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'There's Absolutely More Need': Catalina Cruz on Aid for Immigrant New Yorkers, the Assembly Cuomo Investigation & More


Catalina Cruz Kathy Hochul

Assemblymember Cruz, middle, with Governor Hochul (photo: @CatalinaCruzNY)


“My neighbors speak more than 150 languages. We have folks from all over the world who call this beautiful community their home. They are small business owners, they are first responders, they are frontline workers, we also have Elmhurst hospital. It’s just a beautiful, beautiful community that I am extremely proud to represent,” said Assemblymember Catalina Cruz, a Democrat who represents the 39th Assembly district, made up of Corona, Elmhurst, and Jackson Heights in Queens.

Appearing on a recent episode of the Max Politics podcast from Gotham Gazette, Cruz discussed the many ways she is working to help immigrant communities, at times especially undocumented immigrants, the Assembly judiciary committee’s investigation of former Governor Andrew Cuomo, and more.

“Sixty percent of our neighbors were born in another country and 40% of them have no voting power,” Cruz said regarding the large number of residents of her district who are undocumented or otherwise not full citizens of the United States and unable to vote locally. “That’s because they are permanent residents, undocumented, they have DACA or asylum. Some sort of non-citizenship status that definitely, unfortunately, relegates them to a second class of ‘citizens,’ if you will, when it comes time to have their needs heard.”

Therefore, Cruz says, it’s especially important for local representatives like herself to work on behalf of those constituents and ensure that all levels of government are paying attention to their needs — and making a point to note that many are indeed taxpayers even as they are ineligible for many forms of government aid.

Not only has COVID-19 devastated many communities in New York City, particularly low-income communities of color like those Cruz represents, but Hurricane Ida also just poured historic rains on them, creating another example of how hard it is to be undocumented in a tragedy.

“A day or two after Ida hit, we were trying to figure out how to get our neighbors the government resources, that means the FEMA money, as soon as possible,” Cruz said.

As state government entities, from the administration of Governor Kathy Hochul as well as Cruz’s office and others, screened constituents and tried to help them apply for FEMA funds, they found that roughly half of those in need of help were undocumented and could not apply for FEMA help, Cruz said. She told podcast host Ben Max of Gotham Gazette that she then asked the governor for a fund to help the undocumented individuals of New York who could not apply for FEMA funds and quickly between the state and the city they created a $27 million fund that just launched through the state’s Office for New Americans.

Cruz, who is chair of the Assembly’s Task Force on New Americans, has also been working with her staff and other colleagues in government to help constituents and others access the state’s $2.1 billion “Excluded Workers Fund,” which provides financial aid to undocumented New Yorkers who lost income due to COVID-19 but were left out of federal relief programs. Cruz said many eligible New Yorkers have still not applied and should before the fund runs out of money, or in order to help make the case that it needs to be replenished.

“There’s absolutely more need,” Cruz said on the podcast. “I’m committed, if the time comes and the fund runs out and we realize we need more money, I’m committed to fighting along with the [Excluded Workers Fund] Coalition in the same way that we did before, because people need it to survive.

Cruz also explained that she is working toward a package of efforts coming out of her work as the chair of the New Americans Task Force, which will include new legislative and budget priorities.

[LISTEN: Max Politics Podcast: Assemblymember Catalina Cruz on Pro-Immigrant Policies, the Cuomo Investigation, & More]

Asked about two pieces of legislation she’s sponsored — getting Hochul to sign her Nourish New York Act and both houses of the Legislature to pass the Clean Slate Act — Cruz stressed their importance and expressed optimism.

“Nourish New York was born out of the food desert and food insecurity issues that we saw get exacerbated during covid,” Cruz said. “My office alone, we provided 250,000 meals in a six-month period because we closed our office and turned it into a food pantry because there was no other place where people could get food at one point.”

Working with the Cuomo administration, legislators and other partners helped set up Nourish New York as a pandemic food program connecting upstate farmers with food pantries and food banks across the state, with the state paying the farmers for their goods in order to both utilize that product and feed needy people. While it was a one-time deal with the Cuomo Administration, Cruz and her colleagues passed legislation to ensure its survival and now need Hochul to sign it into law.

The Clean Slate Act would remove publicly available criminal records for misdemeanor crimes and most felonies after people have completed their sentences and parole. For example, someone with a “clean slate” would not have their criminal history available for a landlord to check and then illegally discriminate against them in determining their housing options. 

“It gives people in my community a real second chance at life,” Cruz explained. “You’ve come out of jail, you’ve paid your dues, a certain amount of time will pass, depending on the type of crime, and during that time you are basically showing that you are a good, contributing member of our community. You’re able to show that you are moving forward. Then, after that, your record will disappear.”

Cruz and her colleague believe that Clean Slate can help reduce recidivism rates by removing barriers to employment, housing, and other things for those who have criminal records but have paid their dues.

Cruz also discussed the Assembly Judiciary Committee’s impeachment investigation of now-former Governor Andrew Cuomo. While his resignation led Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie to call off the impeachment proceedings but for referrals and a report, some were disappointed with his decision and many are eager to see the findings, however incomplete.

“I don’t have a date yet but I suspect we are not looking to extend this beyond a couple of weeks, maybe a month or two,” said Cruz, who is an attorney and sits on the judiciary committee. “Because I think people want to know, people want to hear what’s in that evidence, what was in that report.”

Asked about the report, Cruz confirmed that it would include significant information beyond issues related to the former governor’s pattern of sexual harassment that was outlined in the report issued by Attorney General Letitia James, which led to additional calls for resignation, impeachment, and prosecution, and to Cuomo’s decision to resign. Those issues include the governor’s use of government resources on his covid book memoir, Cuomo’s nursing home covid scandal, and more.

Cruz also took a moment to address how Cuomo and his allies have been pushing back against the attorney general and Assembly.

“The governor’s implying that this has all been some kind of political attack on him and his character,” Cruz said. “That this is some kind of war against him and his character. It’s not. This is a war against corruption in Albany. This is a war against corruption in government. This is a war against sexual harassment of staff.”

[Listen to the full conversation: Max Politics Podcast: Assemblymember Catalina Cruz on Pro-Immigrant Policies, the Cuomo Investigation, & More]

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by Georgia Dodd, Gotham Gazette

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Max Politics Podcast: Assemblymember Catalina Cruz on Pro-Immigrant Policies & More


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Assemblymember Catalina Cruz, center (photo: @CatalinaCruzNY)


September 29, 2021 - Max Politics Podcast: Assemblymember Catalina Cruz on Aid for Immigrant New Yorkers & More

Assemblymember Catalina Cruz, a Queens Democrat, joined the show to discuss two state programs to help undocumented immigrants, other work she's doing as chair of the Assembly's Task Force on New Americans, the Assembly judiciary committee's investigation of former Governor Andrew Cuomo, and more.

Listen to the conversation and let us know what you think, on Twitter @TweetBenMax. You can listen to the show through the embedded audio below or download the episode wherever you get your podcasts at Max Politics.

Read more: Max Politics Podcast: Assemblymember Catalina Cruz on Pro-Immigrant Policies & More

Amid Rising Overdose Deaths, Hochul Urged to End Two-Tiered Addiction Treatment System in New York


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Then-Gov. Cuomo signs legislation (photo: Darren McGee/Office of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo)


In the aftermath of the highest number of overdose deaths recorded in New York State in a single year, advocates and substance use treatment providers are calling on Governor Kathy Hochul to sign what they call a crucial piece of legislation to reverse the trend. Without the new governor’s signature, they say, the state’s recently-established two-tiered substance use treatment system, with greater barriers to access for lower-income New Yorkers, will continue and cause more harm.

Medication-assisted treatment (MAT) is a proven tool for helping people who suffer from substance use disorders. It prevents overdoses, emergency room visits and hospitalizations, and ultimately saves lives. But, until recently, New York State required that insurers provide prior authorization to doctors before they can prescribe MAT drugs, like buprenorphine and methadone, to patients.

At the end of 2019, then-Governor Andrew Cuomo signed a bill that removed prior authorization for commercial insurers, expanding access to the life-saving drugs. But with the same pen, he vetoed another bill that would have removed that regulation for Medicaid, which the lowest income, mostly Black, Latino, and Asian New Yorkers rely on. The governor’s decisions effectively created two separate systems, removing obstacles for commercial insurance patients while keeping them in place for Medicaid enrollees.

This Friday, October 1, the state health department is also poised to institute a new statewide formulary for MAT drugs, taking a one-size-fits-all approach to a far more complicated issue.

“When it comes to anything in healthcare, one size does not fit all patients and their medical provider should have a right to decide what treatment works best for them,” said Senator Pete Harckham, who sponsored both bills to remove prior authorization.

After Cuomo’s veto, the state Legislature passed the Medicaid-related bill again this year with overwhelming bipartisan support, as part of an overdose prevention package. Lawmakers, advocates, and treatment providers are optimistic as they urge Governor Hochul to sign the bill into law that Cuomo previously vetoed.

Cuomo’s rationale for vetoing the bill was that it would increase state Medicaid spending. But as advocates point out, that argument was flawed and ignores the cost in human lives from preventing access to MAT drugs. A 2019 report by RTI International for the Legal Action Center, a nonprofit legal services and advocacy group, found that removing prior authorization would save almost 600 lives every year in New York, create cost savings for Medicaid of nearly $52 million annually, and reduce inpatient admissions and emergency department visits by 42%.

Dr. Justine Waldman, CEO of REACH Medical, a harm reduction provider based in Ithaca, said patients on medication-assisted treatment would benefit from a variety of medications rather than a single drug that may be allowed under the state’s new policy. “Given that it's a medication that keeps people alive, we really need to have that flexibility to find the medication that works for them,” she said.

Any additional administrative hurdles can reduce participation in treatment programs, Waldman said, and without first reducing opioid use, the state cannot eliminate it. “If you make everything based on elimination of use completely, you’re not treating a disease process, you're treating sort of a moral process,” she said.

The need for greater action on the overdose crisis has also never been more urgent. In 2020, overdose deaths spiked nationally by about 30% to more than 93,000. In New York, the Cuomo administration cut funding to syringe exchange programs, forcing many providers to lay off staff and reduce services, exacerbating the crisis even further and leading to increases in overdoses and STD outbreaks, according to experts. According to the latest CDC data, New York reported 5,129 overdose deaths between February 2020 and February 2021, a  34.3% increase compared to the 3,817 overdose deaths in the same period from 2019 to 2020.

“The state of New York should be doing everything that it can to make sure that we're turning the tide,” said Jasmine Budnella, drug policy coordinator at VOCAL-NY, an advocacy and service group.

“We have a moment in New York to really chart a whole new path and there's never been a better moment to have true leadership at the state level to trickle down into interventions and solutions,” she added.

Budnella is among the advocates that spent months negotiating with the Cuomo administration to allow greater access to MAT drugs, particularly for those on Medicaid. But while the administration agreed to implement those demands through policy, the new formulary for medications does not achieve the goal. Instead of ensuring that all MAT drugs would be “preferred” and hence need no prior authorization, several drugs continue to require it as well as come with limits on dosage.

“[W]hat you had there was an indication that the Cuomo administration wasn't too worried about creating this two-tiered system and specifically not expanding access for the Medicaid population, which obviously is low-income communities of color,” said Christine Khaikin, senior health policy attorney at Legal Action Center.

Hochul, a Democrat with just over a month on the job as governor, has indicated an interest in more fully tackling the substance use and overdose crisis. In her first public address as governor, she spoke of her own personal experience, having lost her nephew to a fentanyl overdose in 2017, and said the issue would be a top priority.

“Too many of our families have had to face this specter of dealing with someone, and sometimes they lost someone they cared deeply about because of addiction,” she said on August 26, when she announced Senator Brian Benjamin as her lieutenant governor. “So to those families, I know the pain you're going through, and we're going to make sure that we do everything in our power to stop that,” she added.

“Combating the opioid epidemic is a top priority for Governor Hochul, having served as co-chair of the NYS Heroin and Opioid Task Force for years,” said Haley Viccaro, a spokesperson for the governor, in a statement to Gotham Gazette. “She was also personally impacted by the crisis, losing a nephew to addiction several years ago. Governor Hochul will continue to fight for protections for New Yorkers struggling with substance abuse in partnership with families and impacted groups. The Governor is reviewing the legislation and will have more to say on this soon.​”

Hochul’s comments have been encouraging to those who have worked on substance use legislation for years. “It is refreshing to have a governor that understands that pain and grief and frustration that the state of New York has gone through around the overdose crisis,” said Budnella from VOCAL-NY.

“I think she's been much more willing than her predecessor to take on some of these issues,” said Senator Harckham, a Hudson Valley Democrat who chairs the Committee on Alcoholism and Substance Abuse and has been open about his own struggles with substance use.

As Harckham noted, the state is also flush with federal relief funds to fight the overdose crisis and is expected to receive as much as $1.6 billion through the settlements of lawsuits against opioid manufacturers and distributors brought by State Attorney General Letitia James’ office.

“So we will be having new revenues coming into state coffers that will be targeted to addressing substance use disorder, and clearly medication-assisted treatment and equity in medication-assisted treatment needs to be at the top of the list,” Harckham said.

For providers, Hochul’s approach has the right focus on lives rather than cost. “This is a governor who's really going to pay attention to health equity and put health equity above the cost of it, and that makes me extremely hopeful that this is our governor,” said Waldman.

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by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

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Advocates and Journalists Push Hochul to Release Troves of Covid Data


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Gov. Hochul (photo: Mike Groll/Office of Governor Kathy Hochul)


A coalition of advocacy groups is pushing Governor Kathy Hochul to release over 100 datasets related to the coronavirus pandemic in New York that they believe the state is keeping. The groups say that information can be used by scientists, journalists, and advocates to better understand the virus, its impact on public health, and the state's response.

In a letter to Hochul, the coalition identified 123 datasets it said should be made available "without delay," of which only 14 have been published on the state's open data portal in a way that is easy to read and analyze. Another 64 sets have been published across various portals and websites in formats, like graphs, that cannot be broken down into more granular detail.

There are believed to be 45 of the datasets completely hidden from public view, including data on outbreaks and death in long-term care facilities, where some of the worst devastation of the pandemic has taken place.

"Publishing COVID data in a tabular, downloadable, machine-readable format would help restore trust in state government and help researchers, journalists and the public to better understand the dire pandemic that has cost us loved ones and continues to upend everyday life," reads the letter, dated September 7 and signed by ten organizations “from across the political spectrum.” The advocates include good government groups like Reinvent Albany, Citizens Union, Common Cause NY, and the Empire Center, journalist associations like the New York News Publishers Association, national organizations like the National Freedom of Information Coalition, and civic data group BetaNYC.

The groups have been urging the state to release this information at least since March, when they sent a letter to then-Governor Andrew Cuomo, Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie.

On June 22, the Empire Center submitted requests for 62 of the datasets under the state's Freedom of Information Law (FOIL). By September 2, only five had been provided with another five fully or partially denied, according to a blog post by Bill Hammond, the Center's senior fellow for health policy who has been tracking the Cuomo administration nursing home scandal throughout the pandemic. The rest of the requests are pending, including 42 filed with the state Department of Health.

In the most recent letter, the groups argued all the data is subject to FOIL disclosure and should be published online. "We emphasize that this public health data is owned and paid for by the public and should be published as a matter of course," they wrote.

The missing data includes basic information on COVID-19 testing and fatalities as well as more detailed statistics that could be used to track the virus and its variants in critical settings. Many of the datasets are reported in open data format in other states and localities, including on New York City's COVID-19 portal.

Hochul has promised a new era of transparency and accountability in state government, including a reevaluation of what covid-related information is released publicly. A spokesperson for Hochul noted to Gotham Gazette that when she became governor on August 24, Hochul signed an executive order to review all existing executive orders through the 45-day transition period she allotted herself, at which time she will take new executive actions that will include efforts toward a more open, ethical government. That transition period ends October 8.

According to the groups, the state does not publish positive tests tracked by zip code, age, or race and ethnicity, nor does it publish a chronological account of fatalities by zip code -- information that could be used to track regional outbreaks and assess local responses.

The state also does not publish information on hospital capacity, including available COVID-19 beds, according to the coalition analysis. Nor does it publish records of the state's stockpile of PPE and medical equipment -- a major source of anxiety for hospital administrators and health workers, and critical information in the event of another serious outbreak.

The groups say the state has not released any information about the death of staff members working in long-term care facilities, nor infection data in those settings or a list of facilities with outbreaks.

Despite months of lagging inoculation rates and the ongoing prevalence of the highly contagious Delta strain, information on covid vaccines and the state's efforts, while published, is not available in open data format making it difficult to closely analyze. The same is true of deaths in nursing homes and assisted living facilities, as well as testing efforts in schools, according to the coalition. Infection and fatality data in other congregate facilities, like prisons and some group homes is not published at all, the groups say.

"Because the state has not made this data available it is possible that they are not collecting it at all," said Tom Speaker, a policy analyst at Reinvent Albany.

On her first day in office Hochul committed to improving government transparency and the state's FOIL responses. "A new era of transparency will be one of the hallmarks of my administration," she said. "I have instructed my counsel to come up with an expedited process to fulfill all FOIL requests as fast as possible—and post completed requests publicly online."

On September 20, the governor's office issued a memo to state agency heads directing them to review their information-sharing policies and submit a plan "detailing changes your agency will make to increase the transparency of your work." The plans, due October 20, must show how agencies will improve FOIL response times, including "by proactively posting frequently requested information or completed requests online."

The state's tight grip on COVID-19 data, particularly the total death toll and facility outbreaks, has been the subject of controversy. For months, the Cuomo administration had underreported the pandemic's total fatalities by excluding people who died at home, in prisons and other state-run facilities, and people suspected to have contracted the virus without confirmation by a positive test result. On her first day in office, Hochul acknowledged an additional 12,000 deaths -- which had previously been tracked by the CDC and academic institutions -- in the state's regular reporting.

Last week, Hochul announced the resignation of Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker, whose department had kept the state's mortality figures and was dogged by criticism that it mishandled outbreaks in nursing homes and covered up the full covid death toll of nursing home residents.

Nearly 56,500 New Yorkers have died from the coronavirus since the pandemic began, according to the state Department of Health.

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by Ethan Geringer-Sameth, reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

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‘Turning the Page on a Long Chapter’: Kathy Hochul's First Month as Governor of New York


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Gov. Hochul (photo: Mike Groll/Office of Governor Kathy Hochul)


Governor Kathy Hochul on Friday marked her first month in office, during which she has responded to several ongoing and new crises, barnstormed the state in public appearances, and sought to begin restoring confidence in state government after nearly three full terms of her disgraced predecessor’s leadership.

Hochul, a Democrat from Buffalo, continues to carve out the rot of Andrew Cuomo’s administration and build out the top echelons of her executive office as she works to put more distance between herself and the man with whom she twice shared the Democratic ticket. And she is laying the groundwork for her own legacy, already significant as the first woman to be governor of New York, with an eye toward winning a full term in next year’s election.

But there are near-term challenges and opportunities for Hochul, and it remains to be seen if she will live up to the many promises she has already made. In her first month in charge, Hochul has appeared to relish the opportunity and realize she has limited time to make her mark, at least in terms of addressing immediate crises and setting herself up to have more time to lead the state. A major piece of the equation will come in January with her first, and potentially only, Executive Budget.

Hochul has come across as determined and collegial, winning high praise from many and cautious praise from some. Others are taking a wait-and-see approach and some don’t trust anyone who was a major figure of the Cuomo administration — however distant Hochul and the former governor may have been, she did travel the state for more than seven years praising him and promoting his agenda as Cuomo’s lieutenant governor.

Hochul has echoed the need for culture change so many in New York politics and government have identified given Cuomo’s way of doing things, and she quickly made progress on several key issues, including getting more pandemic relief money out the door. But she also appeared to falter on Hurricane Ida, not giving the storm its due in terms of early warnings and emergency decisions as it inundated many parts of the downstate region and killed 16 New Yorkers. A review of the state’s preparations and response is ongoing, Hochul has said. 

In her first public address after being sworn in on August 24, Hochul promised a new era in state government, one marked by collaboration, transparency and accountability. She inherited multiple crises from Cuomo, who resigned under a cloud of scandal that included a series of sexual harassment victims, a culture of secrecy and bullying, allegations of misuse of state resources, and more. The Delta variant was surging, the reopening of schools was fast approaching, and the state was failing to quickly release federal relief funds for renters, landlords, and undocumented workers. The Cuomo administration also faced a federal investigation into the handling of covid in nursing homes, and the alleged subsequent cover up of nursing home resident deaths. 

“I've embraced and internalized the hopes and dreams of 20 million people who share the name 'New Yorkers.' And I want you to know, you are heard, and I'm ready to get to work as your governor to solve the big problems that this state faces,” Hochul said in her inaugural address on August 24.

In her first acts as governor, she directed the health department to issue a universal mask mandate for schools, launched a $1 million outreach campaign to jumpstart the state’s $2.7 billion rent relief program, and announced a series of ethics, transparency, and anti-sexual harassment reforms. She took steps to boost covid vaccination rates, made appointments needed to launch the recreational marijuana industry in New York, and batted away assertions from Cuomo and his camp that he had been railroaded out of office by politically-motivated individuals.

Hochul faced her first crises as two major climate events hit New York within ten days of her taking over. The first, Tropical Storm Henri, hit the day before her swearing in, dropping record-level rainfall on New York City, flooding streets and subways but doing limited damage. But that was followed by Hurricane Ida, which broke those records, wreaking the most havoc in Queens.

Hochul quickly met with local, state, and federal officials to determine the state’s response and preparations for future climate events, including visits to several especially hard-hit areas. She appeared publicly with Mayor Bill de Blasio – who spent years bearing the brunt of Cuomo’s vindictive and adversarial approach – to address the aftermath of the hurricane, further signalling a new cooperative dynamic between the two top executives.

She made national media appearances, met with storm victims, and appeared alongside New York Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand and President Joe Biden, whom she worked with to get quick federal emergency relief approval. Questions do remain, however, about how well both the mayor and the governor reacted to the impending storm.

“Since swearing-in just one month ago, Governor Hochul has hit the ground running to deliver results for New Yorkers,” said Hazel Crampton-Hays, a spokesperson for Hochul, in a statement. “Whether it’s accelerating getting pandemic relief money out the door to struggling New Yorkers, taking smart, science-based steps to slow the spread of the Delta variant, or changing the culture in Albany through higher ethical standards and more transparency, Governor Hochul has swiftly demonstrated her leadership, ability to get things done, and that she will continue to move New York forward.”

The relationship with the mayor was just one of many things that Hochul set out to repair in the wake of Cuomo’s departure. The former governor left the state Health Department in shambles, with a mass exodus of top officials and experts during the course of the pandemic. The state’s ethics watchdogs, long under Cuomo’s thumb, had all but ceded their duties. Authority over, and responsibility for, the state-run MTA varied on the whims of the governor, who took credit for its successes and deflected blame for its failures, prioritizing his own political image over the best way to ‘run a railroad.’

Hochul faced challenging decisions on all those fronts and more, including personnel. She’s toward the tail end of the 45-day review period she announced for making decisions around major appointments and nominations, some of which she has already made. She has pledged to revamp one state government ethics watchdog, JCOPE, with new appointments and less political interference.

This past week, she accepted the resignation of two more controversial Cuomo allies in powerful positions, New York State Inspector General Letizia Tagliafierro and Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker, both of whom had been mired in scandal related to prioritizing Cuomo’s image over serving New Yorkers.

Hochul swiftly filled out some of her top ranks. She appointed Karen Persichilli Keogh as secretary to the governor, the chief executive’s top aide, and Elizabeth Fine as her counsel. She picked Manhattan State Senator Brian Benjamin to be her lieutenant governor, and made a number of other appointments and nominations, while also bringing some of her top staff from the lieutenant governor’s office with her.

“She’s put some terrific people in place who have hit the ground running. That’s important,” said Kathy Wylde, president and CEO of the Partnership for New York City, a business group.  

A number of top Cuomo loyalists do remain in their positions pending Hochul’s ongoing review. Larry Schwartz, once Cuomo’s secretary to the governor who became a volunteer “vaccine czar” last year and continues on as an MTA board member, has not resigned from the board, despite being implicated in the state attorney general’s report on Cuomo’s pattern of sexual harassment. State budget director Robert Mujica, the architect of Cuomo’s tightly controlled budgets over the last several years and also an MTA board member, has also kept his position so far.  

Hochul has been reviewing cabinet positions and meeting with elected officials, making a slew of announcements, including on renewable energy projects for Climate Week, and appearing at events like the Buffalo Bills season home opening game. She's been speaking at Syracuse University and Harlem churches, giving remarks at rallies with activists and labor unions, greeting national and international figures, and generally appearing to squeeze as much into every day as possible, sometimes tweeting about her late-night meals from Shake Shack or a neighborhood diner.

“I'm not sure when she's sleeping or how she's getting it all done, but she is,” Wylde said. “Within a few weeks, she really has made a formidable effort to respond to issues that were of great concern to New Yorkers and get them moving.”

In a September 16 appearance on MSNBC, as she assessed her own performance, Hochul pointed to the various crises she has had to handle, including the two climate emergencies. “Really most of that was in my first two weeks on the job, and I realized I do have the experience and confidence to handle it and that people in New York are willing to give me a chance,” she said. “This is turning the page on a long chapter and a lot of people, particularly in state government, are feeling liberated again.” 

“I'm excited about the potential to transform not just state government, but more importantly, people's image and perception of their state government,” she added. “I want them to trust their leaders once again, and I'm committed to making sure that that happens under my watch.”

Though Cuomo may have received an honorary Emmy award (later rescinded) for soothing a distressed public with his daily press briefings during the pandemic, his administration was marked more by obfuscation, opacity, and a war-like footing with most other entities, from the press to legislators. Hochul has said her administration will be the opposite and given early indications she’s following through, though there is much still to prove.

In at least some ways, she’s shown her style to be very different from Cuomo, including that “she doesn't make hour-long speeches,” Wylde noted. “She focuses on brevity, clarity, and I don't think there's a spin involved. For someone who had to quickly take charge. I think that she's been honest and clear in her communication and I don't get any sense of an attempt to manipulate public opinion.”

Wylde added, “It’s nice when women are in charge. Women are able to multitask, are pragmatic and just want to get stuff done.”

In a Siena College poll released September 14, Hochul was viewed favorably by 42% of New York voters and unfavorably by 17%; 41% said they either did not know her or did not know enough about her. A majority, 52% of voters, said she will be more collaborative than Cuomo, against 18% who disagreed; 74% of voters were excited about Hochul becoming the first female governor, against 16%.

Hochul clearly knows she needs to introduce herself to more New Yorkers and that she has a chance to make a good all-important first impression. She’s regularly taken pains in public appearances to discuss her background, noting repeatedly that she was a local government official for many years, mentioning her brief time in Congress, and discussing her humble roots. From reproductive rights to a clean environment, she has sought to connect with New Yorkers, offering that a number of issues are “personal to me” and offering biographical examples.

As a statewide official for more than seven years with a busy schedule and the knowledge that she could become governor at any moment, Hochul was in some ways very much ready to hit the ground running. But in other ways Hochul has given indications of a fairly steep learning curve -- she’s correctly pointed out, sometimes to give herself cover, that she was not part of Cuomo’s inner circle. While she is particularly familiar, for example, with state economic development policy, which was central to the portfolio Cuomo assigned her, she has not been intimately involved with the MTA.

But Hochul has pledged to quickly get up to speed where necessary and repeatedly offered that she will listen to experts on the various issues, including those she plans to appoint. Her positive relationships with officials across the state have appeared to pay initial dividends. Her commitment to allow more local decision-making while giving state support to county, city, and town officials has been music to many ears.

“Kathy Hochul enters the job as a very different and distinct person...from Governor Cuomo,” said Christine Quinn, former speaker of the New York City Council and once a staunch Cuomo ally who is CEO of WIN, a nonprofit homeless shelter provider for women and children. “She has a commitment to transparency, a bottom-up government, a very much participatory government.”

Quinn praised Hochul’s first few weeks on the job and her response under crisis. “I think she's done a great job. She’s on the ground, connecting with people and marshalling all of the resources of the agencies of the state,” she said.

Though there may be significant exceptions, the central differences between Hochul and Cuomo may not be stances on the issues, but on management, style, and personality. Like her predecessor, Hochul is a moderate with progressive impulses, a “Biden Democrat,” as she recently told The New York Times, naming another moderate who has been moving left with the party.

Hochul has in some cases fulfilled the demands of activists where Cuomo showed intransigence. After nearly a dozen detainees died this year in the Rikers Island jail complex, including three this month, Hochul rushed to sign into law the Less is More Act. Approved by the state Legislature in June, the legislation restricts the detention of parolees on technical violations, and led to the immediate release of 191 detainees while paving the way for others to be let go or not re-incarcerated in the first place in the future. 

Meanwhile, Hochul has also been vocal about her opposition to the “defund the police” movement while also saying she is having conversations about the decriminalization of sex work.

She has said that while she may not support every project Cuomo put into motion, she also plans to go big on infrastructure, and she’s been clear about her readiness to work with business leaders as she seeks to revive the state’s economy.

“No matter the size of your business, I need you to survive because you're the identity of New York that people create jobs and opportunities,” she said at the Business Council's annual meeting on Friday. “You are who we are as New Yorkers. Your success means the success of this entire state. So count me in as an ally, someone who's going to be there for you, who will fight for you to make sure that we do not lose out to any competition, whether it's in the space of cannabis, where I believe there's thousands and thousands of jobs and new industries, to be created that were not even focused on.”

“Hochul’s been very self-assured and competent out of the gate,” said Neal Kwatra, founder of Metropolitan Public Strategies, a consultancy, in a phone interview. “She's been a very proactive governor in the first few weeks and months, and I think she's had a pretty steady hand. I would give her very good reviews in the early innings here.”

Kwatra said Hochul’s already shown a drastically different form of leadership “exemplified in her outreach to other elected officials, her embrace of sharing the spotlight if you will. That has been probably a concerted effort and strategic to show a clear break and I think it's been fairly successful so far...I think she's trying, and I think successfully showing, a different kind of governing approach and culture.”

“I think politically she's done an excellent job in her first month because she's establishing herself as a new ‘normal’ governor who's not engaged in histrionics and bluster and bullying and grandiose pronouncements,” said John Kaehny, executive director of Reinvent Albany, a nonprofit good government group, drawing a clear distinction between Hochul and Cuomo. 

“From a watchdog perspective, I wouldn't grade her as highly,” he said. “She set a very, very high bar for herself by saying that she wants to make ethics and transparency a high priority...That's great. But Cuomo also said that when he was running for governor. Not only did he say that, he published an entire detailed campaign book, a 100-page policy document on it.”

“She’s created an expectation around ethics reform and transparency but not yet been able to match her actions to her words,” Kaehny said, pointing out that Hochul’s incipient administration is already facing conflicts of interest questions. Hochul’s husband, William Hochul Jr., is general counsel and senior vice president at Delaware North, a Buffalo-based gambling and concessions company which has millions in state contracts. Her top aide, Karen Persichilli Keogh, is married to Mike Keogh, a partner at Bolton St. Johns, one of the top lobbying firms in the state. Delaware North was previously a client of the firm from 2019 till February 2021.

Delaware North, Kaehny noted, is the concessions vendor for the current Buffalo Bills stadium as the Hochul administration now negotiates the possibility of a new stadium. “The Hochul administration has kept complete secrecy around the negotiation and around the terms of the deal,” Kaehny said.  

The Bills have proposed a new $1.4 billion stadium, funded through a public-private partnership where the state could cover up to $1.1 billion of the cost. The report commissioned by the team has not been released to the public or reporters who have requested it through the state Freedom of Information law. 

On Wednesday, September 22, Hochul promised that a separate study was underway and would soon be completed and publicly released. “We are waiting for the results of a study that's been underway for a number of months now and I think that will come out in the next couple of weeks,” she said. “We're studying all the options."

The Buffalo native has also repeatedly stressed her emotional attachment to the Bills and has said she is working to make sure they stay put. “I'm a parent of a big family, I love all my teams, but the Bills are staying and I'm very excited about cementing their future in the next few months. Let's just get that done,” she said in her Business Council speech.

Well before those remarks, Reinvent Albany was among several good government groups that called on Hochul to institute a conflict avoidance plan and release it to the public. As questions were quickly raised when she took office, Hochul said in an August interview on CNN’s State of the Union that she had asked outside ethics experts to create an “ironclad policy” for her administration. “So no one will ever question that there's any involvement of my husband in anything pertaining to the state of New York,” she said.

No such policy has been made public as of yet.

Kaehny also criticized Hochul for appointing James Dering, a Cuomo ally, the acting chair of JCOPE just prior to a vote before the board on a matter directly relating to Cuomo. “That created a storm of unhappiness and rightly so,” he said. Asked by reporters, Hochul said JCOPE needed someone familiar at the helm and that she had no relationship with Dering herself. She also re-committed to an overhaul of the troubled ethics agency.

Kaehny said it’s hard for the public to give Hochul or her administration the benefit of the doubt after Cuomo “destroyed” the public trust in government. “Hochul inherited an extremely politicized executive branch where Cuomo spent ten years populating these agencies with loyalists, and that's a big challenge,” he said. “It's hard to just pretend that everything will be normal now. She has to earn the public's trust, and let's not forget the really fundamental fact is, she was lieutenant governor during all of his misdeeds and reign of terror and whatnot….She was in his administration. She represented their policies and programs.” 

New York Republicans, who’ve been focused on trying to win the 2022 governor’s race for several years as their main path back toward greater political relevance in the state, have quickly labeled Hochul as a continuation of the Cuomo regime. “Kathy Hochul is so desperate to avoid a Democrat primary, she's gone even further to the radical left than Andrew Cuomo,” said Nick Langworhty, chair of the New York State Republican Party, in a statement to Gotham Gazette. “She may be a nicer version of Cuomo but beware the wolf's in sheep's clothing as she poses an even greater threat to taxpayers and the safety of all New Yorkers.”

When Hochul took over from Cuomo, one of her priorities was to fix the mess his administration made in trying to hide data on the covid toll in nursing homes. Even as the federal investigation into that continues, she promised to be more open and to provide all the data that the Legislature and the media had been requesting for more than a year. 

Assemblymember Ron Kim, a Queens Democrat who battled the Cuomo administration on the nursing home issue, said he has seen no difference in Hochul’s response. “She has not even communicated, or acknowledged the problem in her first month, and that for me is a major problem,” he said. 

“All the families and the workers want to have an opportunity to present themselves and what they’ve gone through during this pandemic and start working together to try to fix a broken system. But she has not made an effort,” added Kim, who some believe is eyeing a run for statewide office, possibly lieutenant governor, in next year’s election. “In fact, she’s gone out of her way to avoid having tough conversations with me...This is something that’s really appalling.”

Hochul has taken some steps to address the nursing home scandal. Last month, she said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe that her administration would “continue working to identify principals involved in those decisions'' as she builds out her team. She also immediately ordered the release of health data that more accurately reflects the actual death rate from covid, including in nursing homes, and she accepted Zucker’s resignation. Much more is being asked of her on the issue, however.

“She’s good, if not even better, at identity politics,” said Kim. “...Beneath all the recent headlines and press conferences and announcements and pictures that we're seeing on social media, nothing has changed at all,” he said. “She’s going to the same power brokers that made Cuomo and she’s trying to cut the same deals that propped up Cuomo for many years. And that is a sign that she’s playing the same game, she’ll fall into the same traps....Every decision is about loyalty to her and garnering as much support for her reelection.”

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by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

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Ben Max contributed to this story.

Major State Ethics and Governance Reforms Hoped for Under Hochul


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Then-Gov. Cuomo with current Gov. Hochul (photo: Governor's Office)


With the abrupt end of the ten-year reign of Governor Andrew Cuomo, reformers inside and outside of state government are looking for change. Unspooling their wishlist has been a kind of inaugural red carpet for Governor Kathy Hochul, who took office last month after Cuomo resigned amid a flurry of scandal -- almost all connected, in some way, to government ethics, transparency, and the erosion of checks and balances.

Hochul immediately pledged to take steps to undo Cuomo's culture of political aggression and aggrandisement and move New York into a new era of more ethical government. Cuomo was known for trying to use every lever of government to his advantage -- controlling the flow of information from state agencies, using the massive state budget to advance his policy agenda, and stacking state commissions and public authorities with his aides and allies.

He resigned in the face of an Assembly impeachment probe over his abuse of power, including the sexual harassment of aides and a state trooper, his handling of covid-related death in nursing homes, the use of state resources on a $5.1 million book deal, a possible cover-up of faults in the Mario M. Cuomo Bridge -- one of his signature infrastructure projects -- and more. But the parade of wrongdoers in New York State government extends well beyond Cuomo to include prior governors, legislative leaders, and others.

In more than half a dozen interviews with Gotham Gazette, lawmakers and advocates described the ways Cuomo wielded his power to punish adversaries and elevate his position at the expense of democratic and transparent government. While Hochul, the first woman to lead the state, has been described by many as "a breath of fresh air" in the smoke-staled State Capitol, reformers see a litany of litmus tests ahead of her bid for a full term next year.

In her first major address as governor, Hochul -- a Buffalo native and former Congresswoman and Lieutenant Governor -- set out her pandemic-era priorities: getting kids back in classrooms, boosting vaccination rates, and moving stalled relief funding to renters, landlords, and ‘excluded workers.’ She also vowed "a dramatic change in culture—with accountability and no tolerance for individuals who cross the line."

And she promised "a new era of transparency" with a "focus on open, ethical governing that New Yorkers will trust."

"On day one of her administration, the Governor ins​tructed her counsel to come up with an expedited FOIL process, directed State entities to review their compliance with state transparency laws, and began including an additional data set from the CDC in the daily COVID reports," said Hazel Crampton-Hays, Hochul's press secretary, in a statement to Gotham Gazette. "As part of the 45-day transition period, we are reviewing the matters raised by recent investigations and exploring all ways to ensure accountability and open, ethical governing that New Yorkers will trust.”

Good government advocates, including some legislators, see the new administration as a chance to fix some of the worst elements of Albany's political culture. They are taking aim at the state's ethics watchdog, the Joint Commission on Public Ethics (JCOPE), which is known to be compromised by conflicts of interest and something Hochul has also identified.

Reformers want to see the inspector general's office -- another watchdog appointed by the governor -- retooled and the state's sexual abuse statutes and harassment policies updated. And they hope Hochul will restore oversight powers of the Legislature and state comptroller that were stripped by Cuomo, as well as address the state's massive Freedom of Information backlog, including the disclosure of covid-related datasets and the financial interests of a top state judge.

In some regards, Hochul has already met these expectations -- with the acknowledgement of the pandemic's full death toll, for example -- or provided encouraging remarks. But in other instances, like temporary changes to the state's Open Meetings Law made without public review -- her first act of lawmaking as governor -- Hochul's actions have raised alarms.

JCOPE and the Inspector General
For many, high on the list of necessary changes in Albany is revamping the state's system of government ethics oversight. That begins with the Joint Commission on Public Ethics, or JCOPE, the watchdog designed in 2011 by Cuomo and the legislative leaders, Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver -- all of whom left office in disgrace (the former still facing multiple investigations and the latter two in prison on corruption charges).

JCOPE was introduced as an independent watchdog with commissioners appointed by the governor and majority and minority legislative leaders. It is meant to have jurisdiction over government ethics and lobbying issues. But in its ten years, critics say the body has been plagued by inaction and obfuscation stemming from political loyalties and conflicts of interest.

A number of examples have come to light of alleged political interference by Cuomo via his appointees on the commission. That was enabled by an allowance in the state constitution for a small number of commissioners to block investigations from going forward, which can render inert complaints about appointing authorities or their allies.

"The model that we have in the constitution now is just fundamentally flawed," said Senator Liz Krueger, a Manhattan Democrat, who sponsors an amendment that would abolish the commission and create a new body with full jurisdiction over both the legislative and executive branches.

Allowing the governor and legislative leaders, "whoever they are, to have veto power over investigations going forward is just completely unacceptable," she said. While support for replacing the body entirely has grown widely among legislators, legal experts, and good government groups, not all agree on the proposed amendment or the details of a better oversight system.

"My hope is that we do it in a smart, transparent fashion that is honest and earnest and is not hyperbolic or just pure virtue-signalling," said Assembly Member Robert Carroll, a Brooklyn Democrat who sponsors the amendment in the Assembly. "I think that is too often what happens in Albany."

On her first day in office, Hochul indicated support for changing JCOPE but did not go as far as say it should be replaced. She reiterated that position last week after JCOPE again made headlines related to Cuomo's controversial book deal: "We are committed to instituting bold reforms of JCOPE, which is why my administration will work with legislators, good government groups and the public to reform ethics oversight and ensure that the work of this ethics body is beyond reproach."

When asked directly by a reporter at a September 15 press briefing whether JCOPE should be abolished, Hochul said, "I said what I'm going to do is turn it upside down and to challenge the premise that an entity that is created by elected officials with their own appointees should be charged with investigating those individuals, should circumstances arise. The whole premise behind it is flawed."

An omnibus bill in the state Senate, sponsored by Senator Alessandra Biaggi, a Bronx Democrat and the chamber’s ethics committee chair, would make a number of changes to JCOPE short of the constitutional amendment needed to create a new agency with full authority over both the leg and executive branch. The bill would eliminate the requirement that JCOPE investigations have support from two members of the same political party as the person being investigated. It would also get rid of a partisan voting requirement to appoint an executive director. And the bill would give legislative majority and minority leaders an equal number of appointments on the commission.

While it passed the Senate in May, it represents one instance in which the upper chamber advanced a bill without the Assembly doing likewise. Biaggi said she had been working with Assembly ethics chair Jo Anne Simon, a Brooklyn Democrat, to introduce the bill last year but that they were blocked administratively.

"She said yes, she put the bill in for the number, and was never given a bill number," Biaggi told Gotham Gazette. Biaggi said she is still working with Simon to introduce a bill but is again facing resistance: "What I have heard, both in public statements as well as internally, that there's a real reluctance to want to pass these bills," she said.

Biaggi, whose committee held a hearing examining JCOPE in August, plans to hold another in December, this time jointly with members of the Assembly. "Their participation does matter and...they do have a lot of members who have opinions and we want them to be accounted for," she said.

On September 14, Hochul appointed two commissioners to replace Cuomo appointees who had recently resigned, including James Dering -- one of those recently departed appointees -- as acting chair. Her choice of Dering, who also had once worked for Cuomo as general counsel in the health department, raised the ire of politicos seeking a change from business as usual.

"Rather than fulfilling her promise to prioritize transparency and integrity in government, Governor Hochul’s appointment only maintains the status quo," Biaggi said in a statement. "It is now even more imperative for the Legislature to take matters into our own hands, and pass legislation to completely reform and restructure our state’s system of ethics and oversight.”

Hochul defended her choice to reporters a day later. "I had to find an individual, an individual who is highly recommended, has credentials, but literally is unknown to me. I want to make sure that we are not stacking these bodies with our friends and with our allies as had been the past," she said at the September 15 briefing.

Hochul will have another chance to win the approval of reformers seeking an independent watchdog when she appoints a new inspector general to replace Cuomo-appointee and ally Letizia Tagliafierro, who stepped down last week without specifying a reason.

Tagliafierro's office was the subject of public criticism for failing to interview Cuomo or Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie in a probe of their involvement in an alleged leak of a confidential JCOPE vote -- one to investigate Joseph Percoco, a former top Cuomo aide, who is also now serving prison time for corruption. Tagliafierro has said she recused herself from that investigation.

Regardless of who is appointed, Krueger believes the "rules of the road" for an inspector general should be changed entirely so that the position does not report to the governor. "I believe this IG failed on any number of occasions to follow through on what they were supposed to be doing and instead, either by order or request of Governor Cuomo, didn't do what they should have been doing," she said.

Sexual Harassment
Advocates for better policy to prevent and punish sexual harassment in and outside of government have won a series of major changes to state law in recent years, including some signed by Cuomo that he went on to violate, according to the State Attorney General’s August report. Those advocates had already been seeking additional changes to state law, which gained new life in the wake of the many sexual misconduct allegations against Cuomo and subsequent Attorney General report.

"Today, I am directing an overhaul of state government's policies on sexual harassment and ethics, starting with requiring all training be done live, instead of allowing people to click their way through a class," Hochul said during remarks on her first day as governor. She also said she would sign an executive order requiring ethics training for all government employees.

The Sexual Harassment Working Group, an advocacy organization of former legislative aides who were harassed by employers, has been pushing for the definition of abuse of power to be expanded, both in the public's eye and in state law. Among the group’s goals is to have "discrimination, harassment, assault, and retaliation" included as a violation in the Public Officers Law.

"They are not explicitly mentioned in the Public Officers Law, leaving too much room for interpretation," said Erica Vladimer, the group's co-founder, in testimony at the Senate ethics committee's August hearing.

The Working Group is also pushing a bill that would extend workplace harassment protections under the state's Human Rights Law to all employees of government officials, including so-called "personal staff" who in some cases have been considered exempt from protections under a federal statute.

The bill, sponsored by Senator Andrew Gounardes and Assembly Member Yuh-Line Niou, passed the Senate in May and remains in committee in the Assembly. "I can assure you that we will continue to look at that and any other appropriate legislation that continues to underscore that we value...a workplace that allows you to do your best work," Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins said in a recent interview with Gotham Gazette.

"And when you work, regardless of who you are, you will be protected," she added. "So, yes, there will be continued conversations on that."

Another glaring gap advocates see is the so-called "rape intoxication loophole," which has been used to undercut the state's rape statute in cases where the victim or survivor was voluntarily enibriated. Biaggi sponsors a bill that would close that loophole and believes Hochul may be the one to help advance it.

"Having a female governor come in and also really take on things like closing the rape intoxication loophole is important because we know that even though all people can be raped, women are most likely the ones who are raped," she said. The bill passed the Senate in June, but remains in committee in the Assembly.

Government Transparency and the Freedom of Information Law
Before there was a series of sexual harassment allegations against Cuomo, the governor and his Department of Health were facing criticism for mishandling COVID-19 and nursing homes, and questions around their purposeful underreporting of the number of deaths of nursing home residents due to the virus.

For close to a year, the state's regularly reported covid death toll lagged behind one kept by the CDC and other groups monitoring New York. On her first day at the helm, Hochul reconciled the discrepancy by disclosing the deaths of 12,000 more New Yorkers than had previously been reported by the state’s Health Electronic Response Data System (HERDS).

It was a promising first step toward fulfilling a commitment she had made in her first major address as governor: "A new era of transparency will be one of the hallmarks of my administration," she said on her inauguration day.

But good government groups and transparency advocates have been disappointed with some of Hochul's actions and inaction since. At the top of the list was a middle-of-the-night amendment to the state's Open Meetings Law, which, citing covid, temporarily allows local governments to block the public from physically participating in meetings as long as they are broadcast virtually. The change, Hochul's first law signed as governor, was made during a special legislative session originally slated to extend the state's expired eviction moratorium. Because much of the legislation was discussed in an executive session of the state Legislature, the public did not see the bill language until after it passed.

"Going straight into secret session...with an unknown agenda with changes to basic parts of public transparency law...which have not been seen by the public -- that's the kind of thing that makes watchdog groups howl," said John Kaehny, executive director of good government group Reinvent Albany, in a recent interview with Gotham Gazette. "It rattles one's confidence in a clean break from the past."

Advocates including Reinvent Albany, Citizens Union, Empire Center, and others have also been pushing the state to release its COVID-19 data sets, which they argue are public documents subject to disclosure under New York's Freedom of Information Law (FOIL). "Of the [123] datasets we identified, the state has published only 14 as open data, with 64 others provided in a format that cannot be easily used or analyzed," the groups wrote in a letter to Hochul on September 7. The hidden data includes everything from infection and mortality rates by zip code, age, and ethnicity to hospital capacities and facility statistics.

For Ron Kim, a Queens Democrat in the state Assembly and an outspoken Cuomo critic, this is one of the most pressing issues facing the new governor. "The previous administration under [Health Commissioner Dr.] Howard Zucker came up with a million excuses of how they couldn't correlate the data and release accurate numbers," Kim said in an interview. On Thursday, Hochul announced Zucker's resignation as health commissioner.

Kim, whose uncle died in a nursing home last year after contracting COVID-19, was on a call with Melissa DeRosa, Cuomo's Secretary to the Governor, and other Democratic lawmakers when DeRosa admitted to dodging their calls for nursing home data out of fear it would be used by President Donald Trump against the Cuomo administration. He said Hochul could administratively ensure compliance with FOIL requests "in real time" rather than "stonewalling us...something Cuomo was notorious for with the press and legislative body."

Hochul can also enact changes to the FOIL statute that could strengthen enforcement and give the request process more teeth. One bill in the State Legislature would require an agency to provide a "particularized and specific justification" when denying a FOIL request, something transparency advocates say would help block frivolous exemptions to the law. Cuomo vetoed that bill in 2019, but the Legislature reintroduced and passed it again earlier this year. It awaits Hochul's signature.

"I think the FOIL statute is pretty good. You just have to follow it and the Cuomo administration was not following it," Senator Krueger told Gotham Gazette. Instead, extensive delays and refusals regularly "require[d] us to go to court for basic FOIL-able information," she said.

In her inaugural address, Hochul promised to fix that status quo. "I will direct State entities to review their compliance with state transparency laws, and provide a public report on their findings," she said. "I have instructed my counsel to come up with an expedited process to fulfill all FOIL requests as fast as possible—and post completed requests publicly online." Two weeks later, good government groups issued the September 7 letter for the release of the missing covid datasets.

Hochul's office would not provide a status update on these changes to Gotham Gazette or elaborate on what her commitments will entail. But on September 20, the governor's office issued a memo, first reported by the Buffalo News, to agency heads to review their transparency "policies and practices." The memo directed agencies to submit plans for improving transparency by October 20, including FOIL response times, and "proactively posting frequently requested information or completed requests online."

None of those measures would address another long-standing cause for transparency advocates: extending the full coverage of FOIL to the state Legislature. While the Legislature is subject to some FOIL disclosure -- and the Assembly has adopted internal rules to increase the release of information -- the requirements of the law are not as expansive as they are for state and local agencies.

Oversight Powers and Public Authorities
One of the hallmarks of the Cuomo administration was consolidating under the executive branch the separate powers of state government -- namely those of the state Legislature, state comptroller, public authorities and government watchdogs like JCOPE and the inspector general. He also exploited the powers the governor's office already had.

The most powerful tool he wielded in this regard was the state budget. Since the early 20th century, the New York State Constitution has ensured the proposed budget, unlike typical legislation, originates with the governor. Over the years the courts have strengthened the office's standing in budget negotiations.

The most recent example is a series of lawsuits, decided in 2004, between former Governor George Pataki and the state Assembly under Silver. The cases limited the Legislature's ability to alter spending and conditions set in appropriation bills. They also allowed the governor to include certain language that did not relate directly to budget matters. That has been used by governors, particularly Cuomo, to pack the budget with policy that goes beyond state spending.

The practice has created, in effect, two legislative sessions, according to Kaehny, the good government advocate. "There is kind of the varsity level one, which is the budget, and the big policy changes that go into that. And then there is the JV session that comes afterwards after the budget deal is done, when you have less important bills," he said.

According to Senator Biaggi, the state constitution, and the fact that many of the appropriation bills are negotiated at the last minute before the April 1 fiscal year deadline, means legislators often have to decide between forcing a government shutdown or deferring to the governor's proposal.

"The way to deal with this is to allow for the Legislature to have the same kind of power as the executive to say, 'no we're going to make this change and it's not going to reset the whole entire negotiating process,'" she said.

Biaggi and Assembly Member Dick Gottfried, a Manhattan Democrat, sponsor an amendment to even out that balance by allowing the Legislature to "modify and substitute" budget language rather than simply "striking" or adjusting existing proposed appropriations, among other provisions.

Biaggi said the Cuomo administration indicated to lawmakers that voting on the amendment, which remains in committee, would amount to "an act of war." She hopes Hochul or a future governor would be more supportive of it. The amendment doesn't address the governor's ability to include policy matters in the budget, but "when it comes to this issue, the most important thing is that the Legislature and the executive have equal bargaining power," she said.

Hochul will have limited opportunity to pursue legislation outside the budget before she faces a potential primary challenger in June, Kaehny noted. "She has barely any time to do anything so her budget is going to be her main product," he said. The governor’s executive budget plan is due in January.

Avoiding 'acts of war' with Cuomo was in many ways the state of play in Albany. It extended from the budget to the Legislature's power to hold oversight hearings over state agencies, according to Assembly Member Kim.

"There's been kind of a soft agreement to play nicely under Cuomo's administration, fear that members would be punished if they crossed the line with the executive office," said Kim. "I think Kathy Hochul can immediately send the right message that transparency is about holding state government agencies accountable and they should be completely cooperative with our hearings." Kim was among those to expose Cuomo’s notorious bullying after he said he received a threatening phone call from the then-governor earlier this year.

Cuomo also used his broad budget powers to remove a key piece of oversight once held by the state comptroller to review state contracts before they begin. Good government groups have been pushing to restore that power for years. In July, Cuomo extended the comptroller's preclearance exemption to programs to combat gun violence when he signed executive order 211, declaring a state of emergency in the wake of numerous shootings.

"No new contracts should be entered into by Governor Cuomo or Budget Director Robert Mujica without Comptroller review regardless of any prior exceptions," said good government groups in a joint statement in August.

That oversight power is one of a handful of tools advocates say is needed to ensure economic development projects like Cuomo's "Buffalo Billion" are not misused. In the case of the Buffalo Billion -- a billion-dollar-plus initiative to expand nanotechnology manufacturing in western New York and revitalize the state’s second biggest city -- charges of bid-rigging and bribery landed Alain Kaloyeros, the CEO of SUNY Polytechnic Institute, and Joseph Percoco, a top Cuomo aide, in prison.

The state funding came through the Empire State Development Corporation and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, or NYSERDA, two public authorities whose members are appointed largely by the governor. State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, some legislators, and good government groups have said the convoluted funding and contracting structure of the entities made them far too unaccountable to public oversight. It's part of what they say enabled some of the corruption Kaloyeros, Percoco, and others were convicted of.

"If you look at the chain of accountability it starts with the Legislature writing blank checks" to Empire State Development, Kaehny said, which then funneled the money through SUNY-controlled nonprofits. The comptroller's preclearance powers over SUNY contracts, which were removed in Cuomo's first budget in 2011, would have been the canary in the corruption coal mine, he said, but legislative oversight was "really supposed to be the first line of defense."

Even with the laws in place, Kaehny warned, Albany -- including the Legislature and comptroller -- has a fiefdom culture of acquiescence to power that goes beyond Cuomo. "There's a tacit agreement that you'll stay out of my business and I'll stay out of your business," he said.

While some of the comptroller's oversight power was restored in a pre-pandemic 2020 agreement between Cuomo and DiNapoli, it may be terminated with ten days notice. "In the long-term, contract oversight provisions such as these should be embodied in law," said Matthew Ryan, a spokesperson for DiNapoli.

Ryan warned that state budgets "routinely" contained measures "allowing state spending without standard protections," like the comptroller's preclearance power. The pandemic budgets have been rife with them: "Most recently, the State Fiscal Year 2021-22 Enacted State Budget included several new provisions authorizing substantial COVID-related (or public health emergency-related) state spending without such protections," Ryan said.

Another opaque authority where Cuomo's influence has been criticized is the massive Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) -- responsible for public transit in the greater New York City area and employs over 70,000 people. Reformers want to see Hochul and her predecessors appoint competent and independent people to run the MTA (and other authorities). To do that, they would need to operate without political interference and under clear standards of accountability. Hochul has pledged just that, saying she will "professionalize" boards through her appointments and not interfere.

"One of the reasons why it is hard to get additional funding for necessary infrastructure projects for the MTA or for airports or bridges is because people question whether the money is being well spent and who is overseeing it," said Assembly Member Carroll.

"It's our job to pass laws that make sure that the management and the accounting of the MTA is transparent and...there's accountability when there are problems," he added. Carroll sponsored two bills with Senator Leroy Comrie, a Queens Democrat, to require the MTA to publish information in open data format -- one that is easily downloadable and searchable -- and to bring New York City subways and buses under municipal control. The data bill has passed both chambers and could be signed by Hochul this year. The municipal control bill remains in committee.

"If we allow for business as usual, which is the MTA as a black box, that will be a failure of leadership on Governor Hochul's part but also on the legislature's part," Carroll said.

"There was a real push from the second floor not to meddle with the MTA and I think that's because Governor Cuomo and his folks on the board wanted to control everything," he added.

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by Ethan Geringer-Sameth, reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

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State Senate Examines Board of Elections at Oversight Hearing


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State Senate elections hearing (photo: @CitizensUnionNY)


The State Senate analyzed the execution of the June primary elections in a major hearing Tuesday that included testimony from election administrators for New York City and State, as well as counties, and election reform experts. The lawmakers not only examined how elections were run, but the systems and structures that undergirded their performance -- and, as many said, enabled their failures. 

Tuesday's event was unusual in that it served as the culmination of a series of public hearings held around the state this summer by the Senate elections committee, which gathered feedback on the voting experience from average voters. Those hearings highlighted and exposed a number of problems that lawmakers hoped to address Tuesday and in subsequent legislation, according to committee chair Zellnor Myrie.

"Most New Yorkers vote without incident and most board of elections employees work in good faith, work tirelessly, and work to administer a clean and helpful election," said Myrie, a Brooklyn Democrat in his third year in office. "But if I told you that most of the levers on an elevator were sound...or that most of the controls on a train were working you'd say, 'thank you,' and find another mode of transport."

Despite (or perhaps shored up by) the summer tour, Tuesday's hearing focused on topics advocates have been raising for years and, in some cases decades. They include the Board of Elections' structure, widely seen as enabling inaction and diffusing accountability. The senators and election administrators also discussed the slew of voting changes made in recent years and a growing push to "professionalize" the boards of elections.

New York City, which contains roughly 40% of the state's registered voters and is known to have especially troubled election administration, was a big focus. Topics of interest included the new ranked-choice voting system, poll site staffing and locations, and the age-old problem of long lines at the polls. The city Board of Elections representatives who testified defended their agency and complained about the criticism they frequently receive.

There was also a concerted push by good government advocates for the New York City Council, which is responsible for confirming commissioners of the city BOE, to take a more active role in vetting and shedding light on the commissioners. (The Council is expected to vote through a new Democratic Manhattan commissioner on Thursday with little public vetting of the nominee put forward by the county party.)

Boards of Elections’ Bipartisan Structure
Good government groups and many elections experts have for years said the bipartisan structure of elections boards, in which commissioners are chosen evenly from the two major parties, is anachronistic and convoluted. 

A progressive era reform, in place since the turn of the last century, the partisan split was intended to place checks on the parties, so that no single one controlled the levers of voting. Elections advocates largely agree that the split now diminishes an emphasis on expertise and professionalism.

"Not even basic management skills are necessary criteria for selection or retention as a commissioner, much less familiarity with election administration," said Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause New York, in testimony submitted to the committee.

The bipartisan divide also leads to gridlock, which can cripple elections with inefficiency -- wasted time and tax dollars that could go toward election preparation. "The fact that there are an even number of commissioners, split between Democrats and Republicans is a further complicating factor, as the lawsuit filed in 2020 by 3 Democratic Election Commissioners against their own Boards to effect a desperately needed extension of early voting hours illustrates," Lerner said.

"This Tammany Hall era arrangement is not in step with the needs of voters today," wrote good government group Citizens Union, in testimony. Instead, the group is calling on legislators to pass an amendment to replace the Board of Elections system with an elected Secretary of State with limitations on their future participation in politics.

Election administrators from the State Board of Elections and county boards defended the make-up, which they said helps ensure faith in the outcomes. "Our bipartisan system delivers a result that is believed on all sides because there are representatives from the two major parties involved in every decision that we make," said Dustin Czarny, a Democratic commissioner from Onondaga County.

Peter Kosinski, the Republican co-chair of the State Board, loosely compared the "checks and balance" of the bipartisan structure to the separation of powers in the American republic, calling it "a basic tenet of our government and it is reflected in our boards of elections."

Douglas Kellner, the Democratic co-chair, supported the bipartisan structure but said New York City's model of ten commissioners (two per borough) -- as opposed to the typical two in most county boards -- was unwieldy and should be changed. "I strongly urge that the time has come to abolish the ten-commissioner model that separates New York City from the rest of the state and go to the model of two commissioners who work full-time and who have full responsibility and accountability for the operation of the agencies," Kellner said.

Patronage and Professionalization
Many have criticized the partisan structure for the boards' lack of professionalism, which leads to blunders like misinformation from poll workers and chaotic poll sites. 

"At the city board the problem is that the senior management positions are not necessarily chosen on the basis of professionalism because of the need to provide patronage to each of the borough parties," said Kellner. "That's one place where changing the structure of the board would make a big difference."

But he said that same patronage helps ensure well-run elections at the poll-site level, where administrators interact with voters.

Kellner added: "I think it is important to retain one of the best aspects of the bipartisan 'patronage' system, which is [to] keep local district leaders involved in the inspector appointment process," Kellner said. "Where the local district leaders and the local clubs have been involved are where the best run poll sites have been. The biggest problems come when the district leaders don't care about running elections and that has to default to the board of elections to fill that gap."

Kosinski defended the competency of election workers throughout the state. But the sheer quantity of election hires needed each year to run elections makes training workers difficult, he said.

"We hire tens of thousands of people every year to help with the election process," he said. "Is it difficult to train those people and to find those people? Yes it is, that's just a fact because of the number of people that you have to bring in on any election day."

Michael Ryan, the executive director of the New York City Board of Elections, said most employees begin as poll workers and "graduate up." Less than 40% of poll workers are referred through the Democratic and Republican parties, he told the committee.

But that doesn't mean they have professional qualifications. Most are "regular neighbors and friends and maybe they get involved in the political process afterwards," he said, adding: "outside of technical jobs and a few other positions we don't do job postings but I think that's the normal way things get done in a lot of the government processes."

Ryan blamed one of the most high profile snafus of the primaries -- the inaccurate reporting of preliminary ranked-choice voting data -- on a lack of protocols for releasing vote data between the typical "unofficial election night results" and the certification of vote totals.

Had they avoided releasing preliminary ranked-choice tabulations, Ryan said, "I can unequivocally say that never would have happened because prior to certification the borough chiefs and deputies have to complete a discrepancy report."

"We're going to have to circle back amongst ourselves and the commissioners to determine whether or not it makes sense to do any preliminary release of data before the certification and if it does make sense...then we have to develop a set of protocols similar to the protocols that we engage in for certification," he added.

A bill in committee in the state Legislature, sponsored by Senator Liz Krueger, a Manhattan Democrat, and Assembly Member Nily Rozic, a Queens Democrat, would require New York City elections commissioners to have certain professional qualifications. It would create co-executive directors and delineate their powers and that of the commissioners, among other provisions. While conceptually in line with the widely supported spirit of professionalization, good government groups have not universally supported the legislation.

City Council Involvement
While Ryan and Deputy Executive Director Dawn Sandow faced the Senate committee's questions -- along with commissioners from the State and several county boards -- the commissioners of the city Board of Elections did not. In fact, they are almost never to be found at oversight hearings conducted by the State Legislature or New York City Council.

That makes holding the New York City Board of Elections accountable for its decisions, and errors, almost impossible, advocates say. There are mechanisms for the governor to remove commissioners acting badly, and the New York City Council has the ability to reject commissioners during confirmation -- but it almost never happens. Instead the confirmation process in New York City is a perfunctory affair in which the Council -- whose members are often elected with major help from party machinery -- appoints commissioners based on selections from party bosses in the five boroughs.

On Tuesday, a coalition of good government groups issued a letter to Council Speaker Corey Johnson, Majority Leader Laurie Cumbo, and Council Member Karen Koslowitz, the chair of the committee on Rules, Privileges, and Elections, calling on them to "hold a public confirmation hearing" for Jenny Low, who was recently nominated to the BOE by the Manhattan Democratic and "vet the nominee’s experience and fitness to administer elections."

"Low’s experience could be relevant, but the Council must make a real effort to inspect her qualifications and whether she is suitable for the position," wrote the groups, including Citizens Union, Common Cause, the New York Public Interest Research Group, and Reinvent Albany. The letter called for transparency in the confirmation process, including making votes public, and publishing Low's resume. The groups also called for the Council to ask Low to commit to certain reforms like "allowing the Board’s Executive Director to unilaterally hire and fire employees, and publicly posting all open job positions," as it has done in previous confirmations.

Public Advocate Jumaane Williams made a similar push in his testimony before the Senate committee Tuesday: "Our Office is encouraging the incoming New York City Council to exercise more discretion when voting on BOE appointees to ensure that staffing is of the highest possible quality," he wrote.

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

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Debate Over Reform and Safety in Manhattan District Attorney General Election


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Alvin Bragg, left, & Thomas Kenniff


With Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. retiring after 12 years leading one of the most high-profile prosecutorial offices in the country, Alvin Bragg emerged from a crowded, competitive, expensive, and closely-watched Democratic primary and is now in the midst of a one-on-one general election. Bragg, a progressive former prosecutor and top deputy New York Attorney General, competing with Republican nominee Thomas Kenniff, a former military judge and criminal defense attorney.

The two candidates have drastically different visions for criminal justice and running the office as the top state-level prosecutor in Manhattan. With Democrats outnumbering Republicans more than eight-to-one in Manhattan, Bragg is heavily favored to win the general election, which culminates on Election Day, November 2, but Kenniff is seeking to make the race competitive, largely by portraying Bragg as soft on crime. No Republican has held the office since Thomas Dewey in 1941.

The Manhattan District Attorney oversees an office with a $146 million budget and 1,185 employees, including more than 500 attorneys and many other investigators. Vance, a three-term Democrat, has blended a number of progressive reforms with a fairly traditional view of running the prosecutor’s office.

Vance declined to seek another term while facing significant criticism that his office mishandled several major investigations, including into the Trump family’s business dealings and a sexual assault case against now-convicted rapist and former Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. People to Vance’s right believe he’s retreated too much from tougher prosecution of low- and mid-level offenses while criminal justice reform advocates have long accused him of over-prosecuting low-income New Yorkers of color while looking the other way in cases involving richer, white defendants and doing too little to crack down on police abuses.  

Bragg, who would be the first Black district attorney representing the 1.6 million residents of Manhattan (as well as many millions more who work, own businesses, or visit in the borough), is promising to go much further than Vance when it comes to reducing racial and economic biases in the criminal justice system. He is also pledging to take less punitive approaches to many crimes, instead using different approaches to reduce incarceration and its impacts and create more long-lasting safety.

Kenniff, who is white, characterizes himself as a candidate with a “commonsense approach to prosecuting crime” and promises to be  “a compassionate DA, who will innovate our system without abandoning law & order.”

According to the latest Census redistricting data from 2019, about 46.8% of Manhattan residents were white, 23.7% Hispanic, 12.9% Asian, and 11.7% Black. 

The borough is also overwhelmingly Democratic. As of February 21, 2021, there were 871,969 registered Democrats and 107,920 registered Republicans in Manhattan; with another 243,007 registered voters, often called “independents,” who were unaffiliated with any political party.

The next Manhattan District Attorney faces a complicated law and order landscape in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, recent increases in gun violence, and ongoing calls for rethinking criminal justice.

As shootings and murders increased dramatically in 2020 and much of 2021 until recent drops compared to last year, crime and public safety have taken a front seat for a concerned public. There have also been added worries about broader street disorder and subway safety, with notable responses at different levels of government that appear to be having some impact in terms of subway crime rates, gun arrests, and more.

The likely next mayor, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, a Democrat, won the primary nomination pledging to reverse those trends while ensuring more fair and racially equitable policing and criminal justice policies. Bragg made similar promises in his successful primary, though he has been further to Adams’ left on reform and expressed some reservations about some of the language the mayoral frontrunner has used, even as the two have pledged to work well together.

Vance’s successor will also assume responsibility for the office’s case against the Trump Organization; while the organization and CFO Allen Weisselberg have been indicted on several tax fraud charges, former President Donald Trump has not faced charges from Vance’s office. That could change as the probe progresses and key decisions could be up to the next DA.

Alvin Bragg
Bragg, who was recently the ​​chief deputy attorney general for New York State, won the Democratic primary campaigning as a progressive reformer against a crowded field that included candidates both to his left and right. He was generally viewed (and rated by some reformers) as among the more reform-minded candidates in the eight-candidate field, but more moderate than three competitors pledging massive decarceral overhauls of the office and its practices.

“[F]airness and safety go hand in hand,” he said in a phone interview, professing policies that he believes will balance the two, transform the culture of the DA’s office, and focus on justice rather than punishment. 

Bragg, a civil rights lawyer and New York Law School professor, has a long list of priorities and has outlined nearly a dozen changes, including organizational, that he will undertake on his first day in office. They include creating a new Police Integrity Unit, appointing a public defender as executive DA for policy, replacing the Conviction Integrity Unit with a “Free the Wrongfully Convicted Unit,” boosting resources for the hate crimes unit, and replacing the sex crimes unit with one that is survivor-centered and trauma-informed, among others. 

He has pledged to “shrink the system,” reducing prosecutions of low-level offenses such as fare-beating and resisting arrest. And he promised to rely on data to inform policy decisions, including where it points to racial disparities in prosecutions. 

“Fundamentally this is a management job, overseeing a large office that got things done,” Bragg said. “So voters should be thinking about who should be entrusted with fairness and safety, who has done it before, and who has done this work in the courtroom.” 

The Harlem-born-and-raised Bragg drew on his own personal experiences with gun violence – pointing to six incidents where has had a gun pointed at him, including three times by police officers – as he insisted that it will be a priority for his office. He has pledged not to charge every case of illegal gun possession, instead looking in some cases to alternatives to prosecution, which has earned him criticism from his opponent and those on the right but praise from many Democrats.  

Bragg argued that there exists a “false dichotomy” that reform comes at the cost of public safety, as his opponent and others have suggested. It is one way his rhetoric resembles that of Adams, who is likely to become only the second Black mayor of New York City. 

But in key ways, Bragg has taken positions at odds with his fellow Democrat. Adams has called for reinstating a version of the NYPD’s plainclothes “anti-crime” unit, which was disbanded last year because it was disproportionately the source of complaints of abusive policing in the city. Adams has also pushed for overhauling a set of bail reforms passed by the state Legislature (and subsequently somewhat rolled back) that went into effect at the start of 2020. Bragg has opposed both ideas, and has a lengthy plan for reducing pretrial detention. He is also a supporter of the Less is More Act, signed into law by Governor Kathy Hochul on Friday, which will restrict the reincarceration of people on parole for technical violations.

Hochul signed the bill into law in part citing dire conditions on Rikers Island, where the incarcerated population has ballooned to over 6,000 after having dropped to a many-decades low under 4,000 in the spring of 2020. About a three-tenths to a third of those locked up in city jails have been or are being prosecuted by Vance’s office.

Though district attorneys often insist they only enforce the law and do not create it, a prominent voice in legislation at the state level is the District Attorney’s Association of the State of New York (DAASNY) and individual prosecutorial offices can and often do exercise massive discretion in how they enforce the law, what alternatives-to-incarceration programs they support, and more.

Advocates for criminal justice reform have often critiqued DAASNY as a roadblock to progressive reforms, a view that Bragg shares. “There’s no doubt about it. The Association has been an impediment to change. I think that is an objective truth,” he said. But he said he plans to become a member to push for change from within and to represent the interests of Manhattan. “Being in the room is necessary,” he said. 

On prospectively inheriting the Trump case, Bragg has been careful to make any presumptions and has said he will “follow the facts, wherever they go,” as he has done throughout his long career as a prosecutor. He already has experience investigating Trump. In 2018, at the attorney general’s office, he was part of the team that sued the Trump Foundation for improper use of charitable assets, leading to the foundation’s dissolution. 

Thomas Kenniff
Kenniff, an Iraq war veteran, has had a long career as a prosecutor, Judge Advocate General, and now as a defense attorney who co-founded his own practice. He is also a major in the Army National Guard and was called to active duty last year to serve as legal officer at the federal mass vaccination site at the Javits Center in Manhattan. 

He said his call to arms in this election was prompted by the massive spike in violent crime last year. “Like so many people, I’m very disenchanted with the state of the city and the state of crime in the city,” he said in a phone interview. 

Though there was a national trend of increasing crime last year in the wake of the pandemic and resulting mass unemployment and dislocation, Kenniff instead attributes it to “the progressive criminal justice agenda” that has been instituted in recent years in New York. “I think that there is much blame to go around. I think that it is first and foremost an indictment of our legislature,” he said, referring especially to bail reform. 

Kenniff specifically discounts the pandemic as the trigger for increasing crime. “I think it's counterintuitive to suggest that it is,” he said, arguing that the accompanying citywide partial lockdown, exodus of some residents, reduced tourism, and portion of the commuting population that remained at home should have in fact led to lower crime rates. “I don't see any logic in trying to pin the blame for this on covid,” he said.

Kenniff insists he is not an ideologue, but rather a “common sense” candidate. His platform includes tough-on-crime policies – including a promise to aggressively prosecute illegal gun possession and gun-related violence – but also reforms to prosecutorial practices. While he has said he will “fairly” prosecute lower-level offenses, including graffiti and fare evasion, he has also promised to support diversion practices that focus on rehabilitative justice.

He criticized the Legislature’s criminal justice reforms of 2019 and 2020, specifically reforms to the discovery law, giving defendants and their attorneys much more information earlier in the process, but not because he opposed the reform but because he said it overwhelmed local prosecutors who did not receive the requisite funding for its implementation. He also pushed for greater funding for public defenders “because frankly, it’s a lot of work for them.”

Kenniff has promised other reforms. He has said he will hold police officers accountable for abuse of power, though he has not offered specifics. He wants to reduce the use of disproportionate charging decisions to pressure defendants into plea bargains. He wants to establish a rehabilitation program that will allow for the early sealing of criminal convictions and remove the stigma of criminal records – though he notes it differs greatly from the Clean Slate Act currently before the Legislature. He wants diversion for low-level drug offenses and to focus on traffickers. And he wants to expand the number of offenses eligible to be referred to mental health treatment courts and provide for mental health professionals in court at arraignments. 

But Kenniff has largely crafted his public message of the campaign around taking a harder line. In press releases and on social media, he regularly criticizes the “radical policies” of the “far left,” which he believes are causing “mayhem” and “unchecked violence” in the streets of New York City.

“A lot of politicians are doing what they do best - shifting the blame and avoiding accountability. My opponent, Alvin Bragg, goes silent and ignores the violence,” he said in an August 23 statement, after a weekend that saw 18 shootings in the city (though Bragg does regularly discuss gun violence). “All because this doesn't fit their narrative. Because for them, it's not about what's actually good for the people. It's about what will get them headlines and dollars.”

Kenniff said his platform is largely similar to previous Manhattan District Attorneys who are Democrats, including Vance and his predecessor, Robert Morgenthau, who served in the office for 34 years. “A lot of my platform, had they been running on it, they might even have been accused of being too liberal,” he said.

But in terms of this election, the question is in large part the electorate, which has been moving left, even in Manhattan where there are still pockets of more conservative voters, including Democrats. Kenniff said concerns for public safety aren’t a partisan issue, and he is relying on that message as he campaigns. “[New Yorkers] are absolutely fed up with crime in the city, Democrats as much as Republicans, and they are not on board with a progressive district attorney like Alvin Bragg that will bring the experiments that we've seen in San Francisco, Detroit, Philadelphia here to New York,” he said.

Where Bragg has differences with Adams, Kenniff shares common ground. He too wants to see the citywide NYPD plainclothes unit back on the street and wants tougher bail laws back in place. “We have divested judges of the ability to take people that are recidivist offenders, demonstrably dangerous, of our streets, and we're forcing this revolving door system of justice where the courts have no choice but to place these individuals back on the street to commit more crime,” he said. 

If victorious, Kenniff would join DAASNY, even if he does not completely agree with its agenda. “I've always been a very independent thinker. I don't get hung up on labels like Democrat, Republican,” he said, noting that he has not received much monetary support from the local, state, or national Republican parties. The Manhattan GOP has, however, endorsed him and undertaken some efforts to boost his campaign and help him raise funds.

Kenniff has raised limited funds for a competitive campaign. As of July 15, he had only pulled in about $55,500 and spent about $37,800. In comparison, Bragg had raised about $2.75 million over the course of the campaign as of July 15, and had spent about $2.5 million, largely in winning the primary, though he was widely outspent by the second-place finisher, Tali Farhadian Weinstein, who ran a more moderate campaign. Bragg had just about $237,000 in cash on hand as of the July 15 filing.

Like Bragg, Kenniff also did not want to comment on the Trump organization investigation. “I’ll handle it like I handle any other case,” he said. 

Asked if he was a supporter of the former president, he said, “I really have no public opinion on that. Yeah, I don't think it's relevant to this. What I can say is that I have absolutely no connections, zero, to either former President Trump or any former president for that matter.”

***
by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

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‘An Amazing Transition’: Andrea Stewart-Cousins on the New Era in State Politics and What’s Next


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Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (photo: NY Senate Media Services)


Amid major upheaval in state government and ongoing pandemic-era crises in New York, State Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins is embracing a sense of stability and an opportunity for more collaboration among political leaders.

During a recent appearance on the Max Politics podcast from Gotham Gazette, Stewart-Cousins, a Democrat from Westchester who has led the Senate since 2019, discussed the early stages of Governor Kathy Hochul’s tenure, her relationship with former Governor Andrew Cuomo, key issues facing state government and New Yorkers, and upcoming legislative priorities.

“It’s always easier when everyone sees the same reality,” Stewart-Cousins, a Westchester Democrat, told host Ben Max. “We’re all rowing in the same direction. I think the response to extending the eviction moratorium is really emblematic of how important that is.”

“It was clear that we needed to do something and we needed to be on the same page to do it,” Stewart-Cousins said of one of Hochul’s first acts as governor. “It was very clear that we had to extend the eviction moratorium.” State leaders also recognized the need to get rental relief money out faster to tenants and landlords, and moved additional tweaks to the emergency program for doing so, she said.

“We were able to make corrections, we were able to do important things and we have until next year,” Stewart-Cousins said about addressing the moratorium and the relief fund for renters and landlords. “Hopefully we will be in a better position in many, many ways so that people will be able to get on with their lives with some sense of security.” 

Though she had a difficult relationship with Cuomo, Stewart-Cousins was reserved in her comments when asked about him, calling it a “character-building” exercise. She was more forward-looking, expressing optimism about the new era that has dawned under Hochul, a Democrat, and the two Democratic supermajorities in the Legislature, and getting back to the business of governing after many months where Cuomo’s scandals hung over everything.

“It certainly has been an amazing transition,” Stewart-Cousins told Max when asked about the shift from Cuomo to Hochul. She said that she and Hochul haven’t been friends, per se, but “certainly had a good relationship before,” and that Hochul consistently reached out, visited Stewart-Cousins’ district, and showed herself to be a “partner in government” who was “honest and earnest” and committed to “a collaborative government.”

“I am happy that at this point, the governor is fully immersed in fighting covid, building the economy, and obviously with the tragic flooding we’ve had as a result of Ida,” she said of Hochul and lawmakers. “We’ve had real issues and she is singularly focused on that. I think it bodes well for the future and our recovery.”

[Listen to the full conversation: Max Politics Podcast: Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins on the New Era in State Government & Upcoming Priorities]

When asked about any advice she may have given Hochul, Stewart-Cousins said she did not feel the need to offer advice to the newly-appointed governor as they have known each other a long time and had good communication, and she expects them to be open with each other throughout. She also noted that she, Hochul, and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie all took unprecedented paths to respectively become the first female Senate majority leader and governor and first Black Assembly speaker. 

“I think for both of us, we are women in rarified air for women,” said Stewart-Cousins of herself and Hochul. “We’re all people who have not had predictable journeys to put us into these places, so I believe that in our relationship, we’ve always been honest with each other and so there was no advice that I had to give her because she knows that I will say what I believe and express very clearly what I think our priorities should be.” 

Asked about how Hochul should handle some of Cuomo’s top appointees who still hold leadership positions in state government, Stewart-Cousins deferred to Hochul, who has pledged a full review of personnel over her first 45 days.

“I know that she has made it very clear that people who appeared in that report and had an active role in creating some of what we unfortunately experienced have no place in her administration,” she said. “I think she’s taking the time that she’s taking in order to determine whether their abilities are suitable to the tasks at hand,” she said of several top officials Max named, including SUNY Chancellor Jim Malatras, the state health commissioner, Dr. Howard Zucker, and budget director Robert Mujica.

Asked about possible state ethics reforms in the wake of Cuomo’s resignation, Stewart-Cousins stressed that those changes continue to be a priority for her majority, as they have been in recent years. She said improving government transparency and ethics has been “our brand.”

“We’ve been very, very clear what we feel the government should look like in terms of transparency, in terms of really living up to the highest ethical standards,” said Stewart-Cousins. “We’re very much interested in making sure that people trust the government and I believe our behavior around these issues will make a difference.” 

She stopped short when asked how she could get the Assembly to agree to some of the same reforms that the Senate has passed, including major changes to the Joint Commission on Public Ethics, or JCOPE, telling Max to ask Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie when he appears on the show.

“Whether it’s sexual harassment, toxic workplaces, there’s always a conversation about how to make sure that people are respected in the workplace, that they’re protected in the work place, that they know exactly what to do and where to go should they feel that this is not happening for them,” Stewart-Cousins said when asked about potential changes to state laws in light of Cuomo’s transgressions. “ I can assure you that we will continue to look at that and any other appropriate legislation that continues to underscore that we value people’s work, we value a workplace that allows you to continue to do your best work...When you work, regardless of who you are, you will be protected.”

Another piece of legislation the Senate has passed but that has not moved in the Assembly is one that would cover all employees of state elected officials under the Human Rights Law, a top ask of reformers seeking to improve the state’s sexual harassment protections for government workers.

Asked what priorities she and her Senate majority have around climate and resiliency policy in the wake of the death and destruction from Hurricane Ida, Stewart-Cousins said her conference is considering next steps and promoted the $3 billion environmental bond act that will be on the fall ballot this year for voters to approve or disapprove. She also acknowledged the need for a long-term plan to fortify infrastructure and mitigate flooding. 

“I’m happy that at a federal level, we have partners that are also willing to talk about climate change,” Stewart-Cousins added. “I am hoping that we will have partners in terms of resources, in terms of commitment because, frankly, if we can’t save the planet, then none of this other stuff matters.” 

[Listen to the full conversation: Max Politics Podcast: Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins on the New Era in State Government & Upcoming Priorities]

***
by Alexander Puri, Gotham Gazette

Read more by this writer.

Ben Max contributed to this story.

Max Politics Podcast: Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins on the New Era in State Government and Upcoming Priorities


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Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (photo: NYS Senate Media Services)


September 8, 2021 - Max Politics Podcast: Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins on the New Era in State Government

New York State Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, a Democrat from Westchester, joined the show to discuss the new era in state government, the transition from Governor Andrew Cuomo to Governor Kathy Hochul, her conference's upcoming priorities, and a variety of key issues in state government and New York politics.

Listen to the conversation and let us know what you think, on Twitter @TweetBenMax. You can listen to the show through the embedded audio below or download the episode wherever you get your podcasts at Max Politics.

Read more: Max Politics Podcast: Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins on the New Era in State...



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