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Introducing Latino Vote ‘22


At a celebration of Latino heritage (photo: John McCarten/City Council)


Bienvenidos to “Latino Vote ’22,” the latest series in Gotham Gazette on the Latino vote in New York. Last year’s columns on the ever-growing Latino vote looked at specific races and boroughs in New York City’s 2021 elections, as well as the impact of the Latino vote on the mayoral election.

This year’s series will explore specific races in predominantly Latino districts across the city as well as larger trends and dynamics related to Latino representation in New York politics and government.

The latest redistricting saga, the lines drawn by a court-appointed “special master” finally approved, has created some intriguing dynamics in many majority-Latino or Latino-plurality districts throughout the city. This series will take a look at some of the key, competitive races.

It will also take additional dives into the 2022 races for Governor and Lieutenant Governor. For the first time, the Lieutenant Governor race will have two Latinas (Ana Maria Archila and Diana Reyna) and one Latino, Antonio Delgado, who is Governor Hochul’s appointee to fill the position left vacant by Brian Benjamin’s resignation. The Latino vote is becoming increasingly pivotal in the governor’s race. As a mark of that, Governor Hochul and the State Democratic party have announced a new effort aimed at Latinos, Nueva York Initiative.

This new series begins with a podcast episode, also building off our 2021 audio series. I am delighted to be joined by former New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito and Lucia Gomez, the political director of the New York City Central Labor Council, as we share insights on the recently-completed redistricting process. We ask: Have Latino neighborhoods been split electorally? Is there potential for Latino vote dilution? What does New York’s legislative redistricting mean for Latino representation at the state and federal levels?

That discussion will be published May 30, and found starting then at the Gotham Gazette website or on podcast platforms (iTunes, etc) within the “Max Politics” feed, home to Gotham Gazette’s ongoing podcast hosted by editor Ben Max, and titled in part “Latino Vote.”

Grab your cuchifritos, a tasty mofongo, or a delicious taco and, since the summer is upon us, try the famous Puerto Rican limber, and join us for this latest journey, Latino Vote ’22.

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Eli Valentin is a political analyst and author of the forthcoming book, Reinhold Niebuhr: A Political Life. On Twitter @EliValentinNY.

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New York Again Moves to Support Sexual Assault Survivors


Gov. Hochul signs the Adult Survivors Act (photo: Mike Groll/Office of Governor Kathy Hochul)


This is a troubling time in America. With the Supreme Court poised to overturn Roe v. Wade, the fight over women's reproductive rights is becoming more focused on state capitals, where at least half of the states in this country are likely to ban or seriously restrict abortions (and, in some cases, certain forms of birth control) even in cases of rape and incest or the serious injury or death to the pregnant woman. This will cause immeasurable harm to women and girls, including the victims of sexual assault.

In the midst of this darkness, a small bit of good news emerged this week from New York State’s capital, where the Legislature passed and the Governor signed the Adult Survivors Act (ASA) -- a law that will allow survivors of sexual assault whose claims are long time-barred to once again bring those claims.  

And make no mistake, such sexual assault is endemic in America. According to the Rape Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN), the largest non-profit anti-sexual assault organization in the United States, every 68 seconds an American is sexually assaulted. The legal system is simply failing these victims.

To begin with, the criminal justice system often provides little help to the survivors of sexual assault. For example, for several years we ran New York City’s Department of Investigation which, among other things, oversaw the NYPD’s Inspector General. During our time at DOI, we did a lengthy investigation of the NYPD that demonstrated, in stark terms, how poorly one of the nation’s premier police forces investigated sexual assault and how little then-senior leaders of the Police Department cared about getting it right.

The civil justice system has its own limitations, with short times to bring lawsuits that often do not allow survivors to process what has happened to them in time to seek justice.  

The fight to protect the survivors of sexual assault, like the fight to protect reproductive rights, will now also play out in the various state capitals. New York’s path to the ASA is instructive in this regard.

In February 2019, New York State passed a “lookback window,” the Child Victims Act (CVA), extending the statute of limitations for survivors of child sexual abuse in criminal and civil cases in New York. In civil cases, prior to the CVA, the victims of child sexual abuse had only a short window of time, after turning 18, to bring a civil lawsuit against their abuser. The CVA permitted child victims of sexual abuse whose claim was previously time-barred to bring an action. Other states have passed similar statutes and earlier this year, Louisiana became the 22nd state to pass such a lookback statute.  

We have experience representing survivors under the CVA and have seen firsthand how the CVA allowed survivors of sexual abuse to hold powerful institutions — including private and public schools — liable for abuse that those institutions had tolerated for years. The CVA allowed victims of sexual abuse to finally hold institutions like the Catholic Church and Boy Scouts of America accountable for enabling the abuse of thousands of children. It helped more than 10,000 victims bring sexual abuse cases and seek justice for the wrongs committed against them.

New York State has now taken the next step in this fight for justice by passing the Adult Survivors Act. The bill goes into effect in six months. Based on the CVA, the ASA will create a one-year lookback window for survivors of sexual abuse who are over 18 years of age and whose claims are presently time-barred.

Given the historical stigma attached to sexual assault, as well as the career threat that reporting assault by a superior at work can entail, it is no surprise that many sexual assault survivors did not report their assaults at the time they occurred or in the years immediately following. With time, however, some survivors are able to come forward. Unfortunately, by the time they do so, the statute of limitations has often passed, and so legal redress is unavailable. The ASA, by creating a lookback window, will solve this problem. Like the CVA, it will allow survivors to finally hold powerful institutions and individuals accountable for their conduct. 

New York did well in passing this law. Survivors of sexual assault in every state need similar laws. Now that organizing is increasingly focused on state capitals, that organizing should include some version of the ASA to provide justice for survivors of sexual assault. Victims of child sexual abuse had to wait years both in New York and many other states to get lookback statutes. Adult survivors throughout the country should not need to wait a similar amount of time. 

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Lesley Brovner and Mark Peters are the founding partners of Peters Brovner LLP, a boutique law firm that focuses on, among other things, helping survivors of sexual assault. They previously ran the New York City Department of Investigations.

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New York’s Opportunity to Let Sunlight into Penn Station Plan and Other Economic Development Projects


Penn Station redevelopment rendering (photo: MTA)


A landmark open government bill passed the New York State Senate last week with a unanimous vote and the Assembly this week. The bill (S8419A-A9622-C)) would amend the urban development corporation act in relation to community advisory committees and usher new sunshine into how New York does some of its economic development business. After the Senate passes the slightly updated version that went through the Assembly, Governor Hochul should sign this bill into law immediately.

Sponsored by State Senator Jessica Ramos and Assemblymember Michaelle Solages, the bill is intended to fill the gap in transparency requirements for Empire State Development (ESD), a state authority. If the bill is passed into law, ESD would be mandated to make all its community advisory committee (CAC) materials, reports, and meeting minutes available to the public in a timely fashion. It would also make all CAC meetings open to the public. 

When then-Governor Andrew Cuomo introduced the massive Penn Station area redevelopment project in 2020 at the height of covid, he refused to let my community board, the very community board where the project lies, provide local input. As the land use chair of Community Board 5 in Manhattan, the project fell under my purview. But ESD, the state agency leading Cuomo’s grand plan, decided that I would not participate because I was “opposed to the project,” as stated by ESD leadership to Community Board 5. While ESD was correct that I was opposed to the project, it should never be a reason to deny community participation. ESD’s tactics amounted to community suppression. As we continued to demand the right to fully participate, it became a bitter fight. We stood firm. 

Only after I blew the whistle and told my story to the New York Post did ESD agree to let me attend and fully participate in the community advisory committee, without any threat of removal if I dared express my opposition to a plan that from the get-go was fatally flawed. ESD reconvened an expanded CAC, to which I was finally formally appointed and embarked in a series of weekly committee meetings. 

But there was one huge caveat: the community advisory committee meetings would not be open to the public, and all attendees were on gag order. No information, data, reports or studies discussed during these meetings would be permitted to be shared with the broader public. The minutes of the first meeting note under point 9. CONFIDENTIALITY: “All CACWG members are reminded that CACWG meetings are confidential in nature.” We were especially put on notice not to talk to the media.

This gag order put us, community leaders, in a Kafkaesque situation: members of my own community board would ask me for updates on the Penn plan, and I would be prohibited from providing even a basic report about the facts. Information with major implications was revealed to members of the CAC, including potentially spending billions of taxpayer monies. But the small CAC group was not at liberty to share it with any outside party. 

Alarmed by the total lack of transparency and accountability, the good government group Reinvent Albany submitted a FOIL request to obtain the materials from ESD. After a long and arduous process, Reinvent Albany was finally provided with the materials

Only after Reinvent Albany published the documents to its website was the public at large, the media, and independent auditors such as the city’s Independent Budget Office able to grasp the full breadth of the plan, including its potentially devastating financial and fiscal implications. 

Getting access to information from any government agency should not have to be so onerous. The public has a right to know how decisions that involve billions of dollars and could put taxpayers on the hook are made.

The bill passed by the State Senate and the Assembly aims to address the lack of transparency and underscores the lack of accountability from ESD on how it disburses money, or plans to issue and repay debt, and, as importantly, how it justifies such actions.

The bill’s memo notes, “Further, through these advisory bodies, ESD has provided information regarding the potential spending of billions in taxpayer dollars to a small group of individuals who in theory represent the community, but are not required to proactively share this information with the public at large.”

In the case of the Penn project, not only were we not required, we were barred by ESD from sharing any information with the public at large. 

The bill’s memo refers to the Penn project by name and specifically notes its lack of transparency: “For example, for the Community Advisory Committee for the Penn Station Area project, it was not until after a FOIL request was filed for CAC materials that ESD posted a portion of the materials provided to the CAC on its website, months after this information was first made available to CAC members.”

The bill would also make community advisory meetings open to the public, allowing neighbors, the media, civic groups, and others to attend and be informed in a timely fashion.

After the bill’s passage in the Senate last week, Senator Ramos said in a statement, “New Yorkers should not have to go through an arduous FOIL process to see how the Empire State Development Corporation is spending the billions of taxpayer dollars it receives in our annual budget.”

The companion Assembly bill (A09622) passed yesterday. It is now back in the senate for ratification of an amendment. The bill’s passage and the governor’s signature will be a major accomplishment in delivering transparent, equitable decisions serving the greater good rather than special interests.

Governor Hochul modestly revised the Penn plan last year but she continues to push for its approval. With ESD’s continued activity around the project plan, the legislation is especially timely. 

Good government requires trust and trust can’t exist without openness, accountability, and transparency. New Yorkers deserve nothing less. 

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Layla Law-Gisiko is Chair of the Land Use, Housing and Zoning Committee of Manhattan Community Board 5 and a member of the Penn Area GPP Community Advisory Committee Working Group. She is also a Democratic candidate for State Assembly in New York’s 75th District. On Twitter @laylaLawGisiko.

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