Gotham Gazette

The Place for New York Policy and politics

CITY

City

Climate Groups Call on 2021 Candidates to Back NYC Green New Deal Agenda


NYC Green New Deal rally Trump Tower

An NYC Green New Deal event (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)


A coalition of climate-conscious groups is calling on candidates running for citywide and City Council positions in this year’s full slate of city government elections to sign a pledge to create a Green New Deal for New York City, with specific policy proposals.

The pledge asks that candidates who sign both advocate and vote for Green New Deal policies at the city level. The recommended policies aim to end fossil fuel infrastructure, create more green jobs by upgrading buildings' systems, and grow environmentally-friendly transit options. The organizations behind the pledge — Sunrise NYC, New York Communities for Change, and Food & Water Action — are seeking to ensure a groundswell of support for those policies and publicize candidates' positions on environmental policies.

“The Green New Deal must be a priority for any contender serious about becoming the next mayor of New York City,” said Matthew Miles Goodrich, a member of Sunrise NYC, in a recent announcement. “This pledge makes clear that candidates cannot simply pay lip service to the threat of the climate crisis, but must champion legislation, enforcement, and financing of Green New Deal policies to bring the City into the 21st Century. New Yorkers deserve good, green jobs now.”

In the 2021 mayoral race, several candidates -- Shaun Donovan, Kathryn Garcia, and Scott Stringer -- have released climate- and resiliency-focused plans as their first detailed policy proposals.

New York City government has taken several steps in recent years to combat climate change and create a more resilient city, but efforts have been too slow, many activists argue, and a number of resiliency projects promised after 2012’s Superstorm Sandy or since have barely begun or have not been started at all.

In 2016, New York City emitted 52.0 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, with buildings responsible for 71% of these emissions, leading the City Council and Mayor Bill de Blasio to sign the Climate Mobilization Act in 2019. The act sets limits on greenhouse gas emissions for an array of building types with the goal of reducing emissions 40% by 2030. It has been called the main plank of a New York City Green New Deal by de Blasio and others, but the groups behind the new pledge want much more done, and as quickly as possible, in order for the city to really lay claim to its own Green New Deal combining job-creation, reducing emissions, and creating a more resilient city.

The organizations are still planning to push the term-limited de Blasio and the current Council for immediate action throughout 2021, they say.

In order to further curb emissions, improve air quality, and create more jobs, the pledge calls for policies including paying to replace all gas stoves from public and rent-regulated housing and implementing composting citywide.

In creating new eco-friendly jobs, the advocates intend to combat inequality in the city by prioritizing hiring from low-income communities of color and maximizing union jobs with high labor standards.

Additionally, the policy proposals call for massively expanding bus service in underrepresented communities and advocating for the federal government to subsidize low-income car-dependent vehicle owners to purchase electric, environmentally-friendly cars through a "cash for clunkers" program that they want the federal government to subsidize.

The pledge also calls for supporting environmentally-conscious transportation by increasing city funding for mass transit and electrifying the city's vehicles and MTA busses.

To curb reliance on fossil fuels in the city, the pledge calls on candidates to oppose all new gas infrastructure, including siting of new pipelines and power plants, support banning gas hook-ups in new developments and major renovations, and moving city government’s electrical power purchasing to 100% renewable energy generated in New York State by developing publicly-owned wind and solar power and transmission into the city.

“New Yorkers need a climate plan that meets the scale of the crisis. Any genuine effort to combat climate change starts with an immediate halt to any and all proposed fossil fuel projects in the five boroughs,” Alex Beauchamp, Northeast Region Director at Food & Water Action said in the announcement. “After years of slow, incremental change, it’s time for a Green New Deal for New York City.”

***
by Emily Mason for Gotham Gazette
     

Read more by this writer.

Democratic Mayoral Hopefuls Pitch Upper Manhattan Club


9 mayoral candidates

(l-r) top: Maya Wiley, Scott Stringer, Eric Adams, Kathryn Garcia, Carlos Menchaca

bottom: Dianne Morales, Loree Sutton, Ray McGuire, Shaun Donovan


Nine Demcocratic candidates for mayor of New York City appeared one-by-one Thursday night at an online forum hosted by the Uptown Community Democrats. The moderator of the forum was Kyle Ishmael, a club leader who also serves as both Executive Director of the Manhattan Democratic Party and Executive Director of the New York State Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic & Asian Legislative Caucus.

The nine participants -- part of an even larger field trying to succeed term-limited Mayor Bill de Blasio by first winning the June primary -- were Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, former federal housing secretary Shaun Donovan, former city sanitation commissioner Kathryn Garcia, former Citigroup executive Ray McGuire, former nonprofit executive Dianne Morales, city Comptroller Scott Stringer, former city veterans services commissioner Loree Sutton, former counsel to the mayor Maya Wiley, and Brooklyn City Council Member Carlos Menchaca.

It was the latest in a series of local and issue-focused candidate forums that began last year and the pace of which will likely accelerate as the primary approaches.

Each candidate appeared for about 15 minutes, with time allotted for an initial pitch, five standardized questions from Ishmael, three questions from the audience (entered into a virtual chat), and closing remarks. The five standard questions dealt with how candidates would return trust and respect to the government, what issues they would commit to completely resolving in their tenure, their thoughts on the state Hecht-Calandra Act and other education issues, if the New York Police Department’s budget should be reduced, and if New York City should be “a more progressive city.”

Maya Wiley
First to appear at the forum Wiley pitched herself as an “unapologetic progressive” and said she’s running because she saw the government being a “treadmill of incrementalism rather than beating a path to transformation.”

Wiley, former counsel to Mayor de Blasio and chair of the city’s Civilian Complaint Review Board with oversight of some police discipline investigations, among other roles, said some societal issues most important to her campaign are fighting street homelessness, improving public safety through community input and investment, and expanding access to health care.

In her allotted sixty seconds to describe her top priorities, Wiley called the shelter system ineffective, and said the city must prioritize placing homeless people in homes. Wiley also said she wanted to improve public safety by targeting gun violence and making sure “it’s easier to get a job than a gun.”

Regarding health care, Wiley noted that hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers lacked health insurance prior to the pandemic, and she would provide support to health clinics and independent hospitals.

A former co-chair of the New York City School Diversity Advisory Group, assembled by de Blasio and the city schools chancellor, Wiley said she stands by the sweeping recommendations the group made but the de Blasio administration has given limited attention to.

When asked, she expressed support for state repeal of the Hecht-Calandra Act, which would return the power of admissions to the city’s top specialized high schools to the city, though she did not outline a plan for changing admissions at those schools, which admit very low percentages of Black and Hispanic students. She said schools “should reflect our population and how we look” and advocated for student support teams in every school and furthering resources across the board.

Wiley said the budget of the NYPD “absolutely should be reduced,” moving some of its funding to other departments and services. She cited the gun violence reduction platform she has released, and mentioned it includes a participatory justice fund, where communities most impacted by gun violence can specify “the kinds of social and emotional trauma informed supports they need.”

While Wiley praised de Blasio’s universal pre-kindergarten program, she criticized him for the lack of transparency regarding opening and closing public schools during the pandemic. And she advocated for more transparency across the board, saying that “without consultation, people feel like decisions are made without any explanation or clarity or they're not made at all,” and that the solution was “being straight up, honest, telling it like it is.”

When asked if New York City should be a more progressive city, Wiley said “progressivism is government seeing its people as its greatest resource and asset,” and said solving issues like crumbling public housing would benefit the city as a whole.

Loree Sutton
Sutton, a self-described “moderate liberal,” served for over 20 years in the U.S. military and was most recently the founding commissioner of the city’s Department of Veterans’ Services, appointed to the position by de Blasio.

A psychiatrist, Sutton said her top priorities revolve around determinants of health, citing housing conditions as “unacceptable, unconscious,” nutritious food as not widely available, and inequities in access to transportation across the city.

While Sutton said she supports repealing Hecht-Calandra, she sees it as “[bringing] control over who gets admitted to which school” back to the city. However, she explicitly noted that she’s “not going to get involved in what I see as false choices between charter schools versus conventional public schools, or the specialized high schools versus other types of experiences.”

Despite that, Sutton said there should be more specialized schools, particularly in the Bronx and Queens, and there should be expansion of gifted and talented programs in underserved communities. She advocated for partnership between public schools and the private sector, including “adopt-a-school” programs, and said she wanted to see schools open year-round and become “[some]where parents and kids and teachers and community civic leaders can all come together.”

Sutton said she has “been adamantly opposed to the movement to defund the NYPD,” but added that in talking to senior leadership, both active and retired, “they know that there needs to be reforms.” She doesn’t see it as a budget issue, advocating instead for police teams to be trained and incorporating social workers.

Sutton also said she was willing to work with members of the community regarding rezoning in Inwood, but did not express a position on the rezoning. She supported investing in the arts, and suggested she would try to incentivize landlords so that creators had “space to be able to do their craft and their art.” Sutton would also fund efforts to reduce and eliminate homelessness, she said, including peer based coordinators, a hotline for landlords, and would additionally look to address the mental health side of homelessness.

When asked about progressivism, Sutton said she’s “not big on political labels,” but highlighted that she was excluded from an earlier forum for being “too conservative because I stood up for public safety in the face of what was going on following the George Floyd murder,” when she had called for protestors to get city permits. She said her political beliefs meant she “values community over everything,” specifically mentioning the private sector, nurses, police officers and teachers as key stakeholders.

Shaun Donovan
A former Obama cabinet official as housing secretary and as budget director, and housing commissioner under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Donovan said he wants to be mayor as a native New Yorker and lifelong public servant. As he often does, he repeatedly stressed his ties to Obama, as well as other national figures, including incoming President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

Donovan said he was committed to creating “15-minute neighborhoods” for every New Yorker, which would guarantee that “within 15 minutes of your front door, you have access to a great school, good transportation to get you to a job, fresh food, a park.”

Donovan pledged to make sure every New York City high school student has a paid internship before graduation, and all students have the option of attending a CUNY school after high school or are able to find employment. He also expressed support for repeal of Hecht-Calandra, but he is not in favor of scrapping the SHSAT exam, instead seeking to broaden the admissions metrics for the specialized high schools. He said admissions screens for middle schools should be eliminated, and those for high schools should be reduced., and that it is important to increase diversity in student teachers.

Citing his experience leading the Obama administration’s strategy that eradicated military veteran homelessness in more than 80 cities and states, Donovan said he would commit to not only ending veteran homelessness, but ending street homelessness in the city within eight years. He would also follow through on the plan to close the Rikers Island jails, he said.

Pointing to his experience in Obama’s 21st Century Policing Task Force, Donovan said the NYPD budget should be reduced, though he didn’t specify an amount, and added, “we need to reimagine policing and criminal justice” by investing in “community-oriented solutions.”

And again citing his past experience, Donovan said he believed he was “the most progressive candidate in this race because I've actually gotten big progressive things done in this city and across the country.”

He also said he was against the tax cuts passed under President Trump and Republican Congress, and added that “we need to ask more from those who have the most” when asked about taxing the wealthy.

Eric Adams
Adams opened discussing his philosophy about turning around what he describes as dysfunctional government, saying that “instead of going upstream and giving families and children the support they need, we feed our crises.”

"The first classroom is in a mother's womb," Adams said when discussing his top priorities, touching especially on education and health care. He said children need nutritious food and access to high-quality education from as early as possible and pledged to focus on maternal care.

When it comes to Hecht-Calandra, he said, “I'm not running for state office, I'm running for citywide office. Let [the state] address that problem.” Adams said his focus was on prevention, upstream work, and “focusing on the 90 percent of students [that] are not receiving a quality education.” Adams has taken a position to eliminate the SHSAT admissions exam and then reversed his position. He now appears interested in avoiding the topic of specialized high schools admissions.

Adams, a former NYPD officer who rose to the rank of captain before retiring and running for elected office, supports reducing the NYPD budget, but stressed it “should be no reduction that will impact on public safety.” He said policing is currently too reactive and not proactive, and as mayor he would change that. Adams suggested reallocating some of the $400 million spent on officer overtime and using it to fund civilian work instead. He said there is “no reason an officer has to go to a vehicle accident or past crime. A civilian can do that.”

Adams said there should be higher taxes on top earners, which he defined as those earning $5 million or more per year.

He also wants to increase governmental efficiency by clarifying the missions of each agency and making sure no agency is carrying out tasks that are in conflict with the mission of another.

Adams also stressed his background, as a CUNY graduate and former police officer. “We have not had a blue collar mayor in this city over 70 years,” he said. “It's time we have a mayor that has gone through a lot, so he can help people who are going through a lot.”

Ray McGuire
McGuire, a former Citigroup executive who left his job to run for mayor and bundler to Obama’s presidential campaigns, pitched himself both as a candidate who comes from the underprivileged class, that he knows “what it's like to wash the tinfoil,” and who has risen to success that shows he has the skills to manage the city and the relationships to make big things happen for New Yorkers.

McGuire said his priorities revolved around the economy, safety, and education. His economic plan is “going big and going small.” He said he would make sure projects like Amazon and Industry City go through so those jobs and revenue can bolster the local economy. The “small” part of the plan is investing in and incentivizing small businesses — the city needs “to give them a lifeline,” he said. He did not provide details on either side of the equation.

When asked about Hecht-Calandra, McGuire pitched his “cradle to career” education vision but did not directly discuss the law or specialized high schools admissions. He said he would implement a tutor core so that every child would be able to read at grade level by the third grade. After he’d met that standard, McGuire said he planned to start exposing students as young as in the sixth grade to different opportunities such that by the time they graduated high school they could get employed. He added that he wants “to bring the private sector into this.”

Regarding the NYPD budget, McGuire said he’s against defunding the NYPD but for reallocating some of the budget and for reforming and restructuring aspects of the department. He supports funding mental health officials to go into communities, returning to community policing initiatives, and an overall push to get guns off the streets, he said, though he offered few details for how he would accomplish that latter goal.

McGuire also said focusing on precursors to violence is important, and that “some tough things are taking place because of tough circumstances.” By using his education initiatives and making sure students have opportunities during school and post-graduation, he said, it would address some stem issues of citywide violence.

When asked about Inwood zoning, McGuire said he believed those issues were being resolved in court. However, he added that the city’s land use review process needs to be reevaluated, and said he would advocate for more community involvement in the zoning process.

Scott Stringer
Stringer painted himself as someone with “vision and experience in government and politics” ready to lead the city after the devastation of the pandemic.

Stringer said his main priority is addressing affordability across the city. He said he would create a land bank and a land trust and would give community organizations the opportunity to build housing for low-income people. He reiterated his key policy plank that he will work to require all new development to set aside 25% of units for affordable housing.

Stringer also pointed to his record as having voted against weakening rent laws twice as state Assembly member, and called de Blasio’s housing plan “a failure,” saying it “basically built unaffordable affordable housing...we did it in the name of building luxury development, and look where it's gotten us: more homelessness, no real ability to create housing with supportive services.”

Stringer supports the repeal of Hecht-Calandra, and said “we just have a broken admission process” for specialized high schools, but he did not offer a plan for what admissions should look like. He said the city has an obligation “to make sure that every kid accesses schools so everyone has a fair chance to make it.”

He said the city “can and we should ship responsibilities and dollars away from the NYPD towards vulnerable communities most impacted by police violence and structural racism.” He cited his record as being the first elected official to put forth a detailed proposal to reduce the police budget by $1 billion. Stringer said he would look to fund mental health professionals to work with quality of life or mental illness concerns — calls about which he said comprise 40% of 911 calls.

Stringer also opposes the Inwood rezoning “because it makes no sense to price out the people who built up Washington Heights and Inwood.”

When asked about progressivism, Stringer said a progressive city or government “is simply helping people.” He added that being progressive meant taking real action “because talk is cheap in a pandemic,” and said he had the skills to attract diverse leadership to the city.

Dianne Morales
Like Wiley, Morales stressed her background of not having come from public office, and that her “candidacy is 100% rooted in a grassroots, people-powered movement.”

Morales said her priorities lay in defunding the police and housing. She said she’d reallocate funds from the NYPD, replacing cops in school with social services, mental health counselling, and educational enrichment. Other uses of those funds would be investing in local small businesses and job training for young people, she said.

Morales calls for housing for all, stating she believes you cannot separate issues of public safety and public health from everyone having access to housing.

A graduate of Stuyvesant High School, Morales said she not only supports the repeal of Hecht-Calandra, but she wants the removal of all admissions screens from schools so students could have equal access. She added that she wants to redraw districts to encourage school integration.

Morales says she wants to overhaul how education is structured, creating a new curriculum that centers three core areas: digital literacy, financial literacy, and civic and democratic literacy.

She also said she wants to change how land use decisions are made to put community members at the forefront and she re-committed to the creation of a public bank, stating it is “a critical pillar” in keeping and growing the local economy.

When asked about progressivism, Morales said “we need to move towards a whole new model of leading this city.” She said that entails “a radical reimagining and transformation of the way things have operated.”

Kathryn Garcia
Garcia opened by noting she’s a lifelong New Yorker and her vision of a city where “every family can do what my family did, which is raise a family, be able to take care of them, be able to send them to college.”

Garcia said her priorities would be a strong recovery, economic mobility, and fighting the climate crisis. She said she would look to create connections between public education and the private sector to provide employment opportunities to students. She said her climate priorities “in all honesty won't be solved in two terms,” but progress needs to happen, like moving towards clean energy.

She supports expanding bike lanes and making sure that there is rapid mobility for buses, including further utilizing technology that allows traffic lights to turn green when buses approach. Garcia said she prefers dual-stream recycling in the city, in part because it saves money.

Garcia supports repeal of Hecht-Calandra, and suggested implementing the “Texas model,” where a certain percentage of top-performing students at every middle school is offered seats at specialized high schools. But she said she would still look to invest in early literacy, and like McGuire, make sure every student can read at grade level by the third grade.

Regarding the NYPD, she said the department needs to raise the minimum age of recruits to 25, that new recruits should be mandated to live in the city, and that officers need to be held “rigidly accountable.”

Carlos Menchaca
Menchaca said he has the kind of energy and “fresh approach” the mayor’s office needs.

He said his priorities include making sure everyone can get vaccinated against COVID-19 as well as public safety. He pointed to his current work in the City Council in engaging with hard-to-reach communities such as immigrants, public housing residents, and undocumented workers. He said he would make sure language barriers are overcome in the vaccination process.

Menchaca said he is the leading member in the defunding police movement inside the Council, and suggested a $3 billion budget cut to the NYPD, which would halve the department’s annual operating budget. Those funds would be reallocated to housing, food, and vaccination projects he said.

He said he supports repealing Hecht-Calandra. While he did not outline a plan for reforming the specialized high schools admissions process in the allotted minute answer, Menchaca said he would look to work he took part in in District 15, where schools removed screens from the admissions process in middle schools and saw greater integration. Menchaca said he would also prioritize increasing resources at all high schools.

He repeatedly pointed to the areas he currently represents, Sunset Park and Red Hook, as a “very high need immigrant, public housing community that has learned how to get responses from city agencies,” and that experience would serve him well as mayor.

When asked, Menchaca said he feels most politically aligned with opponent Morales, saying they both prescribe to “rethinking how we understand our government and its connection to our communities and our neighbors.” The question was prompted by the fact that New York City is about to implement a new ranked-choice voting system for special and primary elections.

***
by Nuha Dolby for Gotham Gazette

Read more by this writer.

De Blasio Excuses for Slow Vaccine Rollout Contradict Prior City Statements of Readiness


mayor slow vaccine

Mayor de Blasio vaccine promises (photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)


Three weeks after New York City received its first batch of COVID-19 vaccines, and more than five weeks after officials knew when they were coming, only a third of the half-million doses had been dolled out, raising questions about why the city wasn't more prepared to step into "the light at the end of the tunnel."

That has been a favorite phrase of Mayor Bill de Blasio since he signaled the city was on the verge of receiving the life-saving, pandemic-ending treatment over a month ago. But in the weeks since, the roll-out has been plagued by limited access to the vaccine and limited buy-in from the first groups eligible to take it. The situation has led to the latest round of blame and bickering between de Blasio and Governor Andrew Cuomo, fellow Democrats who are notorious for their public disagreements.

Since December 14, the city has received roughly 487,000 doses of covid vaccines developed by the pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and Maderna, of which about 150,000 (31%) have been injected into willing participants as of the end of the day Wednesday, according to the city’s online dashboard. Included in the first phase of vaccinations are hospital and urgent care workers, EMTs, and nursing home residents and staff. The universe of eligibility was recently expanded beyond those groups by the governor, who is keeping tight control on distribution. In total the groups number an estimated 2 million statewide, with 917,000 in New York City.

The mayor has offered a wide range of excuses for the rocky start with a fair share of finger-pointing to higher powers at the state and federal levels, some of which appears legitimate but seems to have come too late to improve the first phase of vaccine distribution. His other explanations are vague and conflict with statements he and the city's top public health officials made weeks earlier about how well-prepared the city would be.

"We understand that in the first few weeks there was tremendous caution and care about making sure people understood how to use the vaccine, the refrigeration issues," de Blasio said on Monday, January 4, after a holiday weekend when fewer than 7,000 doses were administered across the five boroughs despite the hundreds of thousands of doses in stock. "There was a lot of care to make sure things were done right and safely to make sure that we saw good responses from the folks who were vaccinated," the mayor said, without providing specifics.

While the state dictates the parameters of eligibility and closely controls vaccine distribution, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene is responsible for coordinating citywide vaccine delivery. It does it through the city's very loose network of public and private hospitals, which have facilities equipped to store the sensitive new treatment, and through over 100 hubs scattered throughout the five boroughs. Generally, hospital employees will receive vaccinations at their place of work, while unaffiliated healthcare workers -- roughly 50,000 of them -- may visit one of the hubs, as well as the public hospitals, run by New York City Health + Hospitals, according to a spokesperson for the mayor.

On Wednesday, following criticism that many providers were not offering the vaccine on nights, weekends, and holidays, de Blasio announced two 24/7 vaccination sites would be opened in the Bronx and Brooklyn by Sunday. The mayor said new online and phone sign-up systems were in development but not yet operational. The day before, his press secretary, Bill Neidhardt, said the administration was scouting city-owned property in all five boroughs to house "mass vaccination sites," as part of a new goal set by the mayor to administer 1 million doses by the end of January.

In a December 9 press release, the administration indicated some of that work was already underway: "The Health Department is prepared to stand up and operate temporary sites for additional capacity to supplement hospital vaccinations," the mayor’s office stated. "The City is additionally prepared to launch sites citywide in coordination with emergency response partner agencies to offer vaccinations, ensuring access and availability citywide."

Both the Pfizer and Moderna covid innoculations require two doses administered weeks apart and both must be kept refrigerated, though the Pfizer vaccine, which the city received about a week before Moderna's, requires "ultracold storage" at temperatures close to negative 80 degrees Celsius.

While after the first week New York City's vaccination rate was more than double the national rate, by week three, the city's public hospital network, Health + Hospitals, had only administered a third of its doses, falling into the bottom 10% of hospitals statewide, according to state data.

"There are no holidays. There are no nights. There are no weekends going forward. Everything has to be on a 24/7 basis," de Blasio told reporters on Tuesday when asked about the particularly low figures around New Year's Day, when just 147 doses were administered. "Going forward everyone's getting a clear message from me and I'm responsible."

De Blasio has largely attempted to focus press and public attention on his 1 million-dose January goal and calls for Governor Andrew Cuomo to loosen state rules around which categories of people are eligible to be vaccinated. He acknowledged the city’s rollout “should have been better on January 1,” but otherwise has taken limited responsibility for the slow pace.

Despite the mayor's recent claims about refrigeration concerns, in early December — before the first doses had arrived — his health commissioner and Health + Hospitals system leadership assured city lawmakers that all but one of New York City's 55 hospitals had access to ultracold storage.

"New York City Health + Hospitals has been preparing for quite some time over the past several months in anticipation of receipt of the vaccine of which we are incredibly excited," said Dr. Andrew Wallick, Health + Hospitals' ambulatory care chief medical officer, in testimony before the City Council’s committees on hospitals and health in a joint oversight hearing on December 4. "We have outfitted each of our 11 acute facilities with ultracold storage...We plan to follow our flu vaccine model where we will have a centralized hub, if you will, at each of our 11 acute facilities."

A few days later, New York City Health Commissioner Dave Choksi confirmed that 44 hospitals citywide had ultracold storage in-house and ten others had access to the vaccine through those storage facilities. As of December 9, five days before the first vaccine doses arrived in New York, only one hospital in New York City did not have access to an ultracold facility, Choksi indicated at a press briefing with the mayor.

The mayor’s repeated statements that the city's slow pace was in part based on the need to ensure the vaccine had no major negative side effects flies in the face of repeated city assurances, throughout December, that the vaccine was safe -- assertions made based on federal approval of the vaccines and the advice of top city health advisors. "Leading scientists have confirmed that it is a very good vaccine in terms of safety and ability to protect against COVID-19 illness," Choksi said on December 14, the day of the first inoculation in New York City and the United States, while with the mayor. "I, myself, have poured over the studies, including what was released last week."

Even as some have joined de Blasio’s calls for Cuomo to open up more eligibility for the vaccine, there has been widespread criticism of the de Blasio administration's vaccination efforts from Cuomo, members of the City Council, and others.

"Vaccination in New York City is basically only occurring during regular business hours,” City Council Member Mark Levine, chair of the Council health committee, tweeted on January 3. “Very little on weekends. Almost none on holidays. We are in a war-like situation. We need to be vaccinating TWENTY FOUR-SEVEN. We are losing precious time."

"Vaccinating as many New Yorkers as quickly as possible is job number one right now but the pace of vaccinations so far is unacceptable, despite what the administration told the Council in December about being prepared," said City Council Communications Director Jennifer Fermino, in a statement to Gotham Gazette. "We are holding a hearing on this critical issue to determine if the city is doing everything in its power to vaccinate people efficiently and to find out what needs to be done to pick up the pace." The Council has scheduled its second joint oversight hearing focused on the vaccine rollout for January 12.

On Monday, de Blasio again said the city's slow start was the result of deliberate care and caution, which he said was necessary to build public trust in the new vaccine. "The issues were addressed, the refrigeration was handled properly. The vaccine was handled properly. Those who got the vaccine had a good experience. Almost no instance of a negative reaction. That has allowed trust to build," he told reporters during a press briefing.

"That's allowed people to see and feel comfortable in the vaccine. Getting it right in the first few weeks was the trendsetter," he added. The mayor says the city will now aim to provide 100,000 more doses by the end of the week, ramping up to 400,000 doses per week by the second half of January.

But rapid roll-out had been the name of the game for de Blasio, Choksi, and others in the days leading up to the first doses' arrival. "Remember the vaccine shipments are going to be coming in weekly. So, we're going to be quickly able to get more and more. But we have to get going right away," de Blasio said December 3. "The important thing is to work through each category of people, but move it fast and then go on to the next priority category," he said a week later.

Early on, health officials did warn the effort could take some time to ramp up. "The initial week to two weeks we will see [a] more limited number of doses and there will be a plan with respect to exactly how those will be allocated," Choksi said on December 3. "But as the supply increases we expect within a few short weeks that we would be able to cover everyone that is in that top priority group."

Vaccine eligibility is controlled by the state based on guidance from the federal Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and consultation with New York City. Under the direction of Governor Cuomo, the first tranche of vaccines has been reserved for healthcare workers with direct patient contact. The doses have been shipped to hospitals where many of those people work. State officials estimate roughly 2 million people fall into the first phase of eligibility statewide, over 900,000 of whom are in the city, meaning there are more eligible recipients than doses in the initial shipments. Officials have recognized the possibility of roughly 20-30% of those eligible may initially decide not to take the vaccine.

Residents and staff in nursing homes are also part of the first phase and have been receiving vaccines through a federal public-private partnership program with pharmacies, which too has been saddled with delays.

New York City's slow roll-out mirrors the state and nationwide trends to varying degrees. Governor Cuomo has been criticized for taking the mass vaccination plan out of the hands of counties, which have been preparing for such an event for over a decade (at least since the H1N1 outbreak in 2009), and for keeping the initial group of eligible people too limited. In turn, Cuomo has blamed the management of local leaders, like de Blasio, and hospital administrators. This week he outlined penalties for hospitals that don't immediately use their allotted doses, including fines and blacklisting from future shipments, while also imposing even steeper fines and threatening criminal charges to those who knowingly break the priority distribution protocols.

De Blasio and public health officials say they are limited by the discretion of the priority populations, many of whom could take the vaccine but have not yet opted to. The mayor this week called on Cuomo to expand eligibility to other groups -- as demand in the broader population certainly outpaces the current supply of vaccines in a state of roughly 19.5 million -- particularly to all first-responders and people 75 years of age and older.

Yet in December, de Blasio appeared to brush off the possibility that the city's inoculation rate could be slowed or halted by low buy-in from the public. "I don't think we're going to have a leftover problem. I think we can say that. I think there's going to be honestly tremendous need, tremendous interest and speed of execution," he said on December 3.

This seemed to fly in the face of the city's own polling, which in October indicated that only 53% of New Yorkers would be willing to take the vaccine, according to Dr. Jane Zucker, who leads the city health department's Bureau of Immunization, in her testimony at the December 4 City Council oversight hearing. Twenty percent said they would be unwilling to take the vaccine and 27% said they were unsure, she said.

"There is such a contingency plan," Choksi said at the mayor’s press briefing the day before. Through the citywide immunization registry "we'll be monitoring in real time exactly how doses are being distributed as well as the actual uptake of the vaccine. So for finding that there are places that are not able to use their initial allotments, we can shift around demand and then also shift around subsequent supply of the vaccine for future weeks. So that is an integral part of our planning for both the initial phases, as well as beyond that."

On Wednesday of this week, de Blasio announced the city would open pre-registration for seniors who will be eligible in the next phase of vaccination.

"I am pleased that the Mayor has now announced they will begin pre-registering seniors shortly, but I remain troubled that the City did not plan for this earlier," said Comptroller Scott Stringer, who made a similar proposal Tuesday, in a statement on Wednesday. "We can't reopen our economy or get people back to work without widespread vaccination. Lives and livelihoods are at stake."

"We're all anxious to get the vaccination to 1B, 75 year old New Yorkers, and essential workers," wrote Cuomo's communications director, Peter Ajemian, in a statement Thursday referring to the next phase of distribution (1A is the first). "However, we must establish competent administration because if a government fails to administer 1A vaccines, what makes anyone think they can competently administer 1B?"

Neidhardt, the mayor's press secretary, defended the city's work. "We've vaccinated tens of thousands of people," he wrote in a statement posted to Twitter. "We've set up over 125 hubs. Are we perfections? No. Are we going to let that get in the way of saving the lives of first responders and the elderly? That seems like a horrible argument to make."

For the city to meet the mayor's new goal of 1 million doses by the end of January, it will also need a steady supply of the vaccine. On Tuesday, de Blasio sent a letter to Vice President Mike Pence calling for a number of provisions, including increased production under the Defense Production Act and a fair share of doses coming to New York City, which is administering them to out-of-state residents who work in the five boroughs.

The letter also includes a request for technical assistance and financial support to providers and FDA approval to pre-fill syringes, indicating that the city's limited person-power is contributing to delays, despite assurances from Choksi a day earlier that the city had 13,000 untapped members of its Medical Reserve Corp ready to assist in vaccinations. Nevertheless, this week the city also put out inquiries for volunteers to help staff vaccination centers.

"If multiple doses could be drawn by the pharmacist and given to a nurse to administer ahead of time, the pace of vaccinations could increase, as would the savings of staff time," the letter reads.

"As we're announcing more and more sites, obviously we have to have a staffing plan to go with," de Blasio said Thursday.

***
by Ethan Geringer-Sameth, reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

Read more by this writer.



Print Friendly and PDF

Editor's Choice


Gotham Gazette: New York Voters Approve $4.2 Billion Environmental Bond Act
New York Voters Approve $4.2 Billion Environmental Bond Act
Gotham Gazette: 
New York City Voters Approve Racial Justice Ballot Measures
New York City Voters Approve Racial Justice Ballot Measures
Gotham Gazette: 
Housing Development in New York City Slows to a Crawl as Officials Debate Tax Incentives
Housing Development in New York City Slows to a Crawl as Officials Debate Tax Incentives
Gotham Gazette: 
City Council Examines Low Voter Turnout, Moving Local Elections to Even Years City Council Examines Low Voter Turnout, Moving Local Elections to Even Years