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The 20 Most-Read Op-Eds Published by Gotham Gazette in 2020


town hall hands up

New Yorkers with a lot to say (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)


Gotham Gazette publishes a wide range of guest op-ed columns by a diverse set of voices. Below are the 20 most-read op-eds published by Gotham Gazette in 2020. Please note that the opinions expressed in the guest columns are those of the authors and not of Gotham Gazette, any of its staff, affiliates or partners.

1. Rebuild Hospital Capacity in Queens Before It's Too Late, Again - by Lynn Schulman

2. Supporting Law Enforcement and Reforming the NYPD are Not Mutually Exclusive — I Know From Experience - by Ashley Waters

3. What Those Targeting the SHSAT Don’t Really Understand About the Specialized High School Picture - by Amir Davis

4. Without Federal Aid, MTA Bloodbath Will Be Even Worse Than Its ‘Doomsday’ Plan - by Rachael Fauss

5. Now More Than Ever, New York City Needs Leaders to Welcome Jobs - by Carol Kellermann

6. Advice for the Next Mayor from a Veteran of the City Hall Trenches - by Eric Phillips

7. Cuomo’s Density Dodge: Pandemics Aren’t Anti-City, Failure to Act Early Is - by Aaron Carr

8. New York Must Not Exacerbate Disparities Again: Key Considerations for Equity in Covid Vaccination - by Dr. Uché Blackstock & Mark Levine

9. The Bronx to SoHo: Pull Your Weight in Addressing the City's Housing and Segregation Crises - by John Sanchez

10. New York’s Wrongly Open Skies - by Julia Vitullo-Martin

11. To Reopen Schools, The Mayor Needs Smaller Classes - Here’s $570 Million in Potential Department of Education Savings to Get Him Started - by Leonie Haimson

12. Not a Novel Crisis at CUNY - by Matt Brim

13. Who Traffic Enforcement Agents Really Are, and Why They Must Remain Part of the NYPD - by Bob Master & Rebecca Greene

14. Real Criminal Justice Reform Requires Standing Up to Fear-Mongering - by Justine Olderman, Lisa Schreibersdorf, Tina Luongo, Stan German & Matt Knecht

15. The Unexpected Way to Make Your Vote Actually Matter in New York This Presidential Election - by Ilya Schwartzburg

16. New York City Needs a Resiliency Plan that Creates Green Jobs for New Yorkers - by Shaun Donovan

17. ‘Real’ Unemployment in New York City is as High as 25%, with 1 Million Out of Labor Force Due to Pandemic - by Jim Brennan

18. Desperate Acts of Vandalism Won’t Help Homeless People or Stop Me from Representing My Clients - by Randy Mastro

19. When the School Segregationist Dog Whistle Becomes a Bullhorn - by Rigodis Appling, Diana Nevins, Olayemi Olurin & Jason Wu

20. Our Opportunity to End Solitary Confinement in New York City Jails - by Keith Powers

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‘Forsaken Land:’ City and State Officials Mum on Covid Vaccination Plans for Incarcerated New Yorkers and Correction Officers


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Gov. Cuomo visits a prison, pre-pandemic (photo: Mike Groll/Governor's Office)


While New York continues to expand the circle of groups eligible to receive a COVID-19 vaccine, people living and working in correctional facilities are being left out of the equation, despite early commitments from the city's Health Department and the heightened risk of infection in those settings.

With a limited supply of the vaccine, public health officials at the state and city levels have been developing a plan to prioritize populations that are most exposed and most vulnerable to the virus, which has killed more than 36,000 New Yorkers. Tracking guidance from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), inoculations began earlier this month for high-risk city and state health-care providers with direct patient contact, and state health officials have been working with city agencies to create a phased distribution scheme for other populations as more doses become available.

Governor Andrew Cuomo and the state Department of Health have been mum on the position of prison and jail populations in the ordering, but city Health Commissioner Dave Chokshi told lawmakers at a recent New York City Council oversight hearing that congregate settings, including jails and homeless shelters, would be prioritized in the first phase of distribution, which he said could extend into January and February.

Groups representing various categories of essential and frontline workers, from social service providers to cab drivers, have been pushing to ensure that they will be next in line to receive the vaccine. On December 21, residents and staff in the state's nursing homes, a congregate setting ravaged by the virus, began receiving vaccines. On December 23, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced EMS workers with the city's fire department could receive vaccines at three inoculation locations the city had set up for them. This week urgent care employees and residents in addiction rehab facilities will begin receiving vaccines, Cuomo said Monday.

The state's original plan placed ICU, emergency department, and EMS workers, as well as at-risk residents in long-term care facilities in the first round of vaccinations, and first-responders like police, firefighters, and "those living in other congregate settings" in the second. Jails and prisons are not named specifically in the state's vaccine phases, leaving many to wonder where incarcerated people and correctional staff might fall. Officials have not provided any clear answers.

There is urgency "to somehow try to articulate their voice in what seems to be a forsaken land, and a pandemic-friendly environment no doubt," said Anthony Dixon, an advocate with the Parole Preparation Project and Release Aging People in Prison campaign (RAPP), in an interview with Gotham Gazette. Whether or not incarcerated New Yorkers who also fall into other high-risk categories, like those over age 75 and with comorbidities, will receive a vaccine in the first round is unclear.

"Black people's lives matter, not only in death but in life," said Dixon, who is formerly incarcerated. "It seems like the only time that phrase is used is when one of us dies. What about keeping us alive?"

At least 20 people have died from COVID-19 in state prisons since the outbreak in New York began, including two in one mid-December week, according to a spokesperson for the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision. That death count does not include people who have died in local jails, including the 11 facilities run by the New York City Department of Correction (DOC). Three people have died from the virus in DOC facilities, according to a spokesperson. There have been recent outbreaks at a number of facilities throughout the state.

"Throughout the pandemic, the Department has worked in consultation with the NYS Department of Health (DOH), following facts and science, as the entire incarcerated population was tested for COVID-19," wrote Thomas Mailey, a spokesperson for the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, which runs state prisons, in an email. "DOCCS is continuing to partner with DOH as part of the New York State COVID-19 Vaccination Program that was previously announced," he wrote. DOCCS has not responded to multiple requests for more detail on its vaccination planning.

At a December 4 oversight hearing, held jointly by the New York City Council committees on health and hospitals, Chokshi, the city health commissioner, said jails would be among the vaccine priority settings.

"Congregate settings beyond long-term care facilities have also been discussed at the federal level, in terms of the prioritization framework for phase one, and certainly the areas where there's greater risk. That includes prisons and jails, it includes homeless shelters, and certain other congregate settings, as well, will be part of the prioritization for phase one," Chokshi said at the time. (Phase one is broken down into three sub-phases, meaning a group's inclusion does not necessarily indicate it will receive vaccinations from the first tranche of doses.)

But since that time, preparations for other groups that had fallen under the state's latter phases to receive the vaccine -- like members of the NYPD -- are underway, while spokespeople for de Blasio and the city health department say they are awaiting further guidance from the CDC and the state on how to treat people behind bars and the guards who interact with them.

The latest CDC recommendations place high-risk non-health essential workers, including police officers and firefighters, in the second round of distribution. According to state budget director Robert Mujica, who is part of the team developing New York's vaccination plan, as of December 21 New York only had enough doses to inoculate a quarter of the roughly 2 million people who fall into the first category of eligible recipients -- "healthcare professionals, congregant care and nurses," he said at a press briefing with the governor.

Yet, members of the NYPD, an agency that has also suffered a significant number of casualties to the virus, may become eligible to receive vaccines this week, according to a memo recently obtained by the New York Post. The timeline leaves questions about when many other groups that have been designated top or high priorities will have access to the life-saving regimen.

A City Hall spokesperson said the police department may not be included in the first round of vaccinations, despite the memo, if the state does not approve it, the Post reported.

"When we have the prioritization for the next category then we’ll communicate that to the public and come up with a process for individuals to have access," Mujica said at a December 21 press briefing with the governor.

New York State has received approximately 550,000 doses of vaccines developed by Pfizer and Moderna. By Monday, over 140,000 had been administered statewide, according to the governor’s office.

"We're now talking about who's getting vaccinated, and let me be clear: there is no politics in the vaccination process," Cuomo said in a December 21 statement. "This is entirely done by medical professionals and our hospitals have already vaccinated more people than any state in the nation."

"There are so many people who need this vaccine. We are going to move very, very quickly to get that vaccine to everyone who needs it," de Blasio said at a December 23 press briefing.

Advocates say that incarcerated populations living in close quarters need to be expedited for vaccines, and that parole should be pursued more vigorously, especially for the system's aging population. A coalition of advocacy groups, has called on the governor "to ensure vaccine priority for all vulnerable people, including New Yorkers behind bars."

"While Governor Cuomo has condemned the federal government for ignoring communities of color in the national vaccine distribution plan, he must not ignore immigrant New Yorkers in ICE detention or incarcerated New Yorkers, who are disproportionately Black and Latinx," the coalition, which includes RAPP, Center for Community Alternatives, HALT Solitary Confinement, and the New York Civil Liberties Union, wrote in a statement.

Earlier this year, Cuomo ordered the release of people incarcerated for low-level non-violent convictions who were within three months of the end of their sentence, as well as those locked up for some low-level parole violations, and some pregnant and postpartum women. As of late November, roughly 3,100 people had been released under the orders. Working with local officials including district attorneys, de Blasio made a set of decisions related to those in city jails, allowing more than 1,600 to leave detention between March and April, many of whom were being held pre-trial. By November, however, the city jail census had grown by another 860.

Approximately 8,181 people incarcerated in state detention facilities are over the age of 50, according to DOCCS. A press release from RAPP, Center for Community Alternatives, and others states that over 4,000 people total are currently eligible for parole, and more than 6,500 are within a year of their maximum sentence or up for release on good behavior, including five women with infants and one pregnant woman. DOCCS could not immediately confirm these figures.

While the NYPD and FDNY are forging ahead with plans to distribute vaccines to their members amid ongoing discussion at the city and state levels, a spokesperson for the city Department of Corrections said they were not aware of similar steps being taken in correctional facilities. "We have our covid plan in place and once we receive sign off from the state of any new plans for a vaccine then we will of course switch gears," the spokesperson said.

Officials at city and state health departments say they have not made any final decisions on where incarcerated people and facility staff fall in the vaccination line-up, and have not given details on the timeline for when they might receive vaccines (or even when a decision will be made). Some state lawmakers and advocates for incarcerated people have been pushing for details to no avail.

“Unfortunately, I have not heard from either the City or the State about their vaccination plans for incarcerated individuals," wrote Bronx Senator Gustavo Rivera, chair of the state Senate's health committee, in an email to Gotham Gazette. "It is critical that those individuals in correctional facilities are vaccinated imminently."

“Science and sound public health policy point to what we already know: all persons living and working in congregate settings in New York, including those incarcerated in correctional institutions, should have access to COVID vaccines as soon as possible," said Manhattan Assemblymember Richard Gottfried, who chairs the Assembly's health committee.

"COVID doesn’t distinguish or discriminate between different kinds of congregate settings, and neither should the State of New York," he added.

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by Ethan Geringer-Sameth, reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

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Max & Murphy Podcast: Senator Jamaal Bailey on the Albany Agenda and Leading the Bronx Democrats


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State Senator Jamaal Bailey (photo: NY Senate)


December 16, 2020 - Max & Murphy Podcast: State Senator Jamaal Bailey on the Albany Agenda and Leading the Bronx Democrats

State Senator Jamaal Bailey of the Bronx joined the show to discuss his agenda, where the state may be headed in terms of solving its fiscal issues and helping struggling New Yorkers, and his leadership of the Bronx Democratic Party.

Listen to the conversation and let us know what you think -- we're on Twitter @TweetBenMax and @JarrettMurphy. You can listen to the show through the embedded audio below or download the episode wherever you get your podcasts, under "Max & Murphy," and listen to Max & Murphy live on Wednesdays at 5 p.m. on WBAI radio, 99.5FM or wbai.org.

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by Ben Max, Gotham Gazette
     

Read more by this writer.

CUNY Nursing Schools Continue Amid Pandemic, with Major Questions for One Program


nurse gotham health hospital survive

Gotham Health (photo: Ed Reed/Mayor's Office)


On Friday, the New York City Council’s Committee on Higher Education heard from administrators and students of CUNY’s nursing schools to understand how they have maintained student progression despite transitioning to online learning amid the coronavirus pandemic.

CUNY has 14 nursing schools that offer a variety of certificates and associates, bachelors, masters, and doctorate degree programs. An average of 1,800 students graduate every year from CUNY nursing programs, many of whom go off to work in New York City hospitals, nursing homes, and other local settings.

City Council Member Inez Barron, a Brooklyn Democrat who chairs the Council higher education committee, noted at the hearing that given the increasing demand for health-care workers, recent graduates from CUNY nursing programs will be needed as hospitals prepare for a challenging winter amid spiking covid infections and hospitalizations.

Also of particular concern during the hearing was the withdrawal of Lehman College’s accreditation, which has left the careers of 45 Family Nurse Practitioner (FNP) students up in the air. In order to receive accreditation from The Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education (CCNE), schools must have a minimum pass rate of 80% on the National Council Licensure Examination (NCLEX). Lehman College students missed that pass rate by 2% in 2019.

Overall, administrators highlighted CUNY nursing programs’ ability to implement virtual learning methods without, they said, sacrificing the quality of student learning.

CUNY Dean of Health and Human Services Patricia Boyce discussed how students have been able to continue their degrees through online learning opportunities such as simulations, alternative training models, and Interprofessional Education (IPE), a learning method where students can collaborate across health fields.  

“We’ve met or exceeded the expectations in terms of student progression” said Boyce. “We have the highest number of graduations in spring 2020, at the height of the pandemic, which I think again demonstrates the perseverance of our students and our ability to maintain their progression in our programs.”

This past spring, 1,879 students graduated from CUNY’s nursing programs, a 60% increase from the number of graduates in 2019.

In place of in-person clinical training, CUNY has provided students with telepractice opportunities and simulations through NYSIM, which is NYU’s and CUNY’s collaborative simulation courses in healthcare. With the exception of some licensing requirements and accelerated programs which require in-person clinical training, most accreditors and all CUNY nursing programs permit students to fulfill their clinical requirements through alternatives to in-person clinical experience.

A major reason students may not have in-person opportunities for clinical training is because of the limited availability of spots at clinical sites. For health and safety reasons, hospitals may limit the capacity of students they accept. “But as soon as the sites let us in,” Boyce said, “we go immediately and fulfill those students' clinical hours.” 

Both the administration members and students who testified also discussed racial diversity in CUNY’s nursing programs. Boyce noted that “Approximately 70% of our nursing degree students are people of color,” which she said is a “stark contrast to national norms” where enrollment skews more white.

Chair of the CUNY Student Senate Juvanie Piquant said that despite the overall increase in STEM degrees, Black and Hispanic students remain underrepresented in STEM programs.

“CUNY’s Black and Hispanic students earned 31% of computer science degrees last year while representing 55% of the student body,” she said, citing research from the Center for an Urban Future. Piquant also emphasized that the lack of cultural affirmation, lack of mental health support, and financial and food insecurity amid tuition hikes has made it challenging for nursing students at Lehman college to continue their studies.

Students expressed special concern for the 45 Lehman College nursing students expecting to graduate in January 2021. Expectant graduates found out about the college’s loss of accreditation this past November.

Because Lehman students will be graduating from a non-accredited institution, they will be barred from taking the NCLEX exam for all testing dates in the future and consequently be unable to receive licensure. Although New York is one of three states in the U.S. that allows graduates from non-accredited programs to practice nursing, very few institutions will hire nurses from programs without CCNE approval.

“They're graduating during a pandemic and the city needs more health-care workers, but they can’t practice with their degrees as of now,” said Sumana Ali, Vice President for Academic and Legislative Affairs of the CUNY Student Senate.

Students are also looking to delay graduating in the case that Lehman College will regain accreditation. However, Marina Aminova, who is one of the 45 Lehman College nursing students expected to graduate this month, explained that postponing graduation entails other complications.

“If we postpone in six months people have student loans that they need to begin to pay,” she said. “We spent this money on this degree and now we won't have the income to recoup what we invested.”

Lehman has reached out to CCNE requesting an extension for its accreditation to stand until February. It has also submitted a request to the American Association of Nurse Practitioners (AANP) to see if accreditation by the New York State Education Department (NYSED) is enough to permit students to take the exam. Lehman is expected to receive responses from both institutions this week.

“We lost family members, we experienced dark moments all the while we were still attending school and still completing hundreds upon hundreds of clinical hours needed to graduate in the most impoverished county in this state during the worst pandemic in the century,” said Aminova. “These last years of hard work, sacrifice, time away from spouses, parents, and our children, time away from work, forgone income, paid tuition, tireless studying has all been for nothing.”

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by Victoria Choe for Gotham Gazette
@GothamGazette

New York Looks to Georgia with Senate Control and Much More on the Line


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Senator Schumer and Governro Cuomo (photo: Kevin P. Coughlin/Governor's Office)


Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election brought the collective nightmare of the Democratic Party to an end after four years. But the celebration was muted given the party’s majority in the House of Representatives diminished and, more importantly, the fate of the U.S. Senate remained undecided despite grand Democratic hopes for taking the chamber. The near- and long-term implications for New York are immense given the size of the federal aid package that it -- including state and local governments, especially New York City, governmental authorities like the MTA, businesses, nonprofits, and people -- is hoping for from a President Biden and Democratic Congress.

So much, including the success or failure of Biden’s broader, ambitious agenda, which will have major ramifications for New York, hinges on the results of two simultaneous Senate runoffs in Georgia, which has for many years elected Republicans to the upper house of Congress, that will be decided in early January, just days before Biden is inaugurated.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that tens of billions of dollars in pandemic-related aid to New York, and much more in terms of policy and future appropriations, could be on the line in Georgia, and it appears many New Yorkers are well aware and are taking action. 

Democrats made a net gain of one in the Senate after the party flipped two seats in Arizona and Colorado but lost one to Republicans in Alabama. The Democratic Party now holds 48 seats to the Republican Party’s 50. In order to pass any major legislation through the Senate, should Republicans vote strictly on party lines, Democrats will need to win both seats in Georgia to hold half the legislative chamber. In any tie in the Senate, the vice president -- soon to be Democrat Kamala Harris -- casts the deciding vote.

The last Democrat to win Georgia in the presidential election was Bill Clinton when he was first elected in 1992. Four years later, when he ran for reelection, he lost the state to Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole. The state has not had a Democratic Senator since the late Zell Miller, who held the seat between 2000 and 2004. 

This year, Biden broke that losing streak and won Georgia with 2.47 million votes to President Donald Trump’s 2.46 million, a margin of only 12,670 votes or 0.25%. 

The two Senate races were inconclusive since none of the candidates crossed the 50% vote threshold required by Georgia election law. The races are headed to a January 5 runoff election – with in-person early voting beginning Monday, December 14 – in which incumbent Republican Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler are being challenged by Democrats Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock, respectively. 

Democrats from around the country know that much of Biden’s agenda depends on control of the Senate and have aimed all their resources on the two races. Here in New York, local, state and national elected officials are pulling out all the stops to achieve those victories. Congressional leaders have been sending out fundraising pleas to their supporters, progressive groups have held phone-banking and text-banking events and have been registering voters. 

“The two Senate elections in Georgia have a direct relation to the lives of New Yorkers,” said Bill Neidhardt, press secretary for Mayor Bill de Blasio, in an email. “This will determine the Senate majority, which means it will determine if New Yorkers get the stimulus we need, let alone the progressive policies they could pass afterwards.”

If Democrats do win both seats, U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer from New York would go from being the minority leader to holding the Senate agenda in his hands. Last month, after Biden was finally declared the winner four days after Election Day, Schumer said, “Now we take Georgia, then we change America!”

That prospect has Republicans in Georgia and elsewhere worried, and they’ve used the Schumer video clip in attack ads against Warnock and Ossoff, warning their base about “radicals” taking over the government. The Republican National Committee is also spending about $20 million on the election. In Georgia, however, both Democratic candidates are relatively moderate – for example, neither has backed policies like the Green New Deal or Medicare for All that are associated more closely with the progressive wing of the party. 

At a Crain’s New York Business forum last month, Schumer even said the party would let Georgia Democrats be the face of the campaigns. “We're leaving the Georgia campaign to the Georgia folks...Their side [the GOP] is trying to nationalize it. We're making it a Georgia-run campaign,” he said. 

The first priority for Democrats is another federal stimulus package, particularly one that will provide aid to state and local governments that have seen their economies devastated by the coronavirus pandemic, leading to major job loss, business closure, and tax revenue drops. New York State needs as much as $60 billion over the current and next fiscal years to fill the state government’s budget hole, provide the necessary level of funding to municipalities, and to keep the Metropolitan Transportation Authority afloat without drastic cuts to subway, bus, and commuter rail services and personnel layoffs.

“If we want to increase our chances of having a better 2021 and beyond, we need more help from the federal government,” said State Assemblymember Michael Blake, a Bronx Democrat and vice chair of the Democratic National Committee. “We want that help from the Fed, we need to have people that actually want to help us.” Blake recently hosted a virtual conversation and fundraiser with Warnock, a statewide prayer call with Georgia clergy, and has been helping boost the candidate on social media.

A number of other elected officials have also used their platforms to provide assistance. Rep. Nydia Velazquez and Representative-elect Ritchie Torres have been using their supporter lists to solicit donations for the two candidates and to promote voter registration drives in Georgia. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has built a massive following on social media, took to Instagram to stress the importance of the runoffs.   

Republicans in the Senate have been reluctant to approve as large a stimulus package as Democrats are demanding, leading to a months-long deadlock. The House-passed HEROES Act, worth a total of $3 trillion and passed May 15, has not been taken up by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and no three-way deal among the two legislative majorities and President Donald Trump has been reached on any aid package since the CARES Act in March.

New Yorkers have continued to suffer in that time, particularly after the additional weekly federal unemployment assistance of $600 ended on July 31, and the state is now well within a second wave of the virus that threatens to shut down parts of the economy again. Unemployment in the state, especially the state and federal “economic engine” of New York City, skyrocketed then came back down somewhat, while hundreds if not thousands of businesses have shuttered, people are struggling to put food on the table or pay rent, and governments are facing the potential of laying off many thousands of workers.

Democrats in the House have considered compromising with the Republican Senate to approve a $908 billion package as a stopgap measure, before pursuing another package after Biden is sworn into office. One of the key sticking points has long been that Republicans are reluctant to plug state and local government tax revenue holes, the largest of which exist in New York, which had the worst covid outbreak thus far and economic devastation to match.

In a desperate plea, New York’s elected leadership including Governor Andrew Cuomo, Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, Mayor Bill de Blasio and several labor leaders called on the state’s congressional delegation to ensure the state receives its fair share of those funds if such a compromise is reached.

“New York has the highest number of deaths in the nation and has among the highest number of unemployed people in the nation because COVID came to New York before the Trump Administration even acknowledged COVID's presence on the eastern seaboard,” they wrote in a letter on Wednesday. “Federal funds should not be distributed politically but rather distributed by need and damage. By any fair estimate, New York is the economic engine of the United States, a fact that should be recognized in any federal legislation intended to jumpstart the national economy, and no state was damaged to the extent that the federal government damaged New York.”

Without sufficient federal aid, Governor Cuomo and the Democrat-led Legislature have tough choices ahead. Either they will have to make major cuts to local aid, which will most impact funding for education and health care, or find new ways to raise revenue. Legislative leaders have emphasized that wealthier New Yorkers should pay more in taxes, though they’ve taken no action to do so, while the governor has long been averse to tax increases, insisting that they will simply incentivize higher-wage earners to leave the state. 

“January 20th we are going to have a President that will be looking to actually help us and not hurt us. It is equally important to have a U.S. Senate led by Senator Schumer. These special elections in Georgia are crucial,” said State Senator Andrea Stewart-Cousins, the Democratic majority leader, in a statement to Gotham Gazette.

One of the most significant aspects of the federal aid package will be the amount of funding for mass transit. The MTA is already threatening increased fares and reduced service, along with layoffs, as it looks for a way to make up for $12 billion in lost revenue because of the pandemic. 

Beyond the stimulus package, Blake said the next Congress will also have to handle the Herculean task of ensuring an equitable and effective vaccine distribution plan to combat the pandemic. He noted that Perdue and Loeffler couldn’t be trusted with that task, pointing to the controversial stock trades the two Senators made when the coronavirus began to take hold in the country, earning them accusations from Democrats that they were profiting off the pandemic.

“Given the history of [the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment], given the history of what's happened in this country, do we want someone in Loeffler and Perdue who, when they learned information, what they first thought about was making money for themselves?” Blake said. “Or do we [want] Ossoff and Warnock who are going to be a part of the process to make sure there's equity when it comes to distribution?” 

Biden’s broader national agenda also includes a $2 trillion infrastructure plan that would be crucial for New York to build everything from housing to climate resiliency and green energy projects. He’s promised to create a $100 billion affordable housing fund which could provide the state, and particularly New York City, with support it needs to fight a housing affordability crisis that has deepened over the years. And there is always the question of federal funding for NYCHA public housing, which is in deep disrepair.

“New Yorkers are clear that a full recovery that we need from the COVID crisis, the economic crisis, relies on a robust strategy led by Democrats at the national level,” said Sochie Nnaemeka, New York State director of the Working Families Party. 

The WFP is a national organization with its base in New York and a presence in Georgia as well. It is among the many national groups like MoveOn and Sunrise Movement and local organizations like the Manhattan Young Democrats and Persist Brooklyn  that have turned their attention to the Senate runoffs, providing what support they can to help the two Democratic candidates succeed. 

“New York was ground zero for COVID and we are still waiting for adequate relief from the government for small businesses, for working people, for excluded workers who are not getting by in this moment in New York State,” Nnaemeka said. “The federal government and what Congress does or does not pass directly impacts working people here in New York State.”

Brooklyn City Council Member Brad Lander partnered with Persist Brooklyn, a local progressive group, and the Working Families Party for a recent phone-banking and fundraising effort for Ossoff and Warnock. In a phone interview, Lander pointed to the dire need for aid to states and cities as a chief concern. “We've already made cuts to sanitation services and parks staffing and summer youth jobs and making any more would be devastating. But if we don't get federal aid, you know, really hard choices will have to be made,” he said. “And the city suffers doubly, because not only do we have our own deficit, but the state has an even worse deficit. If they don't fill it, they're going to pass more cuts on us. So we'll get hit twice.”

Almost daily, new announcements are coming from Democratic elected officials, activists, and political clubs for ways New Yorkers can get involved in the Georgia elections. On Monday, Queens Assemblymember Catalina Cruz emailed her supporters to announce an upcoming phone-bank along with New Visions Democratic Club and the Lesbian & Gay Democratic Club of Queens. “Polling shows these two races are in a statistical tie,” Cruz’s email said, “so we have to make sure we're doing everything we can.”

While they appear less active around the Georgia elections given their smaller presence in the overwhelmingly Democratic city, New York Republicans are also paying attention to what happens in the Peach State, of course. A recent email blast from the New York Republican Party passed along a pitch from the Young Republican National Federation (YRNF) asking for donations to “deploy young Republicans into Georgia.”

“The Democrats are targeting the Senate Majority!,” the YRNF email says. “We can save the Senate and, in turn, save America from extreme socialist policies, but we need your help.”

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by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

Read more by this writer.

Ben Max contributed to this story.

The Status of $6.5 Billion in Federal Covid Aid to New York City and State as End-of-Year Spending Deadline Looms


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Gov. Cuomo at a covid briefing (photo: Governor's Office)


New York City has spent its entire $1.4 billion allocation from the Coronavirus Relief Fund, a key portion of the federal CARES Act relief package that expires at the end of the month. The state government is far from spending its own, much larger allotment from the fund, but officials say it will identify eligible spending without having to return money to the federal government.

Many other states and localities have been struggling to distribute the funding, wrangling with strict eligibility requirements, often set at the state level, even as they face fallout from the pandemic-induced economic crisis. In September, the Treasury Department clarified that the money had to be spent on activities that occurred between March 1 and December 30, but that the spending could take place after the year-end deadline.

The Coronavirus Relief Fund (CRF) is a $150 billion stimulus program to be used directly by state and local governments out of the $2.3 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, the third federal pandemic relief bill. In March, Congress allocated $5.1 billion of the CRF to New York State and another $1.4 billion to New York City. The money can be used by state, local, and tribal governments on any "necessary expenditures" related to the public health crisis that had not been previously budgeted.

According to the Office of the State Comptroller, the state has spent roughly a quarter, $1.4 billion, of the $5.1 billion CRF allocation as of December 7. That money breaks down into $838 million for non-personnel costs, like supplies and utilities, and another $555 million in personnel costs, including salaries and benefits. Based on a September report from State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, at least 40% of the personnel service costs and fringe benefits have been spent by State Police, and more than 95% of non-personnel costs have been spent by the state Health Department. (Neither agency provided Gotham Gazette with a breakdown of those expenses despite requests.)

Close to $3.7 billion of the CRF was unspent as of December 7, according to figures provided by the Comptroller's office to Gotham Gazette.

But in response to a Gotham Gazette inquiry in mid-November, Freeman Klopott, a spokesperson for the state Division of the Budget, wrote, "The state has fully allocated the $5.1 billion in CARES Act funding provided through the Coronavirus Relief Fund,  which can only be used for narrowly defined COVID-related costs and the state will spend every dollar on eligible costs related to the pandemic response, including personal protective equipment, testing statewide, and contact tracing."

The state has identified roughly $7 billion in expenditures that could be covered by CRF and is looking for other revenue sources to make up the nearly $2 billion balance, according to Robert Mujica, the state budget director, at a December 2 press briefing with the governor.

"The CARES Act funds expire on December 30, so we'll fully allocate the full 5.1 [billion dollars] and then the additional funds we are looking for [are] other revenue streams, FEMA reimbursements, and if not they'll just add to our [budget] gap," Mujica told reporters. "Currently we're waiting for the federal government to provide additional resources to deal with that revenue gap."

On Tuesday, Klopott indicated that final decisions about CRF spending had yet to be made, but echoed Mujica’s point. “The state has approximately $7 billion in eligible spending for the $5.1 billion we received from the CARES Act, including potential personnel costs, and we will make a determination on which eligible expenses to apply to this funding that maximizes our use of this and other potential federal funding streams,” he wrote in an email.

"Final classifications of disbursements charged to the Coronavirus Relief Fund are under review by the Division of the Budget," wrote a spokesperson for DiNapoli in an email Tuesday when asked about the discrepancy between the office's figures and the response from the Division of the Budget. The DiNapoli spokesperson reiterated that $1.4 billion had been "charged to New York State's allotment" of the CRF.

In recent weeks, Governor Andrew Cuomo has made a push to identify expenses that would be eligible under the CRF, seeking to free up funds through executive order, and assuring the public that the money will not have to be returned to the federal government. Various interest groups and the elected officials that rely on them for support have been pushing the governor to spend the remaining funds. Meanwhile, Cuomo has been withholding billions of dollars in local aid while the state has a sizable cash balance, per DiNapoli’s office, and the governor continues to lobby for more federal funds.

On December 2, Cuomo announced he would sign an executive order to expand eligibility and reopen applications for the state's COVID-19 rent relief program, which provides a one-time rental subsidy from a CRF allocation of up to $100 million. At the time of the announcement, only $40 million of the available funds have gone to renters and landlords. As Gothamist first reported in November, about 57,000 applicants have been rejected, with another 22,000 pending as of the end of October, and only 15,000 accepted statewide.

"By executive order I'm going to change the law. I've spoken to the legislative leaders about this - reopen the application window, extend the eligibility requirements to help more New Yorkers," Cuomo said.

Some lawmakers and nonprofits, which have been struggling to maintain expenses while often providing new pandemic services in a contracted economy, have called on the state to release funds from the $5.1 billion coffer to cover expenses like personal protective equipment (PPE) and facility modifications. In late November, State Senator James Sanders Jr., a Queens Democrat, wrote a letter to the governor signed by dozens of other state legislators and business groups urging Cuomo to use unspent funds from CRF on small business grants.

"There is still nearly $2 billion in unspent NY Cares Act funds available of the initial $5.1 billion in federal funding," the letter reads. "New York should spend CARES Act funds for the purpose of grants to small businesses around the state."

In a survey of 500 minority- and women-owned businesses published in July by New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer, 85% of businesses said they would not be able to stay in business without additional funding or legislative assistance.

The Sanders-led letter notes that other states, like Ohio, have used CARES Act funds for small business grants, although it is unclear if those funds came from CRF.

While the bulk of CRF went to states, local governments with populations over half a million can receive allocations directly. Under that provision, New York City received more than $1.4 billion. Suffolk, Nassau, Westchester, Erie, and Monroe counties, and the Town of Hempstead combined got close to $950 million, according to the state comptroller's office -- all of which, like the state's $5.1 billion, must be spent on activities that took place prior to December 30.

New York City
According to a spokesperson for Mayor Bill de Blasio's Office of Management and Budget, all $1.4 billion in CRF funds to New York City has been spent and the city does not expect to have to return any to the Treasury Department.

Of the CRF, $1.2 billion was budgeted for Fiscal Year 2020, which ended June 30, and another $215 million in Fiscal Year 2021, which began July 1. Another $4.7 billion has been budgeted from other federal sources, like FEMA, other CARES funding, and the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, which has a December 31 cut-off date, according to the U.S. Department of Labor website. The de Blasio administration spokesperson would not say what other funding streams are subject to cut-offs, but noted "varying deadlines." The administration expects all of the expenses to be reimbursed by the federal government, the spokesperson said.

Hazel Crampton-Hayes, a spokesperson for Comptroller Stringer, told Gotham Gazette close to $80 million CARES Act claims had been spent by the city but not yet reimbursed by the Treasury, although it is unclear if any of these expenditures came specifically from CRF. A spokesperson for the Mayor's Office of Management and Budget could not confirm the comptroller's figures, which had been pulled from the city's Financial Management System, according to Crampton-Hayes.

It is unclear how much, if any, of the state's $5.1 billion CRF allocation will be spent on programs within New York City. In response to Gotham Gazette inquiries on the state's spending in the five boroughs, Klopott, the state Division of the Budget spokesperson, wrote, "We are using the CRF funds to support the pandemic response statewide."

Total Federal Aid to New York
The total federal aid New York and New Yorkers have received -- including to the state itself, localities, organizations, and individuals -- dwarfs the CARES Act funding. According to Matthew Ryan, a spokesperson for State Comptroller DiNapoli, citing figures from the national nonprofit Federal Funds Information for States, New York received at least $31 billion additional grant funding and $118 billion in non-grant funding to individuals, businesses, and other entities as of November 24.

The grant funding went to myriad programs focused on education, health care, transit, and economic development. Non-grant funding included unemployment benefits, business loans through the Paycheck Protection Program, and access to borrowing for state government.

"The Office of the State Comptroller has approved unemployment benefit payments of more than $54 billion since March 1, with most of that from the expanded benefit programs provided by the federal government," Ryan wrote in an email in late November. 

The state nevertheless faces a $10 billion budget gap after projecting an initial revenue shortfall of $14 billion earlier this year. While federal stimulus bills passed in the spring have been a boon to state finances, partisan gridlock in Congress has nearly eliminated hope for more federal aid in 2020, though negotiations are ongoing.

"The federal government has failed to provide New York and other states impacted by COVID-19 with assistance to offset any of the resulting revenue loss,” Klopott of Cuomo’s budget office wrote in an email in November, “which amounts to $30 billion over two years for New York State – funds that would be used to support hospitals, schools, and services for the vulnerable.”

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by Ethan Geringer-Sameth, reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

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House of Representatives Examines Census Data Anomalies and Risks to Accurate State Numbers


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Rep. Carolyn Maloney (photo: Jeff Reed/City Council)


The U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Reform met on Thursday to discuss data-processing errors that will make it impossible for the U.S. Census Bureau to deliver accurate state population totals by the statutory deadline of December 31. Those numbers are then essential to reapportionment efforts as the Census dictates how many seats each state has in the House and are used for redistricting efforts within each state.

During the hearing chaired by Rep. Carolyn Maloney, a Democrat representing New York’s 12th Congressional District, members of Congress and expert witnesses testified to challenges they have faced in trying to obtain important documents about the Census data from the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Documents obtained by the oversight committee and reporting by the New York Times indicate that the Census Bureau needs until late January or early February to complete accurate calculations. This would be after President Donald Trump, who has sought to interfere with the decennial nationwide population count, particularly by excluding undocumented immigrants, is due to leave office. If the Bureau does not deliver the data before President-elect Joe Biden enters office on January 20, the Trump administration won’t be able to leave undocumented immigrants from the numbers it delivers to states as Trump has ordered. It is also possible that the Trump administration will be forced by the courts or convinced by other pressure to deliver the full numbers to the states, including undocumented immigrants.

Excluding these residents would be an unprecedented and likely unconstitutional move that would result in less federal funding and lower representation in the House of Representatives for states with high undocumented immigrant populations, such as California, Texas, Florida, and New York.

The Trump administration previously said that the deadline for delivering reapportionment totals could be moved to April 2021 because of the pandemic, but it backtracked suddenly in July, demanding the statutory deadline of the end of this year be met.

Internal Census Bureau documents obtained by the House oversight committee through an unnamed source contain descriptions of 15 irregularities in the data that together affect more than a million records from all states. They also contain a detailed schedule for determining the accurate Census count by February. But the three documents provide only a partial picture. Last month, spurred by New York Times reporting, Rep. Maloney, who chairs the oversight committee, asked Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to send all documents related to the Census data anomalies, but he did not do so, citing ongoing litigation, according to a press release from Maloney. She now says that if Ross does not submit the documents to the oversight committee willingly by December 9, the committee will issue a subpoena to get them. 

“The Trump administration is preventing our committee from verifying the scope of these data problems, their impact on the accuracy of the Census, and the time career professionals need to fix them,” Maloney said in her opening statement at the hearing.

“We cannot risk endangering the livelihoods of millions of Americans by compromising the integrity of the census,” said Rep. Ayanna Pressley, a Democrat of Massachusetts.

“There’s no question that there are going to be strengths and blemishes to the Census counts; there are in any Census,” said Robert Santos, Urban Institute vice president and American Statistical Association president-elect. But this year, the problems are worse, he said.

Although the scope of the irregularities may seem small, the errors are “not evenly distributed over the geographic areas of the country,” said Joseph Salvo, a demographer and head of Census efforts at the New York City Department of City Planning. “Anything that compromises the content of the decennial census will be felt more in some areas than in other areas.”

Movement this past spring and other challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic caused problems, Salvo said. “There was considerable dislocation. A lot of it, we believe, is temporary, but it caused a lot of confusion,” he said. “People may have answered in two different locations. The Census Bureau needs time to sort this out.”

“I think the duplication problem’s going to be on steroids,” Santos said. 

According to the documents the committee obtained, the duplication problem has resulted in an overcount of college students, many of whom moved out of their dormitories in the spring because of the pandemic. There could also be errors counting others living in group quarters, such as nursing homes, homeless shelters, prisons, and military barracks. While people living in these settings may have responded to the Census in two different locations because of the disturbance of the pandemic, they also might not have responded at all, possibly resulting in an undercount. “I am not surprised at all that roughly perhaps half of the list of problems that have been revealed thus far are related to group quarters,” Santos said.

A document the committee obtained includes a thorough strategy for the deployment of patches, or sets of changes made to computer programs in order to correct errors. “If the sequencing of patch deployment isn’t executed properly may result in other data anomalies,” the Census Bureau document says; this work cannot be rushed. “If new anomalies are identified they will be tracked, assessed and additional time maybe required for comprehensive release.” 

Experts who testified said that it’s important for researchers outside the Census Bureau to be able to analyze the results before they’re finalized. “Oftentimes, folks and programmers running diagnostics to find errors don’t realize that they’ve missed something that’s crucial,” Santos said, “and the only way that that can be uncovered is by becoming transparent and allowing researchers outside of the Census Bureau access to those data, so they can see if, basically, it passes the laugh test in their local community.” 

Like the oversight committee, these independent researchers have also struggled to get information about the Census data. “It’s not so much the Census Bureau; our understanding from senior Census officials is that it’s under review by the general counsel of Department of Commerce and the Department of Justice, as being bound up with the litigation,” said Christopher Mihm of the U.S. Government Accountability Office. There are “indicators that we know exist and could be easily generated and put out to the public and to researchers so that we could establish for ourselves, independently, the quality of the Census counts,” Santos said.

Oversight committee ranking member Rep. James Comer of Kentucky and other Republicans denied that the data-processing errors were significant and used the hearing to share their concerns about the accuracy of the 2020 presidential election results and their opinions about whether people residing in the country illegally should be counted in the Census. Rep. Paul Gosar, a Republican of Arizona, called the attempt to obtain information about Census data-processing efforts part of “Democrats' conspiracy theories.”

The Democrats “are launching partisan attacks on the 2020 Census to undermine the public’s confidence in the results,” Comer said. “The Bureau has made clear that the issues it has encountered in completing the current phase of the Census are few in number, relate to only .063% of the data for the Census, do not call into question the quality of the data, and are on par with issues arising in past Censuses.” While this is what the Census Bureau has said publicly, Comer’s claims are not consistent with the internal documents obtained by the oversight committee or reporting by the New York Times, which suggest that problems this year go beyond past Censuses.

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by Lauren Hakimi, Gotham Gazette
   

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Manhattan District Attorney Candidates Pitch Plans and Pasts to West Side Democratic Clubs


Gotham Gazette:

Top (l-r): Tahanie Aboushi, Alvin Bragg, Eliza Orlins, Janos Marton, Tali Farhadian Weinstein
Bottom (l-r): Liz Crotty, Dan Quart, Diana Florence, Lucy Lang


Tuesday night, the Chelsea Reform Democrats and Hell’s Kitchen Democrats co-hosted a candidate forum for the nine candidates running in the 2021 Democratic primary for Manhattan District Attorney. Incumbent Cy Vance has not declared whether or not he plans to run for reelection, but he has not been actively fundraising for another run and has not appeared at any of the early forums, where candidates have at times criticized his record harshly as too punitive on some, particularly low-income people of color, and too lenient on others, particularly wealthy white people, including some men accused or convicted of sexual assault.

Much of the early discussion in the race has been about the many candidates trying to present their resumes and lay out their credentials to become the borough’s top prosecutor, with many of the candidates taking progressive stances and promising efforts to decarcerate. A number of differences among the candidates have emerged, and others are still becoming apparent as they appear at more events together, release policy plans, and further explain how they would run the office that has domain including much of the city’s sprawling subway system, Wall Street, major tourist destinations, some of the wealthiest zip codes in the country, many public housing developments, and other facets of Manhattan.

The moderator Tuesday was Sylvia Di Pietro, a district leader in the 75th Assembly District. The candidates were asked mostly different questions throughout the forum.

The nine participants included civil rights attorney Tahanie Aboushi; former Principal Deputy State Attorney General Alvin Bragg; former Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Liz Crotty; former Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Diana Florence; former Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Lucy Lang; decarceration activist and civil rights attorney Janos Marton; public defender Eliza Orlins; Assemblymember Dan Quart; and Tali Farhadian Weinstein, the former general counsel to Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez.

Dan Quart
Assemblymember Dan Quart, the only current elected official in the race and a criminal defense attorney, promised “a complete break from the last 11 years” of Vance’s tenure and sought to emphasize his anti-establishment bona fides from the beginning of the forum, highlighting his unsuccessful 2005 run for City Council against a party-backed candidate, along with his legislative accomplishments and pro bono work. He said “we can have public safety but also policies of decarceration that don’t punish poor people.”

He listed decarceration as his top priority if elected, saying it “requires deconstructing this office and rebuilding it.” As part of his “reimagining a new vision for public safety,” Quart promised a “complete revamp” of the sex crimes unit, scaling back the use of surveilance in prosecutions, and ending the “criminalization of poverty.”

Quart said he was a supporter of ending cash bail and sentencing reform “before it was easy or a talking point,” citing his legislative work on those issues. When asked how he would reduce jail overcrowding, Quart said as DA he would institute a “rebuttable presumption that no one will be offered a sentence of greater than 20 years.”

Later in the forum, he sought to make a distinction between himself and several of those in the race with prosecutorial backgrounds, saying he would decline to prosecute more cases, rather than mandate diversion programs, as advocated by some other candidates, “who believe they can use the tools of the office in a kinder, gentler way.”

As has been the case in prior forums, there was limited discussion by Quart or others about prosecuting crime, with some exceptions.

One being a major issue brought up at the forum of how each candidate would deal with vehicular violence as DA. Quart called the issue a “serious problem” and said he would be aggressive in prosecuting such cases, like reckless driving and when drivers hit pedestrians, but “not for purposes of incarceration.”

Diana Florence
Diana Florence, who formerly ran the Manhattan DA’s construction fraud task force, said she was running “for people who never thought they’d win” and repeatedly mentioned her intention to focus on “crimes of power not crimes of poverty” if elected. She cited her own work taking on real estate developers and landlords as an example of this. Florence has been endorsed by more than a dozen labor unions, she said, most of which are associated with the construction industry.

“We can’t be operating in the 20th century,” said Florence, who claimed “the district attorney’s office hasn’t changed in 45 years.” She promised to “reallocate resources” from targeting crimes of poverty to crimes of power.

Florence also criticized Vance, whom she worked for until earlier this year, saying, “I was very much an outsider in that office,” and criticizing what she described as a toxic work environment. She also criticized the current handling of gun violence more broadly, telling attendees that “we’re not attacking the problem at its source. She advocated an “interstate approach” to stop gun trafficking before it reaches the city and said “we have great laws but if we’re not enforcing them and stopping the source, we’re not doing anything.”

When asked about vehicular violence, Florence said she would “proactively investigate every single traffic injury or fatality,” comparable to how she investigated any construction fatalities while at the DA’s office.

Lucy Lang
Lucy Lang pitched herself by saying “I know how to reform the system because I’ve worked from the inside and outside.” Lang served for over a decade as an Assistant DA under Vance and has been the director of the Institute for Innovation in Prosecution at John Jay College since 2017.

Lang said the most significant change she would make to the office would be “building an inclusive workforce,” prioritizing diversity. When asked about the incumbent’s handling of the Harvey Weinstein case, Lang decried a “sense of backdoor dealing” and said she would institute “a policy of equal access,” preventing “backdoor meetings for well-heeled defense attorneys.”

When asked if she thought traffic violence should be treated similarly to drunk driving, Lang said she could not commit without seeing the legislation, but that she “aspires to ensure” that offenders are held “appropriately responsible.”

Tahanie Aboushi
Tahanie Aboushi offered a much more aggressive pitch, saying she was “running to transform this office.” She said ending discriminatory practices is “not just doing damage control but making sure they won’t happen again.”

“This problem is not with Vance,” Aboushi said. “He’s just another cut-and-paste prosecutor.” She said she would refocus the office away from “crime and punishment” and towards public health. When asked how she would address the school-to-prison pipeline, Aboushi said, “we rely on police instead of using our social service programs” and that we need to “stop criminalizing children for being children.”

She criticized the office’s conviction integrity unit as “a lame duck” and committed if elected to “making sure this office is represented by impacted people.” When challenged over whether 20 years would be too lenient of a sentence for murder, Aboushi said that being against the death penalty means “being against death by incarceration.”

Liz Crotty
“I’ve represented everyone,” said Liz Crotty, noting her work as both a prosecutor and defense attorney, which she says gives her “an informed perspective to lead this office.” She said she would bring “realistic, common-sense reforms” to the office, while also declaring “the job of the District Attorney is to enforce the laws of the State of New York and that’s what I’m planning to do.” She cited the use of “certificates of readiness” to prolong cases as a “practice the DA’s office has gotten entirely wrong.”

Crotty often eschewed the more sweeping and systematic promises of her opponents, saying she would look at cases on an individual basis. Asked about how she would handle immigration concerns as DA, Crotty said she would “look at the collateral consequences in nonviolent cases,” but “when it comes to violent crime, it doesn’t matter where you’re from.”

She had been the only candidate in the race not to sign a letter calling for Governor Cuomo to institute elder parole. “[W]hile I agreed with the spirit and tenor of that letter,” she said, she did not sign it because “each case has to be held on an individual, case-by-case basis.” She specifically said, “I don’t think Harvey Weinstein should get compassionate release.” She took that instance as an example of her “courage to stand out and above,” saying “that’s leadership.”

While generally supportive of restorative justice, she noted that the decision should be left up to the victims, saying, “I have enough experience with defendants to know that not everyone wants that opportunity.”

When asked about her criteria for prosecuting hit-and-runs, Crotty said she would “have to look at the surrounding circumstances.”

Eliza Orlins
Eliza Orlins emphasized that she’s the “only public defender running.” She said that she “absolutely” believes there is systemic racism in the New York criminal justice system, adding that it “forms the basis of our penal system.”

When asked about bail reform, Orlins said right now the presumption of innocence “only applies when you’re rich enough to buy your freedom,” recalling her experiences representing low-income defendants. She said “money bail does not keep us safe” and instead “is used to detain people who are poor.” She decried the “false choice” between ending cash bail and public safety.

Again citing her own work as a public defender, Orlins said, “I’ve seen rampant misconduct” from prosecutors in the Manhattan District Attorney’s office. She said there is a “need to restore trust in the office.”

When asked if she would use vehicular data recorders in vehicular violence prosecutions, she said, “I don’t think that makes our city safer in any way” because in her experience those devices have been used to “up the charges” on defendants.

Alvin Bragg
Alvin Bragg, the lone Black candidate in the race, told the attendees that “all of this work is personal for me,” recounting his personal history witnessing and experiencing police misconduct and violence in his community in Harlem. According to Bragg, his lived experiences led him to make criminal justice his “life’s work” and he said he’s “ready to fundamentally reform the Manhattan DA’s office.”

“The way [violent crime] is prosecuted now doesn’t work,” Bragg said, calling current practices “overly punitive” while also saying that it “doesn’t do enough for victims.” He promised that the decisions of his office would be “survivor-focused and trauma-informed,” including an “opportunity for survivors to confront” perpetrators. He said “we have to deal with this as a systemic issue,” because “trauma affects us all.”

Bragg also promised to hire formerly-incarcerated individuals to work in the office to help others with reentry post-incarceration, saying “those closest to these issues know them best.” He also said he was “proud to stand with those calling for a $1 billion reducation” in the NYPD’s budget, saying that the NYPD “dealing with homelessness and mental health does not make us safer.”

Tali Farhadian Weinstein
Tali Farhadian Weinstein recounted her own personal experiences as an immigrant and said “that remains my framework for how I view the work.” She says that experience has led to her “to want to tear down barriers because I know what it’s like to stand on the other side.” She said she would bring the practices of the Brooklyn DA’s office, which she calls a “national model of progressive prosecution” across the East River to Manhattan.

She said “crimes against women and gender-based violence has not gotten the attention it deserves” from the Manhattan DA’s office, and that change would “require extensive retraining” in addition to “moral courage and commitment.”

When asked about alternatives to incarceration, Farhadian Weinstein said she would import practices from the Brooklyn DA’s office, where she worked until recently, such as a diversion program for first-time gun offenses. Under such a program, participating in mental health counseling or job training could result in charges being dismissed.

On gun violence, she said, “we have excellent gun safety laws yet gun violence is still going up.” She would work with state and federal partners to “stem the flow of gun trafficking” into the city, she said, as well as removing guns from domestic abusers and enforcing red flag laws.

When asked about a dangerousness standard being used to determine bail, Farhadian Weinstein said it’s “a system that better achieves public safety” than cash bail, specifically the need to keep domestic abusers away from their victims.

Janos Marton
Janos Marton takes pride in having the most aggressive decarceration policy in the field. He has a campaign pledge to decrease the pretrial incarceration rate by 80%, which he calls a “real commitment.” He said “that’s something that we can be held accountable by the community for” because of his plan’s specificity.

Aside from the decarceration pledge, Marton said his campaign has published more policies “than any other candidate.” He highlighted his latest plan to “use resources from the financial forfeiture fund for community-based mental health-care,” which he described as a “change approach.” He said “We can do much better in this city than letting people struggle in the streets.”

A longtime leader of the push to close the Rikers Island jails as director of policy and campaigns at JustLeadershipUSA, Marton has also spoken out against the new local jails proposal. “No issue is more important to me," he said, adding, “I believe we can close Rikers without building new jails if we’ve implemented the reforms I’ve proposed.”

Marton is also an advocate for defunding the police, saying resources could instead be used to “invest in programs that truly keep people safe.” He highlighted that he organized a letter among candidates earlier this year calling for $1 billion defunding of the NYPD budget.

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by Andrew Millman, Gotham Gazette
   

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New Scholarship Helps Bridge Gap for Military Veterans Studying at CUNY John Jay


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The CUNY Office of Veterans Affairs (photo: CUNY)


Amid the coronavirus pandemic, Thomas Donaldson pondered whether to take out a loan or pay his master’s degree tuition bill with a credit card. As a military veteran whose government benefits had run out, a husband, and a father paying his way through his education seemed impossible, even with his NYPD salary.

In an effort to meet this need for higher education tuition help that many veterans face, the newly-created Beshar Scholars Military Service Award offers student veterans at CUNY’s John Jay College both financial and moral support as they pursue their degrees.

Created by Sarah and Peter Beshar, the $2,500 scholarship is open to matriculated undergraduate and graduate student veterans and active duty members who demonstrate financial need, maintain at least a 2.0 (undergraduate) or 3.0 (graduate) GPA, and demonstrate good character. Of the 530 veterans enrolled at John Jay––which has been deemed “military friendly” with a Bronze distinction by veteran-led small business Viqtory––the 2020 Beshar scholarship was awarded to 10 students.

The Beshars say one motivation to fund the award is a desire to “meet the moment.” “We do feel very strongly that John Jay is such an amazing institution and has an incredible array of wonderful veterans in all sorts of different disciplines,” Sarah Beshar said in an interview. “We know that this is a really tough time in New York, so it just felt right to bring those different focuses together.”

Peter Beshar, who serves as a Trustee and Chair of the Veterans Committee at John Jay, pointed to the very practical need to ease financial burdens for military veterans and current service members trying to earn their degrees, while showing gratitude for their service. “What's motivating this is that we want the student veterans and military students to feel seen and to understand that there are so many people who are rooting for them; that hopefully that makes them feel empowered and ready to overcome some of the obstacles that either the commitments that they have in their life with working––many of these students are working concurrently––or have been caused by the pandemic,” he said.

For recipient Lorraine Gonzalez, a Private First class 42A Human Resource Specialist for the Army Reserve, the Beshar scholarship allows her to complete her education while also relieving her disabled father, who is also a veteran, of contributing to her tuition payments. Following in her father’s military footsteps and aspiring to make him proud and to make her own way, she detailed the scholarship's impact in a profile interview with John Jay, saying, “I want him to see how dedicated I am. I want to be a role model for others. I want to show him that all the sacrifices he made for me didn’t go to waste. I want to be great for him. This award has cleared the path for me to succeed in life. Because of the Beshars’ generosity, I’ll be able to earn my degree and achieve my dreams; and my dad will be able to enjoy his retirement in peace.”

Gonzalez explained to Gotham Gazette that as a member of the Reserve, her active duty service hours do not yet add up to the minimum service requirement to be eligible for the G.I Bill. The Beshar scholarship works to fill in the holes that veterans assistance programs don’t, such as cases like Gonzalez’s.

With the scholarship, the Beshars also intend to assist in the process of veterans integrating into civilian life. “We have a civilian world on one side, and a military world on the other side, and these two groups don't actually intersect as much as they should,” Peter Beshar told Gotham Gazette. “It's hard for a veteran to capture on their resume the skills that most employers might look at...They can be...extremely humble and understated about the rather remarkable things that they've done in the course of their military careers. Trying to urge them to be a bit more expansive about the types of projects that they undertook when they served in the armed forces, that then I think when they say that, it really triggers in the HR department or the person who's looking to hire folks, a better appreciation for the breadth of their skills. Project management, leadership, communication skills."

In an interview, Donaldson discussed the difficulties of transitioning out of the army  “In June of 2009 I was in Northern Iraq. I was in a very dangerous area. I was in charge of 11 other people and $4 million worth of equipment. Fast forward to September of 2009, I'm living on Long Island, and I'm going to community college with 18-, 19-year-old kids and it's a culture shock,” he said. “All your friends––my brothers that I spent six years with, I spent every day with, we ate together, we slept in the same room together, we worked together, we had Thanksgiving dinner together––I left them. It was like ripping off a Band-Aid and it was very difficult. And while the military may make an attempt––between resume writing classes or interview classes––they don't prepare you for that.”

The Beshar scholarship allows Donaldson to balance his responsibilities and get a degree that he hopes will help him one day develop an efficient and reasonably-priced plan to protect schools, he said, while also providing him with a sense of support. “I think a lot of times people feel that there's a lot of benefits and [veterans] are OK, we're handled, somebody else has got it,” he said. “When people come out and kind of bridge that gap, it's amazing. I'm very humbled that I got the scholarship and to be a part of what these people do.”

For recipient Dr. Michael Isom––who, with a 20-year military career, is a retired major in the U.S Army National Guard, a counselor in Alaska, and graduate student in forensic psychology––his degree will help him achieve his goal of further protecting the Alaskan Native community. “I have worked with the Alaskan Native American Indian population on child abuse and neglect cases throughout the tribal system here in Alaska,” he said. “What this scholarship is allowing me to do is continue to support our indigenous population in a way that they'll have, hopefully, someone who is skilled and culturally sensitive, and understands the needs of tribal sovereignty and also tribal family constructs, in the legal system to protect their rights as families and tribal members.”

He told Gotham Gazette that the award served as a “circular” moment for him, reflecting on his parents; when he was younger his mother was incarcerated and his father was an aspiring attorney in California. “The scholarship is coming from an attorney who’s practicing, and who, in essence, is how my mother––and I’m not blaming the legal system, my mother committed a crime and she must atone from that––but it's the same system that was established that wound up having my mother placed in jail for 10, 13 years of my life. Being a defense attorney, as the granter is, and having to go through that process, I think it is circular."

In an interview with John Jay, Peter Beshar told a story of a military phrase he heard during his time as a Special Assistant with the United Nations. “Each year, the Army invites 100 civilians to join senior members of the military—typically Colonels—as they complete a nine-month course in strategy, leadership, and military history. I was assigned to a “full bird” Colonel [the insignia for a full Colonel is an eagle] in the Air Force. He was seated directly behind me for the opening session. Just as the program began, he leaned in and said, ‘I’ve got your six.’”

That notion, Peter Beshar told Gotham Gazette, is at the core of the motivation to create the scholarship. “These brave men and women in the armed forces have had our six, they've had our back for all these years. It just seemed so obvious and natural that now it's our turn to have their back and give them support. These scholarships are so modest in scale compared to the need, but as Sarah says, particularly with the pandemic, at least it's a step to make veterans' lives a bit easier at John Jay.”

***
by Angelica Crisostomo, Gotham Gazette

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Essential Workers Continue to Struggle for Covid-Related Workers' Comp and Death Benefits


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Many frontline workers have sought covid-related workers' comp (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)


Eight months into the coronavirus outbreak in New York, frontline workers and their families continue to struggle to receive workers' compensation and death benefits for covid-related injuries incurred on the job. A Gotham Gazette analysis of claim data from the Workers' Compensation Board reveals that fewer than 2% of workplace injury claims associated with the virus have had lost wages awarded through the Board, while thousands remain in limbo.

Over 12,000 covid-related claims were filed since the pandemic began, according to information from the state's Open Data portal, which was last updated October 8, almost two months ago. In only 184 of them the Board made a determination to return wages, all of them for injuries sustained between March and May, the peak of hospitalizations and a period when, for the most part, only “essential” personnel were authorized to work in-person because of the risk of contracting the virus. Close to 5,000 more have been "voluntarily" awarded lost wages by insurance carriers, according to a spokesperson for the Board, but labor unions and workers' comp lawyers say essential employees from nurses to grocery store clerks are fighting to receive coverage after contracting COVID-19 on the job. At least 1,229 covid claims were initially denied by an employer or insurance carrier, the data shows.

The numbers demonstrate the difficulty of seeking relief and restitution through New York State's workers' compensation system, once a national exemplar of workplace protections, even in the event of a pandemic that left tens of thousands of first responders and other essential personnel ill. Since the spring peak, labor unions and elected officials have been pushing for COVID-19 to be deemed an "occupational disease" to streamline compensation claims, but experts say the change wouldn't alter many of the demanding procedures that create barriers to receiving benefits.

"Carriers and employers continue to unjustifiably deny and delay care and benefits for workers exposed to COVID-19 in the workplace and their survivors," wrote Mario Cilento, president of the New York chapter of the AFL-CIO, in an email to Gotham Gazette.

Cilento said his organization, which represents 3,000 labor unions statewide, has been working with the Workers' Compensation Board to expedite awards. But those efforts haven't been enough, he said, as "too many workers and survivors are waiting too long for the benefits they need."

Presented with the findings by email, Melissa Stewart, a spokesperson for the New Yorker State Workers' Compensation Board, the 11 members of which are appointed by Governor Andrew Cuomo, wrote, "a single piece of data at a single point in time simply doesn’t tell the full story — the fact is nearly three-quarters of COVID-related claims are pending because they are incomplete and fewer than 10 of them have been denied."

"Just because someone has not received a formal award on a claim does not mean it was denied or that benefits aren’t being paid," Stewart wrote in response to a Gotham Gazette inquiry to the governor's office.

"Thanks to New York’s strong worker protections, many insurers voluntarily pay injured workers lost wage benefits and cover associated medical costs, even before a complete claim is submitted or an official determination is made by the Board,” the email read.

In response to follow-up questions about what the worker protections were that led to voluntary payouts from insurance companies, a spokesperson wrote that since 2015 the Board has been monitoring and penalizing insurance companies for failing to meet legal time frames, which they claim has improved the speed at which insurers pay lost wages and report injuries.

"The majority of wage-related COVID claims are receiving benefits," the spokesperson wrote in an email. Of the more than 12,000 covid claims, roughly 8,000 include lost time, which means they "could potentially" be eligible for lost wage benefits, the spokesperson wrote. Of those, about 61 percent, or 4,900, have received lost wages from insurers voluntarily.

The 11 Board members are mostly from organized labor and the insurance industry, and the Board makes determinations on claims in accordance with the state's workers' compensation law.

According to Stewart, typical cases take at least four months to establish that an injury is work-related and many workers receive benefits during that time. But Cilento said the Board isn't doing enough "to reign in recalcitrant employers and carriers."

Part of the problem is the novel coronavirus missing designation as an occupational disease, which would create the presumption that a worker contracted the disease on the job as opposed to at home or in the community, thereby removing some evidentiary hurdles. Tracing the spread of the disease remains a challenge for scientists and pinpointing where an infection took place can be difficult for anyone, whether a worker, employer, insurer or the Workers' Compensation Board.

Labor unions and their allies are pushing for legislation to expand the definition to include COVID-19.

“The working class has been disproportionately impacted by this pandemic—risking their lives and the health and safety of their loved ones to keep New York running,” said state Senator Jessica Ramos, a Queens Democrat who sponsors many of workers' comp reforms, including the bill to make COVID-19 an occupational disease, and chairs the Senate’s labor committee.

“As we head towards what looks like a second wave, passing this bill is more important than ever—providing workers and their families with the added security of financial compensation if COVID-19 is contracted on the job and leads to disability or the loss of life, is the least we can do for their great sacrifice,” Ramos wrote in an email.

Academics and lawyers representing injured workers have said the issue goes deeper to the byzantine, and increasingly litigious, system of workers compensation in New York.

"The problem the essential workers are having with covid demonstrates the systemic problems that we have with the Workers' Compensation Board," said William Crossett, co-chair of the New York State Workers' Compensation Alliance, the advocacy arm of the Injured Workers Bar Association, in an interview.

New York was the first state to pass a statewide workers' compensation bill near the turn of the twentieth century, but experts say decades of legislative action have gutted the system and helped shift its rewards from injured workers to insurance carriers.

Injured workers may receive medical coverage immediately related to the injury and recovery and compensation capped at two-thirds of lost wages in New York. A 2018 study from The New School found additional weekly minimum and maximum benefits trail neighboring states and place New York in the bottom half of the country. Death benefits may total two-thirds of wages the year before the accident (subject to weekly caps), plus up to $12,500 for funeral expenses.

According to the report, legislative and administrative changes, particularly ones made between 2007 and 2017, "have focused on curtailing benefits rather than minimizing injuries, adequately compensating injured workers, or fostering return to work."

Between 2014 and 2018 the total dollar amount of workers’ compensation benefits, including workers' indemnity and medical costs, fell 28% while insurance company profits rose 200%, the report found. In 2017, insurance companies in New York reached $1 billion in profits for the first time and the next year had already reached $1.6 billion.

Government employees in New York have workplace injury rates above the state average, the report notes. In late May, following a push from labor unions and elected officials, including Mayor Bill de Blasio, Cuomo signed a bill extending eligibility for "line-of-duty" death benefits to the families of civilian public employees who died from COVID-19 while working a frontline job. The measure brought those death benefits closer to those received by members of the NYPD and FDNY. The mayor's office did not respond to a request for comment for this story about whether de Blasio believes more should be done to ensure workers' compensation benefits for private sector workers who may have contracted covid at work.

"It is the least we can do to say thank you, and we honor you, and we remember you," Cuomo said in a statement after signing the legislation. "We will be there to support your families going forward. And we say to their families, 'We thank you, we grieve for your loss, and we will always be there for you the way your loved one was there for us.'"

But even with the presumption the virus was contracted on the job -- still not a reality for private sector first responders and other essential personnel -- workers nevertheless face an arduous claim procedure and the burden of proving the virus led to lost time on the job, which can delay claims or discourage workers from seeking them entirely.

For a claim to be complete it must have a medical report from an authorized provider and either an employee claim or a report of injury from an employer, according to a spokesperson for the Workers' Compensation Board. The spokesperson said many workers file claims but do not end up pursuing them because they found they did not actually contract the virus or contracted the virus but did not miss the requisite seven days of work to trigger compensation under state law.

In cases related to COVID-19, a worker must have received a positive PCR test or a diagnosis by a physician, both of which were hard to come by at the height of the first covid wave in March, April, and May, when testing supplies were extremely limited and workers were instructed to stay home unless their symptoms were severe.

Another obstacle is finding an Board-authorized medical provider to write the report. Crossett said that pool is limited because many providers don't want to deal with the paperwork and process of litigation in exchange for relatively low reimbursement rates.

Workers frequently represent themselves in compensation cases and for those who do the barriers are especially high. They are higher still for those who do not speak English as a first language and receive determinations from a judge only in English. According to the New School report, immigrants make up more than a third of jobs in "higher-than-average injury-prone industries," and accounted for 28% of all workers in the state in 2017.

The process for receiving death benefits for the survivors of people who died after contracting COVID-19 at work is similar but often even more onerous, because of the levels of separation from key pieces of evidence. According to Crossett, most death benefits are initially denied by insurance companies.

In October, the Workers' Compensation Board proposed guidelines limiting injured workers' access to mental health treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder, which has become common among health-care workers who covered the frontlines this spring.

The measures are strongly opposed by groups like the Injured Workers Bar Association and Behavioral Medicine Associates, which provides mental health treatment to injured workers, because they lack support for workers who have a dual-diagnosis, like PTSD and depression, and for those who may be suicidal. The guidelines favor a limited treatment program and favor medication over therapy according to a statement from Behavioral Medicine Associates.

"These guidelines were developed for the outpatient treatment of the typical psychological population which are upper middle class, college educated individuals, most of whom are white," the statement reads.

Crossett's group supports a series of bills in the state Legislature that would make the process more worker-friendly and remove some of the roadblocks to receiving benefits. 

One bill would ensure that decisions about compensation claims be handed down in the workers' first language and that transcripts of hearings, rather than audio recordings, be made available. Another would deem any physician who treated a COVID-19 patient an authorized provider for the purposes of the required medical report. Other legislation limits the length of time insurance companies can take to make a decision on a claim and ensures each claimant receives a hearing in every case.

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

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