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New York Can’t Put the Blindfold Back On: Legislature Must Reject Rollbacks to State Discovery Laws


Protecting halls of justice (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)


In 2013, a fight broke out among dozens of people near a nightclub in the Bronx where Aaron Cedres worked as a bouncer, and one man was seriously injured. Though he insisted that he had only broken up a separate fight, Cedres was charged with gang assault, a charge that carried up to 25 years in prison if convicted. Prosecutors told Cedres’ public defender that surveillance footage of the fight looked bad and offered him a plea deal for five years in prison. He maintained his innocence and urged his attorney to acquire the footage. 

Cedres’s attorney requested the footage from the District Attorney but they delayed and delayed, taking months to turn over security footage that ultimately disproved the allegations against him. Discovery laws laws pertaining to the disclosure of evidence were in the prosecutors’ favor; they were not required to turn over the video footage until they were ready for trial. They used the law to their advantage to try to pressure Cedres into taking a plea deal without seeing the evidence against him, or risk going to trial where he faced a greater prison sentence. 

After more than a year, his case was dismissed, but the charges had already cost him his job, his car, and his apartment. Cedres won his case, but lost everything else due to New York’s antiquated discovery laws.

In 2019, in an effort to address this and similar injustices, New York overhauled its discovery laws, falling in line with 47 other states that require full and timely discovery. Yet, alongside New York prosecutors, Governor Hochul is now trying to undo this progress in ongoing closed-door budget negotiations. They would revert the state’s evidence-sharing practices back to the same era that upended the life of Aaron Cedres and so many others.

For decades, prosecutors and police were allowed to withhold evidence from people accused of crimes and their attorneys until the eve of trial, effectively “blindfolding” them.

This unjust system denied people access to crucial information, such as police reports and witness statements, keeping them and their attorneys in the darkunable to investigate, prepare a defense, or make an informed decision about whether to accept a plea offer. Even when discovery contradicted the prosecutor’s allegations, cast doubt on a person’s guilt, or exposed untruthful testimony by police or other witnesses, prosecutors routinely got away with withholding this vital information.

The consequences of the “Blindfold Law” were delayed trials, less effective defense representation, coerced guilty pleas, and one of the highest rates of wrongful convictions in the nation. 

In 2019, the State Legislature enacted a fair discovery statute, which required prosecutors to turn over evidence in a timely and meaningful way, avoiding delays and allowing defense attorneys to adequately prepare for trial.

Now, Governor Hochul and some New York District Attorneys are pushing to gut these transformative discovery laws.

Their proposed legislative changes would shift the burden of identifying discoverable evidence to the defense. This is a practical impossibility as only prosecutors are in a position to know what evidence police have collected in an investigation. If enacted, the change would effectively destroy the 2019 legislation, striking a major blow to transparency and the need to hold prosecutors and police accountable. 

This last-minute proposal comes as a shock. Governor Hochul did not seek any changes to the discovery law in her initial budget proposal. And in February, the District Attorneys Association testified that prosecutors need more money to implement the law, but did not call for legislative changes.  

One thing is clear: prosecutors and defenders acknowledge that for the discovery system to function as intended, more resources are needed for both sides. In 2022, we all met with Governor Hochul’s office to discuss solutions to a growing backlog of cases caused by the pandemic, and we agreed that more funding was needed for staffing and technology to collect, store, share, and review digital evidence.

Police and prosecutors also must agree to a uniform digital transfer system so that DAs aren’t gathering the evidence piece by piece from individual officers, delaying discovery. The refusal or inability to share files between police and prosecutors is no reason to overturn the law.

Despite our agreed-upon solution, prosecutors have suddenly pointed to a supposed increase in dismissals, citing their inability to comply with discovery as the primary cause. This is untrue. The current law has many “safety-valves” when DAs cannot fully comply with the law: DAs simply need to show that they started requesting the information early and that they did so more than once. Worth noting: their data is incomplete because the reasons for dismissals weren’t accurately tracked until the spring of 2022. It is also clear that the lengthy pandemic affected case outcomes, resulting in dismissals as a way to reduce the backlogs.  

Fulfilling the promise of a fairer criminal legal system requires firm commitment to the 2019 landmark law not a retreat from it that will absolve prosecutors of their obligations and have devastating consequences for people awaiting trial. We urge state legislators to resist the governor’s and prosecutors’ attempt to weaken our discovery laws. Justice depends on it.

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Yung-Mi Lee is President of the New York State Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. Mark Funk is President of the Chief Defenders Association of New York. On Twitter @NYSACDL & @chiefdefendsNY.

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Our Newest New Yorkers Want to Work: What They Need from the President and Mayor


Helping with immigration paperwork (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)


Imagine if we could fulfill the American Dream for tens of thousands of vulnerable migrants, save vast amounts of money on temporary housing, and add to the city’s tax base – all at no cost and with no downside. It’s possible: President Biden must give all of New York City’s asylum-seekers employment authorization — today — by granting humanitarian parole to our newest New Yorkers.  

New York City is more than $1 billion into a humanitarian disaster not of our making with no end in sight. At least 55,000 migrants from the United States/Mexico border have arrived in the city since April 2023, and more than 34,000 are in the city’s care, according to the administration of Mayor Eric Adams. To meet the need, the City has opened 103 emergency shelters and eight massive humanitarian centers.

Tens of thousands of vulnerable migrants in New York City want and need to work, but very few have been approved to do so. No work means no money. No money means no way to afford an apartment or groceries. No apartment or groceries means full dependence on city social services and non-profit organizations. Full dependence on social services and non-profits means a heavy strain on the city budget and the migrants’ dignity and mobility. 

Asylum-seekers are eligible to apply for employment authorization 180 days after their first check-in with an immigration judge. The backlog in immigration court is so severe (there are already more than 110,000 pending asylum cases in New York State) that new appointments for initial check-ins are booked until at least 2025. Some appointments are being scheduled as far out as 2029.

In other words, for tens of thousands of New York City’s recently-arrived migrants, the 180-day clock won’t even start for two to five years.

New York City’s legal service providers estimate just 5% of the 55,000 migrants have completed their first appearance. Those who have are still subject to United States Citizen and Immigration Services backlogs: it takes another 8 to 18 months for employment authorization applications to be approved.

The question is, how do we fix this? 

First, the federal government should grant humanitarian parole of at least two years to the migrants who are already in the city. Humanitarian parole provides temporary lawful status in the U.S. while cases are adjudicated and allows migrants to secure work authorization within five to ten months. Humanitarian parole does not take away the requirement to apply for asylum or seek another form of permanent status. It is temporary relief, not a path to citizenship, until additional applications for relief are submitted. 

The Biden administration is already using humanitarian parole for 100,000 Ukrainians and 85,000 Afghans. It is a long-established tool to resettle large numbers of people and start their lives while pursuing immigration status in the United States. Temporary Protective Status (TPS) is another route the federal government could take, but the wait time for work authorization is much longer, approximately two years.

Homeland Security has the discretion to grant humanitarian parole without Congressional action. It is adaptable and immediate. The regulations are broad: parole can be granted for “urgent humanitarian reasons” or “significant public benefit.” President Biden should think about what that means in New York City. 

Second, the City must increase funding to legal service providers. There are not enough attorneys to get applications moving and maintain continuity of representation for 55,000 migrants (and counting). The New York Immigration Coalition and Catholic Charities Community Services of New York – two of the organizations spearheading legal services for migrants – estimate an additional $30 million is needed for an initial and effective, sustained response on top of the $31.1 million already allocated by Mayor Adams. 

Next, the City needs to help with pathways to jobs and financial independence. We commend the mayor for calling on Washington to speed up work authorizations, including through the use of humanitarian parole. In the meantime, the city can do more to prepare people for employment.

There should be English language classes at hotels and shelters, including lessons that are tailored to workplace vocabulary and communication. The City should connect even more migrants with job training and certification programs. There should be financial literacy workshops that help migrants obtain an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN), which enables payment of income taxes and helps to establish “good character” in the eyes of immigration court judges. These small investments pay dividends.  

Nonprofits are already doing this work. Organizations like the Staten Island-based La Colmena support immigrant workers with a robust list of services such as apprenticeships, resumé writing courses, and legal clinics. Their Occupational Safety and Healthcare Administration (OSHA) and Site Safety Training (SST) courses are in such high demand that there is a 400-person waiting list. 

New York City is perhaps the only city in the nation with the infrastructure, jobs, and generosity to handle this crisis, but we can’t sustain it if migrants can’t work. Washington must grant humanitarian parole now.

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City Council Member Gale Brewer represents parts of Manhattan. Murad Awawdeh is executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition. On Twitter @galeabrewer & @HeyItsMurad.

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Rowan Wilson Protected the Essential Right to a Speedy Trial


The Court of Appeals (photo: Mike Groll/Governor's Office)


Governor Kathy Hochul’s appointment of Judge Rowan Wilson to be the new Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals was widely praised by practitioners, bar associations, and legal academics, who hailed the selection of a brilliant and respected jurist to be New York’s first Black Chief Judge.

But criticism at Wilson’s confirmation hearing centered on a recent majority opinion he wrote in People v. Regan, in which the Court of Appeals overturned a rape conviction on speedy trial grounds. While the facts of this case are tragic, this criticism misunderstands the reasons behind the decision, the importance of the constitutional right at stake, and the effect on future prosecutions.

The Regan case turned on the New York Constitution’s right to a speedy trial, which protects both individual and societal interests. Speedy trials protect defendants from having an accusation hanging over their head for years while they await their day in court. They are also better for victims, for the truth-seeking functions of criminal courts, and for public confidence in the court system. A long-delayed trial is more likely to result in the wrong verdict, less likely to deter criminal behavior, and less likely to satisfy the demands for justice of those harmed.

The right to a speedy trial exists more in theory than in practice, as Kalief Browder’s infamous case illustrates. Browder, a teenager from the Bronx accused of stealing a backpack, spent over three years on Rikers Island awaiting trial, most of it in solitary confinement, before his case was finally dismissed—without a court finding any violation of Browder’s right to a speedy trial. Despite some policy changes, New York’s speedy trial laws still often fail to ensure timely justice, unless there’s proof of egregious negligence by the prosecution.

But egregious negligence is exactly what happened in Regan. After a woman reported she had just been raped by an acquaintance, whom she identified, police administered a rape kit and interviewed the acquaintance, who denied the allegation. Prosecutors then took over three years to obtain a warrant to get DNA from the accused and another year to indict him. For most of that time, by their own admission, prosecutors were doing nothing on this case: not investigating, not interviewing, not even thinking about it. If you’ve ever reported a crime to police and then sat around waiting while it felt like nothing was happening, that’s exactly what happened here—not just for weeks or months, but for years.

New York courts apply a five-factor test to decide when the constitutional speedy trial right has been violated. Applying this test in Regan, four of the six Court of Appeals judges found that the yearslong delay—which the prosecutor’s office could not offer any explanation for—violated the state constitution, so the case must be dismissed. Notably, the majority joining Wilson’s opinion included the Court’s most moderate judge and one member of the three-judge conservative bloc, Judge Anthony Cannataro. Even the District Attorney who lost the case signaled his acceptance of the decision, telling the New York Times, “The facts are so specific and inarguable that I don’t know that you’re going to run into a situation like this down the line.”

Nevertheless, misconceptions about the decision have abounded in recent days. An op-ed in the Daily News described the decision as a break with precedent “requir[ing] courts to give weight to whether the defendant had been prejudiced by delay.” In fact, the Court gave weight to that factor but found it outweighed by other factors, particularly the years in which the prosecution did nothing and the lack of any explanation for this inaction.

The op-ed also complains that the Court could tackle the problem of inexcusable delays by police and prosecutors in other ways, like task forces or “reform initiatives.” But this was a court presented with a case to decide; it was not an option to say “The Constitution was violated here, but we can just overlook that and set up a task force instead.” As Wilson wrote, “Although the constitutional guarantee of a prompt prosecution is not the sharpest instrument by which to address the chronic lackadaisical approach to reports of sexual assaults, affirming the prosecutorial conduct here would establish a precedent—which would apply in every future rape and sexual assault case—that the [prosecution] can delay investigation of a serious crime for years without any explanation or excuse."

The Regan decision should make it easier, not harder, for victims of sexual assault to see their attackers swiftly tried and convicted. Contrary to Republican Senator Steven Rhoads’ claim during Wilson’s floor vote, if someone walks into a police precinct today to report a rape, it doesn’t matter if it occurred last night or 50 years ago: law enforcement can investigate and bring charges. What Regan means is that they actually must do that, and promptly, rather than stick the report in a drawer and forget about it for years. By declining to condone prosecutorial negligence, Wilson’s opinion made clear that swift justice isn’t just a nice idea but a constitutional requirement. Victims, the accused, and every one of us deserves no less.

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Sam Feldman is an appellate public defender in New York City. On Twitter @srfeld.

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Does Voting by Mail in New York Really Require a Constitutional Amendment?


In the State Senate (photo: Edwin J. Torres/Mayoral Photo Office)


Does voting by mail in New York really require a constitutional amendment? Our new analysis says it may not. First, our perspectives on this important issue:

Deborah: I love voting by mail. I can see the ballot in advance, research the candidates and propositions, then cast my ballot without even leaving home; I can check whether my ballot was accepted on the Board of Elections website. Currently, 35 states allow anyone to vote by mail.

But in New York, the only way to vote by mail is to qualify for and request absentee ballots each year. Why?

Jim: Throughout my 32 years in the New York Legislature, we believed that enacting no-excuse-needed mail-in voting required amending the New York State Constitution. This is not easy: two successive classes of both houses of the Legislature have to pass the proposal each term just to put it on the ballot, where voters approve or disapprove it. Nevertheless, I introduced a bill for the amendment and it passed in one house before I retired; it finally appeared on the ballot in 2021 as Proposition 4. The measure failed, but commentators observed that not only was it an off-year election, but supporters didn’t do much at all to counter a well-organized opposition. So the vote was not conclusive, but left us back where we started.

Since the amendment process is so long and unpredictable, we wondered whether an amendment is actually needed. After studying court decisions from other states, we’ve concluded that mail-in voting is in fact compatible with the New York Constitution.

We summarize our analysis below, in the hope that New York state legislators, justices, and others will look at our Constitution with fresh eyes.

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The key parts of the state constitution are Article II, Sections 2 and 7:

Article II, Section 2: Absentee voting
The legislature may, by general law, provide a manner in which, and the time and place at which, qualified voters who, on the occurrence of any election, may be absent from the county of their residence or,...may be unable to appear personally at the polling place because of illness or physical disability, may vote and for the return and canvass of their votes.

Article II, Section 7: Manner of voting; identification of voters
All elections by the citizens, except for such town officers as may by law be directed to be otherwise chosen, shall be by ballot, or by such other method as may be prescribed by law, provided that secrecy in voting be preserved…

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Section 7 seems to give the Legislature the power to enact any reasonable method of voting, as long as one’s vote stays private. But New York legislators believe that Section 2 restricts allowable voting methods: that “absentee voting” means any voting that is not done in-person, and, crucially, that any voter not mentioned in Article 2 is forbidden from absentee voting.   

There are three other nearby states with similar constitutional language that have enacted mail-in voting laws without a constitutional amendment: Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. The laws were upheld by the supreme courts in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, and although the Delaware law was ultimately rejected by its supreme court, the judge writing the lower-court decision encouraged the supreme court to uphold the mail-in voting law. (The text of most of these decisions is available via links at the Brennan Center for Justice.)

In essence, New York legislators are using the logic of the maxim “expressio unius est exclusio alterius” (“the expression of one thing is the exclusion of the other”); in other words, the existence of a clause granting rights to some implies that all others do not have those rights.

Is this logic justified? Article 2 does not mention any absentee voting methods, nor does it say that only the listed voters may use this type of voting, yet that is the conclusion from expressio unius.

In Massachusetts, Article 45 (in the Amendments section of its constitution), is analogous to New York’s Section 2 on absentee voting. The Massachusetts Supreme Court explicitly rejected this logic when upholding the state’s mail-in voting law (VOTES Act, June 2022 - see “Lyons” August 2022, p. 27-28).

Moreover, the court warned that “Cases from other jurisdictions have consistently counselled that the maxim [expressio unius] should be applied with even greater caution when interpreting a State constitution, especially where its application would act as a restraint on the plenary power of the Legislature.” (p. 28)

Pennsylvania’s constitution has language similar to New York’s: a clause giving the legislature the power to enact voting methods, and a clause to provide for absentee voting: Article VII, Section 4: Method of elections; secrecy in voting; and Section 14: Absentee voting.

As in Massachusetts, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court reversed a lower-court decision, and ruled that its mail-in voting law (PA “Act 77”, 2019) was constitutional (see “McLinko” August, 2022).

At the heart of the Pennsylvania decision is the court’s belief that, “To be a restraint on the General Assembly’s law-making authority, it must be explicitly set forth or necessarily implied in the Constitution. There is no restriction – other than the maintenance of secrecy – in Section 4 on the methods of election the General Assembly may establish.” (p. 69)

The Pennsylvania court, as in Massachusetts, rejected the interpretation of the absentee-voting clause (Article VII, Section 14) as a ban on mail-in voting for all voters not listed, instead holding that its function is to protect the designated voters: “Whether or not Act 77’s universal mail-in provisions survive future legislatures, [Section 14] guarantees the constitutionally designated qualified voters a way to exercise their franchise regardless of their location on Election Day.” (p. 75)

Lastly, Delaware, which has similar constitutional language (Article V, Section 1: Time and manner of holding general election, and Section 4A: General laws for absentee voting), 

also enacted a Vote-by-Mail Statute without a constitutional amendment (Senate Bill 320, 2022). However, its Supreme Court upheld a lower Chancery-Court ruling against the statute (see “Higgin”, December, 2022).

The Delaware Supreme Court acknowledged that the lower court had encouraged it to overturn the ruling (p. 5) and the grounds for the decision can be boiled down to one word, tradition: ”In diverging from the approach taken in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, we do not insinuate a failure of wisdom or analysis on the part of our learned counterparts in those states; indeed, had our historical record and constitutional tradition not pointed us firmly in the direction we have taken, we might very well have followed their lead.“ (p. 61) 

The written decisions from Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and even Delaware provide good logical arguments why mail-in voting should be constitutional in New York. The key question is whether tradition should prevail over logic. Currently, tradition is winning. But now that we have the infrastructure for widespread, secure voting by mail, is that a good enough reason to delay giving voters this valuable option?

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Jim Brennan served in the New York State Assembly, 1985-2016, representing parts of Brooklyn and writes a blog on policy and politics. Deborah Franzblau was a mathematics professor at CUNY/College of Staten Island, 1996-2021, and lives in Rockland County. On Twitter @JimBrennanNY.

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The Theology of Mayor Eric Adams


Mayor Adams hosts faith leaders (photo: Benny Polatseck/Mayoral Photography Office)


Mayor Eric Adams recently made headlines for suggesting in a speech that the City of New York would benefit from there being no separation between church and state. On CNN’s State of the Union some days later, Adams clarified his remarks, stating that “Government should not interfere with religion, and religion should not interfere with government.” Though this walk-back did not quell the controversy, it did highlight the precariousness of navigating religion in public life.

Some background on Adams’ beliefs and the broader issue of religion and politics gives context to the mayor’s comments. Most people in my corner of the political world know me for my work as a political consultant and more recently as a political analyst. Many do not know that I am also an ordained minister and that for 16 years I pastored several congregations. My graduate training was in the field of theology; I studied at New York’s Union Theological Seminary under Dr. James Cone, the founder of the Black theology of liberation movement in the United States.

Here, I put on my theologian’s hat and examine Mayor Adams’ recent postulations and their significance for the broader scope of religion and politics.

To begin to understand the mayor’s recent remarks it helps to know his religious background. The mayor was raised in a Church of God in Christ (COGIC) congregation. COGIC is a Pentecostal denomination, and a predominantly Black denomination. In fact, it is the largest Pentecostal movement in the United States. The importance of the Black church tradition on his public service has been previously acknowledged by Mayor Adams. In a late 2021 campaign interview with Gotham Gazette, Adams declared, “I would not be who I am if it wasn’t for the Black church, as a police officer and now as the future mayor of the city.”

COGIC’s reach within the Black community is extensive. The Rev. Al Sharpton was ordained in COGIC, under the leadership of Bishop F.D. Washington, an extraordinary preacher and ecclesial leader. COGIC also counts among its most widely familiar members Denzel Washington (whose family has roots at the Allen Memorial Church of God in Christ congregation in Mount Vernon, NY), Stevie Wonder, and Chris Tucker.

As a Pentecostal denomination, COGIC embraces a theology that is fairly common within such a Christian tradition. It centers the Bible as the Word of God, and embraces many biblical narratives as literal facts, void of any mythic import. It focuses on personal piety; and the belief that God’s Spirit is not a reality aloof from human affairs but is in fact often and consistently at work in individual lives and capable of transforming broader society. This same Spirit is active in the empowerment and uplifting of the most vulnerable.

The significant communal involvement of many Pentecostal and Evangelical churches in underserved communities around our city and state is therefore not surprising. Many of the organizations that have worked on housing, drug rehabilitation, and food insecurity issues, for instance, and that have done so with little or no government funding, have been church-led. To understand Mayor Adams’ belief that his election is part of God’s purpose for New York is to be aware of this commitment and involvement.

Pentecostals firmly believe in the ever-present reality of God in our historical circumstances. Their fervor for spreading the Gospel (evangelism) is undeniable, including the idea that evangelistic efforts should lead not only to the salvation of souls but also to the transformation of society. Hence, within the Pentecostal tradition it is not uncommon to hear comments like those of Mayor Adams about the necessity of re-instituting certain practices of yesteryear, like prayer in schools.

Inviting God’s Spirit into the mundane, Pentecostals believe, will lead to the needed transformation of society. For Pentecostals, much of the content of Mayor Adams’ remarks is familiar. Most of them would support his declarations, though some might perhaps take umbrage at the initial remark on the problematic nature of separation of church and state, that Adams subsequently walked back.

The extent of Mayor Adams’ dependence on Pentecostal thought and practice may end at the idea of God’s continual involvement, and our invitation of God’s involvement in our affairs. For Adams departs from broader Pentecostal practices when it comes to some of his apparent religious practices. For instance, Adams’ collection of Buddhist statues and his belief that “’a special energy’ comes from New York since it sits on a store of rare gems and stones” would certainly be considered weird if not heretical by most, if not all, Pentecostals.

In any event, it is clear that the influence of Adams’ COGIC background continues to permeate much of his worldview.

Adams, considered a moderate-to-conservative Democrat, is not the only elected Democratic official whose political stances are influenced by certain Christian sensibilities. While in New York we can think of a number of former and current elected officials who fit this bill, we can also point to a more national figure who has earned the praise of progressives and moderate Democrats alike.

Senator Reverend Raphael Warnock was raised in the Holiness Church tradition. For him, too, the utterances of Mayor Adams are familiar. Warnock’s parents were both pastors and he is also a pastor, serving since 2005 as senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. Like me, he is a graduate of Union Theological Seminary and a former student of Dr. Cone, referenced above.

To understand the influence and impact of Warnock’s religious sensibilities, one need only revisit his victory speech last November. Warnock’s speech was filled with vivid religious language. On a national platform, he unapologetically drew on the language of faith that nourished him and that continues to propel his work. After thanking Georgians, Warnock proclaimed the words that countless Christians have uttered through song and sermons — “to God be the glory!”

“I have often said that a vote is a kind of prayer for the world we desire for ourselves and for our children. It is faith put in action. It is the sober recognition that we pray not only with our lips but with our legs,” the Senator proclaimed, employing the cadences of the preacher that he is.

Again not shying away from articulating his faith, in another instance Warnock described democracy as the fulfillment of a greater spiritual reality: I believe that democracy is the political enactment of a spiritual idea. The notion that each of us has within us a spark of the divine…We all have value. And if we have value, we ought to have a voice.” Accentuating this idea, Reverend Warnock declared what guides his own political philosophy—the idea that “each of us has within us a spark of the divine, that we were created in imago Dei, in the image of God."

Despite some Christian trajectories that are similar to Adams’, the theological and political stances of Warnock are in fact quite distinct. As a Baptist minister, Warnock fiercely defends the principle of the separation of church and state, a stance that Baptists consider a key Baptist “distinctive,” the idea of which goes back to their origins in England and Holland and were brought over to the beginnings of the U.S. through leaders like Roger Williams.

Furthermore, some of Warnock’s progressive stances are in fact driven by a particular theological posture, one indebted to the liberation theology movement. At the heart of this movement is the idea that the plight of the most vulnerable is one that deserves our priority response.

While clearly there are differences between Adams’ and Warnock’s worldviews, one cannot deny that faith has and continues to play a pivotal role in their own political philosophies and work, including as elected officials. And they are not shy about expressing this very fact.

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Eli Valentin is a political analyst and author of the forthcoming book, Reinhold Niebuhr: A Political Life. On Twitter @EliValentinNY.

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New York City Needs Federal Legislation for Preventative Climate Resilience


Climate resiliency efforts (photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)


Our nation faces a growing and urgent need to enhance our resilience to flooding and other natural disasters, which are becoming increasingly frequent, intense, and costly. For example, since 2000, flood-related disasters in the U.S. have accounted for more than $850 billion in damage and losses. We can no longer afford to delay action to more fully and proactively address the devastating effects of extreme weather events such as these. 

New York City is addressing this on a municipal level – earlier this year Mayor Adams announced the expansion of stormwater management projects in flood-prone communities, which is a step in the right direction of looking to update our existing infrastructure to mitigate the impact of flooding events.

However, it's crucial that all levels of government take action to improve our resilience to these challenges – and we particularly need support on a federal level. As it stands now, the federal government's siloed approach to resilience often creates inefficiencies and challenges for state and local partners. The current approach contributes to wasted taxpayer dollars and missed opportunities to address risk. 

What we need is a piece of federal legislation that can streamline federal resilience operations and help fill the nation's resilience gaps – bolstering the efforts that city and state governments are leading. Key components of any bill of this kind should include: 

Creating a Chief Resilience Officer (CRO) position within the White House to improve the coordination of federal resilience initiatives. 
This position would align resilience efforts across agencies and integrate them with state and local partners. By creating this role, the federal government can embrace a model being adopted by a growing number of states across the country.

Taking stock of federal barriers to building climate resilience and identifying solutions to address them. 
This would involve developing a national resilience strategy that streamlines federal support, leads with science, puts nature to work, and addresses historical inequities. Federal working groups will ensure that the national strategy includes practical and coordinated resilience goals. The strategy will also include incentives to spur local and state adaptation action and prioritize the use of nature-based solutions.

Promoting equity and efficiency. 
Leaders within the federal government's resilience operations, such as the proposed CRO, must regularly report on federal resilience efforts, funding resources available for resilience and barriers to improving resilience, and identify ways to ensure that federal funds are being distributed effectively and equitably. This will help address long-standing concerns of local communities and states that federal programs and assistance to address disaster risks are often disjointed, redundant, and overly complicated. 

And finally, giving a diverse set of stakeholders a seat at the table in developing the national resilience strategy. 

A successful national resilience strategy would account for the values, needs, and expertise of state, local, Tribal, and territorial governments, NGOs, as well as the private sector. This will ensure that actions are equitable and better address the on-the-ground needs of those most vulnerable to climate impacts.

We need the federal government to take this critical step toward improving our nation’s resilience to the growing threats of flooding and other disasters. Solutions like this deserve bipartisan support. It is economically and environmentally sustainable to do so. 

We cannot afford to delay action and risk further losses of lives, homes, businesses, and infrastructure. Through these avenues, we can better safeguard the nation – and New York City – from the devastating effects of flooding and other extreme weather events. 

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Dina Rabiner is VP of Economic Development and Strategic Partnerships at the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce.
 On Twitter @brooklynchamber.

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Our Communities Need Fair Pay for Home Care Work; Albany Leaders Must Hear Them


The push for Fair Pay for Home Care (photo: @CaringMajority)


For the first time in United States history, a president has declared April as Care Workers Recognition Month. Making the announcement, President Biden stated, “Care workers help raise our children, assist seniors as they age with dignity, and support people with disabilities." Despite this, care workers remain among our nation’s least recognized heroes.

Today, home care workers are some of the lowest-paid workers in the country and routinely face harsh working conditions. Countless providers are forced to hold multiple jobs and overwhelmingly rely on public assistance programs. One in four home care workers lives under the federal poverty line. In an industry comprised primarily of women, particularly women of color, the impact of this chronic underpayment widens gender and racial pay gaps, and tangibly undermines the wellbeing of our communities. 

As President Biden noted, “care is the work that makes all other work possible,” and providing fair pay to home care workers extends far beyond the bounds of labor and economic justice. The vast majority of older adults and people with disabilities in New York would like to remain at home. Therefore, the opportunity to receive skilled health care safely at home and with dignity is a foundational older adult and disability justice issue.

Presently, however, New York faces the nation’s largest home care worker shortage in the nation. Investing in Fair Pay for Home Care in the state’s next budget will put an end to this crisis, incentivizing new workers to join the home care sector.

A 2021 CUNY study found that higher wages for home care workers and improved working conditions would not only attract more than 50,000 full-time home care workers, but the economic multiplier effects would generate tens of thousands of employment opportunities outside of the home care industry. An investment in home care workers would also net the state billions of dollars in savings. But time is short as the state budget process gets down to the wire.

As it stands, Governor Hochul’s executive budget is out of tune with the progress we made last year to index home care wages at $3 per hour above minimum wage. This was a small, but meaningful first step. The next state budget, due any day now, must continue building on this progress, advancing us down a path of justice and equity.

This is a time to recognize that Fair Pay for Home Care is a kitchen table need for millions of New Yorkers. The deliberate policy choice to underpay care workers leaves millions of families struggling to care for aging parents or a loved one with disabilities. But the Governor could work with the Legislature to enshrine Fair Pay for Home Care in the state budget and establish her legacy as a national leader in building a care economy that would make tangible inroads on centuries worth of systemic inequities. 

Recent data from AARP-New York shows that 2.2 million family caregivers, predominantly daughters and daughters-in-law, provide 2.1 billion hours of free care, costing the state $39 billion. It’s well acknowledged that the best long-term care insurance you can have is having a daughter or daughter-in-law. We have both served as family caregivers for loved ones and know firsthand that this policy has the dual effect of pushing thousands of women out of the workforce or forcing them to remain in unwanted, unfulfilling jobs, undermining their financial security. Physical and mental health problems also frequently arise as family caregivers often feel isolated meeting the constant demands of caregiving. But we can – and should – do more.

Governor Hochul is New York’s first mother, grandmother, daughter, and granddaughter to serve as the state’s executive, and while her words of support are encouraging, they ring empty without action to pass Fair Pay for Home Care. Today, aging in place is a privilege afforded to few. Fair Pay for Home Care would change this, ensuring New Yorkers in search of care can find it; and will serve as another tangible step toward a future defined by care and love, justice and equity.

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New York City Council Member Crystal Hudson represents the 35th District in Brooklyn and serves as the Chair of the Council’s Committee on Aging. Bobbie Sackman, MSW, is the former Director of Public Policy at LiveOn NY and is a campaign Leader with the NY Caring Majority and Jews for Racial and Economic Justice. On Twitter @cmcrystalhudson & @SackmanBobbie.

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The American Dream is Still Possible in NYC, But We Need Strong Local Leadership


Ursila Jung, the author


As an immigrant, I see a truth that is sometimes not obvious to everyone: the United States of America is so much more than a mere geographical entity. It is a land where the American Dream of opportunity and prosperity  is possible. It is a place that people around the world aspire to because it is a beacon of hope and promise. I know this to be true because the U.S. is a country where a person like myself - an immigrant woman - can dream of having a fair chance at running for public office.

Unfortunately, today, it seems as though the American dream is beyond the reach of many. I am running for New York City Council in Lower Manhattan’s District 1 because I believe I can help restore people’s confidence in this possibility. I am running because I remember how choked up I was when I caught my first glimpse of the Statue of Liberty and thought of the hundreds of thousands of immigrants who set foot on Ellis Island escaping persecution, drought, famine, or war, looking to build a new life in this brave new world. I am running because I have seen the grit, perseverance, and determination of everyday New Yorkers, which was never more clear than in the months following 9/11. I am running because I believe in this democracy.

If America is the land of opportunity, New York City is where it all happens. I believe for this country and this city to be at its best, every American must participate in our democracy. We must all take collective ownership. Change begins when everyday people like us choose to make our voices heard. Many New Yorkers I speak with feel left out of the political process and disenchanted with many of our elected officials.

Despite most of this country being firmly in the middle of the political spectrum, our attention is diverted time and again to the loudest voices at the fringe. Many feel that their votes don’t matter and that they cannot make a difference. I am running with the express purpose of bringing more people into the political fold, to help them feel confident in the strength of their vote. I am running because I know that we need to work together to have an economically, socially, and culturally vibrant city that values hard work and respect for all.

In speaking to New Yorkers in District 1 since I launched my campaign last month, it’s become clear that there are a number of issues we need to address, most notably: Growth, Learning, and Safety. I believe New York City can soar again by prioritizing these issues.

Growth: New York City has long been at the heart of the global business and financial world. Our city has always been a place for innovation and creativity that powers not only our local economy, but the nation as a whole. Unfortunately, our business community has been left unsupported despite its essential role in making New York City unique and in many cases, carrying us through the COVID-19 pandemic.

These businesses need elected leaders with the political will to help them survive and thrive. By cutting through the bureaucratic maze small businesses have to navigate, better controlling commercial rents, and providing incentives for businesses to open locally, we can drive our local economy forward with good-paying jobs.

Learning: As a mother, I know that there is nothing more important than the safety and education of our children. I am committed to ensuring that all children, especially those who have been under-resourced for so long, have access to a high-quality education that focuses on preparing them for a technological world.

By offering families more options in their children’s education, we can empower parents to make the best decisions for their families. Educating our children is essential to ensure that all Americans will be at the level needed in this increasingly competitive and interconnected global economy.

Safety: As a New Yorker, I know that our perception of safety has been drastically altered in this post-pandemic world and that it is impeding our ability to return to the New York City we know and love. I’m running because I know we need to increase public safety in our neighborhoods so that families feel safe. In some instances we can do that with more training for police officers and more foot patrols to assist our small businesses with petty crime. We can also better serve individuals who need mental health and social services by providing them with professionals trained to handle those specific situations, reducing the need to put police officers in situations they’re not prepared to handle.

The answer here is not easy, but I believe when we invest in community policing and increase collaboration between law enforcement and local organizations, we can create a safer environment for everyone so our neighborhoods are places where families can live, work, and play without fear.

I am running for New York City Council because the time for extreme politics is over. I’m running because I believe in the potential of our community to rise above our current challenges and build a better future for us all. As your City Council representative, I promise to be a tireless advocate for these goals and to work diligently to make our community the best it can be.

***
Ursila Jung is an immigrant, mother, and community advocate running for New York City Council in District 1 in the June Democratic primary. On Twitter @UrsilaJung.

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Does Mayor Adams Know How to Reform the City’s Troubled IT Bureaucracy? MyCity Shows He Doesn’t


MyCity (photo: @nycgov)


When Bill de Blasio took office as Mayor in 2014, everyone knew government information technology agencies needed significant reform but didn’t know how exactly to do it. His predecessor, Mayor Bloomberg, was a venerated technology executive who had a hugely embarrassing software development fiasco called City Time happen under his watch. Barack Obama, the nation’s allegedly tech-savvy and youthful president, had a similarly high-profile failure with his HealthCare.gov website, which forced his Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to resign and almost doomed the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) before it got started. 

From the ashes of HealthCare.gov came, in 2014, a small and experimental unit within the Obama administration’s General Service Administration called 18F. It was organized and operated like an engineering-driven software startup within the government. Instead of signing lots of big contracts with proprietary software companies, 18F built common-sense tools using available open-source components, and posted its work to the code-sharing website Github so people could see the progress it made and reuse its code.

18F was, and continues to be, a massive success. By reliably delivering modern applications for dozens of federal agencies, its “digital service organizations (DSO)” model has been copied by national, state, and municipal governments throughout the United States and the world.  

While top leadership in the de Blasio administration didn’t seem to be paying much attention to this new model for reforming technology bureaucracy, a few intrepid New York City civil servants did. They followed the 18F model to organize their own small teams within existing city agencies, but outside the city’s innovation-averse technology bureaucracy. 

NYC Planning Labs within the Department of City Planning was a great example. It released a dozen tools, including popular products such as ZoLa and the Population Fact Finder.

NYC Opportunity was another. Operating within the Mayor’s Office of Economic Development, it delivered ACCESS NYC. Beyond offering access to “over 40 programs” and the ability to “apply directly for SNAP, Cash Assistance and Medicaid renewal” or “all 3 at the same time through the Cash Assistance application,” ACCESS NYC is also a masterclass in how a DSO-style team communicates about their product. They explain how it’s built, who it’s built by, and post links to Github repositories with code for its various components that would be helpful to future administrations who want to “leverage technology to improve the delivery of government services,”  as Mayor Adams claims his administration is now doing.

Despite the successes of NYC Planning Labs and NYC Opportunity, de Blasio and his chief technology officer, John Paul Farmer, failed to organize a city-wide DSO to pursue IT reform. They did, however, announce an intention to do just that in December 2021, with less than a month left in de Blasio’s eight-year tenure.

When Mayor Adams took over, he recentralized the city technology bureaucracy under the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunication (DOITT), which he rebranded as the Office of Technology and Innovation (OTI), and put Matthew Fraser, a former NYPD Chief Information Officer and Gartner consultant, in charge. Looking at Adams' rhetoric and Fraser’s background, I saw no indication that they cared at all about the now-decade-old IT reform best practices established by 18F and similar DSOs around the country and world.

As a candidate, Adams campaigned on his plan for “MyCity,” an app that would consolidate residents’ enrollment in and interactions with New York City government into a single, streamlined portal. Somehow Adams seemed to convince people this was a new idea even though cities around the world have delivered apps like this to their residents, and NYC Opportunity’s ACCESS NYC app and open source components were already delivering much of the complex functionality Adams seemed to be envisioning. 

This should have been great news for Adams. All he needed to do was to keep doing what was already working with ACCESS NYC, expand the scope of the app, rebrand it, and then market it with his unique flair as something new and exciting. It was a big fat pitch right down the middle of the plate. And he missed it. 

On March 30, Adams announced the release of the first version of MyCity, and it is a dud with many of the classic hallmarks of a failed IT project: it is late and expensive, has fewer features than promised, and is built with proprietary technologies the city doesn’t own by over a dozen outside contractors. Let’s dig deeper, shall we?

First, MyCity is built on the proprietary and expensive Salesforce Experience Cloud. This means that the city has to pay Salesforce a licensing fee for as long as the city uses the site. It also means the investment in customizing the site is lost if and when the city wants, inevitably, to move to an open source system like ACCESS NYC that it actually owns and completely controls.

Second, the site is remarkably shallow considering it took over a year and millions of dollars to build. MyCity’s home page offers four sections: Child Care, Business, Jobs and Benefits, but only the Child Care section links further into the MyCity app. The Business section links to a site run by the Office of Small Business Administration. The Jobs section links to working.nyc.gov. The Benefits section links to ACCESS NYC at access.nyc.gov. 

MyCity’s Child Care section has an eligibility screener that, after answering a few questions, directs the user to one of the two applications that MyCity apparently hosts. Before you access the applications, you are ejected to the NYC.ID login/registration flow. Presumably after that the magic happens where you access an online form wizard.

So, in summation, MyCity is, in its initial phase, a Salesforce-powered app with a short screener form, two benefits applications linked to a user’s NYC.ID, and a portal where a user can see the status of these two applications and any documents they’ve uploaded. How much did this cost the city?

Search Keyword: “MyCity” in the city’s recently released public view of Passport contracts. It shows over $6,750,000 awarded over 32 contracts to 15 different vendors, with $3,400,000 spent already.

Who are these vendors that the Adams administration thinks can do better than ACCESS NYC? I think that’s a great question worth investigating more. But the big winner here is clearly Innovative Business Concepts, Inc. It won seven contracts worth over $2.7 million, all of which were under the $500,000 threshold for small purchases, with two of those contracts starting, ending, and registered on the same day, each for $498,960. One is for “MyCity Portal - Development” and the other is for “MyCity Portal - Design.” (According to OTI, though the contracts are listed as Minority/Women-owned Business Enterprise non-competitive small purchase contracts, there was a competitive bidding process that involved multiple M/WBEs).

The Innovative Business Concepts website doesn’t have much information but does have a truly classic design and LinkedIn shows that it recently hired a former Assistant Deputy Commissioner of the NYC Department of Social Services and Human Resources Administration.

I’m not trying to suggest there is something out of the ordinary going on here. In fact, I’m suggesting the opposite: that MyCity is being executed the same, broken way that a myriad of other city IT projects have been executed. 

If Mayor Adams wants to deliver the technology improvements he promised as a candidate, he needs to reorganize his technology bureaucracy to follow open source DSO principles.

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Devin Balkind is a nonprofit executive, civic technologist, and startup advisor who ran for Public Advocate three times as the Libertarian Party nominee. On Twitter @DevinBalkind.

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Note - This article has been corrected to note that the contracts awarded to Innovative Business Concepts, Inc. went through a competitive bidding process involving multiple Minority/Women-owned Business Enterprises (M/WBEs). The contracts were not non-competitive as initially noted. 

Good Cause Makes Good Sense for Harlem


In Harlem (photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)


As a New York State Senator serving Harlem and an Executive Director of a Harlem community organizing group, we have witnessed the rapid transformation of our neighborhood over the past several years and the wave of gentrification that has accompanied it. 

For a century, Harlem has been a refuge for working-class Black families and other families of color. But today, those families are getting pushed out by rising costs — and not just out of the neighborhood, but out of New York altogether. Over the past two decades, more than 200,000 Black New Yorkers have left New York City – a 9% drop – pushed out by the skyrocketing cost of living. 

New York’s diversity is its strength. In particular, Harlem's rich Black culture and numerous contributions to our nation and the world’s civil rights movement must be preserved. Black people have a median average income of $53,000 per year compared to $98,000 on average for white people. There has to be targeted income-based housing coupled with enhanced tenant protections in the upcoming state budget agreement in order to protect current residents and make it possible for working class Black people and future generations of Black families to stay in New York City. If we want to preserve Harlem as a safe harbor for working families, and not just a playground for the rich, we need help to protect renters in Harlem and across New York from even more displacement.

There is a solution. The state must pass ‘Good Cause Eviction’ to preserve the stability of the community. Right now, landlords of unregulated apartments in New York are able to evict tenants for any reason and raise the rent as high as they want. If a tenant complains about basic health concerns, like a lack of heat or pest infestations, a landlord can legally retaliate by refusing to renew their lease. Given that more than a third of rental units in Harlem are unregulated, the lack of protections has a huge impact. Residents in these units have no protections against corporate landlords trying to squeeze profits from renters.

Good cause eviction protections, currently being considered by the State Legislature in negotiations with Governor Hochul, would provide important safeguards for tenants against arbitrary or retaliatory evictions. Put simply, the law would require landlords to have a valid reason to evict them, and give tenants the power to take landlords to court if they suspect they’re being kicked out for unjust or retaliatory reasons.

And the bill limits exorbitant rent hikes by capping rent increases at the end of a lease to 3% or 150% of the Consumer Price Index, whichever is higher. 

Good Cause would give tenants greater security and peace of mind in their homes, knowing that so long as they are lease-abiding, rent-paying tenants, their leases will be renewed. And it would be particularly valuable for Black women, who are evicted at twice the rate of white tenants. 

The lack of tenant protections has caused tremendous hardship for low-income renters in Harlem. Too many residents cannot afford rent increases and find themselves in shelters or on the streets. And not only do evictions take a toll on renters themselves, but they reverberate across the entire neighborhood. Research shows that evictions increase crime rates, hurt public health, and make it harder for children to succeed in school

And, Good Cause could be good for small landlords, especially homeowners of color, who are increasingly getting squeezed out of the market by corporate landlords and big investors. Today,  89% of all rental units in New York City are owned by corporations, and the average apartment in New York City is owned by a landlord with 900 units – not a mom-and-pop building owner. The law would dissuade corporate real estate profiteers from slapping tenants with outrageous rent increases like many people have seen in the past two years. In January, rents in Manhattan hit an all-time high, with median rent spiking 15% in a single year.

As people who know and love our community and our city, we want to protect Harlem renters – and all New York tenants – more than anything. While new growth and development is an essential part of any city, we must ensure that it doesn’t take an undue toll on existing residents or decimate the character of entire neighborhoods. To maintain the vibrancy of our city and make sure New York remains a place where people from all walks of life can live, we must pass Good Cause this year. 

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Senator Cordell Cleare was raised in Harlem and currently represents the 30th District of the New York State Senate. Juanita O. Lewis is the Executive Director of Community Voices Heard, a statewide, grassroots organizing nonprofit based in Harlem. On Twitter @SenatorCCleare & @CVHAction.

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