted in very heavy-handed protest policing."
"A Strong Military Appearance"
Experts in crowd psychology have long embraced a philosophy known as the "Madison Method," in which officers policing protests are instructed to facilitate, rather than confront, First Amendment activity. The Task Force on 21st Century Policing, convened by President Obama in the wake of Michael Brown's killing in Ferguson, Missouri, was largely based on that paradigm. It recommends law enforcement agencies avoid military style formations and riot gear when policing protests, and communicate openly with participants in a demonstration.
Such a "guardian mindset" runs counter to the NYPD's historical approach to policing political speech — particularly when police are the subject of those protests. In previous years, the Disorder Control Unit was found to have endorsed tactics such as infiltrating demonstrations in order to spread misinformation, and making "proactive arrests" to set a "tone." During Occupy Wall Street, a memo from the unit reminded officers of the "psychological advantage" of maintaining a "strong military appearance" at protests.
While de Blasio has frequently touted the NYPD's evolution under his administration, critics of the department see the SRG as a continuation of that old school approach. Officers assigned to the bike squad are divided into platoons, with positions such as "linebacker" and "point officer" that make use of elaborate line formations to contain protests. In the early days of the Floyd protests, members of the unit began wearing full-body tactical gear, purchased from the motocross company Fox Head Inc. In addition to larger protests, the so-called "hard gear" has since appeared at demonstrations with just a few dozen people and post-election celebrations.
"For 100 years the NYPD managed to deal with protests with nothing more than helmets and in a few rare occasions riot shields," said Alex Vitale, a sociology professor at Brooklyn College and the author of The End of Policing. "Now they have heavily armored officers, water cannons, more frequent use of pepper spray, long range acoustic devices. It's an escalation of repression tactics."
Gothamist's Freedom of Information requests seeking crowd control training materials were denied by the NYPD. But materials viewed by the Law Department showed that the department's disorder curriculum is still focused on the discredited "mob mentality" theory. It describes participants in a protest as adrenalized, unpredictable actors who may be experiencing "emotional arousal created through contagion," according to an excerpt published by the Law Department in December.
Anthony Raganella, who spent eight years as the commanding officer of the NYPD's Disorder Control Unit prior to the creation of the SRG, said that officers policing protests face a unique set of challenges, and must be prepared for the possibility of unpredictable violence. He noted that dozens of NYPD officers sustained injuries during the Floyd protests, which at times devolved into unrest and looting.
"There has to be a balance between the First Amendment and the mandate of police to maintain public order, and that's a very delicate balance," Raganella told Gothamist.
Still, he acknowledged that the NYPD's approach to crowd control was largely "antiquated." Before retiring from the force in 2018, Raganella, who describes himself as a "visionary" of the SRG, presented the department with a 13-week training academy for the unit's officers, with best practices on crowd control that he'd pulled from European police departments. That got whittled down to a two-week program, half of which is spent on using heavy weapons, according to Raganella. "My idea of professionalization and specialization went right out the window," he said.
"Window Dressing"
As part of his promise to reform the department, de Blasio has pledged to implement a series of policy changes, outlined by the Department of Investigation, focused on the policing of protests. The document's first two items call on the NYPD to create a new Protest Response Unit that does not report to the SRG and to update its Patrol Guide with a policy on protests, developed with help from civil rights attorneys and community members.
The NYPD did not respond to a list of questions about the current status of those recommendations. In an email to Gothamist, a police spokesperson said that the department handles up to 10 protests on a daily basis, most of which do not involve the SRG. "The NYPD now positions Community Affairs Officers in front of protestors but also utilizes resources as warranted in a flexible manner," according to a spokesperson, Sergeant Jessica McRorie.
"Our first goal is protecting the safety and first amendment rights of protesters," mayoral spokesperson Avery Cohen added in a separate statement. "Consistent with the recommendations of DOI, we've made a tactical shift in our protest response, designating Community Affairs staff as the primary liaisons on the ground. We look forward to implementing DOI's broader set of recommendations."
Even after the recommendations took effect, the SRG has continued to respond forcefully to Black Lives Matter protests, most notably during a Martin Luther King Day demonstration last month. Reform advocates say that the agency's deeply ingrained attitude toward protesters means that many of the problems SRG will likely persist, regardless of which part of the agency is technically in charge.
"Putting a few officers in blue community affairs jackets in front of the police line isn't new," said Vitale, the Brooklyn College professor. "It's window dressing."
"The mayor gave free rein to the NYPD to dramatically expand their political policing with no public oversight or accountability," he added. "People have no choice but to take to the streets."
When NIMBYs attack: Why CoJo's master plan won't fly
The Real Deal
Feb. 19, 2021
Corey Johnson's comprehensive planning bill will never pass, for the same reason all such bills never pass: It dilutes the power of neighborhood cranks and naive ideologues to stop new housing.
Predictably, a coalition of the city's leading NIMBY groups blasted the City Council speaker's proposal Thursday as a "top-down approach that would leave communities with even less democratic control over massive city rezonings" than they have now.
Well, yes. That is exactly the point.
Not to be anal, but this is not a direct democracy. It's a republic. We elect leaders, who in turn run the government. We don't let people with pitchforks decide what can be built where.
The reason is obvious: Left to their own devices, locals make decisions in their own interests, not those of society at large.
For example, limiting the supply of new homes will make your own more valuable, because shoppers will have fewer options. It also spares you from the annoyances of construction — noise, dust, ugliness — costs that the people who move in never have to bear.
When you think about these issues the way economists do, they become clear. Figure out who bears the costs and who reaps the benefits and you can predict how people will respond.
Urban planners and good-government types have been talking for decades about comprehensive planning, knowing that when localities make choices, they never sacrifice for the greater good.
Case in point: It would make sense for the metro area to transport goods by rail to Maspeth, where they could be loaded onto small trucks for short trips to stores in the city and on Long Island. But in that scenario, Maspeth bears the cost of more truck traffic, while the benefits — fewer overall truck trips, lower emissions, longer-lasting roads and bridges — are spread across the region. You can't blame Maspeth for opposing that plan. That is why top-down planning is essential.
There are other advantages: A more predictable approval process would lower costs for developers, who currently might spend $1 million or more to get a single rezoning through the City Council. And sometimes the local Council member, who singularly controls the fate of rezonings, makes extreme demands or simply says no. Developers compensate for bearing those costs and risks by planning apartments with high profit margins — and the opponents demanding affordability wonder why.
Johnson's scheme, in a nutshell, simplifies the process by having planning experts decide what could go where, and any project meeting those terms would be approved. The point is not just to lower costs but to have development where it makes sense — near mass transit and other infrastructure that supports it.
"This is a very top-down, dictatorial process," the NIMBY coalition declared. "For comprehensive planning to be truly democratic it cannot be decided and fast-tracked by those appointed by the mayor."
But for reasons just explained, comprehensive planning cannot be truly democratic. It would be like letting people decide individually how much tax to pay: Each would pay less than he is paying now, leaving the government unable to provide services and systems that benefit society as a whole.
New York's lone YIMBY group, Open New York, thinks Johnson's plan should go further because "it fails to address longstanding practices that allow wealthier neighborhoods to block new housing and shunt demand elsewhere," said board member Will Thomas.
He was disgusted but hardly surprised by the letter from the anti-development groups including Village Preservation, Voice of Gowanus, Stop Sunnyside Yards, Soho Alliance and the Coalition to Protect Chinatown and the Lower East Side.
"We encourage legislators interested in more equitable city planning to ignore complaints by wealthy NIMBYs who are primarily interested in protecting the status quo," Thomas said.
Johnson's plan is a noble gesture that will end up in the ever-growing graveyard of comprehensive planning proposals. But it serves a purpose by keeping the flame alive on a crucial issue, not to mention sparking some entertaining Twitter exchanges.
"As a lifelong resident of Bayside, I'm appalled by the introduction of legislation that robs our communities of the power to have a say in housing development and forces us to accept a system that thoughtlessly adds density," tweeted Austin Shafran, a City Council candidate.
"Funny thing about Bayside…" someone responded, noting that the neighborhood was ranked among the most expensive housing markets in the nation for comparable detached homes.
Rest assured, whoever wins the seat in Bayside will vote to keep it that way.
Make apartments out of vacant offices, hotels to bring young workers to NYC, Cuomo says
Feb. 19, 2021
Corey Johnson's comprehensive planning bill will never pass, for the same reason all such bills never pass: It dilutes the power of neighborhood cranks and naive ideologues to stop new housing.
Predictably, a coalition of the city's leading NIMBY groups blasted the City Council speaker's proposal Thursday as a "top-down approach that would leave communities with even less democratic control over massive city rezonings" than they have now.
Well, yes. That is exactly the point.
Not to be anal, but this is not a direct democracy. It's a republic. We elect leaders, who in turn run the government. We don't let people with pitchforks decide what can be built where.
The reason is obvious: Left to their own devices, locals make decisions in their own interests, not those of society at large.
For example, limiting the supply of new homes will make your own more valuable, because shoppers will have fewer options. It also spares you from the annoyances of construction — noise, dust, ugliness — costs that the people who move in never have to bear.
When you think about these issues the way economists do, they become clear. Figure out who bears the costs and who reaps the benefits and you can predict how people will respond.
Urban planners and good-government types have been talking for decades about comprehensive planning, knowing that when localities make choices, they never sacrifice for the greater good.
Case in point: It would make sense for the metro area to transport goods by rail to Maspeth, where they could be loaded onto small trucks for short trips to stores in the city and on Long Island. But in that scenario, Maspeth bears the cost of more truck traffic, while the benefits — fewer overall truck trips, lower emissions, longer-lasting roads and bridges — are spread across the region. You can't blame Maspeth for opposing that plan. That is why top-down planning is essential.
There are other advantages: A more predictable approval process would lower costs for developers, who currently might spend $1 million or more to get a single rezoning through the City Council. And sometimes the local Council member, who singularly controls the fate of rezonings, makes extreme demands or simply says no. Developers compensate for bearing those costs and risks by planning apartments with high profit margins — and the opponents demanding affordability wonder why.
Johnson's scheme, in a nutshell, simplifies the process by having planning experts decide what could go where, and any project meeting those terms would be approved. The point is not just to lower costs but to have development where it makes sense — near mass transit and other infrastructure that supports it.
"This is a very top-down, dictatorial process," the NIMBY coalition declared. "For comprehensive planning to be truly democratic it cannot be decided and fast-tracked by those appointed by the mayor."
But for reasons just explained, comprehensive planning cannot be truly democratic. It would be like letting people decide individually how much tax to pay: Each would pay less than he is paying now, leaving the government unable to provide services and systems that benefit society as a whole.
New York's lone YIMBY group, Open New York, thinks Johnson's plan should go further because "it fails to address longstanding practices that allow wealthier neighborhoods to block new housing and shunt demand elsewhere," said board member Will Thomas.
He was disgusted but hardly surprised by the letter from the anti-development groups including Village Preservation, Voice of Gowanus, Stop Sunnyside Yards, Soho Alliance and the Coalition to Protect Chinatown and the Lower East Side.
"We encourage legislators interested in more equitable city planning to ignore complaints by wealthy NIMBYs who are primarily interested in protecting the status quo," Thomas said.
Johnson's plan is a noble gesture that will end up in the ever-growing graveyard of comprehensive planning proposals. But it serves a purpose by keeping the flame alive on a crucial issue, not to mention sparking some entertaining Twitter exchanges.
"As a lifelong resident of Bayside, I'm appalled by the introduction of legislation that robs our communities of the power to have a say in housing development and forces us to accept a system that thoughtlessly adds density," tweeted Austin Shafran, a City Council candidate.
"Funny thing about Bayside…" someone responded, noting that the neighborhood was ranked among the most expensive housing markets in the nation for comparable detached homes.
Rest assured, whoever wins the seat in Bayside will vote to keep it that way.
Make apartments out of vacant offices, hotels to bring young workers to NYC, Cuomo says
Newsday
Feb. 19, 2021
Converting deserted offices and hotels in New York City to affordable apartments could help revive the economy by attracting young workers, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said.
The five boroughs were a magnet for young people before the pandemic — but apartment rents prevented some from moving. Now, the energy and creativity of people in their 20s and 30s is needed to revive the city and spur business activity throughout the metropolitan area, he said.
"Let's have more affordable housing to get that young talent" back to New York City, Cuomo said in a Feb. 10 taped interview with Long Island real estate developer Scott Rechler.
"You're going to be an artist, you're going to be a sculptor, you're going to be the next great newscaster…You come here, and you can afford to live here," the governor said in the 40-minute interview, which aired Thursday night on the website of the 92nd St. Y, one of the city's cultural institutions.
In his proposed 2021-2022 state budget in January, Cuomo called for the State Legislature to permit property owners in the boroughs only to make apartments out of vacant office buildings and hotels. The Long Island Association business group is lobbying to have the provision extended to Nassau and Suffolk counties, which needs more multifamily housing.
The governor and lawmakers face an April 1 deadline to adopt a new state budget.
"Those companies that came here [in the past]…came because the talent was here," Cuomo said. "You're not going to get the young talent to sit in a retirement community in another part of the country and put on sunscreen. They want to be here because it's exciting — and big companies follow the talent," he said.
Cuomo was the first guest on Rechler's "Recalibrate Reality: The Future of NY" video series, a collaboration between the 92nd St. Y and the Regional Plan Association, whose board the developer leads. The interview was recorded before this week's news of a federal investigation of the Cuomo administration's handling of data about COVID-19 deaths of nursing home residents.
Cuomo said commuters from Long Island, the northern suburbs and New Jersey are critical to New York City's economy, though he predicted only young people will return to the city daily for jobs.
The governor said he hopes the Long Island Rail Road's Third Track project, new rail cars, the Moynihan Train Hall and improvements to Penn Station would lure back commuters. "We're battling Zoom," he said, referring to people working from home.
These Groups Are Raising Millions to Sway the N.Y.C. Mayor's Race
Feb. 19, 2021
Converting deserted offices and hotels in New York City to affordable apartments could help revive the economy by attracting young workers, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said.
The five boroughs were a magnet for young people before the pandemic — but apartment rents prevented some from moving. Now, the energy and creativity of people in their 20s and 30s is needed to revive the city and spur business activity throughout the metropolitan area, he said.
"Let's have more affordable housing to get that young talent" back to New York City, Cuomo said in a Feb. 10 taped interview with Long Island real estate developer Scott Rechler.
"You're going to be an artist, you're going to be a sculptor, you're going to be the next great newscaster…You come here, and you can afford to live here," the governor said in the 40-minute interview, which aired Thursday night on the website of the 92nd St. Y, one of the city's cultural institutions.
In his proposed 2021-2022 state budget in January, Cuomo called for the State Legislature to permit property owners in the boroughs only to make apartments out of vacant office buildings and hotels. The Long Island Association business group is lobbying to have the provision extended to Nassau and Suffolk counties, which needs more multifamily housing.
The governor and lawmakers face an April 1 deadline to adopt a new state budget.
"Those companies that came here [in the past]…came because the talent was here," Cuomo said. "You're not going to get the young talent to sit in a retirement community in another part of the country and put on sunscreen. They want to be here because it's exciting — and big companies follow the talent," he said.
Cuomo was the first guest on Rechler's "Recalibrate Reality: The Future of NY" video series, a collaboration between the 92nd St. Y and the Regional Plan Association, whose board the developer leads. The interview was recorded before this week's news of a federal investigation of the Cuomo administration's handling of data about COVID-19 deaths of nursing home residents.
Cuomo said commuters from Long Island, the northern suburbs and New Jersey are critical to New York City's economy, though he predicted only young people will return to the city daily for jobs.
The governor said he hopes the Long Island Rail Road's Third Track project, new rail cars, the Moynihan Train Hall and improvements to Penn Station would lure back commuters. "We're battling Zoom," he said, referring to people working from home.
These Groups Are Raising Millions to Sway the N.Y.C. Mayor's Race
NY Times
Feb. 19, 2021
The last time there was an open mayoral election in New York City, an independent committee spent roughly $900,000 to help take down the presumptive front-runner, paving the way for Bill de Blasio's victory.
Eight years later, another onslaught of barely regulated money is heading New York's way, with super PACs poised to play an outsize role in the race for mayor, the most important election in recent city history.
Business-friendly organizations have already raised millions of dollars. At least one candidate, Raymond J. McGuire, has a dedicated super PAC. And now progressive groups are getting in on the act, creating their own super PACs to supplement their on-the-ground and social media efforts.
The rising tide of independent spending highlights the fierce debates unfolding across the political spectrum about how to manage the city's post-pandemic recovery and what its future should look like.
New York City already has a generous matching-funds campaign finance program for candidates, and much of the political muscle in the race will come from major endorsements, such as from unions. On Friday, Maya Wiley, a former MSNBC analyst and legal counsel to Mr. de Blasio who did not qualify for matching funds this week, received a boost with the backing of the city's largest union.
But in a crowded field, and with an electorate distracted by the challenges of daily life in a pandemic, major spending — in particular, on paid advertising — will also be vital for candidates' efforts to stand out. And there is a hunger among donors in New York City, one of the nation's political fund-raising capitals, to play a role in this year's races without being bound by the strict rules governing direct donations to political campaigns.
A super PAC called New York for Ray, which backs Mr. McGuire, a former Wall Street executive, has already raised more than $1 million since registering with the state in January, including $500,000 from a theater producer, Daryl Roth, whose husband, Steven Roth, is the head of Vornado Realty Trust; and $500,000 from John Hess, the chief executive of Hess Corporation. It also lists a $2,500 donation from Richard S. Fuld Jr., the former chief executive of Lehman Brothers.
At the other end of the spectrum, a group of progressives are starting a super PAC that aims to raise up to $5 million, in hopes of pushing the field of more than 30 mayoral candidates and hundreds of City Council candidates to the left on matters including housing and diverting funding from the police.
The super PAC, Our City, is being led by Gabe Tobias, a former senior adviser to Justice Democrats, which played a key role in helping Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez get elected to Congress. Mr. Tobias is also the co-founder of the Movement School, which grew from her campaign.
Our City's board includes Nelini Stamp, a senior official at the Working Families Party, and Ed Ott, the former executive director of the New York City Central Labor Council.
"There's no other effort like this in recent history that I'm aware of, a progressive independent expenditure aimed at winning control of city government," Mr. Tobias, the director of the group, said. He is hoping to raise $300,000 in the group's first month and go from there.
Several of the leading candidates running in the June 22 Democratic primary for mayor are battling to emerge as the progressive standard-bearer, continuing a trend that has influenced a slew of recent elections from House races to City Hall.
But various business interests in New York are trying to mount a counterattack: They persuaded Mr. McGuire, one of the highest-ranking and longest-serving Black executives on Wall Street, to enter the race; they have urged their employees to register to vote in the primary; and they are raising money to push their issues.
James L. Dolan, the chief executive at Madison Square Garden Entertainment, has already started The Coalition to Restore New York, a super PAC to which he has directed more than $2 million in monetary and in-kind donations from the various Madison Square Garden affiliates he controls.
Mr. Dolan declined an interview request, but his PAC says it is focused on getting the candidates to explain how they would restore the city's economy, improve public safety and balance its budget.
Stephen M. Ross, the developer of Hudson Yards, has put $1 million toward a super PAC called Common Sense NYC, which has a similar political bent as Mr. Dolan's. It was originally considering targeting both the mayor's race and the City Council races, but the crowded mayoral field inspired it to focus on the City Council, where it can presumably make more of an impact.
The group recently spent roughly $200,000 on a special election for a Council seat in Queens, helping a former councilman, Jim Gennaro, defeat several rivals including Moumita Ahmed, a progressive whose views the group called "extreme" and "reckless."
"It completely changed the race in the final two weeks," Ms. Ahmed said. It also turned Mr. Ross, who has supported both former President Donald J. Trump and Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, into even more of a boogeyman for the left. (Mr. Ross, who owns a stake in Equinox, ignited anger among Democrats in 2019 when he hosted a fund-raiser for Mr. Trump.)
Our City's launch video juxtaposes a picture of Mr. Ross at Hudson Yards with an apparently homeless person sleeping on a cardboard box as a narrator talks about inequality. Mr. Ross declined to comment on the video.
The New York Immigration Coalition's political arm is also planning to mount an independent expenditure committee, according to Murad Awawdeh, the group's interim co-executive director.
"What progressive organizations and progressives have realized is that super PACs are going to be part of the narrative, and until we have real reform that outlaws them, we have to be able to play the game and participate in that process," Mr. Awawdeh said.
In New York City, candidates running for mayor, and donors seeking to support them, are subject to strict limitations: Individuals who are doing business with the city can contribute up to $400 to a mayoral candidate; other donors are subject to caps varying between $2,000 and $5,100. Wealthy individuals and corporations can make unlimited contributions to a super PAC under New York and under federal law, according to Seth Agata, a former counsel in the governor's office who helped write New York's independent expenditure regulations.
Even as more super PACs are expected to form in the weeks ahead, it remains to be seen whether outside spending eclipses the nearly $16 million spent during the 2013 New York City elections.
Veterans of the mayoral primary that year recall only one independent expenditure committee that mattered. The committee, New York City Is Not for Sale, received backing from an animal rights group seeking to ban horse-drawn carriages. It focused on the race's putative front-runner, Christine Quinn, then the City Council speaker.
The effort ended up mired in controversy. But Ms. Quinn said it had a clear impact on her mayoral prospects.
"These independent expenditures are merely ways around the best campaign finance law in the country, and I think they're very destructive," she said.
New York for Ray is supposed to have a more positive message. Its goal is to increase Mr. McGuire's name recognition and amplify his message, according to someone involved in the effort.
"I have known Ray McGuire a long time and am confident in his ability to lead our city," Ms. Roth, one of the group's major donors, said. Mr. Hess, via a spokeswoman, declined to comment.
It will be led by Quentin Fulks, an Illinois-based political consultant; Jennifer Bayer Michaels, a former fund-raiser for Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo; and Kimberly Peeler-Allen, an experienced New York fund-raiser who is also the co-founder of Higher Heights for America, an organization that aims to elevate Black women in politics, and the co-chair of its PAC.
L. Joy Williams, who is working on Mr. McGuire's campaign, is the Higher Heights PAC's chairwoman. A campaign spokeswoman said Ms. Williams was unaware that Ms. Peeler-Allen was working on New York for Ray, and that there has been no coordination between the super PAC and the campaign.
A serious super PAC effort on Mr. McGuire's behalf — especially through paid advertising — could help him overcome his significant challenges with name identification. Among New York political operatives, the matter of whether Mr. McGuire would receive outside help had been a subject of great speculation. In recent months, there have been conversations within prominent Democratic firms about the prospect of doing work for a pro-McGuire independent expenditure effort, according to someone familiar with the conversations.
The super PAC sees no gain in smearing Mr. McGuire's opponents, the person involved in the effort said, given the advent of ranked-choice voting, which will allow New Yorkers voting for mayor to rank their top five choices.
"Rule No. 1 is do no harm," said Jesse Ferguson, a Democratic strategist who has worked on multiple national independent expenditure efforts and lives in New York. "That means understanding how what you say in the campaign could reverberate on your preferred candidate, and how your entrance into the race could even reverberate on your candidate."
After Defense Of Yeshivas, Andrew Yang Zooms Into Contention For Ultra-Orthodox Bloc Endorsement
Feb. 19, 2021
The last time there was an open mayoral election in New York City, an independent committee spent roughly $900,000 to help take down the presumptive front-runner, paving the way for Bill de Blasio's victory.
Eight years later, another onslaught of barely regulated money is heading New York's way, with super PACs poised to play an outsize role in the race for mayor, the most important election in recent city history.
Business-friendly organizations have already raised millions of dollars. At least one candidate, Raymond J. McGuire, has a dedicated super PAC. And now progressive groups are getting in on the act, creating their own super PACs to supplement their on-the-ground and social media efforts.
The rising tide of independent spending highlights the fierce debates unfolding across the political spectrum about how to manage the city's post-pandemic recovery and what its future should look like.
New York City already has a generous matching-funds campaign finance program for candidates, and much of the political muscle in the race will come from major endorsements, such as from unions. On Friday, Maya Wiley, a former MSNBC analyst and legal counsel to Mr. de Blasio who did not qualify for matching funds this week, received a boost with the backing of the city's largest union.
But in a crowded field, and with an electorate distracted by the challenges of daily life in a pandemic, major spending — in particular, on paid advertising — will also be vital for candidates' efforts to stand out. And there is a hunger among donors in New York City, one of the nation's political fund-raising capitals, to play a role in this year's races without being bound by the strict rules governing direct donations to political campaigns.
A super PAC called New York for Ray, which backs Mr. McGuire, a former Wall Street executive, has already raised more than $1 million since registering with the state in January, including $500,000 from a theater producer, Daryl Roth, whose husband, Steven Roth, is the head of Vornado Realty Trust; and $500,000 from John Hess, the chief executive of Hess Corporation. It also lists a $2,500 donation from Richard S. Fuld Jr., the former chief executive of Lehman Brothers.
At the other end of the spectrum, a group of progressives are starting a super PAC that aims to raise up to $5 million, in hopes of pushing the field of more than 30 mayoral candidates and hundreds of City Council candidates to the left on matters including housing and diverting funding from the police.
The super PAC, Our City, is being led by Gabe Tobias, a former senior adviser to Justice Democrats, which played a key role in helping Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez get elected to Congress. Mr. Tobias is also the co-founder of the Movement School, which grew from her campaign.
Our City's board includes Nelini Stamp, a senior official at the Working Families Party, and Ed Ott, the former executive director of the New York City Central Labor Council.
"There's no other effort like this in recent history that I'm aware of, a progressive independent expenditure aimed at winning control of city government," Mr. Tobias, the director of the group, said. He is hoping to raise $300,000 in the group's first month and go from there.
Several of the leading candidates running in the June 22 Democratic primary for mayor are battling to emerge as the progressive standard-bearer, continuing a trend that has influenced a slew of recent elections from House races to City Hall.
But various business interests in New York are trying to mount a counterattack: They persuaded Mr. McGuire, one of the highest-ranking and longest-serving Black executives on Wall Street, to enter the race; they have urged their employees to register to vote in the primary; and they are raising money to push their issues.
James L. Dolan, the chief executive at Madison Square Garden Entertainment, has already started The Coalition to Restore New York, a super PAC to which he has directed more than $2 million in monetary and in-kind donations from the various Madison Square Garden affiliates he controls.
Mr. Dolan declined an interview request, but his PAC says it is focused on getting the candidates to explain how they would restore the city's economy, improve public safety and balance its budget.
Stephen M. Ross, the developer of Hudson Yards, has put $1 million toward a super PAC called Common Sense NYC, which has a similar political bent as Mr. Dolan's. It was originally considering targeting both the mayor's race and the City Council races, but the crowded mayoral field inspired it to focus on the City Council, where it can presumably make more of an impact.
The group recently spent roughly $200,000 on a special election for a Council seat in Queens, helping a former councilman, Jim Gennaro, defeat several rivals including Moumita Ahmed, a progressive whose views the group called "extreme" and "reckless."
"It completely changed the race in the final two weeks," Ms. Ahmed said. It also turned Mr. Ross, who has supported both former President Donald J. Trump and Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, into even more of a boogeyman for the left. (Mr. Ross, who owns a stake in Equinox, ignited anger among Democrats in 2019 when he hosted a fund-raiser for Mr. Trump.)
Our City's launch video juxtaposes a picture of Mr. Ross at Hudson Yards with an apparently homeless person sleeping on a cardboard box as a narrator talks about inequality. Mr. Ross declined to comment on the video.
The New York Immigration Coalition's political arm is also planning to mount an independent expenditure committee, according to Murad Awawdeh, the group's interim co-executive director.
"What progressive organizations and progressives have realized is that super PACs are going to be part of the narrative, and until we have real reform that outlaws them, we have to be able to play the game and participate in that process," Mr. Awawdeh said.
In New York City, candidates running for mayor, and donors seeking to support them, are subject to strict limitations: Individuals who are doing business with the city can contribute up to $400 to a mayoral candidate; other donors are subject to caps varying between $2,000 and $5,100. Wealthy individuals and corporations can make unlimited contributions to a super PAC under New York and under federal law, according to Seth Agata, a former counsel in the governor's office who helped write New York's independent expenditure regulations.
Even as more super PACs are expected to form in the weeks ahead, it remains to be seen whether outside spending eclipses the nearly $16 million spent during the 2013 New York City elections.
Veterans of the mayoral primary that year recall only one independent expenditure committee that mattered. The committee, New York City Is Not for Sale, received backing from an animal rights group seeking to ban horse-drawn carriages. It focused on the race's putative front-runner, Christine Quinn, then the City Council speaker.
The effort ended up mired in controversy. But Ms. Quinn said it had a clear impact on her mayoral prospects.
"These independent expenditures are merely ways around the best campaign finance law in the country, and I think they're very destructive," she said.
New York for Ray is supposed to have a more positive message. Its goal is to increase Mr. McGuire's name recognition and amplify his message, according to someone involved in the effort.
"I have known Ray McGuire a long time and am confident in his ability to lead our city," Ms. Roth, one of the group's major donors, said. Mr. Hess, via a spokeswoman, declined to comment.
It will be led by Quentin Fulks, an Illinois-based political consultant; Jennifer Bayer Michaels, a former fund-raiser for Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo; and Kimberly Peeler-Allen, an experienced New York fund-raiser who is also the co-founder of Higher Heights for America, an organization that aims to elevate Black women in politics, and the co-chair of its PAC.
L. Joy Williams, who is working on Mr. McGuire's campaign, is the Higher Heights PAC's chairwoman. A campaign spokeswoman said Ms. Williams was unaware that Ms. Peeler-Allen was working on New York for Ray, and that there has been no coordination between the super PAC and the campaign.
A serious super PAC effort on Mr. McGuire's behalf — especially through paid advertising — could help him overcome his significant challenges with name identification. Among New York political operatives, the matter of whether Mr. McGuire would receive outside help had been a subject of great speculation. In recent months, there have been conversations within prominent Democratic firms about the prospect of doing work for a pro-McGuire independent expenditure effort, according to someone familiar with the conversations.
The super PAC sees no gain in smearing Mr. McGuire's opponents, the person involved in the effort said, given the advent of ranked-choice voting, which will allow New Yorkers voting for mayor to rank their top five choices.
"Rule No. 1 is do no harm," said Jesse Ferguson, a Democratic strategist who has worked on multiple national independent expenditure efforts and lives in New York. "That means understanding how what you say in the campaign could reverberate on your preferred candidate, and how your entrance into the race could even reverberate on your candidate."
After Defense Of Yeshivas, Andrew Yang Zooms Into Contention For Ultra-Orthodox Bloc Endorsement
Gothamist
Feb. 19, 2021
Mayoral hopeful Andrew Yang has rocketed into contention for the city's coveted ultra-Orthodox bloc vote, multiple Hasidic leaders told Gothamist, one day after signaling his plan not to enforce basic education standards within the community's yeshivas.
At a virtual forum hosted by the New York Jewish Agenda (NYJA) on Thursday, candidates were asked how they would ensure that children enrolled in yeshivas and other religious schools received a secular education required by state law.
As other candidates danced around the subject, Yang offered a blunt defense of the embattled Jewish private schools. "I do not think we should be prescribing a curriculum unless that curriculum can be demonstrated to have improved impact on people's career trajectories and prospects," Yang said.
He added, pointing to his own month-long Bible course at a Westchester prep school: "I do not see why we somehow are prioritizing secular over faith-based learning."
The stance rankled some education advocates, who pointed to a 2019 report that found just a fraction of yeshivas were providing students with adequate secular instruction. Other observers described the comments, which echoed a similar answer recently given to The Forward by Yang, as a transparent attempt to curry favor with the Hasidic voting bloc.
For the moment, that bid seems to be working.
Feb. 19, 2021
Mayoral hopeful Andrew Yang has rocketed into contention for the city's coveted ultra-Orthodox bloc vote, multiple Hasidic leaders told Gothamist, one day after signaling his plan not to enforce basic education standards within the community's yeshivas.
At a virtual forum hosted by the New York Jewish Agenda (NYJA) on Thursday, candidates were asked how they would ensure that children enrolled in yeshivas and other religious schools received a secular education required by state law.
As other candidates danced around the subject, Yang offered a blunt defense of the embattled Jewish private schools. "I do not think we should be prescribing a curriculum unless that curriculum can be demonstrated to have improved impact on people's career trajectories and prospects," Yang said.
He added, pointing to his own month-long Bible course at a Westchester prep school: "I do not see why we somehow are prioritizing secular over faith-based learning."
The stance rankled some education advocates, who pointed to a 2019 report that found just a fraction of yeshivas were providing students with adequate secular instruction. Other observers described the comments, which echoed a similar answer recently given to The Forward by Yang, as a transparent attempt to curry favor with the Hasidic voting bloc.
For the moment, that bid seems to be working.
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