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Report Offers Closer Look at Role of Asian American Voters in Brooklyn Assembly Race Flipped by Republican


Lester Chang, left (photo: Chang campaign website)


Though Democrats maintained supermajorities in the State Senate and Assembly after the midterm elections, they lost ground in several communities across the state and ceded several seats to the Republican Party in the State Legislature and in Congress.

One of the most notable Republican flips came in Assembly District 49, an Asian-majority district in Southern Brooklyn which covers parts of Bay Ridge and Borough Park and much of Dyker Heights and Bensonhurst. There, 36-year Democratic incumbent Peter Abbate Jr. narrowly lost to Republican Lester Chang, in a race some have pointed to as evidence of Asian American voters moving from Democrats to Republicans. Now, a new post-election study finds that low turnout among Asian American voters could actually have been the deciding factor.

Chang, who is Chinese-American, defeated Abbate Jr., who is white, 52-48%, a margin of just 582 votes in an election where only 14,287 votes were cast. But according to a new study from the Asian American Federation, an advocacy and research nonprofit, Asian American voters did not turn out significantly in favor of Chang and if they had been more engaged in the election, they could have swung it for Abbate and the Democrats. While there has been some rightward movement of Asian voters, they remain overwhelmingly Democratic in both registration and voting patterns.

There also remains the possibility that Chang may not be able to serve in the seat. The State Assembly is set to convene on Wednesday morning to determine whether he failed to meet the residency requirements to run for District 49 and thus should not be seated for the new term that begins in January.

“The 2022 midterm elections in New York showed us how imperative it is for candidates and parties to forge and sustain meaningful voter outreach to New York’s rapidly growing Asian population,” said Jo-Ann Yoo, executive director of the Asian American Federation, in a statement. “Taking District 49 as a case study, there is a clear lesson that underinvesting in outreach to Asian Americans has electoral consequences.”

AAF’s analysis examined the Asian American population in the Assembly district, which was slightly redrawn in the recent redistricting cycle following the 2020 Census. (The Assembly district maps were later rejected by a judge but were allowed to stand for the 2022 cycle. They are currently being redrawn for the next legislative election in 2024.)

As AAF noted, Asian Americans were the fastest growing population in the 2020 Census and the count showed they had overtaken white residents as the majority in the district. According to AAF calculations, Asian Americans made up 59% of the population of the district, 80,454 residents out of a total 136,258. The district had 60,627 voting age residents, of whom 49%, or 29,704, identified as Asian. Moreover, more than half of those Asian voters were registered as Democrats while only 6.9% were registered as Republicans (40.3% were unaffiliated with a political party).

Overall voter turnout in the district was about 28%, even below the citywide turnout of 33% in the election. But AAF’s study found that turnout in District 49 election precincts with more than 50% of Asian registered voters had turnout lower than the district average, with some as low as 15-16%.

AAF modeled two scenarios if turnout had been different. If there was higher Asian American turnout and all registered voters cast a ballot along party lines, while all party-unaffiliated voters cast a ballot for the Republican, Chang would still win but with a smaller margin of 459 votes.

But, if all party-affiliated registered Asian voters cast a ballot along party lines and unaffiliated Asian voters split among Democrats and Republicans, Abbate Jr. would have won by 473 votes.

“Our examination of District 49 voter data undermined assumptions that the growing Asian population caused the district to swing red or that Asians always vote for other Asians,” said Linying He, AAF’s associate director of research, in a statement. “Asian voters are not a monolith, and we do not always vote along party lines or the ethnicity of a candidate. What matters to us, like all voters, are credible and deliverable promises that our communities and issues will continue to matter to candidates after Election Day.”

To that point, the district went for Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 election, as he won by a margin of 56.4-43.6 over then-President Donald Trump, a Republican. But in the governor’s race this year, Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul lost the district to Republican Lee Zeldin roughly 38-62% — meaning Abbate outran Hochul by a wide margin even in defeat — expanding on the improved Republican performance by mayoral nominee Curtis Sliwa in the 2021 election.

In their recently released Civic Engagement Report, AAF wrote that the Asian American community is “often considered too socially and linguistically fractured for political campaigns to target effectively.” But, through their own voter outreach efforts through the AAPI Power Coalition of eight nonprofits in the city, they found that culturally relevant and in-language outreach increased Asian voter turnout by 10 percentage points.

The group also recommended several measures to increase Asian American participation in the electoral process including more local surveys to accurately study various Asian American communities, addressing language barriers at the polls, and same-day or Election Day voter registration and no-excuse absentee voting to make voting easier.

[READ: 'I knew the vote would be close, but I didn't think that close': Iwen Chu's History-Making Win in Brooklyn's New 17th State Senate District]

[LISTEN: Max Politics Podcast: Ron Kim on How Democrats Can Win Back Asian Voters]

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by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

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Max Politics Podcast: Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani on a New Plan to 'Fix the MTA' & More


Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani at Wednesday's press conference (photo: Kara McCurdy)


December 15, 2022 - Max Politics Podcast: Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani on How to 'Fix the MTA' & More

Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani, a Queens Democrat, joined the show to discuss his new plan to 'Fix the MTA,' upcoming state budget negotiations, the 2022 election results, and more.

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

Read more: Max Politics Podcast: Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani on a New Plan to 'Fix the MTA' & More

What to Know About the Adult Survivors Act, New York’s New Law Allowing Civil Suits Over Past Sexual Abuse


Gov. Hochul signs the Adult Survivors Act (photo: Darren McGee/Governor's Office)


As of November 24, the Adult Survivors Act went into effect in New York State, allowing survivors of sexual offenses one year to file civil claims for cases that occurred even decades ago. 

The Adult Survivors Act (ASA) was signed into law in May by Governor Kathy Hochul, the state’s first female governor, and removes the statute of limitations for certain civil claims regarding past sexual offenses between November 24 2022 and November 24 2023, regardless of when the alleged crime took place. Like the Child Victims Act before it, the ASA’s implementation means that victims can address alleged sexual offenses they experienced years or decades ago but did not bring to court at the time. Reasons for such past inaction can span trauma, lack of resources, threats, and unsupportive environments. 

The Adult Survivors Act does not reopen the opportunity for criminal prosecution, but victims can seek justice through the civil court system.

Rachel Tuchman, a lawyer at Kaplan Hecker & Fink in New York, is one of the attorneys representing E. Jean Carroll in her ongoing defamation lawsuit against former President Donald Trump. The case unfolded when Caroll alleged in 2019 that Trump sexually assaulted her in a New York City department store in the 1990s. Trump publicly denied the assault, saying “I’ve never met this person in my life” and “she’s not my type.” As Carroll was no longer able to press criminal charges, one way she would be able to prove the assault was by trying to prove that Trump’s statements qualified as defamation.

But now the Adult Survivors Act has enabled Carroll to file a second lawsuit against Trump: for battery at the time of the alleged assault, and for recent alleged defamatory statements in October.

Kaplan Hecker & Fink are working with a number of clients filing claims under the ASA. “[W]e are not talking about sending someone back to jail after 25 years,” Tuchman said in an interview, “we are simply talking about monetary relief. Every single person who walks through our doors has incurred enormous costs to try to resolve the mental health struggles they have faced from sexual assault.”

Under the ASA, victims can bring claims against individual defendants but also against responsible entities such as employers, universities, government affiliates, and hospitals. The scope of behavior covered includes violent crimes such as rape, but also other numerous sexual offenses defined in the New York State Penal Code. This includes, but is not limited to: sexual abuse; forcible touching; and ‘spiking’ for sexual assault, when a victim is unknowingly given drugs or alcohol.

Passage of the Adult Survivors Act
Since the #MeToo movement gained momentum in 2017, there has been an ongoing public conversation about why survivors of sexual misconduct often do not come forward at the time of the offense. One common thread has been the existence of power dynamics where the perpetrator holds economic or other influence that coerces the victim to stay silent. Another is that trauma takes time to process and victims may struggle to confront their experience publicly. This is made worse by the fact that social norms have often led to victims being marginalized.

Over the last five years many state and local governments have enacted #MeToo-inspired legislation intended to address sexual harassment, violence, and other misconduct. This includes the passage of ‘revival statutes,’ which suspend the statute of limitations for civil actions related to sexual offenses to give survivors opportunity to seek legal redress. To date, most of these revival statutes have been aimed at childhood sexual abuse, such as New York’s 2019 Child Victims Act (CVA).

Carroll, an established journalist and author, has said she is one example, accusing Trump of sexual assault decades ago. When Carroll was finally ready to come forward about her experience, the statute of limitations meant that she could no longer file criminal charges or a civil suit against Trump, despite the mental and financial toll she has said the alleged rape has taken on her life. In the face of this challenge, Carroll’s legal team decided to advocate for a law that would help survivors seek justice through the court system.

Along with numerous advocacy groups in the state, the team worked to get the Adult Survivors Act in front of lawmakers. Tuchman said that “there was still this deep misunderstanding on the part of many in New York of why it would take so much time to come forward, particularly for adults who were sophisticated and had networks and access to attorneys.”

Ultimately Tuchman believes that this misconception was addressed in part by numerous survivors sharing their stories so publicly. “E. Jean’s story helped individuals understand why it takes so long to process this trauma, and why she was petrified to come forward against someone like Donald Trump – who can represent any other powerful figure, like an employer.”

In June 2021 the Adult Survivors Act passed unanimously in the New York State Senate, but stalled in the Assembly, though both chambers had Democratic supermajorities. But it then passed a second time in the Senate in April 2022, and in May 2022 it finally passed in the Assembly. At its core, the ASA reflects the reality that there are many rational reasons why survivors may wait a long time, some even decades, to come forward about the sexual abuse they endured.ADD 

On May 24, 2022 Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul signed the Adult Survivors Act into law at a bill-signing ceremony in the state Capitol in Albany, attended by survivors and those who had supported the legislation. During the ceremony Hochul declared “to those who thought they got away with horrific crimes they committed I just have one message: Your time is up. Your victims will see you in court and you will be brought to justice.” Drew Dixon, a survivor who attended the ceremony, said, “I'm really overwhelmed with gratitude today, because so many people will be set free.”

State Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins stated that prior laws had “failed adult survivors and prevented them from accessing true justice” because it takes “time to come forward, particularly when faced with the trauma that accompanies disclosures.”

State Senator Brad Hoylman, a Manhattan Democrat who sponsored the ASA alongside Assemblymember Linda Rosenthal, released a statement of appreciation to survivors saying: “We would not be here today without the courage of your convictions that propelled you to share your deeply personal stories about the sexual abuse that upended your lives and made legislative passage possible.”

This is not the first time that New York lawmakers have lifted a statute of limitations where disclosure of the crime involves complex circumstances. In 2019 the Child Victims Act (CVA) allowed victims of child sexual abuse to file civil claims retroactively within a two-year window and extended the deadline for future cases until the age of 55.

During the period between August 2019 and August 2021, over 9,000 lawsuits were filed in New York State by alleged victims who had suffered trauma without retribution since childhood – though experts suggest that this number represents merely a fraction of the victims eligible. Nearly 65% of claims were filed against entities related to the Catholic Church; the CVA also led to plaintiffs bringing forward cases of child abuse against high-profile individual defendants such as the actor Kevin Spacey and Prince Andrew. In September 2022, President Biden signed into law the Eliminating Limits to Justice for Child Sex Abuse Victims Act of 2022,  which removed the statute of limitations entirely for federal civil lawsuits relating to child sex abuse including forced labor and child sex trafficking. However this law does not apply retroactively.

Why Wait?
Amid the #MeToo movement and debate in New York over the Child Victims Act and Adult Survivors Act, one question that has come up repeatedly is: why do so many victims not come forward at the time of the alleged abuse?

As explained by Lucia Osborne-Crowley, a specialist in sexual offense trials, “there is a very overwhelmingly common pattern among young adult survivors called delayed disclosure. This essentially means that people who are sexually abused almost never report at the time, or even immediately afterwards...It is by far the most common outcome.”

In the Ghislaine Maxwell trial, a sexual abuse expert testified that many of the victims had delayed their disclosure about the alleged abuse they had faced at the hands of Maxwell and Epstein until well into adulthood. This is possibly because they were not able to articulate the severity of their experiences due to trauma, or even that they could not immediately identify the incident as a crime. Similarly, the expert in Anthony Rapp’s civil trial against Kevin Spacey concluded that the victim had experienced delayed-onset PTSD years later as an adult. Ultimately, the jury in this trial found Kevin Spacey not liable for battery.

In the United States, RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) estimates that the vast majority of sexual offenses are perpetrated by someone familiar with the victim. Studies have shown that a delayed disclosure reaction is even more likely when a victim is targeted by someone close to them, such as a partner, friend, relative, boss, coworker, or other important figure. “Often, the first thought is ‘I’ve done something to cause this’ or ‘I’m going to get into trouble,’” explains Osborne-Crowley. “There is a lot of self-blame that goes into delayed disclosure.”

Osborne-Crowley noted that the abuse often goes along with manipulation and grooming, which are used to keep victims silent; “these are psychological weapons which cause victims to not trust their own perception of what happened.” To make matters more complicated, Osborne-Crowley notes that memories become repressed because victims store trauma in a different part of the brain that may be harder to access. This can be difficult for a jury to understand; “most people don’t know that traumatic memory is stored differently and retrieved differently. No one knows that instinctively unless they have experienced trauma.”

Before the #MeToo movement, survivors of assault and abuse often faced a broader environment that did not support victims – and experts say there is still a long way to go. Tuchman said that “the #MeToo movement was a watershed movement that educated so many people on why it took survivors so long to come forward. [There is] a counter-narrative that women are coming forward with false stories in droves or only seeking a financial reward. That counter-narrative silences women further, and it is important to educate individuals publicly about how trauma often inhibits immediate reporting.”

Historically, women who experienced inappropriate groping in a workplace environment were told to go along with it or ridiculed, and more often than not stayed quiet in favor of job stability. When Kaplan Hecker & Fink began taking on cases of this nature, Tuchman quickly noticed that “it was very clear that silence was a systematic problem. So many women had not come forward as a result of being threatened silently through demand letters and defamation threats, threats to their employment and livelihood, a loss of community.” Many victims internalized shame because they feared serious ramifications in their personal, professional, and social lives.

During the Harvey Weinstein and Ghislaine Maxwell trials, many survivors were called forward to present witness testimony but were unable to file their own civil lawsuits due to the statute of limitations. With the implementation of the Adult Survivors Act they can now take their cases to court. Having spoken to a number of these survivors for an upcoming book, Osborne-Crowley said, “for them it’s absolutely life-changing. It is validating to acknowledge that the legal system is not fit for purpose.” However, the witness testimonies in the Maxwell trial led Osborne Crowley to believe that justice systems are still not suited to victim disclosure. 

“In initial police interviews you are in a room with strangers, often men, which is not conducive to giving graphic details of an assault,” Osborne-Crowley said, “you will often see defense teams say that victims have made up or changed their stories to seem more credible.” In reality, working through sexual trauma is a complex and lengthy process in which authorities must be specially trained in order to support victims rather than undermine them. Osborne-Crowley said that sexual offenses must be considered uniquely because “we will continue to see these patterns as long as the system mistreats victims.”

Due to a combination of these factors, the majority of sexual offenses are unreported to authorities. The federal Centers for Disease Control (CDC) estimates that over half of all women have experienced physical sexual violence in their lifetime. One in four women has experienced attempted rape and one in three women has experienced harassment in a public space. But the NYC Alliance Against Sexual Assault estimates that only 3% of rapes are actually reported to the police, a number that is only lower historically. Of the sexual assaults which are actually reported, RAINN estimates that only 8% result in incarceration. With such a criminal justice system that fails victims so often, it is difficult to estimate just how many individuals in New York may seek retribution in civil court this year under the Adult Survivors Act.

Help for Victims
It is clear from the statistics of unreported sexual crimes that both legal and societal shifts are necessary to bring perpetrators to timely justice. New York’s Adult Survivors Act only allows sexual offenses to be brought to civil court, not criminal court, meaning that no perpetrator will face imprisonment.

Questions remain about how to create an environment that supports victims seeking criminal justice for sexual offenses when they occur.

Osborne-Crowley suggests that there are many tangible improvements that could be made, including: ‘trauma-informed’ first interviews with women who are experts in handling sexual offenses; training across police forces for understanding sexual trauma; and specialised task forces dedicated to sexual crimes.

Tuchman believes that the response within the criminal system is already improving, but that “we should be continuing to encourage this training and ensure that the types of questions being asked to a survivor do not come off as hostile, abrasive, or re-traumatizing.”

On a societal level, Osborne-Crowley is adamant that safe spaces must be created for victims. People must be more sensitive when discussing sexual offenses, she argues, as the subject matter can be triggering to many women who have experienced abuse but are yet unable to come forward. This is especially pertinent in the wake of high-profile trials and more to come, which she describes as “a lightning rod for vitriol and abuse from the public...they give ‘permission’ for people to speak about victims in a very abhorrent way.” On the other hand, E. Jean Carroll’s work on the Adult Survivors Act has helped show that these high-profile cases can pave the way for survivors; but commentators should be conscious when discussing the sensitive elements of sexual offenses with others, considering that more women than not have experienced some form of sexual violence in their lives and the topic itself may be a source of trauma.

Shawn Crowley, a partner at Kaplan Hecker & Fink, is hopeful that the Adult Survivors Act is already changing society’s perception and support of victims for the better. “Until pretty recently, it was not clear to most people that unwanted touching and groping [which are covered under the Adult Survivors Act] were wrong, and they were dismissed as an unfortunate part of being a woman. The more we can do to normalize the fact that it is not OK, that you should come forward, that you will be believed when you do come forward, creates a safer environment for survivors.”

Filing Claims Under the Adults Survivors Act
Crowley notes that the greatest difficulty in trials for sexual offenses is that “cases become harder to prove the further we are from the incident.” DNA becomes harder to find, memory fades, and records become less accessible. Yet it is hardly impossible, and legal teams are already preparing evidence for decades-old cases to present within the one-year lookback window under the Adult Survivors Act.

Tuchman and Crowley detailed some examples of evidence that can be used retroactively: 

Sexual Assault Forensic Exam: otherwise known as a rape kit. If the victim went to the authorities at the time and had DNA samples taken, this information may still be available. Even if the DNA is no longer available, there may be ER admission records that could support the claimant’s case and verify alleged timeframes.

First-hand contemporaneous records: victims may be surprised to know that evidence like diary entries or writing at the time can be fundamental to their case. Any firsthand account, if available, can prove the timeframes and details of an alleged offense.

Secondhand testimony: similarly, if victims told someone else – parents, friends, authority figures – at the time, it can be powerful supporting evidence.

Record of Change in Disposition: it can be particularly difficult to establish a timeline in retroactive sexual offense trials. If someone close to the victim, like a therapist, guidance counselor, or teacher, was able to record a notable change in behavior around the alleged timeframe, this can support the victim’s testimony – even if the victim did not attribute these changes to the sexual abuse they faced.

Traditional Evidence: there are many types of evidence that you could find in a typical crime scene such as physical objects, video evidence, notes and emails, relevant voicemails, et cetera.

Hardly an exhaustive list, it shows that despite many challenges it is in fact possible to gather evidence for claims of sexual offenses alleged to have happened well in the past.

Another obstacle survivors face is the perceived inability to hire decent legal counsel. “On the civil side, many individuals feel as though they may not have the resources to come forward with the support of an attorney,” said Tuchman, a leading attorney specializing in sexual offenses. “It is important to understand that, depending on the circumstances, lawyers may be able to take their case on either on a pro bono basis or on a contingency basis (meaning that the individual does not have to pay anything up front, and the lawyer will recover a percentage of any award ultimately granted).”

There are many resources available for victims of sexual offenses, including mental health support and legal aid. Survivors in New York may consult the Sexual Assault Bill of Rights; there is a free hotline (1-800-942-6906); the state’s Rape Crisis Prevention Program; the National Sexual Violence resource center, and free legal aid through the New York Legal Assistance Group.

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by Alicja Hagopian, Gotham Gazette

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Queens Assembly Member Up Just One Vote After Recount as Fight Over 98 Ballots Remains


Assemblymember Stacey Pheffer Amato (far left, photo: @Stacey23AD)


Assemblymember Stacey Pheffer Amato, a Queens Democrat, is leading by just one vote over her Republican opponent, Thomas Sullivan, after a manual recount for the District 23 election concluded on Wednesday. But, the race is still not over as a court battle for nearly 100 additional ballots remains to be decided.

On election night, Amato trailed Sullivan by 246 votes in an election with more than 32,000 ballots cast, a close enough margin to trigger an automatic hand recount. More than 1,000 absentee and affidavit ballots remained uncounted at the time, and Amato’s campaign also filed a lawsuit to ensure that ballots that were improperly invalidated should be counted. On Tuesday, Queens Supreme Court Justice Joseph Risi ruled in her favor, ordering that 94 absentee ballots and 4 affidavit ballots that were initially deemed invalid by the Board of Elections should be added to the tally.

In the case of the 94 absentee ballots, the court found that the BOE had failed to notify voters that their ballots had been invalidated and did not give them the opportunity to cure their ballots or inform them of their other options for voting as required by state law.

“There is no question that the Board’s failure to provide this required notice impaired these voters’ ability to participate in the electoral process,” the judge ruled. He also said that the election law “shall be construed liberally in favor of…protecting the right of voters to have their ballot cast and counted.”

The additional four ballots, he wrote, were “mistakenly marked as invalid” for varying reasons.

Sullivan’s campaign has appealed the court decision, with the next hearing in the case set for Monday, December 12. According to Adam Fusco, a lawyer representing Sullivan, the campaign is fighting to exclude the 94 “fatally defective” absentee ballots. However, neither side has questioned the inclusion of the four affidavit ballots, which will be counted regardless of the outcome of the appeal.

“It's those four affidavit ballots that may very well decide this race,” Fusco said in a phone interview. “Those four affidavits are sealed. Other than guessing, there's no way to know who, if either, of the candidates that those four voters voted for.” Fusco expects the case to be decided quickly next week.

Doug Forand, a spokesperson for Amato’s campaign, expects to prevail despite the appeal and predicted that Amato’s margin of victory will only increase since the 94 absentee ballots contain more Democratic votes than Republicans.

“Voting is the cornerstone of our American democracy,” Forand said in a statement after the court ruling on Tuesday. “We will not allow anyone to silence the voices of voters who have exercised their constitutional right to have their votes counted. We are grateful to the courts for following the law and rightfully ruling that these ballots must be counted.”

Pheffer Amato has been in the Assembly since 2017, representing the 23rd District, covering Rockaway, Howard Beach, Lindenwood, Ozone Park and parts of Hamilton Beach. She had to outrun Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul, who lost the district to Republican Rep. Lee Zeldin by nearly 8,000 votes.

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by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

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'A Bill Like This Should Be A No-Brainer': Hochul Yet to Move on Legislation Restoring Comptroller's Contract Review Powers


Gov. Hochul at a bill-signing (photo: Mike Groll/Governor's Office)


Update: Governor Hochul signed legislation to restore some of the comptroller's oversight of SUNY, CUNY, and Office of General Services centralized contracts on December 30, 2022.

Governor Kathy Hochul has yet to sign a bill that would restore some of the Comptroller's contract oversight powers that had been stripped by her predecessor, Andrew Cuomo, putting her at odds with the state's chief fiscal watchdog, members of the State Legislature, and good government advocates.

The wait-and-see on the bill, which passed both houses of the Legislature in June, is "frustrating" some of the main stakeholders, including Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, who has pushed for the restoration on and off over the decade.

Hochul has said she is still considering legislation that would give the Comptroller power to review some major state contracts from the State University of New York (SUNY), the City University of New York (CUNY), and the Office of General Services before they are signed  – often referred to as “pre-audit” authority. Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli and good-government groups say the measure would codify protections intended to limit opportunities for corruption, waste, and fraud.

DiNapoli has gone the bulk of his tenure without that authority after Cuomo and the Legislature stripped it from him in 2011 and 2012. Its absence featured prominently in corruption scandals that dogged Cuomo throughout his time in office and led to the convictions of several of his close allies and donors.

The bill would restore pre-audit authority over Office of General Services centralized contracts; certain contracts from SUNY, including SUNY health care facilities and the SUNY Construction Fund; and CUNY contracts, including its Construction Fund.

According to the comptroller's public database, Open Book, the state has committed tens of billions of dollars outside DiNapoli's pre-audit authority in OGS contracts alone. That means the Comptroller's Office didn't have the chance to flag potential issues with the bidding process or contractors ahead of their issuance, unlike with many thousands of other annual contracts entered into by state entities.

Hochul has until the end of the year to sign or veto the bill.

"Frustration would be a fair characterization. The bill passed overwhelmingly in both houses," DiNapoli told Gotham Gazette in a phone interview last week.

"With the change in administration there needs to be a new level of transparency. A bill like this should really be a no-brainer," he said. "I think it should have been signed months ago."

Asked about the legislation at an unrelated press conference on November 29, Hochul said the bill was still under review along with hundreds of other pieces of passed legislation.

"We are always looking to strive to improve accountability and transparency in state government. We can always do more," she said, noting the year-end deadline still a month away. "But it's important that people know that we take taxpayer dollars very seriously, that they are invested and allocated based on strong principles and not access to individuals as has happened in the past."

"It's an opportunity to show our priorities and how I'm going to lead over the next four years," she added.

A spokesperson for Hochul referred Gotham Gazette to her November 29 statement after an inquiry about the status of the bill.

Advocates say the measure would help prevent the kinds of pay-to-play schemes that plagued the Cuomo administration, including the bid-rigging plot in the $1 billion “Buffalo Billion” economic development program that landed a top aide and other allies in prison. Part of that involved SUNY Research Foundation and its nonprofit affiliates, leaders of which manipulated a request for proposals to steer tens of millions of dollars in contracts to corrupt bidders who were major donors to Cuomo's campaigns.

“Prior to being removed by Governor Cuomo, the Comptroller’s oversight powers over many of these state contracts existed for over 100 years," wrote Tom Speaker, a policy analyst at the good-government group Reinvent Albany, in an email. "Every day that Governor Hochul delays signing this bill is another day that her office continues a Cuomo-era policy that puts hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars at risk.”

Reinvent Albany and 34 other advocacy groups, labor unions, and political organizations urged Hochul to sign the legislation in a memo in support of the bill in October, before the general election she went on to win.

"Comptroller oversight is crucial for ensuring the integrity of state contracts," the memo states. "The Comptroller’s office reports that it reviewed $235 billion in state contracts in 2020, and identified multiple cases where oversight saved the state millions. Allowing large contracts to go unchecked risks the abuse of billions of taxpayer dollars."

The Comptroller's Office could not say the exact value of contracts that would have been under pre-audit oversight, had it not been removed.

"Because the COVID emergency orders eliminated our approval role and the need for a competitive procurement, we cannot provide an accurate or complete number of contracts that we did not have an opportunity to review," wrote spokesperson Mark Johnson in an email.

"Especially in the early Cuomo years there were these huge centralized contracts, as I said in the billions, that went through OGS that we didn't review," DiNapoli said in the interview. According to Open Book, the largest was a $4.1 billion contract with Citibank from 2014 for credit and travel cards to be used by state agencies, school districts, and other entities.

In 2019, as Cuomo faced pressure over the scandals, he and DiNapoli signed a memorandum restoring some of those powers to the comptroller's office under an agreement that could be terminated with ten days notice. The legislation before Hochul would codify much of that agreement and go beyond it, with higher thresholds that will place more contracts under the comptroller's pre-audit jurisdiction. It would also expand the length of time the comptroller has to conduct pre-audit reviews from 30 days to 90 days. Advocates for greater checks and balances say the bill substantially brings the comptroller's authority back to the pre-2011 status quo.

The bill sponsors, Assemblymember Kenneth Zebrowsky and Senator Elijah Reichlin-Melnick, told Gotham Gazette discussions with the administration went cold ahead of the election, in which Hochul faced a competitive challenge from Republican Lee Zeldin.

At the time, Hochul indicated that she had issues with some of the value thresholds that would place a contract under the comptroller's pre-audit oversight. Under the current memorandum, the comptroller may review proposed SUNY and CUNY contracts valued at $250,000 or greater and OGS centralized contracts of $85,000 or greater. The legislation keeps the OGS threshold the same but gives the comptroller the power to review preliminary SUNY and CUNY contracts as low as $50,000 in some cases.

"I'm in conversations with the comptroller as we speak about the levels," Hochul said, when asked about the bill on the debate stage with Zeldin in October. "We think we can negotiate a position to recognize that inflation is out there. So something that may be worth $50,000 10 or 12 years ago has a different price point.”

"We are actually having conversations to make sure that people do feel comfortable that we restore the oversight system," she said. "And I believe in this, I mean, I believe in accountability and transparency and that's how I continue to conduct myself as the governor of the state of New York for the next four years."

Hochul, Cuomo's lieutenant governor, came into office in August 2021 promising "a new era of transparency," collaboration, and ethical government.

"I'm waiting," Reichlin-Melnick told Gotham Gazette of the governor acting on the bill. "There were conversations between their team, me, the Senate staff, the Assembly, the Comptroller, with a couple of proposals back and forth and then everything kind of stopped leading up to the election…I have not heard back from the governor's office in the last three weeks since the election."

"How would I characterize it? To-be-determined," Zebrowsky said in an interview, of the status of negotiations.

Neither lawmaker gave specific details about the proposals during negotiations before they fizzled out. "The main source of contention is that the administration felt like the bill that passed constrained them too much, it put too many barriers in place towards rapid issuance of contracts," said Reichlin-Melnick.

One of the main voices against the legislation is SUNY, which sent a memorandum of opposition to lawmakers in May – after it passed the Senate and before it passed the Assembly – raising concerns about the lower thresholds and longer review window.

"It will result in costly delays for hundreds, if not thousands of SUNY contracts, and further hinder SUNY’s ability to compete for students, faculty, and research," stated the memo, issued by the SUNY Office of Government Affairs. "Increased purchasing costs due to delays will also impact the healthcare and patient services provided by SUNY’s three hospitals to vulnerable populations across the state."

According to a 2019 State Comptroller's Office report, pre-audit reviews take on average between six and seven days and only take longer when the contract raises red flags.

"I think it's kind of a bogus argument, because that's just not the reality of how long it takes," DiNapoli told Gotham Gazette, echoing comments he repeatedly made when Cuomo stripped the powers and then sought to defend the move. "But the purpose of the 90 days as existed before is to give maximum time if in fact there is a need for closer scrutiny."

He said a shorter window could have unintended consequences. "If we're under a tighter timeframe, it may compel us to just reject the contract because we don't have adequate time to get through it,” DiNapoli warned. “So I don't think it achieves what they think it might be achieving."

"But," he added, "nobody's advanced anything to my knowledge along those lines. They've just been using that as a reason to say they're against the legislation. SUNY has a history of wanting to operate as an entity unto itself and I don't think that's right."

DiNapoli, Reichlin-Melnick, and Zebrowsky each said they were open to discussing changing some of the parameters of the bill to address administration concerns as long as the comptroller's pre-audit authority was materially restored.

"My line in the sand is to make sure that there's no loopholes in the language that allows the governor to waive the review," Zebrowsky said. "In terms of the threshold levels, we think these are appropriate. If the governor attempts to come up with different levels I would ask for a justification and I would confer with the comptroller."

"Any attempt to carve SUNY out in any significant way would be a nonstarter to me," DiNapoli said.

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by Ethan Geringer-Sameth, reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

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As Hochul Promises ‘Bold’ Agenda, Many Housing Policies on the Table for 2023 in Albany


Gov. Hochul at a housing event (photo: Kevin P. Coughlin/Governor's Office)


New York faces an acute housing crisis: rents are sky high, not enough housing is being built, homeownership is increasingly out of reach, and there is a looming eviction crisis coming out of the covid pandemic. But while the issues contributing to the problem have long been simmering, solutions from state and city leaders have been halting and piecemeal, far from meeting the need wherein 53% of New York City tenants are rent-burdened, with 32% “severely” rent-burdened.

The housing crisis, including the shortage of new housing to meet demand, requires an all-of-government response. New York City Mayor Adams and the City Council have recently passed or announced plans for tens of thousands of new apartments, with the mayor promising more to come. Heading into the new year, all eyes will be on Governor Kathy Hochul and the State Legislature as the state’s budget and legislative session begins, with housing among the top issues on the agenda for the newly-elected governor and legislators.

The Democratic governor has already promised that housing will be one of the top priorities for her administration as she starts her first full term in January.

“People want to live here; they just can’t afford it anymore,” she said in an October interview with Politico New York. “The cost of housing is up 57 percent in the last seven years. Rent is up, depending on the part of the state, anywhere from 27 percent to 57 percent across New York. And so what that does is it creates a barrier for young people who are raised here, educated here and want to live in the same neighborhood they grew up in — Long Island, Westchester, the city — and they can’t afford it. That’s a tragedy.”

She pledged to release a “very ambitious housing plan” to meet what she has said is the state’s need for between 500,000 to 1.2 million new units of housing over the next ten years. (The National Low Income Housing Coalition estimates that New York has a shortage of more than 615,000 rental units for very low-income households with a maximum income of $26,200 for a family of four.)

Hochul has already committed to a five-year, $25 billion housing preservation and construction program that will produce 100,000 units, just scratching the surface. “So we have to be much more creative and start catching up with other cities and regions in building housing,” said Hochul, who earlier this year proposed but was unable to pass a series of policies to boost housing production in the state.

In the keynote speech at the New York Housing Conference’s annual conference on Thursday, Hochul pointed to the scope of the state’s housing woes. “We are in the midst of a housing crisis that has been decades in the making,” she said. “In the decade before the pandemic we created jobs at three times the rate of housing units leaving us with 1.25 million jobs but only 400,000 units of housing. See the disconnect? We now have the jobs but where are you going to put the workers? Where are they supposed to live?” 

Hochul also acknowledged that the crisis is largely self-inflicted because of the “cumbersome” regulations that delay development for years, as well as local anti-housing opposition. “We're a national leader in blocking housing…New York is essentially in a league of its own when it comes to constricting housing development,” she said.

The governor again pledged Thursday to offer a “bold and audacious” housing plan in her January State of the State agenda, which she said will include a real statewide “housing strategy,” which is currently lacking.

Navigating the state’s housing crisis will be a monumental challenge and there will be at times competing and complementary policy pushes from the governor, lawmakers, tenant and housing advocates, the real estate industry, local officials like Mayor Adams, and others. Reforms could address the entire spectrum of housing policy from rent regulations and tenant protections to zoning rules and tax incentives, and beyond.

“The most important thing is that housing is at the top of the agenda in Albany for 2023,” said Andrew Fine, policy director for Open New York, a pro-housing group based in the city. “And that there’s an agreement among the governor and the State Legislature that they can't go home in June without passing some meaningful bills that will advance housing production.”

In New York City, where the affordable housing crisis is particularly severe, Mayor Adams is attempting to make sweeping changes to citywide zoning regulations under his “City of Yes” plan, in order to make it easier to build housing. As the specifics of that proposal are being crafted with a 2024 timeline, the Adams administration has been working on a series of major development deals, often with private developers, and the City Council has approved over 12,000 units of new housing on rezoned land already this year.

But Adams’ administration has its own demands of the state, particularly when it comes to tax incentives that the governor, mayor, and others say are crucial to spur real estate developers to build affordable housing.   

“New York City urgently needs more rental housing, including a significant number of below market rate units,” said James Whelan, president of the Real Estate Board of New York, in a statement. “The State Legislature has taken several actions in recent years purportedly in response to the housing crisis – and that crisis has only gotten worse. We hope the Legislature will now take a different approach by focusing on common-sense policies that produce more of the rental housing New Yorkers desperately need."

Meanwhile, some housing advocates are particularly focused on legislation that will immediately protect renters from large rent increases, eviction, and homelessness. The Housing Justice for All statewide coalition, for instance, has backed three proposals – Just Cause Eviction, a new Housing Access Voucher Program, and the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act.

Among other policies, there is renewed focus heading into the 2023 state session on those three bills as well as how to bring tens of thousands of vacant rent-stabilized units back into tenancy, crafting a replacement for the expired 421-a tax abatement program for housing development, the white whale of sweeping property tax reform, ways to build more housing in the New York City suburbs, and more.

Tax Incentives
Perhaps the most important tax benefit for the real estate industry was 421-a, a program that incentivized affordable housing creation and lapsed last year. Progressives long criticized the program as effectively a major giveaway to developers with limited return on investment.

Governor Hochul proposed a modified version, called 485-w, that had stronger affordable housing mandates and would have opened up new kinds of housing to the tax benefit. But her proposal failed to pass in the face of opposition from state legislators. The governor is likely to advance another measure next year and it remains to be seen whether it will get a nod from the Legislature. Mayor Adams and administration officials are among those who have called for a new solution to be crafted to ensure more housing production.

At a Citizens Budget Commission breakfast last month, Jessica Katz, the city’s chief housing officer, said that besides incentives for new construction, the Adams administration is also pushing for a tax abatement for housing preservation “because now we're in a position where because of the economic environment, we're starting to worry about housing quality in a way that we haven't had to in a certain amount of time.” She specifically referred to renewing the expired J-51 program for renovating residential buildings. 

Zoning and Regulatory Reforms
The CBC and the Regional Plan Association, a nonprofit think tank, have both urged changes to the state’s zoning laws and regulations that determine housing development and land use decisions statewide. 

In a report released in September, CBC recommended that the state make changes to the State Environmental Quality Review (SEQR) process to expedite development and to set objective standards for local governments to contribute to regional housing while expedite approvals for projects that meet those goals. 

RPA has called for a more sweeping zoning framework for the state. “The discussion is heading to how can we change our overall regulations so that we can build more, and more of the type of housing that we need, but in a way that is going to be less objectionable for communities than what's being built now or what could be built otherwise, whether those concerns are noise, height, or gentrification and having too many luxury apartments with not enough affordable,” said Moses Gates, RPA's Vice President for Housing and Neighborhood Planning, in a September appearance on Gotham Gazette’s Max Politics podcast.

“At the top of the list is we just need a state framework at all…In New York, we have absolutely nothing,” he added in the interview, pointing to states like New Jersey and California that have made progress. “We don't even have a state department of planning. So before we can do anything...the state just needs to acknowledge that it plays a role in housing production, smart planning, and housing growth.” 

Hochul indicated in her speech Thursday that her approach will be statewide, alluding to the type of framework that Gates spoke of. “[E]very community, every small town, every local zoning board, every planning board, every community has a role to play. And they must,” Hochul said.  

Basement Apartments and Accessory Dwelling Units
The Adams administration is also pushing for the legalization of basement apartments and other Accessory Dwelling Units, which officials say will open up new units of housing while also giving homeowners additional streams of income. It would also help bring under code existing illegal housing that can be especially dangerous.

Hochul had proposed a bill in last year’s budget to legalize ADUs for single-family homes, which would have allowed homeowners to go around local zoning laws to add basement apartments or certain types of ‘granny flats.’ But she scrapped it after facing significant backlash from suburban lawmakers, both Republicans and Democrats, particularly on Long Island.

Transit-Oriented Development 
Another proposal Hochul could revive in the new year is a measure to allow multi-family housing development around rail transit stations in New York City and its suburbs. Hochul proposed the idea in this year’s budget but it was met with similar opposition as the ADU proposal and she eventually scrapped it too.   

The proposal has support from advocacy groups that say it is crucial to building more housing, especially near transit and in the suburbs.

“We don't think that New York is keeping pace with other states that have really taken actions to unlock housing supply by using the state zoning authority,” said Rachel Fee, executive director of the New York Housing Conference, a nonprofit advocacy group. 

Good Cause Eviction
One of the chief priorities for progressive lawmakers and tenant advocates is the “good cause eviction” bill proposed by State Senator Julia Salazar and Assemblymember Pamela Hunter, which would give tenants stronger protections against significant rent raises and evictions. Landlords have vociferously opposed the proposal as it gained momentum in Albany, while Governor Hochul has so far refused to take a position on it. 

Housing Vouchers 
State Senator Brian Kavanagh and outgoing Assemblymember Steven Cymbrowitz, who chair the housing committees in their respective chambers, proposed legislation to create a Housing Access Voucher Program for homeless families and households at a risk of homeless, which would cost roughly $200 million in its first year. The measure had significant backing in the Legislature but the governor’s office did not support the bill, specifically arguing over the estimated budget impact of the program.

It is likely to be among the top housing priorities for the Democratic majorities in the Legislature during state budget negotiations.

Tenant Opportunity to Purchase
State Senator Zellnor Myrie and Assemblymember Marcela Mitaynes sponsored the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act, which would give tenants first chance to buy the buildings where they live before the owner can put them on the open market. The proposal, also known as right of first refusal, did not make it past committee last year.

Rent-Stabilized Vacancies
The Community Housing Improvement Program (CHIP), a group that represents owners and managers of tens of thousands of rent-stabilized buildings in New York City, is making a major push for a “vacancy reset” allowing landlords to reset the rent on rent-stabilized units when they are vacated to a level in line with other apartments in the neighborhood, higher than is currently allowed under state law.

The group says the measure would allow building owners to rehabilitate 20,000 vacant and dilapidated units, which would then continue being regulated but at the new, higher rent. According to reporting from City Limits, as many as 38,621 rent-stabilized units out of roughly 1 million in the city, are vacant, down from more than 61,000 last year, per data from New York State Homes and Community Renewal, the state’s housing agency, which relies on self-reporting by landlords. According to CHIP, owners have been unable to perform needed renovations on many of those buildings after the Legislature passed the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act of 2019 (HSTPA), which limited rent increases on vacated rent-stabilized apartments. 

“Better housing is possible. And it doesn’t require billions of dollars in government investment, it simply requires the government to implement policies designed to grow the supply of housing and rollback current policies, which are designed to keep housing scarce,” said Jay Martin, executive director of CHIP, in a statement. “The high rents, lack of quality apartments, and overall frustration with housing is solely due to bad policies put in place decades ago, and the lack of political courage among elected officials to change these policies over the years.”

Tenant advocacy groups have naturally opposed the idea of a so-called vacancy reset. And the proposal will likely face headwinds from left-leaning legislators. But there will be pressure on Hochul and lawmakers to find a solution that will help bring tens of thousands of vacant, rent-stabilized units back into service to tenants.  

Open New York, for instance, has proposed an action plan to reduce apartment vacancy including a statewide rental registry, greater enforcement through foreclosures on properties with longstanding unpaid taxes and violations, property tax reform, adding more affordable homes to the city’s online Housing Connect portal, and beefing up staff at the city’s Department of Housing Preservation & Development.

Besides the vacancy reset, CHIP’s legislative agenda for 2023 also includes support for Hochul’s ADU and transit-oriented development proposals, the Housing Access Voucher Program, removing the cap on floor area ratio that limits the size of housing development, and a ban on parking minimums for housing development near transit hubs.  

CHIP and the Rent Stabilization Association, another trade group of landlords and property owners, filed a lawsuit prompted by the 2019 law, arguing that the entire rent regulation system is unconstitutional. The case has yet to be decided and could end up on appeal before the U.S. Supreme Court.  

Increasing the FAR Cap
Last year, Governor Hochul proposed eliminating the state’s cap on floor area ratio (FAR) for residential buildings in New York City, which would allow developers to build denser buildings. Commercial buildings already have a higher FAR cap than residential ones. But the proposal was among several housing policies that failed to pass the finish line and which the governor may revisit next year.  

Property Tax Reform
A big open question is whether the governor and Legislature will finally attempt to reform New York City’s property tax system, which is in large part governed by state law and imposes inequitable taxes on homeowners despite the value of their homes. Successive mayors have pledged to take it up as an issue in Albany and have repeatedly failed.

The most recent effort came from Mayor Bill de Blasio who punted the issue to a commission that issued its reform recommendations in a report just days before his tenure ended. Mayor Adams has shown no indication of carrying that report forward or proposed any alternatives of his own. 

The New York City Council held a hearing in mid-November on the city’s property tax system, where there was a variety of testimony urging city and state officials to urgently address the issue in 2023. Among those testifying was City Comptroller Brad Lander, who issued a framework for comprehensive reforms including incentivize new rental housing production by reducing base tax rates by about 30%, aligning tie tax breaks with the cost and affordability of buildings, and replacing the expired 421-a program with a new version of the state’s Mitchell-Lama program to create permanently affordable, cooperative homeownership.

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

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Max Politics Podcast: Ron Kim on How Democrats Can Win Back Asian Voters


Assemblymember Ron Kim (photo: @rontkim)


November 30, 2022 - Max Politics Podcast: Ron Kim on How Democrats Can Win Back Asian Voters

Queens Assemblymember Ron Kim, fresh off a narrow reelection win, joined the show to discuss how Democrats can win back Asian voters who have been moving toward Republicans in recent election cycles, what's wrong with the Democratic Party in New York, and more.

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


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by Ben Max, Gotham Gazette
     

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'I knew the vote would be close, but I didn't think that close': Iwen Chu's History-Making Win in Brooklyn's New 17th State Senate District


A rally for Iwen Chu, center (photo: @Iwen4NY)


This month, Iwen Chu became the first Asian-American woman elected to the New York State Senate, clinching an unexpectedly tight victory over Republican Vito LaBella. Starting in January, Chu will represent the 17th Senate District, a newly-created Asian-plurality district in Southern Brooklyn, redrawn in the recent redistricting process based on demographic trends in the 2020 Census, which saw Asian Americans as the fastest growing group in New York in the last ten years.

Chu’s victory was hard fought, with a margin of just 215 votes as of November 21, and though going into the election she was expected to win fairly easily, she wound up defying the political headwinds by significantly outperforming the top of the Democratic ticket in neighborhoods that have been increasingly leaning towards Republicans over the last few years.

The new 17th District, one of 63 Senate seats across the state, includes parts of Sunset Park, Bensonhurst, Bath Beach, Bay Ridge, Kensington, and Dyker Heights, with a population that is 48.6% Asian, 29.3% white, and 18% Hispanic according to the CUNY Graduate Center’s Redistricting and You project.

The district is home to 69,884 registered Democrats, 18,645 Republicans, and 40,182 party-unaffiliated registered voters, according to State Board of Elections data as of November 1. Even though Democrat Joe Biden won what is now the district by nearly 17 points over Republican President Donald Trump in the high turnout 2020 election, the district has been growing redder in other races, like for mayor and city and state legislative seats.

As was readily apparent from this and past elections, portions of Southern Brooklyn are unlike much of the rest of the heavily Democratic borough. In the 2021 mayoral race, Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa carried much of the region over Eric Adams, and in this election, Republicans won three Assembly seats, unseating incumbent Democrats.

In this year’s election, not only did Hochul win by a far narrower margin than the Democratic gubernatorial nominee in the last four elections, but Democrats sustained significant defeats in Southern Brooklyn, on Long Island, and in the Hudson Valley. And though U.S. Rep. Lee Zeldin, the Republican nominee for governor, lost in all of Brooklyn to Governor Kathy Hochul by a margin of 28.3% to 70.8%, he handily won in Southern Brooklyn.

The new 17th State Senate districts overlaps significantly with the smaller Assembly districts 47, 49, and 51, and slivers of Assembly Districts 44, 45, 46, and 64.

Assembly Districts 47 and 49 cover the vast majority of Senate District 17 and include the neighborhoods of Bensonhurst, with its large Asian-American population, Bath Beach, New Utrecht, and parts of Bay Ridge and Dyker Heights. Zeldin bested Hochul with 62% and 63% of the vote in those two Assembly districts, respectively. LaBella won those Assembly districts with smaller margins, 55% and 52% of the vote, respectively, meaning Chu was able to outrun Hochul by 7 and 11 points. However, in Assembly District 51, which covers Sunset Park and Red Hook, home to large Asian and Hispanic communities, Hochul won with 76.4% of the vote. Parts of that district in Sunset Park fall within the new Senate district and Chu won there with 71% of the vote, in essence providing her narrow overall margin of victory.

Asian voters in Southern Brooklyn and parts of Queens have been voting more Republican in recent election cycles, and Chu had to win over many of them that were voting for Zeldin for governor in order to win her Senate race.

Chu did have her advantages over LaBella, a former NYPD officer and education activist. She has long been involved in the local political arena, as a member of Community Board 11, a member of Community Education Council District 20, and most recently as former chief of staff to longtime Assemblymember Peter Abbate (who was among the Democratic incumbents defeated this year). Chu ran unopposed in the primary for the new open seat and was able to quickly garner widespread support from the Democratic political establishment, progressive groups, elected officials, political clubs, and labor unions across Brooklyn and beyond into the general election.

Chu’s policy platform was comparable in parts to her opponent’s. “I believe education and public safety is not a party position. That's why even my opponent and I, on these two issues, we are very similar,” she said in a Monday interview. Chu supported changes to the state’s controversial bail laws to give judges more discretion in setting bail though LaBella’s positions went further – he was pushing for entirely reversing the state’s bail reforms, which eliminated cash bail for most nonviolent offenses.

Both Chu and LaBella opposed efforts to replace gifted and talented programs in city schools and to drastically change admissions at the city's elite Specialized High Schools, issues that are particularly important to Asian American communities and on which Democrats have found themselves split.

Chu also advocated for increased social services to tackle the root causes of crime, greater support for small businesses, including loans, grants, and language assistance programs,  increased resources for immigrant communities including legal assistance and poll site interpretation services, investments in street safety improvements, and increased affordable housing support.

LaBella, meanwhile, also said he would push the governor to audit and fire any district attorneys who refuse to enforce the law, echoing a call from Republicans aimed specifically at Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a reform-minded Democrat. LaBella also railed against Critical Race Theory, though it isn’t taught in city schools. In September, he landed in hot water after the New York Daily News reported on a video he posted last year from his summer home in Massachusetts, in which he said, “I just like it so much better here than Brooklyn. I hate fucking Brooklyn, I wish I never had to go back.”

Though Chu, as a longtime participant in local politics and an Asian-American woman, had a ready constituency clamoring for representation in state government, she knew the challenge she faced, having taken stock of the 2021 mayoral election. “We cannot afford to leave any stone unturned!,” she tweeted ahead of the election along with images of two maps showing how Sliwa performed well in the 2021 election alongside the contours of the new Senate district. She called for help from Democrats to ensure the seat would be theirs.

“I knew the vote would be close, but I didn't think that close,” Chu said in the Monday interview.

The issues that resonated with voters in the new 17th State Senate District were similar to those that Sliwa pounced on to win broad parts of the area: concerns about public safety, including rising anti-Asian hate crimes, and education, specifically preserving gifted and talented programs and test-based admissions to the city’s specialized high schools.

“Safety concerns, it's definitely the number one topic no matter what language you speak or what background you're from. Everybody wants to feel safe,” Chu said.

Some Democrats have long recognized that Southern Brooklyn voters go their own way and the Democrats there tend not to vote strictly along party lines. “We’ve never had blowout elections in Southern Brooklyn,” said State Senator Andrew Gounardes, a Democrat whose current, outgoing district covered many of the neighborhoods of the new 17th. Gounardes himself flipped a seat from Republican to Democrat in the ‘blue wave’ 2018 elections.

Gounardes placed no small amount of blame for losses and close calls on the state and county Democratic parties, which took a hands-off approach to the election that has incensed Democrats across the borough, city, state, and even country.

“This election cycle, I didn't see a single bit of effort from the state party to invest in Southern Brooklyn. I didn't see any effort…barely an effort from the county party to help in southern Brooklyn,” he said of the Brooklyn Democratic Party, which has been accused of failing to support its candidates while blaming them for their own defeats.

Gounardes worries that without constant effort and attention from the party apparatus, “we will lose these neighborhoods for good. And I’m very concerned about that. because we have worked so hard to move the needle so far. And to see this work now being undone because we can't get the parties to pay attention is very disappointing.”

“In the most Democratic county in the country, we should not be losing Democratic incumbents when the top of our ticket is winning,” he added.

City Council Member Justin Brannan, a Bay Ridge Democrat who also narrowly won reelection last year, echoed Gounardes. “Southern Brooklyn has always been unique and complicated and often misunderstood or taken for granted,” he said. “Every cycle people seem to have amnesia about how close the general elections are in Southern Brooklyn and I certainly don’t enjoy saying, ‘I told you so’ but this is something that we've been sounding the alarm on for quite a while. The Democratic Party has all but completely lost large portions of voters in Southern Brooklyn who are now reliably voting Republican.”

What most people agree on is that Democrats lost the rhetorical battle to Republicans on the issue of crime and public safety. Republicans repeatedly hammered away at rising crime rates, blaming Democratic policies for what they depicted as an out of control city and state, especially honing in on rising hate crimes against the Asian community. That message was largely consistent from local races up to the statewide level.

“Campaign strategy-wise, Republicans, they do organize, they do,” Chu said. “Obviously, the voters took the message and then they sent the message to us loud and clear. Mainstream [Democrats], we didn't address Southern Brooklyn voters strong enough.”

“There was a well-funded Republican campaign that highlighted crime that certainly drove Republican votes in Southern Brooklyn,” said one Democratic consultant who wished to remain anonymous to speak more freely. “There was an effective messaging campaign by Republicans, whether it's fair or whether it's accurate is a different question…It's something that Democrats gotta figure out going forward to 2023 Council elections, 2024 legislative elections.”

Brannan conceded that his party did not offer a positive vision that could oppose Republican fearmongering that peeled away a significant chunk of voters, particularly amid the sustained pandemic era increases in most major crimes. “We're losing to an opposition who has zero solutions,” he said. “We're losing to an opposition who was just pointing at things and saying that's a problem. But our party is not countering that with anything. We're not articulating a vision to counter that ‘world is going to hell’ narrative.”

“The Democratic Party has to give more to the community than identity politics,” said George Sarantopoulos, who co-managed LaBella’s campaign with his wife, Heidi Chan-Sarantopoulos. “I think people are concerned in the district about crime. They're concerned about cost of living…They're worried about getting to work every day and going on the subway and getting robbed on the way coming back from work.”

Sarantopoulos said it was natural that Chu would have significant support from Asian New Yorkers, particularly as she pitched herself becoming the first Asian-American woman to be elected to the Senate. But Asian Americans also came out in support of LaBella, who is white, he said. “Obviously, our message resonated with a large portion of the Chinese community…I saw that in terms of voters, in terms of volunteers. Vito LaBella was embraced by a good portion of the community.”

One of the issues on which Democrats have lost ground to Republicans is specialized high schools and gifted and talented programs. Former Mayor Bill de Blasio sought to replace G&T programs with a universal enrichment model and change admissions policies at the specialized high schools to increase enrollment of Black and Hispanic students, earning the ire of many Asian Americans. That backlash was felt at the polls last year and has continued into this year’s election, even though many Democrats did not support de Blasio’s efforts. “I think the gifted and talented programs and specialized high schools are not up for negotiation...It’s a deal-breaker for the Chinese community,” Sarantopoulos said.

Chu said that the conversation around changing specialized high school admissions, which became a major focus for de Blasio in 2017, eroded “faith and trust about how the city government is serving us,” not just for Asian-American families but other immigrant communities in the district that see education as a crucial pathway for the next generation. “We need to prove to those voters…that not all Democrats are saying the same thing,” she said.

While Mayor Adams reversed de Blasio’s plan to replace G&T programs and even announced plans to expand on the current model, while also announcing opposition to changing specialized high school admissions and plans to open new specialized high schools, Republicans still successfully painted Democrats as a threat to the educational opportunities that many Asian New Yorkers prioritize.

What was also clear from the election is that while the state and Brooklyn Democratic parties failed to step in, Governor Hochul ran an anemic campaign in Southern Brooklyn. “There were definitely a lot of voters in WeChat that supported just Republican candidates in general…very much unhappy with the current incumbent Democrat,” said Yiatin Chu, president of the Asian Wave Alliance, a group that endorsed both Republican and Democratic candidates in the election but favored the GOP. Yiatin Chu (no relation to Iwen Chu) is a close personal friend of LaBella and volunteered on his campaign.

Yiatin Chu and the Asian Wave Alliance focused heavily on the issues of public safety and education, and on Asian turnout for many Republicans in the 2022 elections, from Zeldin to LaBella, as well as victorious or nearly-victorious Assembly candidates in Brooklyn and Queens.

In Southern Brooklyn, Republican Lester Chang defeated longtime incumbent Democratic Assemblymember Abbate in the 49th District (though there are questions about Chang’s residency that could endanger his victory); Democratic Assemblymember Steven Cymbrowitz lost to Republican challenger Michael Novakhov in the 45th District; and in District 46, incumbent Democratic Assemblymember Mathylde Frontus lost to her Republican opponent, Alec Brook-Krasny. In Flushing, Queens Assemblymember Ron Kim, a Democrat, won his reelection by a margin of less than four points in a district that Zeldin narrowly carried against Hochul. And in Rockaway, Democrat Assemblymember Stacey Pheffer Amato trails in her race by 246 votes.

Even the newly minted state senator conceded that Democrats have failed to pay attention to issues that voters in the district have raised, particularly around public safety and changes to education systems. “We're the voice of the district. We represent the people. So I need to make sure my colleagues in the State Senate, in Albany, in government, they need to understand Southern Brooklyn here, we’ve been ignored far too long,” Iwen Chu said.

Yiatin Chu said that key to Iwen Chu’s victory was her securing votes from many reliably Democratic voters, particularly outside the Chinese community. “But in terms of the unaffiliated, kind of the everyday parents, small business owners. They were not excited about her,” Yiatin Chu said. “It's kind of like the excitement for the first Asian woman in the Senate all came from outside the communities that she was running in.”

The political battle for the new 17th State Senate District has just begun. Iwen Chu and Democrats now have two years till the next election to prove to constituents that the party has their best interests in mind and solutions to their woes.

“We understand how the pandemic affected a lot of small businesses, immigrant businesses, how the pandemic increased a lot of Asian hate crime so that anyone in Southern Brooklyn who is Asian American, either directly themselves or someone they know has had a bad experience,” said Jay Brown, vice president of Bay Ridge Democrats, which endorsed Chu’s campaign. “So our side has plans to tackle those issues, and Iwen does, but that’s a nuanced conversation sometimes, how to attack those problems in a positive way.”

“It's a lot easier to just kind of tout crime and instill fear. That's a quick and easy thing to do,” Brown said. “And it resonates with people because they feel it. So we knew that was a hurdle to overcome. And we've been seeing that the past few years that that's been, reverberating throughout the communities a bit.”

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by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

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Despite State Budget Funding, Little Progress Bringing Psychiatric Beds Back Into Service


Hospital staff (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)


New York State has made little progress bringing 1,000 shuttered psychiatric beds back into service after they were closed during the covid pandemic, raising questions about a signature element of the mental health and public safety agendas of Governor Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams.

In the April budget, Hochul and the Legislature allocated $27.5 million in state funding, matched by federal dollars, to restore the roughly 1,050 psychiatric beds shifted at the height of the pandemic when hospitals scrambled to make room for the swell of COVID-19 patients. Since then, only about 200 psychiatric beds have come back into use, according to the state Office of Mental Health (OMH) – a number that has not moved since June. OMH did not provide a breakdown of where the 200 beds are located.

According to OMH, nearly half the 850 defunct psychiatric beds are in New York City, where 415 remained offline as of September. Another 435 of the beds are closed outside the city, including 94 on Long Island, 141 in the "Hudson River Region," 61 in Central New York, and 139 in the western part of the state. ​There are currently roughly 5,800 licensed psychiatric beds in 97 hospitals across the state, and 3,300 more in New York's state-run psychiatric hospitals.

The state expects New York City to add another 200 psychiatric beds "in the coming months," according to the Office of Mental Health. In response to Gotham Gazette inquiries, the governor's office did not comment on the apparent lack of progress since June.

The beds have been central to the street safety plans Hochul and Adams have touted since January, policies aimed at beefing up police and mental health services, particularly underground, amid a string of high profile attacks committed by people with reported psychosis. According to the two leaders, psychiatric beds are a complement to their efforts to flood the city's public spaces with police officers, and to a lesser extent social workers – offering a helpful destination for those in severe need, who have often wound up on the streets and subways or in jail.

Part of a larger formula backed by and enacted in partnership with Mayor Adams, the psychiatric beds were announced alongside increased police and outreach worker patrols. In the state budget deal of April Hochul also toughened the state's bail and discovery laws and expanded Kendra's Law – a statute that enables officials to obtain court-ordered outpatient mental health treatment.

When announcing the state budget agreement on April 9, Hochul said, "There's an obligation on our part to not just make those kinds of changes, but to balance the other side of the equation as well. Invest in resources for those who need it most. Invest in the mental health structure infrastructure to give people what they need."

"We are going to make sure that there are over 1,000 psychiatric beds available because there are people that need care, they need attention, they need to be on a path to recovery," Hochul continued. "And they can't get it as long as there's beds that are not available in a place that can be helpful to them."

The psychiatric beds had been part of Adams' broader state budget ask when he testified before the Legislature in February, just before releasing his own preliminary budget.

"It is urgent that we request the state’s immediate assistance in expanding the number of beds for those in critical need of mental health care, and funding for the medical and support staff they require," Adams told state lawmakers in February.

"Too many of our fellow New Yorkers are cycled through temporary care and released before they are ready, often due to the limited availability of long-term support and housing," he testified.

"That's crucial for us," Adams had said of restoring the psychiatric beds when he made his preliminary budget announcement in February, which included more funding for police officers and homeless-encampment clearing.

"We're ending the era of tents. We're ending the era of sleeping on our subway system, with all your belongings, that era has ended in the city," Adams said. "But at the same time, we want to have additional help and giving people the mental help that they need."

The $55 million total state and federal allocation would fund higher Medicaid reimbursement rates for psychiatric beds that would bring them to the same levels as general medical beds.

"Let's make up that differential," Hochul said at another subway safety announcement with Adams in October. "That's what our money from the state went towards. So there's not an incentive to have fewer psychiatric beds."

But the higher reimbursement rates require federal approval, which is still pending, according to James Plastiras, a spokesperson for the state’s Office of Mental Health. None of the state allocation has been spent as of early November, meaning 200 psychiatric beds were restored at the existing Medicaid rate. Plastiras told Gotham Gazette the higher Medicaid reimbursement rates will be retroactive to April 1 once they receive federal approval.  

“Under Governor Hochul’s leadership, we are fully committed to providing a comprehensive array of services for any New Yorker experiencing a mental health crisis — including the unhoused," Plastiras wrote in a statement to Gotham Gazette.

"We are embracing innovative approaches to help these individuals address their mental health issues in meaningful ways that will allow them to transition into stable housing in independent settings," he said, noting investments in community-based mental health services and a $12.5 million budget allocation to add 500 scatter-site supportive units, which include on-site services, to the state's housing portfolio.

As of October, the state had not issued a request for proposals to initiate the supportive housing development, which includes services to support formerly-homeless individuals. According to Plastiras, one would be issued by the end of the year.

The state was also slow to complete the rollout of Hochul's Safe Option Support outreach teams, part of her first subway safety announcement with Adams in January, and it is unclear whether they have been effective in helping homeless individuals into permanent housing (after this article was published Plastiras told Gotham Gazette the teams have enrolled 500 individuals in some kind of service). And despite amending Kendra's Law, the new language was not used as the basis of any court orders in its first four months in effect, raising questions about implementation across the state.

It is not a simple matter to open a psychiatric bed in a hospital. It requires unique configurations of space and staff. In the case of repurposing medical beds, there can be construction costs and capital needs to make them safe and appropriate for psychiatric patients.

"All of this stuff they built into these rooms to take care of the [COVID-19] medical emergency needs to be undone," said Alison Burke, the vice president of regulatory and professional affairs at the Greater New York Hospital Association, which represents 280 member hospitals, in an interview.

Hospitals are also contending with staffing shortages that have become drastic during the pandemic. The state budget allocated another $9 million to recruit psychiatrists and psychiatric nurse practitioners with loan forgiveness. After a series of Gotham Gazette inquiries for this story, the governor’s office put out a press release on Wednesday, November 23 announcing the opening of applications for the program.

"Community-based mental health care providers continue to be impacted by the nationwide shortage of healthcare workers, and the demand for psychiatrists and psychiatric nurse practitioners continues to grow,” said New York State Office of Mental Health Commissioner Dr. Ann Sullivan, in the press release. “The Community Mental Health Loan Repayment Program will help our partners meet this growing demand by helping to attract and retain these essential professionals." 

"We're confounded by the fact that we have workforce challenges," Burke of Greater New York Hospital Association told Gotham Gazette. 

The commitments to higher Medicaid rates and staffing retention were welcome to hospitals, even if they have been slow to materialize. "We're moving in the right direction. It's a very welcome and necessary investment," Burke said.

As pandemic era crime increases came to define the 2022 election, as they had 2021 races in New York, Hochul emphasized the mental health funding she secured in the state budget alongside changes to the state's bail and outpatient treatment laws. In October, she joined Adams, and the heads of OMH, the MTA, and the NYPD to announce another phase in their subway safety strategy that she dubbed, "Cops, Cameras, and Care."

The plan included dispatching 1,200 more police officers to subways, installing surveillance cameras in every subway car, and opening up 50 new psychiatric beds, dedicated to homeless individuals with severe mental illnesses. Even with ridership up, Hochul, Adams, and their appointees said the public perception of danger is high, driven by unstable passengers and fare-beaters who they claim have a propensity for more serious offenses.

"It's not just stats. We can give you stats all day. The question is how do New Yorkers feel? We must match the actual impacts with how New Yorkers feel on the streets and in the subway system," Adams said.

"That's why the omnipresence of police officers and the removal of those who are dealing with mental health issues is crucial to our second phase of this important plan," the mayor said.

Asked to respond to the halting restoration of psychiatric beds despite the state budget allocation and promise of 1,050 beds back into service, a spokesperson for Adams referred Gotham Gazette to the city's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH).

"All of us – federal, state, city and service providers – are working day and night to improve our system of care for people living with mental illness. We are introducing new and innovative strategies to ensure that we can overcome decades of underinvestment and neglect to meet the incredible needs of the moment," DOHMH spokesperson Patrick Gallahue said by email.

The 50 psychiatric beds are separate from the 1,000 accounted for in the state budget, funded with $10 million from the state's general fund, Crain's New York reported. The first of two new 25-bed "Transition to Home" units opened on November 1 at the Manhattan Psychiatric Center, according to OMH. The office also plans to seek contract bids for a $7.3 million residential step-down program that will offer short-term housing with services to help individuals transition to more independent living.

At the time of the announcement, Adams said the NYPD had removed 1,500 "emotionally disturbed persons" from the subway during the calendar year "to prevent some form of incident from taking place." It is unclear whether those individuals were charged with a crime or where they ended up; a series of city agencies did not respond to inquiries other than to refer Gotham Gazette to another city agency.

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

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