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A coalition of environmental organizations, labor unions and community groups advocated grassroots recovery in areas devastated by Superstorm Sandy has released a report recommending that New York develop "community-based green infrastructure and climate adaptation projects," "mitigate industrial waterfront threats" and "improve evacuation and disaster response planning." The report was released by the Sandy Regional Assembly. The authors of the report write: 

It is imperative that low-income and communities of color be an integral part of the Sandy Recovery decision-making process and help hold recovery projects accountable after funds are allocated. This means having a place at the table when recovery plans are made and funds are allocated; working to ensure that recovery efforts are coordinated locally and regionally; and demanding transparency from elected officials and appointed task forces. Low-income communities of color are on the frontline of climate change impacts - but we are also leaders in making our communities, homes, and workplaces safe and resilient now and in the future.

 

 

 

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One owns a wine shop at the South Street Seaport that was flooded during Hurricane Sandy. Another was the founding director of a nonprofit dedicated to HIV/AIDS research and treatment.

These are just two of 76 new members of Manhattan's Community Boardspicked by Borough President Scott Stringer this year. The new appointees also include public housing residents and parent leaders. 

The BP says the appointments are a "culmination of nearly eight years of work on Community Board reform and empowerment." He has made reforming Community Boards one of his chief goals. 

An independent panel representing civic organizations and good government groups reviewed appllications and helped select the new board members. 

DNAinfo's Jill Colvin has more on the new appointees here.

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Council Speaker Christine Quinn, a Democratic candidate for mayor, hammered out a deal to move forward legislation that would require many businesses to give paid sick leave to their employees. She made the announcement Friday with supporters and leaders of local chambers of commerce. Quinn had refused to bring the bill to a floor vote for two years. But as the campaign to get the bill passed dovetailed with the mayoral race and a possible revolt from fellow Council members, she met with elected officials, union leaders and supporters of the bill to negotiate a deal. 

The result was a seemingly more business-friendly bill that includes a provision that would delay the implementation of the bill if the economy worsens by the time it goes into effect in April 2014. Though acknowledging the effort to address concerns with the bill, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he would veto it anyway. Quinn has said she has the votes to override him.  

The New York Times' Editorial Board called the deal "good news, although it will take at least a year for most employees to enjoy a basic benefit widely available elsewhere." The New York Post wrote: "The best way to improve life for city workers is not by imposing politically motivated diktats on employers. It’s by giving business the freedom it needs to create a dynamic, expanding economy." 

Last night, Councilwoman Gale Brewer, the prime sponsor of the sick leave bill, sent out an email thanking the speaker. She also disclosed the following "outline" of the bill:

• Businesses with 20 or more workers will have to provide five paid sick days beginning April 1, 2014.

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PAID SICK LEAVE

The City Council held a hearing on Friday on the paid sick leave bill that Speaker Christine Quinn, a candidate for mayor, has refused to bring to a vote. Two of her rivals for the mayor's office, Bill de Blasio and William Thompson, rebuked her for holding up the bill. Quinn said at a news conference that she supported the concept behind the bill, but not the measure in its current form because of its potential negative effects on small businesses (The New York Times). The New York Daily News praised her for "putting sound economics over cheap politics." Quinn only spoke briefly at the hearing, and didn't ask any questions. Her fellow Council members are discussing the possibility of forcing the legislation to the floor, thereby circumventing Quinn (The Wall Street Journal). 

STATE BUDGET

The city is losing out as state lawmakers negotiate an on-time budget. A number of sticking points that got jettisoned to make room for a $135 billion budget agreement would affect residents of New York City, from a speed camera program designed to reduce traffic accidents and deaths to tweaking the laws regarding possession of small amounts of marijuana (Gotham Gazette). SUNY Downstate Medical Center was left to struggle on its own (The Daily News).  While the State Senate was voting on budget bills yesterday, the Assembly is putting its duties off until Thursday (WXXI). 


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NEW YORK — Thousands of pages of critical data on the nation's largest transit system is in "static black and white charts" and needs to be set free so the public can use it. 

That's one major conclusion from a nearly two year-long study on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's efforts to make data about its vast operations widely available. 

A group that works to keep the MTA accountable released a report based on its findings, titled "The MTA in the Age of Big Data," on Tuesday.

Read the full Gotham Gazette story here.

The report, which largely praised the MTA for its efforts to make data more available to the public, recommended that the agency begin to invest in the distribution of its performance statistics, including with visualizations that can help the public understand what is going on with the subways and buses.

"The future of the MTA must be more digitally oriented and technologically savvy for the agency to be efficient and successful," said the report by the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the MTA. It said the MTA's technological capabilities are currently "underfunded, under staffed and under supported, leaving the MTA ill-prepared to move into a technology-based future."

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Out of sight, out of mind — that's how Mayor Michael Bloomberg wants to reduce smoking rates among youth in the nation's biggest city.

Bloomberg announced today that he's going to push for new anti-tobacco restrictions, including a first-in-the-country law that would mandate retail stores hide away tobacco products except during sales to adults or when they are being restocked.

He said the bill tackles the pervasive in-store marketing of tobacco products to young people. 

"New York City has dramatically lowered our smoke rate," Bloomberg said in a statement. "But even one new smoker is one too many — especially when it's a young person." 

Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley said the adult smoking rate had decreased from 21.5 percent in 2002 to 14.8 percent in 2011. But he said "youth smoking rates have remained flat at 8.5 percent since 2007."

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Tom Allon has dropped out of the mayoral race, ending a long-shot candidacy to devote his energies to publishing. 

His campaign announced early this morning that he would withdraw as a candidate because Allon had acquired the publisher of City & State, a political newspaper. A message left for his spokesman was not immediately returned. 

"When I decided to enter the mayoral race in July 2011, I had a deep desire to lead this wonderful and unique city and to finally fix our crumbling public education system," Allon said in a statement released to the press. 

He said that he would continue to "pursue a reform agenda as an education activist, a columnist and blogger, and parent of three teenagers." 

Allon was running as a Republican and was endorsed by the Liberal Party, which released a statement saying that it respected his decision. 

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STOP-AND-FRISK ON TRIAL: A federal judge begins hearing key testimony today in a trial to determine whether the New York Police Department has been unlawfully targeting blacks and Hispanics with its tactic of stopping, questioning and frisking people on the street. The New York Times writes that the outcome "will help define the terms under which the department patrols large swaths of the city long after Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg leaves office." The U.S. District Judge in the case, Shira Scheindlin, has expressed misgivings about the NYPD's stop-and-frisk tactics (Bloomberg, The Associated Press).

LIU DECLARES: Comptroller John Liu (@JohnCLiu2013) officially declared that he is running for mayor on the steps of City Hall in front of hundreds of people Sunday. Striking a populist tone, the Democrat took aim at Mayor Michael Bloomberg's as beholden to the wealthiest New Yorkers. Liu defiantly cast the legal cloud surrounding an investigation into his campaign's fundraising as a result of his willingness to stand up to powerful interests. "When you go after powerful people and rich corporations, they're going to come after you," he said in his speech (Wall Street JournalThe New York Times, many others).

Other Stories We're Following

Cuomo And State Lawmakers In Deep Budget Talks (Capital Tonight)

State Senate Underdog Drives Campaign Finance Reform (Associated Press)

School Aid Could Be Restored Under State Budget (Gotham Schools)

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Community Service Society of New York held a mayoral forum with seven candidates last month to discuss the issues facing low-income New Yorkers. The organization made available this video of the forum earlier today. CSS also published online a voter guide to the candidates — who were asked questions on topics ranging from health to affordable housing — to coincide with the Feb. 28 event. 

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The city's Lobbying Commission approved recommendations today that would significantly expand the definition of lobbying activities.

Under the recommendations, which will now go to the City Council and mayor, the definition of lobbying activities would include legislation that has not been formally introduced as well as any attempt to influence oversight hearings and mayoral executive orders.

The commission also recommended that the law be clarified to encourage architects, engineers, planners and others engaged in technical work to register with the commission.

That last recommendation could shed light on decisions surrounding land use, said Citizens Union Public Policy Director Alex Camarda, who generally praised the commission's recommendations.

"Enhanced transparency will, however, only occur if the clerk's database revealing lobbying activity is modernized," he said in an e-mailed response.

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In its second annual report on the state of the city's parks, New Yorkers For Parks found that more parks scored an A or B. "On the face of it, this is encouraging news. But when you scratch below the surface and look at trends across park features, it becomes apparent that the Parks Department is caught in a property management version of 'Whac-A-Mole:' in order to address one problem, resources must be pulled from another area, causing a new problem to arise in that area. Bottom line: the Parks Department simply does not have sufficient resources to keep up with the endless demands of maintaining the City’s 29,000 acres of parkland — including the more than 3,600 acres spotlighted in this report." (read the full report)

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City Council Speaker Christine Quinn formally declared Sunday that she is running for mayor. "I'm running for mayor because I love this city. It's the greatest place in the world," she said in a five-minute video posted on her campaign website at 8 a.m and linked to a post on Twitter. She spent several hours on a walking-and-talking tour of the boroughs (New YorkThe Associated PressDNAInfo).

Although it was far from a surprise, the City Hall press corp gamely followed along, with The New York Times reporting this about one encounter between the candidate and a bus driver in the Bronx: "It was a scene nearly unimaginable in this buttoned-up era of City Hall: Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, after all, is not known for greeting New Yorkers with an enthusiastic public display of affection." She sounded her campaign theme of representing the middle class (Capital New York).

Quinn has a lead in the polls for the Democratic primary, which is expected to take place in September (The Wall Street Journal)Daily News columnist Mike Lupica wonders whether Quinn "can run for mayor and win by talking out of both sides of her mouth."

Here's Quinn's video: 

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Let the big data dump begin.

About 40 city agencies have until midnight tonight to post their publicly available data to an online portal where anyone from citizens to government officials can access it.

It is the first milestone of the landmark open data law that was signed into law a year ago by Mayor Michael Blooomberg, and technologists, elected officials and advocates were celebrating the occasion.

"It's a baby step in the right direction, but it's a pretty big baby step," said Noel Hidalgo, executive director of the Open NY Forum and Code for America's local program manager. "You cannot reinvent the architecture and the practices of government within a year."

The much more significant data dump will take place over the next few years. By 2018, the agencies are expected to make available as much data public as possible under current law.

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Mayor Michael Bloomberg doesn't dispute a recent report that homelessness has hit a high not seen in decades — with over 50,000 people a night staying in the city's shelters — but he refuses to accept criticism that his administration has failed to tackle the problem.

Instead, he says the state cut the key Advantage rent subsidy program, and that the Coalition for the Homeless, which released the report, backed that decision.

Capital New York reports that Bloomberg said this at a news conference earlier today:

We are having fewer people coming into the homeless system .... They are staying longer. Why? Because the state cut the Advantage program out. When they cut their money out, we also lost the federal monies. Without those subsidies, people don't move out. So if you want to reduce the population, you've gotta go and get those monies back. Keep in mind, it was the Coalition [for] the Homeless that wanted to kill that program and hurt the people in the shelters. So it's a little bit disingenuous for them to start talking about it.

Mary Brosnahan, president of the Coalition for the Homeless, responded in a statement:

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GAS DRILLING: Gov. Andrew Cuomo was about to give the go-ahead to allow drilling for natural gas in New York using the contentious process known as hydraulic fracturing — until conversations with environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., convinced him to hold off, The Associated Press reported Saturday.

TEEN PREGNANCY ADS: A new public information campaign announced by the city Sunday aims to show teenagers the potential consequences of becoming parents when they do not have the emotional and financial means to support children. "We must encourage responsibility and send the right message, especially to young people," said Human Resources Administration Commissioner Richard Doar in a statement (GothamistStaten Island Advance).


Other Stories We're Following

'Vision' For Proposed Domino Factory Site Redevelopment (Capital)

Silver-Backed Constitutional Amendment Would Benefit Friend (NY Post)

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New York City spends the majority of its multimillion dollar advertising budget promoting its messages through major newspapers, such as The New York Times, The New York Post, The New York Daily News, amNY and MetroNY, according to a new report from the Center for Community and Ethnic Media. Community and ethnic publications receive about 18 percent of the city's ad budget. "The city's choices about where and how its messages are delivered have important public policy consequences," the report's authors say. (read the full report)

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From Climate Desk

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NYC2013: Seven mayoral hopefuls gathered to discuss transportation policy at a forum on Friday night. Christine Quinn, the presumptive Democratic frontrunner, suggested she would like to see the city have more control over mass transit. Rival Democratic candidate Sal Albanese went further, suggesting he'd fight for control of it. Some of the presumed candidates rehashed the idea of a commuter tax to raise funds for the mass transit system. (The New York TimesThe New York PostCapital New York)

Notably absent from the forum was Joh Lhota, the Republican candidate who resigned from his job overseeing the mass transit system to run for mayor. Organizers said they couldn't reach him; a Lhota spokeswoman told the Times they didn't even try.

The next night, Quinn was booed at another mayoral forum by Upper East Side residents angry about her ongoing support of a waste transfer station in the neighborhood, even though the facility now sits in a flood zone. "I am not changing my position," Quinn declared. (The New York Post)

NATIONAL URBAN LEAGUE IN HARLEM: Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced Friday that the National Urban League was planning to move to Harlem and to open a museum about the American civil rights movement. Local leaders had proposed an annex of the Jazz at Lincoln Center, along with other amenities, at the same site, currently a garage (DNAInfo).

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Make that three candidates in the race to succeed Christine Quinn to represent such notable Manhattan neighborhoods as Chelsea and Greenwich Village in the City Council. 

Andrew Meadows, a member of Community Board 2, told The Villager ahead of an expected official announcement on Friday that he is going to run for the spot Quinn has to give up because of term limits (she also happens to be running for mayor). A 36-year-old openly gay Cuban American, Meadows worked on Quinn's re-election campaign in 2009 and has been a member of various local political clubs. 

Villager reporter Lincoln Anderson writes: 

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Diabetes runs on both sides of his family — his father died of the disease at age 53 — which compelled Meadows to enter the healthcare field, specializing in the disease. But he lost his job in the economic downturn a few years ago, which is how he wound up volunteering with Quinn. Now he is in estate management, overseeing a handful of real estate holdings.

Given his family background, health is an important campaign issue for him. Others include education and school safety; caring for seniors; improving public transportation; preserving and expanding affordable housing; fighting for civil rights — especially for the transgender community; and also ensuring quality, accessible healthcare.

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SCHOOL BUS STRIKE ENDS

The city's largest school bus drivers union ended its monthlong strike on Friday after five Democratic mayoral candidates released a joint letter pledging that they would be more open to extending job guarantees to the workers. Mayor Michael Bloomberg had refused to negotiate with the union. The strike had disrupted the lives of thousands of city families, but Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1181 argued the action was necessary to fight for job protections. 

ELECTIONS 2013

Mayoral candidate Bill Thompson criticized his opponent in the Democratic primary, Council Speaker Christine Quinn, telling The New York Post that there has been "a pattern of questions surrounding Christine Quinn’s entire tenure as speaker." He made the remark in response to a question about the Mason Tenders District Council's endorsement of Quinn (Daily News). Democratic City Councilman Domenic Recchia says he'll run for Congress against Rep. Michael Grimm, a Republican, to represent New York's 11th district (Staten Island Advance). 

In the Press...

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