City Council Progressive Caucus Co-Chairs Hanif & Restler (photo: John McCarten/NYC Council)
The New York City Council’s Progressive Caucus is announcing its legislative agenda for 2023 on Thursday, pursuing 20 bills in seven categories on criminal justice reform, police transparency, housing affordability, public banking, waste and emissions reduction, and gig worker benefits.
The Progressive Caucus’ membership, all Democrats, is the largest it has ever been in the 51-member City Council, with 35 members in its ranks, including Speaker Adrienne Adams as an ex-officio member, up from 12 members when it was first created in 2010.
The Caucus’ influence in the Council has grown over the years. In 2014, it was instrumental in selecting Melissa Mark-Viverito, one of its founding members, as the Council Speaker, an immensely powerful position in forging the city’s legislative and budget agendas. Though its power has ebbed and flowed in the years since, seeing some high-profile defections at times, it now boasts a majority that, if cohesive, could even override a mayoral veto.
But the new agenda is ambitious and just because the caucus has such numbers does not mean that the full package of legislation is by any means a slam-dunk. There is a fair share of political diversity in the Progressive Caucus, and not all members are as far left-leaning as others. And Mayor Eric Adams, a moderate Democrat who has already clashed with the Council and its Progressive Caucus on several fronts, may be especially unwelcoming of several pieces of the agenda, having already expressed opposition to the top priority, a ban on solitary confinement in city jails.
“Working-class New Yorkers, immigrant New Yorkers, and Black and brown New Yorkers are buckling under the weight of multiple intersecting crises in our City,” said Council Member Shahana Hanif, who co-chairs the Progressive Caucus with fellow Brooklyn Council Member Lincoln Restler, in a statement. “They are demanding a real comprehensive response from their City government, and where the Mayor is failing to act, the Council will step in.”
“The time is ripe for a bold progressive agenda to take hold in this Council that addresses economic justice, racial justice, criminal justice, environmental justice, housing justice, and more,” Restler said in a phone interview.
“With an unprecedented number of Progressive Caucus members together representing a veto-proof majority in the Council, we have the power to advance and enact the policies that New Yorkers are clamoring for and that we were elected to implement,” he added.
The 20 pieces of legislation in the Caucus’ 2023 agenda have all already been introduced before the Council, and several set up clear battles with the mayor.
At the top of the agenda is the proposal to ban solitary confinement in city jails, introduced by Public Advocate and former Council Member Jumaane Williams and Council Member Carlina Rivera, who chairs the Committee on Criminal Justice. Though former Mayor Bill de Blasio, under pressure from the Council and criminal justice advocates, took steps towards reforming the practice, Mayor Adams came into office pledging to retain the use of what he calls “punitive segregation.”
While the mayor has called such tactics essential for protecting both detainees and correction officers, his administration is facing widespread criticism and calls for a federal takeover of the jails given that 17 detainees have died this year, some of whom have been in solitary confinement.
“We are laser-focused on ending this torturous policy in our own city jails,” Restler said.
The second proposal on the agenda, introduced by introduced by Council Member Keith Powers of Manhattan, is the Fair Chance for Housing Act, which would prohibit housing discrimination on the basis of arrest record or criminal history. According to a release from Powers’ office, citing a study by John Jay College’s Data Collaborative for Justice, there were nearly 750,000 New York City residents with a conviction history in 2019, almost 11% of the city’s adult population. Under current law, landlords and brokers can deny housing to those individuals, who are also ten times more likely to become homeless than the general population.
“New Yorkers who have paid their debts still experience severe discrimination, no matter how minor the offense or how long ago,” Powers said in a statement in August, when he introduced the bill. “The Fair Chance for Housing Act will finally give these folks a place to sleep a night—and the opportunity to rebuild their lives.”
Two other bills, also introduced by Council Member Powers, would require reporting by the city on its bank deposits and use of non-depository city financial services, with the aim of establishing a New York City Public Bank. But that would first require approval from the state Legislature, where a public bank proposal has languished for years.
The “Progressive Agenda” includes six bills that would require greater transparency from the NYPD, which has traditionally been resistant to most attempts at greater oversight by the Council. They include proposals to mandate reporting on use of force incidents involving an NYPD motor vehicle; banning the department from deploying the Strategic Response Group, a counterterrorism squad, to nonviolent protests; requiring monthly reports from the NYPD on complaints of police misconduct; requiring the department to report on instances where an individual denied an officer consent to a search; requiring reporting on police-civilian investigative encounters; and abolishing the gang database. Lead sponsors of the bills include Council Members Crystal Hudson, Chi Ossé, Tiffany Cabán, Alexa Avilés, Althea Stevens, Rivera, and Public Advocate Williams.
“The vision of the Caucus is to put together different packages of legislation that we feel will be transformative for New York City,” said Manhattan Council Member Carmen De La Rosa, co-vice chair of the Caucus, in a phone interview.
“When you look across the board, what these bills seek to address, they’re systemic, historic issues that our communities have been dealing with and viable solutions for those issues,” she added.
Restler expects that many of the bills will receive pushback from Mayor Adams. “The mayor’s all over the place,” he said. “What I know is that this is the most progressive Council that has ever been elected in New York City, and that when we are organized as a caucus, that we can and will get transformative pieces of legislation through the finish line.”
Under de Blasio, who was decidedly more progressive than his successor, the Progressive Caucus had a closer ally on legislative priorities, though the two sides of City Hall clashed nonetheless on issues like NYPD reform. With Adams, the Caucus finds itself pursuing its original mission in the Bloomberg years of pushing leftward a more centrist ideology in the Mayor’s Office. “It's the role of the Council to counterbalance what is coming out of the administration,” De La Rosa said. “So this is our opportunity to fight back on behalf of the communities we represent.”
What’s not lost on Restler is that the entire Council is yet again on the ballot next year, with June primaries barely 18 months after dozens of new members were seated, because of the decennial Census and redistricting cycle. Many of the Caucus members are first-timers on the Council, giving the legislative agenda that much more urgency.
“I certainly think that a four-year term is a more sensible timeframe to give elected officials the opportunity to fully focus on legislating and serving their communities rather than in constant election mode,” Restler said. “As a predominantly newly-elected body, we need to show real results to our constituents in advance of next year's election. And this is a package that I believe my colleagues and I can proudly run on in our reelection campaigns if we can get these pieces of legislation across the finish line.”
Another five bills in the agenda, the Zero Waste legislative package, aim to codify and achieve the city’s goal of sending zero waste to landfills by 2030, which was first set by Mayor de Blasio in 2015 but is far behind schedule. Among the proposals are a citywide curbside organics program for residential buildings, enshrining the zero waste by 2030 goal into law, requiring regular reporting on progress towards that goal, and mandating that the Department of Sanitation establish at least one community recycling center and three organics drop-off sites in each community district.
Though Speaker Adams is technically a member of the Caucus, and she has embraced many of the proposals including the zero waste package and the solitary confinement ban, she has not yet endorsed the entire agenda. “I think she is a natural ally for the caucus in helping to make this happen,” Restler said.
Three other bills aim to create and expand access to permanently affordable housing in the city. They include the Community Opportunity to Purchase Act, introduced by Council Member Rivera, which would give nonprofit and community housing developers a right of first refusal on purchasing certain residential properties; the Public Land for Public Good Act, introduced by Restler, which would give nonprofit developers and community land trusts priority when the city sells public land for affordable housing; and a bill introduced by Council Member Gale Brewer that would establish a Land Bank to acquire, warehouse, and transfer property to develop, rehabilitate, and preserve affordable housing.
Building on previous efforts to expand paid sick leave, the agenda includes a bill introduced by Council Member Hanif that would extend the benefits of the Earned Safe and Sick Time Act to gig workers under certain conditions.
The Progressive Caucus — including its director, Emily Mayer, who was hired in June to help guide and organize the large and mostly-new group — and a number of allies including Public Advocate Williams, Legal Aid Society, and other groups will hold a press conference on Thursday at noon outside City Hall to formally unveil the agenda.
[LISTEN: Max Politics Podcast: City Council Progressive Caucus Co-Chairs Shahana Hanif & Lincoln Restler]
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by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
@samarkhurshid @GothamGazette
Mayor Adams and city officials talking jobs (photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)
Many indicators tracked by New York City’s economic development agency to chart the health of the local economy are showing signs of growth, according to a new monthly report being released Thursday.
The initial data shows some major gains in job creation and business start-ups in the last year, and a multi-year increase in venture capital funding. It also indicates a sluggish return to the office amid ongoing hybrid work models.
The city has seen an explosion of new businesses in the first year of the Eric Adams mayoral administration, with 27,500 new ventures, or 10% of all businesses, opening in the last year. "That's a pretty extraordinary stat," said Andrew Kimball, president and CEO of the New York City Economic Development Corporation (EDC), in an interview.
The report, titled "New York City Economic Snapshot" and previewed by Gotham Gazette, is the first in a monthly series from EDC, a mayor-controlled public benefit corporation. The snapshots are aimed at capturing the city's economic progress since the start of Mayor Adams’ administration and tracking the city’s recovery from the many challenges of the covid pandemic. The report shows monthly metrics on the labor market, business activity, real estate, tourism, and transit, with the first iteration painting a picture of a slow but persistent mend.
"In almost every measure we are doing very well,” said Kimball. “When you look at our national competitors -- Boston San Francisco Dallas Miami -- we are competing very strongly."
"The point of this report is to share with the broader business community, elected officials, and policy-makers our view on a monthly basis of what the most important metrics are and the metrics we look to as we measure where the economy is and where we need to take it," Kimball said of the snapshot.
New businesses are not launching as much in Manhattan's commercial hubs as they are in burgeoning sections of the other boroughs, like Jamaica, Queens, Broadway Junction in Brooklyn, and Morris Park in the Bronx, Kimball said. Those areas are more vibrant now than they were in the pre-pandemic era, he added.
"When you map where the new businesses are [it] shows where we have work to do," he said. "And a lot of that is in midtown and downtown [Manhattan] right now.
"Having more thriving commercial hubs outside of Manhattan, and our other central business districts like Downtown Brooklyn and Long Island City, is only going to strengthen the city from a long-term sustainability point of view," said Kimball, who was appointed to his position by Mayor Adams earlier this year after serving as Industry City's longtime CEO.
The exact direction city government – and EDC as its primary economic development arm – will take to strengthen these commercial districts will be informed by a panel of business, nonprofit, and labor leaders convened by Mayor Adams and Governor Kathy Hochul in June. The group, known as the 'New' New York Panel, is expected to make recommendations to policymakers some time in the coming weeks, Kimball said.
In Manhattan, the mayor and governor have talked about making commercial centers in midtown that have seen significant drops in commuters into more residential neighborhoods, which they say could revitalize parts of the city that were built to serve a different kind of work-life model. The process of converting office and retail space into housing and business districts into livable neighborhoods is a complicated process that would involve billions in capital investment, local buy-in, and navigating New York's cumbersome land use regulations.
"Central Manhattan will remain our business district, but we are going to have to do a zoning rethink the way we did with downtown after September 11,” Adams said at a breakfast hosted by Crain's New York Business in September.
The office vacancy rate -- meaning unleased office space -- in New York City has increased less than a percentage point to 12.7% during the Adams administration, per data covering the first two quarters of the year. That average vacancy rate in 2019 was only 7.6%.
Transit and tourism indicators have also moved in a positive direction during the Adams administration, according to the report. Subway ridership in October has been at roughly 64% of pre-pandemic levels, Times Square saw 80% of foot traffic return, and Broadway attendance similarly reached 80% of pre-pandemic levels. Hotel occupancy has increased by 5.2 percentage points since the start of the Adams administration. The only travel metric in the report to remain stagnant since the beginning of the year was bus ridership, which has remained frozen at 63% of pre-covid levels since January.
"We know it's not going to be the same as before covid but there's been steady increases," Kimball said of the return to commuting. "But if you have more live-work [neighborhoods], that will also encourage more local business start-ups in those areas, which is something we care a lot about."
EDC is focused on the fastest growing industries including "green tech," life sciences, machine learning, cybersecurity, and fintech, he said. The level of venture capital investments has grown significantly in New York City since the onset of the pandemic, particularly in these sectors. That trend is "reassuring," Kimball said, despite a recent downturn.
Total venture capital funding -- meaning private investment in companies headquartered in New York City -- reached $9.4 billion in the second quarter of 2022 and dropped to $5.8 billion in the third quarter of this year, according to the EDC report. That's still higher than the pre-pandemic level of $3.9 billion, measured in the third quarter of 2019. Overall this year, venture capital funding reached $23.6 billion, compared to $34.5 billion during the same period in 2021. That year set a record, with venture capital investments nearly doubling what they were during the same period in 2019, before the pandemic.
"We think that's a shift that's here to stay," Kimball said of the increase in venture capital investment in new businesses.
"It's no surprise that big tech companies, while they've slowed down hiring in recent months, continue to expand their real estate footprint throughout covid, and it's because this is where the talent wants to be," Kimball said.
New York City is adding jobs at a faster rate than much of the rest of the country, leading all metropolitan areas in the number of new jobs created in the last year, according to the EDC report.
The New York City metro area added over 450,000 jobs in the last year and 34,500 last month. The city's unemployment rate, while still well above the national average, continued to fall, reaching 5.6% in August, down from 7.4% at the beginning of the Adams administration, but still higher than the 3.7% before the pandemic. In recent months, however, labor force participation has been relatively stagnant and the number of job postings in the five boroughs decreased from nearly 90,000 in August to 85,000 in September.
The numbers echo findings in another recent economic report from New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, which shows overall private sector employment reached 97% of pre-pandemic levels in August.
"Sure that does give pause," Kimball said, chalking up the dip to cyclical oscillations in the job market and inflation pressures in national and global markets. "I would say in that context we are doing very well," he said.
But the unemployment rate among Black New Yorkers, particularly Black men, is still "unacceptably high," Kimball added. (At just six pages, the EDC 'snapshot' does not include demographic breakdowns.)
"In every instance where we have a project or initiative on the ground in New York City we're making sure we're putting in place the kinds of career pathways that are most likely to support those populations," Kimball said. That often means partnerships with local high schools, universities, and workforce development programs.
He gave the example of SPARC Kips Bay, a recently-announced plan to develop a life sciences campus on the East River incorporated with three CUNY schools – a two-year school, four-year school, and graduate school – focused on healthcare and biotech careers along with a new public high school with a public health theme. The project is a joint endeavor by Adams and Hochul.
Overall, Kimball said the data in the report offers important insight and perspective, and is complementary to other focus areas for Mayor Adams.
"The mayor has been relentlessly communicating around more direct quality-of-life issues, you know, public safety, cleanliness, those issues," he said. "This is really a complement to that."
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by Ethan Geringer-Sameth, reporter, Gotham Gazette
@GeringerSameth @GothamGazette
Officials touring the Kingsbridge Armory (photo: William Alatriste/NYC Council Media Unit)
The Kingsbridge Armory, the largest of its kind in the world at 520,000 square-feet, has sat vacant for more than three decades as plans to redevelop the structure have repeatedly failed. But the city is undertaking yet another attempt to reenvision the armory for modern use, and local lawmakers are optimistic that this time they will succeed.
Built in 1917 for the New York National Guard, the armory had been used for myriad purposes until it was decommissioned in 1991 and then given over to the city in 1996. But the armory, occupying an entire city block between Jerome Avenue and Reservoir Avenue in the Kingsbridge neighborhood of the Bronx, is a complicated site to redevelop. It was designated a city landmark in 1974 and then listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.
Over the years, the city has proposed various uses for the space, which includes a 180,000-square-foot column-free drill hall, five garage units, and 120-foot ceilings roughly as tall as an 11-story apartment building. Mayor Michael Bloomberg tried to convert the armory into a retail mall, a plan that was shot down by the City Council in December 2009 in a near-unanimous vote, chiefly over concerns that the project failed to require “living wage” job provisions for the developer. Bloomberg vetoed the Council’s vote but was overridden.
The last proposal, first announced by Bloomberg in 2013, involved turning the armory into the world’s largest ice rink facility, the Kingsbridge National Ice Center (KNIC), a 750,000-square-foot complex with nine indoor regulation-size ice rinks, 5,000 seats and 50,000 square feet of space for community use. The plan was estimated to create about 180 permanent jobs and 890 construction jobs.
The KNIC plan was unanimously approved by the City Planning Commission and then passed by the City Council in a 48-1 vote in 2013, as the mayor’s third and final term wound down, as well as the terms for many City Council members.
Over the years, however, the project stalled as the city’s development partner, KNIC LLC, which included former New York Rangers star hockey player Mark Messier, failed to obtain sufficient capital to fund it. In 2016, seeking to galvanize the project, the state’s Public Authorities Control Board approved a $30 million loan from the Empire State Development Corporation to KNIC to begin construction on the first phase of the project. In 2017, then-Governor Andrew Cuomo announced another $108 million loan to the project in his State of the State address.
Questions about transfer of the lease for the armory from the city to the development group became a contentious affair among the group, Cuomo, and then-Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr on one side and then-Mayor Bill de Blasio and city entities on the other.
In December 2021, the plan finally fell through and the city ended its contract with KNIC LLC, after a lengthy court battle that ended with a judge ordering that the armory’s lease would remain with the city’s Economic Development Corporation.
Now the city is taking up the task of another community engagement process to determine how to overhaul and rehabilitate the armory more than a hundred years after it was built. The effort comes on the heels of the controversial redevelopment of the Bedford Union Armory in Brooklyn, a mixed-use project redeveloped by the real estate firm BFC Partners, with 415 units of housing and a 60,000-square-foot community center that opened last October.
Earlier this year, City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams and City Council Member Pierina Sanchez, whose district includes the armory, set aside $5 million for initial renovations on the structure. The state also re-appropriated the $108 million in this year’s budget for any potential future redevelopment of the armory, the governor’s office confirmed.
“There have never been successful conversations about the permanent uses [of the armory], uses that will serve the community,” said Sanchez, a former urban planner who is just over nine months into her Council tenure, in a phone interview. Sanchez is co-chairing a community working group, along with Sandra Lobo, executive director of Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition, to oversee a six-month community visioning process along with the EDC.
The next project will also likely need to go through the city’s lengthy Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP), which only starts once there's a project plan and, if needed, private partners on board.
“The hope for the armory is a space that is really a driver of economic development for the community,” Sanchez said, “that is bringing good jobs, local hire…could be business, could be other kinds of uses that are responsive to the community and are going to be helping to build wealth and health in the community.”
Sanchez wants to oversee a robust community engagement process, supported by technical assistance from the city, and a strong community benefits agreement like the one that was included in the KNIC proposal, which would have provided living wage jobs for all employees, 51% of jobs and contracts reserved for Bronx residents, 51% of contracts for Minority and/or Women Owned Businesses, a Green Action Plan to improve the environmental impact of the project, free access to ice rinks for Bronx Title 1 schools and community groups, a small business technical assistance fund, among other things.
“That's the floor, not the ceiling,” Sanchez said. “That’s the floor in these discussions. Community is at the center.”
As Sanchez noted, the armory is often considered as a space for emergency uses, including recently as the city has experienced an influx of thousands of migrant asylum seekers, burdening the already struggling shelter system. But she said the armory has hazards that make it unfit for those uses, including potential lead and asbestos contamination. The Council’s $5 million allocation is meant to remediate those immediate concerns.
“It's a downpayment on addressing some of those environmental hazards and concerns so that the community can actually access the space and be a part of the visioning process,” she said. “I will yell at the top of my lungs to get as much more funding as I can from the city side of things.”
“We are excited to learn more about the community’s priorities for the Kingsbridge Armory,” said an EDC spokesperson in a statement to Gotham Gazette. “As New York City continues its recovery from the pandemic, redevelopment of the Armory can support outer-borough economic development, bringing new investment, good-paying jobs, and overall benefits to the neighborhood, the Bronx, and the city at large. We look forward to an open conversation with community members so the new Kingsbridge Armory becomes an asset every Bronxite can feel proud of.”
The mayor’s office did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
The armory is also getting attention at the national level. U.S. Secretary of Labor Martin Walsh recently toured the armory with U.S. Rep. Adriano Espaillat, whose district includes the armory, Council Speaker Adams, Council Members Sanchez and Oswald Feliz, (whose district neighbors the armory) Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson, and others.
“We don't know how much subsidy dollars beyond what we have today we will be able to secure,” Sanchez said. “These are political processes and budgetary processes…So us local members who represent the community and represent the armory are going to be fighting but it's not guaranteed.”
Espaillat's office did not reply to multiple requests for comment for this story. Walsh's office acknowledged an inquiry but did not provide comment.
State Senator Gustavo Rivera, whose district includes the armory, supported the previous KNIC proposal because of its strong community benefits agreement, and wants something similar for any new redevelopment project. “What's important and has always been important for me is what is at the core of it, and that is…it has to be driven by community needs and community wants,” he said in a phone interview.
“There is a consensus amongst all of us that we need to actually bring together state resources, city resources, and national resources to actually make this into a reality, to make it into a viable economic engine for this community,” he added. “We are working in concert in ways that has not necessarily happened before so I'm quite excited about what the possibilities will bring in the next couple years.”
As Borough President Gibson, a former State Assembly and City Council member who took her current office in January, noted in a phone interview, the current zoning of the area does not allow either building a school or housing. While that zoning could be changed through the city's land use review process, under the current restrictions, Gibson said she would ideally like to see multiple uses for the space including a community recreation center, a health care center, space for businesses (for instance the tech and video gaming industries), and potentially coworking space for entrepreneurs, small businesses, and worker cooperatives. Crucially, the new project should generate revenue for the city, she said.
“We're not waiting, because time is of the essence,” she said. “We have money that's been allocated, money that's already designated from the state and we want to make sure that that money doesn't go away.”
Gibson said the failure of the KNIC project also served as a lesson for local elected officials. “We're going to learn from the past mistakes, and we're going to do things different and better,” she said. The ice center project wasn’t necessarily the best use of the space, she said, but rather just the best proposal at the time.
“I think we need buy-in from the mayor, from the governor,” said Gibson. “We need buy-in from every level of government because this is really an all-hands-on-deck project.”
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by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
@samarkhurshid @GothamGazette