22 minute read
FIRST READ
Gov. Kathy Hochul signed three environmental bills last week, including measures to reduce building emissions and another to improve heating and cooling efficiency.
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– Congressional candidate Suraj Patel, who is running in the 12th District, via the New York Post
HOCHUL TACKLES THE ENVIRONMENT
Following action taken to address U.S. Supreme Court rulings on abortion and guns, Gov. Kathy Hochul shifted gears to climate change and the environment, once again referencing a recent decision. This time, Supreme Court justices rolled back the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulatory authority over power plant emissions. She cited the decision as she signed into law three new climaterelated bills, including one meant to reduce building emissions in the state, a major source of greenhouse gases. Hochul again spoke about the urgency of the climate crisis when she announced $255 million in clean water infrastructure. However, she still hasn’t indicated whether she
KITTY HALL RETURNS
Eric Adams may not be happy with the press coverage of the first six months of his administration, but the New York City meow-or had the right idea in mind for some free pawsitive publicity. Adams cuddled up with a kitten at an American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals pet adoption event this week that was, sadly, closed to the media.
– Congressional candidate Carlina Rivera, referring to her 10th District competitor Mondaire Jones will sign a moratorium on cryptocurrency mining, a major environmental priority for advocates that passed the state Legislature.
GATEWAY MOVES FORWARD
Hochul and New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy agreed to split the state-level costs of the Gateway project down the middle, paving the way for a new train tunnel under the Hudson River delayed thanks to years of political squabbling between the two states as well as the federal government. New York and New Jersey previously reached an agreement with the federal government in 2015, but then Govs. Andrew Cuomo and Chris Christie disagreed on how they would split their share of the costs. And though they ostensibly settled matters in 2017, they ran into the Trumpled federal government, stalling the project once again.
PAY RAISE COMES TO LIFEGUARD’S RESCUE
As New York City public pools officially opened for the summer, the city faced a shortage of lifeguards there and at beaches to keep swimmers safe. At first, Mayor Eric Adams said that raising their pay would not help alleviate the staffing crisis. But after a significant pressure campaign, he announced that lifeguards would receive a 20% pay bump,
with starting salaries now sitting at $19 per hour. Until the city can staff up, many New Yorkers will have limited access to public pools and beaches, with some unable to open and others forced to limit their capacities.
NEW CRIME DATA IN NYC
Following the violent Fourth of July weekend that saw over 50 people shot – including seven who died – the New York City Police Department released new crime statistics that showed shootings have gone down this June compared to June of 2021. The city also saw a decrease in murders both year-to-date compared to last year as well as in June compared to May. However, overall crime had increased by about 30% year-overyear. Concerns over crime continue to drive political conversations at both the city and state levels, with public safety a key factor for the GOP in the race for governor
JCOPE’S LAST STAND
In the last hours of the Joint Commission on Public Ethics’ existence, the now-defunct state ethics agency released a report on how former Gov. Andrew Cuomo got approval for his controversial COVID-19 book deal. It found that Cuomo and his administration largely had control of the situation, setting the terms for what information it would disclose and when. The report concluded that JCOPE effectively rolled over for Cuomo and allowed him to coerce the agency into expediting the approval with minimal oversight. The decision to release the report was the agency’s final move before it was replaced by the Commission on Ethics and Lobbying in Government.
New York City lifeguards got a 20% pay increase last week after some pools and beaches were unable to open due to lifeguard staffing shortages.
New York’s true two-person race for governor
As promised, the Working Families Party has named Gov. Kathy Hochul and Lt. Gov. Antonio Delgado as its candidates for their respective offices after Jumaane Williams and Ana María Archila lost in the June Democratic primary. The development was not unexpected, as the WFP said it would not play spoiler if their original candidates lost, and Hochul said she would accept the party’s line if offered.
But the lack of fanfare was noteworthy thanks to a recent change in the law that made the process exponentially easier. And with Williams off the ballot, the race for governor in November will officially have no third party or independent candidates joining Hochul and Republican Rep. Lee Zeldin, a first for the state in recent elections.
In years past, getting a candidate off the ballot presented something of a challenge. The WFP – and any other third party that had nominated a candidate who lost in a major party primary – needed to nominate that candidate for a different office, generally a remote judgeship. In the case of Cynthia Nixon in 2018, who is not a lawyer and could not technically run to be a judge, the WFP placed her on the ballot in her Assembly district. This process was twofold: first, remove the Assembly placeholder by nominating that person to a remote judgeship, then designating Nixon to appear on the Assembly ballot to free up the gubernatorial line for Andrew Cuomo. In short, the process was convoluted and messy.
A new law in the state simplified that process by giving third-party candidates the option to decline the designation within a handful of days of losing a major party primary. No placeholders and upstate judicial races needed. Williams and Archila made use of this new law, allowing the WFP to nominate Hochul and Delgado in their stead.
This year, only Hochul’s and Zeldin’s names will appear on the ballot. Hochul will occupy the Democratic and WFP lines, while Zeldin will appear on the Republican, Conservative and (potentially) Independence Party lines.
This year, candidates for the Green and Libertarian parties failed to get on the general election ballot. That means voters won’t see perennial Green Party gubernatorial candidate Howie Hawkins, nor Libertarian Larry Sharpe. Although third party candidates have historically had negligible impacts on the outcome of gubernatorial races in New York, their absence this year truly does make the November election a strictly two-person race. – Rebecca C. Lewis
THE WEEK AHEAD
WEDNESDAY 7/13
City & State celebrates with the Brooklyn Power 100 at Court Street Tavern from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. INSIDE DOPE
The networking event will feature Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, state Sens. Jabari Brisport and Brian Kavanagh and New York City Council Member Justin Brannan. THURSDAY 7/14
The New York City Council holds a hybrid stated meeting at 1:30 p.m. in the Council chamber. FRIDAY 7/15
The state Office of Cannabis Management tours an Ulster County farm to review the first crop of marijuana for legal recreational use at 2:30 p.m.
NYC FERRY IS TAKING ON WATER
CITY COMPTROLLER BRAD LANDER FOUND $224 MILLION IN UNDISCLOSED SPENDING.
By Annie McDonough
The NYC Ferry service launched by then-New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio in 2017 is notoriously expensive to operate. In order to keep fares at $2.75 per ride – equal to the cost of a subway or bus ride, and a priority of de Blasio’s – the New York City Economic Development Corp. subsidizes the service.
According to a new report by the New York City comptroller’s office, the cost of that subsidy is even higher than previously reported. City Comptroller Brad Lander released an audit finding millions in underreported ferry expenses and overpayments to the ferry operator, Hornblower.
Here are some of the key findings in the comptroller’s audit. The amounts by which the audit said the EDC understated the per-ride subsidy cost for fiscal years 2018 through 2021, respectively. The audit said this was due to the EDC calculating the per-ride subsidy without including the extra ferry-related expenses.
The total amount that the audit recommended the EDC attempt to recoup in overpayment costs to Hornblower. However, the EDC said that it won’t seek these refunds, saying the payments were made to Hornblower in accordance with their operating agreement.
Total ferry-related expenditures that the audit said were not disclosed by the EDC through 2021, roughly $181 million of which was capital expenses and $43 million of which was operating expenses. The EDC said it properly disclosed all ferry-related expenses but would make new financial and operational reports available online.
The amount that the audit estimated was spent in “questionable vessel acquisition costs.” The comptroller’s office found that the EDC overspent when purchasing vessels from the ferry operator Hornblower – including by purchasing some at prices above their true value.
The year that Walt Whitman published his poem “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,” which Lander quoted from liberally while detailing the findings of his office’s audit. “‘It avails not,’ Whitman wrote, ‘Time nor place – distance avails not,’” Lander quoted. “Cost, however, avails.”
A Q&A with Assembly candidate
SARAHANA SHRESTHA
How does a Democratic majority block bills?
You are on track to be the first DSA member from upstate New York. You beat an incumbent. What was your key to success? We had everything going right for us, and I have to say that despite that, it was pretty close. And it was very difficult. And one of the motivations for running for this race is that I knew that this was a very forward-thinking progressive district, and I didn’t feel like that was coming across in the state representation.
And I felt like that was an underutilization of what this district could do for the state.
So you know, this district skews older, skews more women, very highly informed voters in the Democratic base and most people that we talk to, by and large, agreed with our platform, agreed that the government should be doing a lot better. Agreed that, you know, there was too much corporate influence, that we hadn’t really seen the results of adding a Democratic supermajority.
I would say that this is a campaign that spent very little money; we spent around $100,000. I am a very good organizer. The people who came on board early on are very good organizers. You know this was mostly a DSA-built campaign, specifically Mid-Hudson Valley DSA. And then once we got the Working Families endorsement, it sort of elevated us to the next level that we needed to get to the finish line.
You said people were disappointed in the supermajority in the state Legislature. What were people disappointed by? Our top three things are climate, housing and health care. But we tie those three things into the issue of our economy. Our economy is positioned to favor profits over people in need, and that has transpired into all of these crises.
And when we were talking to people about these things. I think we were having conversations where we were able to do some political education on top of their intuitions. We talked a lot about specifically the Assembly, like what’s the composition of the Assembly. We have 105 Democrats. We only need 76 votes, which should make the Assembly very active in terms of passing bills, and that’s not the case. And how does a Democratic majority block bills? Because we don’t have Republicans blocking bills. Right? So we were able to have conversations that kind of supplemented their intuition with concrete issues in the culture of our government.
What do you think your victory says about the direction of the Democratic Party in New York? I don’t even think that this is necessarily a shift in what people want because I’m in a district where most voters are older. Most of our supporters were older, I would say 65 and above. We had a lot of supporters who were 80 and older. These are people who have always believed in this platform. I don’t think it’s the voters who have changed. It’s just that our organizing has changed.
This wasn’t ideological? The breakthrough of our campaign was not gaining support for our ideology. It was being able to put our name on the ballot, and we gave them the choice because they have been ready to make that choice. – Pete Tomao
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State legislators, from left, Julia Salazar, Phara Souffrant Forrest, Zohran Mamdani, Emily Gallagher, Jabari Brisport and Marcela Mitaynes
THE SOCIALIST BLOC
DSA lawmakers in the state Legislature are expected to present a united front – and are held accountable when they don’t.
By Peter Sterne
MICHAEL DRAKE T O BE AN unorganized socialist is a contradiction in terms,” Zohran Mamdani told City & State, explaining his decision to join the Socialists in Office committee soon after winning a Democratic primary for an Assembly seat in
2020.
Mamdani, who represents the Astoria section of Queens, is a member of the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America and received the group’s endorsement when he ran for office. He is one of six DSA members in the state Senate and Assembly, who are collectively known as the Socialists in Office.
The first socialist in office in the modern era was Julia Salazar, who was first elected to the state Senate in 2018. (Full disclosure: I am a member of NYC-DSA and donated to Salazar’s campaign.)
The rest of the group were elected in 2020: Mamdani, state Sen. Jabari Brisport, and Assembly Members Marcela Mitaynes, Phara Souffrant Forrest and Emily Gallagher.
These six legislators work closely with the DSA, in ways that go far beyond the usual relationship that elected officials have with community and activist groups.
Following its victories in the 2020 elections, NYC-DSA created a dedicated group known as the Socialists in Office committee (SIO) to coordinate with its elected officials. The SIO includes representatives of NYC-DSA’s Citywide Leadership Committee, geographic branches (such as the Central Brooklyn branch and Queens branch), and working groups focused on specific issues (such as the Healthcare Working Group and housing working groups).
The SIO meets regularly, typically through weekly virtual meetings and monthly in-person meetings. During the meetings, members will often discuss pending bills and strategize on how to win the DSA’s legislative priorities, which this year included the New York Health Act, the Build Public Renewables Act and “good cause” eviction.
The committee is democratically run, with any member – not just those in elected office – able to suggest that the committee adopt a collective position on a certain issue or piece of legislation.
“We have created a decision-making process by which we could air out a question – whether it be legislation or whatever else, or endorsements – and then have a structure to a debate and then a vote, internally, to figure out: Where do we lie on this as a committee, and how do we ensure that we move as a collective even amidst individual dissent?” Mamdani said.
In cases where the committee does vote to adopt a collective position, the six legislators will be expected to vote as a bloc in the Assembly and state Senate. In other cases, though, they may vote differently from one another.
“There have been a lot of occasions where we didn’t make any decision at all, and then as a result, we just ended up voting in different ways,” Salazar said.
In addition to the regular SIO meetings, the six socialists in office often attend the
Julia Salazar, top left, and Jabari Brisport, bottom right
DSA’s monthly branch meetings and participate in mass calls open to all DSA members, where they report back on what is happening in Albany.
“Part of the function of the committee is to have mass calls where we explain what exactly just happened in this extremely complicated, last-minute process that has huge ramifications for millions of people in our state,” said Sumathy Kumar, the co-chair of NYC-DSA and a member of the SIO committee. “That is an extremely important function of the socialists that are in Albany right now, of pulling back the veil on how undemocratic, how top-down the Legislature is, all the things that they think they can get away with, and exposing that to a mass audience and agitating people to get involved, to get organized, to join a movement so that we can actually structurally change that.”
The particular relationship that the DSA has with its elected officials is unique within state politics. Plenty of lawmakers belong to caucuses and informal blocs, participate in strategy calls led by outside advocacy groups and host town halls to hear from constituents. But only the DSA and socialists in office have created this hybrid model.
“It’s not a one-off town hall where you hear from people and then you go back to your office and you do whatever you want,” Kumar explained. “It’s an ongoing process, it’s an organizing conversation, it’s a permanent strategy really, to have an ongoing conversation between people who have been elected and people they’re representing.”
In some limited but very real sense, the elected officials who belong to SIO have been willing to share the power they have as legislators with the DSA, agreeing to support the collective goals of the SIO committee despite their own personal beliefs.
“I think what’s unique about it is it truly is collaborative between the legislators in the Socialists in Office committee and the nonlegislators in the committee,” Salazar said.
In theory, that could mean DSA elected officials would represent the interests of an outside group rather than the interests of their constituents. But in practice, the socialists in office say, there isn’t much conflict between the DSA’s values and those of the districts that elected them – not least because many people in those districts belong to the DSA. NYC-DSA currently has about 6,400 members.
“More of my constituents are dues-paying DSA members than of any other organized group in the district,” Mamdani said.
“The guy that I beat in FIFA five blocks down from my apartment is a DSA member,” he added. “The co-owner of the bar on Avenue North where we launch our canvasses is a DSA member. The taxi driver who lives two avenues south is a DSA member. The teacher I run into on the subway platform is a DSA member. In being accountable to a mass movement, I am being accountable to my constituency.”
Both Salazar and Mamdani said that they have never felt pressured by the DSA to take a stance that they disagreed with, since they all share the organization’s values and politics.
“This committee is, almost fundamentally, based on our socialist ideology, right? So we’re like-minded people and like-minded policymakers,” Salazar said.
That is a credit to the DSA’s electoral strategy. Unlike many progressive advocacy organizations, the DSA is extremely selective with its endorsements, only endorsing candidates who fully embrace the organization’s values and plan to work closely with the organization once in office. Often, DSA-endorsed candidates have already been active in the DSA organizing campaigns for years before deciding to run for office. So long as the DSA only endorses true believers in socialism, it can be assured that any endorsed candidate who wins election will share its goals and be eager to collaborate on future work.
When it comes to the DSA’s main campaigns – such as universal health care, “good cause” eviction and publicly owned renewable energy utilities – there’s no question that all six of the socialists in office are on the same page.
When it comes to issues that are controversial within the DSA, however, the unified front of the socialists in office can fray. That was the case with the bill creating the Public Housing Preservation Trust – an enormously complex piece of legislation that enables the NYCHA to set up a public trust to accept federal housing vouchers and sell bonds to raise money from investors to repair NYCHA buildings. Many NYCHA tenants have expressed skepticism of the Public Housing Preservation Trust, though others have spoken out in favor of it.
In late May, Salazar was approached by Democratic leadership and asked whether she would sponsor the state Senate version of the bill creating the Public Housing Preservation Trust. The bill had originally been introduced by state Senate Housing Committee chair Brian Kavanagh, but he withdrew his sponsorship in response to opposition from NYCHA tenants. Salazar, who supported the creation of the Public Housing Preservation Trust, agreed to sponsor the bill – without first consulting the SIO committee.
Salazar maintains that she did not do anything wrong, since neither the SIO nor NYC-DSA as a whole had taken a position on the Public Housing Preservation Trust. She said that the SIO did discuss an earlier version of the bill, known as the Blueprint for NYCHA, but ultimately decided not to take a position.
“In 2021, we had a discussion about it. The members of the committee who were interested actually met with representatives
– Sumathy Kumar, cochair of New York City chapter of Democratic Socialists of America and a member of the Socialists in Office Committee
from NYCHA to understand the bill better and make our own recommendations for how the bill could be improved,” Salazar said. “After that, the Socialists in Office committee determined that it was not a priority for the committee, and it clearly wasn’t a priority for the organization, so the committee took no position on the Preservation Trust.”
But others within the organization felt betrayed when Salazar sponsored the bill. Last summer, a group of DSA activists who opposed the creation of the Public Housing Preservation Trust had introduced a resolution at NYC-DSA’s annual convention calling for the organization to publicly oppose the bill. But the resolution did not pass – a reflection of the fact that some within the DSA actually support the Public Housing Preservation Trust. After the convention, NYC-DSA leadership passed an amended resolution that pledged to remain neutral on the issue of the Public Housing Preservation Trust and to create a dedicated group within the DSA known as the NYCHA Solidarity Working Group that would focus on bringing NYCHA tenants into the DSA.
“We moved forward with a resolution at the convention, and there was a back and forth; some in leadership didn’t want to take a hard anti stance on the Trust,” said Dannelly Rodriguez, a member of the NYCHA Solidarity Working Group. “We made compromises; DSA would not take any position on the Blueprint or the Trust until we had organized NYCHA tenants.”
Rodriguez said Salazar’s unilateral decision to sponsor the bill was a slap in the face that violated NYC-DSA leadership’s pledge to remain neutral on the issue.
After Salazar announced her sponsorship of the Public Housing Preservation Trust bill, the NYCHA Solidarity Working Group published an open letter demanding that she withdraw the bill. More than 140 DSA members signed their names to the letter.
“Senator Salazar has ignored NYC-DSA’s democratic decision-making process,” the letter reads. “By surprising her NYC-DSA colleagues in the State Legislature, some of whom have no firm opinion on and others of whom have major concerns with this NYCHA legislation, she has shown disregard for the SIO Committee as a concept. Albany wants to politically divide the SIO and this action accomplished that.”
Salazar did not withdraw the bill, though she did hold a virtual forum with the NYCHA Solidarity Working Group and other DSA members to discuss her position on the bill. Rodriguez and other members of the NYCHA Solidarity Working Group said that their concerns were not addressed; they wanted Salazar to face some form of accountability from DSA or SIO for her decision to sponsor the bill, not just for her to explain her position.
“In the aftermath, there has been zero to minimal engagement about what Julia had done,” Rodriguez said. “We had a meeting prior to the voting on the bill to try to rein her in, a ‘critical and meaningful discussion’ that ultimately led to zero accountability on her position.”
When Salazar’s bill and its Assembly equivalent came up for a vote, all of her fellow socialists in office voted against the bills. Phara Souffrant Forrest, one of the Assembly members elected in 2020, also released a public statement explaining her decision: “For me, doing better means starting with NYCHA residents and engaging them deeply on the issues and what possible solutions might look like. Having spoken to my own constituents about this legislation, I have heard skepticism and a feeling that no one has invested the time to work deeply with them on shaping their future.”
Rodriguez said that Salazar’s decision to sponsor the bill had led some NYCHA tenants to refuse to work with the DSA and had led him to question the DSA’s commitment to holding its elected officials accountable.
Meanwhile, Fight for NYCHA, an activist group opposed to the Preservation Trust that Salazar has previously sparred with
