21 minute read
FIRST READ
State Attorney General Letitia James’ major announcement was indeed a big one. She is going after Donald Trump, his children and his company for alleged fraud.
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– Rep. Grace Meng, the state’s only Asian American member of Congress, on aggressive Republican outreach in her Queens district, via The New York Times
TRUMP IN THE HOT SEAT
State Attorney General Letitia James filed a sweeping civil lawsuit accusing former President Donald Trump, three of his children and his family business of fraud, saying they lied about the value of their assets. If the 220-page lawsuit is successful in court, the Trump family could be forbidden from ever operating a business in New York again. The lawsuit, which centers on activity that it says spanned more than a decade, came about a week after The New York Times reported that James had turned down an offer from the former president’s lawyers to settle her office’s probe of The Trump Organization, which is based in Manhattan.
EMERGENCY CONDITIONS
An influx of asylum-seekers to New York City is prompting Mayor Eric Adams to open “humanitarian relief centers” that critics said resemble “refugee camps” or “tent cities” in images released by City Hall showing barracks-style cots lined up in massive tents. The administration has also considered housing migrants on cruise ships or on the grounds of summer camps.
– Jennifer Raab, Hunter College president, referring to the college’s seventh floor bridge being split between two districts in a proposed map, via the Times
NEW ERA OF VACCINE MANDATES
Starting Nov. 1, employers who work in private businesses like restaurants, gyms or big corporations will no longer be required to be vaccinated to work in person. Students participating in sports also no longer need to show proof of vaccination. The news, which was announced by New York City Mayor Eric Adams in conjunction with the rollout of a new booster outreach campaign, has been met with a myriad of concerns, robust debate and glee particularly within the business community. But the change has also breathed additional life into frustrations about the municipal worker vaccine mandate that remains in place nearly a year after it was enacted by former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.
BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING
New York City subway riders should steel themselves – another pair of eyes will be on them soon. State officials recently announced that two security cameras will soon be installed in every single Metropolitan Transportation Authority subway car. The project, which is likely to take about three years to complete, comes as city and state officials strive to bring back riders and improve New Yorkers’ faith in the sprawling system’s safety. While many have
celebrated the announcement and hope it’ll deter people from committing crimes, others like the New York Civil Liberties Union expressed concerns that the security cameras could increase scrutiny and violate riders’ privacy.
HOCHUL UNDER FIRE FOR PAYMENT TO CAMPAIGN DONOR
Several months before she’ll face Republican Rep. Lee Zeldin in the general gubernatorial election, Gov. Kathy Hochul has come under fire for an alleged pay-to-play scheme involving a company called Digital Gadgets. The Times Union first broke the story in July, reporting that the state paid the business $637 million in taxpayer funds to provide the state Department of Health with at-home COVID-19 test kits without conducting competitive bidding. The problem? Digital Gadgets is owned by a New York City family that’s donated nearly $300,000 to Hochul’s campaign. Not long after that story broke, reporters revealed that the state bought the same tests at nearly twice the price that California bought them for through different sources. Digital Gadgets founder Charlie Tebele also threw an in-person campaign fundraiser for Hochul about a month before her administration made the deal. So far, Hochul has maintained that she was unaware that Digital Gadgets was a campaign donor when her administration made the deal.
Gov. Kathy Hochul announced that there will be two cameras in every New York City subway car.
New York City’s redistricting mess
So much for New York City showing up the state with a less dramatic redistricting process. The New York City Districting Commission voted down a new set of proposed City Council maps on Thursday, with appointees of Republican Council Minority Leader Joe Borelli on the commission – and several appointees of New York City Mayor Eric Adams – shooting down a plan that would have stretched one of Staten Island’s three council districts into Brooklyn.
The new maps would have undone a number of controversial changes in an earlier draft released in July – including the move to maintain three districts fully self-contained on Staten Island, despite the borough barely having enough population to warrant three full districts. New York City’s population grew by roughly 630,000 people between 2010 and 2020, which requires the average size of each of the council’s 51 districts to grow too.
In order to send this latest set of maps to the City Council – one of the final steps in the city’s redistricting process – nine of the commission’s 15 members needed to vote in favor of it. But only seven of the commission’s members voted for it, with some of the objectors referencing the pairing of Staten Island’s Mid-Island District 50 with a section of Bath Beach and Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn.
“A few individuals undid some of the work of the many,” said Mike Schnall, a commissioner appointed by the City Council’s Democratic majority who voted against sending the new map to the City Council. “Staten Island deserves the same respect and chance at self-determination that the other boroughs enjoy.” Schnall took issue with Staten Island being blamed for domino effect changes on the rest of the map throughout this process. Schnall said that he also objected to changes in the ratio of District 8 shared between Manhattan and the Bronx, which he said could dilute the potential increase in Bronx political power in a district that currently favors Manhattan.
Maria Mateo, a commissioner appointed by Adams, also voted against sending the new maps to the City Council, saying that she heard concerns from the Dominican community about changes in Manhattan Districts 2 and 7 diluting the Dominican vote. Other commissioners who voted against sending the map to the City Council did not elaborate much on their specific objections to the map. – Annie McDonough, with reporting by Jeff Coltin
THE WEEK AHEAD
WEDNESDAY 9/28
The New York City Council Criminal Justice Committee holds an 11 a.m. hearing at City Hall on a bill that would ban the use of solitary confinement in city jails. THURSDAY 9/29
City & State New York hosts the Rebuilding New York Summit, featuring New York City Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer, starting at 9 a.m. at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in lower Manhattan. FRIDAY 9/30
The New York City Council Immigration Committee holds a 1 p.m. oversight hearing about resources and services for newly arrived asylum-seekers. INSIDE DOPE
The Assembly is out of session, but it is also holding a hearing. The Social Services Committee is discussing inflation and public benefits at 11 a.m. on Sept. 29 at 250 Broadway.
By Sahalie Donaldson
There’s an interesting history behind how New York City public schools are numbered and named, reflecting a neighborhood’s history and spirit.
If you thought about where New York City’s school numbering system started, you might logically think of Public School 1, or P.S. 1. But then there would be another question: Which one?
There’s one in each borough: the Courtlandt School in the Bronx, The Tottenville School in Staten Island, The Bergen in Brooklyn, the school turned contemporary art museum in Queens now called MoMA PS1, and of course the first to hold the P.S. 1 moniker: the Lower East Side institution now known as The Alfred E. Smith School.
With around 1 million children and 1,859 schools, it’s no secret that New York City’s public schools make up a sprawling and complex system.
The repeated numbers don’t just apply to P.S. 1 – there’s also three P.S. 3s, three P.S. 5s, three P.S. 100s, four P.S. 108s and four P.S. 65s, just to name just a few. This can be attributed to the fact that Manhattan, Staten Island, Queens and Brooklyn each had their own school systems (the Bronx was part of Manhattan’s) until the boroughs were consolidated into one city in 1898, according to Judith Kafka, a professor of education history and policy at Baruch College.
But beyond the assigned number, the vast majority of public schools also have a more traditional name. Here are three schools with either interesting histories behind their names or ones that embody their communities.
Originally called The African School, the institution was founded by community members in 1827 – the year slavery ended in New York – as the first independent educational initiative for Black students in Brooklyn. However, The African School was soon renamed Colored School 1 after the Brooklyn Board of Education took control. Today, the school honors its fight to overcome racism and segregation by being named after Charles A. Dorsey, an influential Black principal at the school from 1863 to 1897. Originally known as New York Free School No. 1, the school opened its doors to serve immigrant children over 200 years ago in a small apartment in downtown Manhattan. It was one of the first public schools in the city, and it didn’t take long for its small student body of about 40 students to outgrow its original location. Today, The Alfred E. Smith School is located at a building on Henry Street in Two Bridges, where it opened in the late 1800s. Like the Upper West Side’s P.S. 163, it is named for Alfred Emanuel Smith, who served four terms as governor in the early 1900s.
P.S. 116 in Brooklyn was built in the late 1890s and still operates out of its original red brick building in Bushwick. As one of only a few school structures being used from the 19th century, the Landmarks Preservation Commission designated P.S. 116 as a historical landmark in 2002. After the borough’s schools were consolidated, the school was named the Plymouth School in 1916, but it acquired its current name in the late 1990s after Elizabeth Farrell, a New York educator who was regarded as the first person to teach a class of special education students in the U.S.
A Q&A with 1199SEIU President
GEORGE GRESHAM
I heard that you spoke with a lot of passion this morning at the breakfast about how important it was for New York state’s labor establishment to embrace Chris Smalls and his independent Amazon Labor Union despite what might be some generational tensions. Can you expand on that? We have to remember that we are now in the role of elders, and you know a good elder not only gives advice but also sits back and allows the younger, or the apprentice, to learn their way and be patient with them. Sometimes, there’s no question, the youth, because of their militancy and impatience, want to rush the system and we have to expect that. I mean it takes that kind of energy to be willing to take on an organization like Amazon. But (what) we can’t allow is for that to divide us as labor leaders. I would say I don’t know about all of us, but many of us started out the same way. We were impatient. We wanted change, and we wanted change right away. We need to remember that because I feel that if the union leaders in New York – which is considered a labor state – don’t support them (the Amazon Labor Union), it’s going to be much harder everywhere else in the country. That makes it all the more important and puts the responsibility on us to support them.
Throughout the country, we have monuments for the casualties of the wars we have fought. Do we need to replicate this for the health care professionals and other essential workers we lost in the fight against COVID-19? Absolutely. This was the most difficult because this invisible enemy attacked all of us at different times, and I can tell you that I spent a lot of time assuring the workers who were afraid to come into work because they did not want to die. They saw co-workers die. They saw patients die. They did not want to bring that back into their house. They would actually change their clothes in the lobby of their building so they would not infect their families and some even slept in their car. To let this go by without an historical remembrance is wrong.
I know that your union embraces universal health care. Yet, some unions resist the idea because they maintain it will diminish the health care coverage they negotiated for. Could you speak to that? I feel really bad when I hear my fellow leaders take that position. Everyone in this country deserves to have health care. That should be a human right. We should not worry about if we have Plan A and if it gets reduced to Plan B in order for others to have health care. At 1199, we have always grown up with the idea of universal health care. We will never give that up, and we have A+ plus benefits. If it means A+ goes to A- , or B+, and that means everyone gets health care, we will take it in a New York minute. – Bob Hennelly
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THE INVISIBLE
MAYOR
Eric Adams’ public schedules tell a lot – but not nearly as much as they should.
By Jeff Coltin and Annie McDonough
NEW YORK CITY Mayor Eric Adams’ office released six months of detailed public schedules on Sept. 16, shining some more light on how the city’s chief executive spends his working hours. But the calendar entries fall short of even the bare minimum of transparency – providing far less information than was released by Adams’ predecessor, Bill de Blasio – reflecting an administration that has resisted revealing too much to the public.
Adams’ calendar was published in response to a Freedom of Information Law request. City & State was one of multiple news outlets to request his daily schedules.
Not all the information included in the calendar is new. The mayor’s press office emails a version of Adams’ public schedule every evening for the day ahead, and occasionally emails updates throughout the day if an event is canceled or rescheduled, or if there is a late addition, such as the mayor going to the scene of an emer-
gency. However the schedules released on Sept. 16 include far more entries than these official public schedules, such as private meetings with members of his administration, as well as outside private meetings and events that the press office chooses to leave off the emails.
The schedules released on Sept. 16 also include previously off-the-books meetings between the mayor and high-profile officials including Gov. Kathy Hochul (Jan. 6, Feb. 10 and June 23), state Attorney General Letitia James (Feb. 11, at private club Casa Cipriani) and state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (March 6, in Yonkers).
Unsurprisingly, the mayor who has embraced corporate leaders also has many of their names appear on his schedule. As The New York Times reported, the mayor met with Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings President and CEO Frank Del Rio on June 12, at a high-rise on 57th Street. Adams’ schedule also includes meetings with Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon (Jan. 26, with the location redacted), JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon (March 4, in the 43rd floor “tasting room” of the banks’ headquarters) and Microsoft President Brad Smith (June 29, over Zoom). The topics for discussion at these meetings are rarely noted, though the mayor’s calendar includes a “Goldman Sachs session on return to work” in early March.
The schedules also provide some insight into the wide variety of issues garnering the mayor’s attention. Adams requested a meeting with Chief Housing Officer Jessica Katz “to discuss hotel conversions” on June 14. Two days later, the mayor had an “Introduction to Virtual Currency & DFS Regulation” – presumably to better understand how the state Department of Financial Services deals with cryptocurrencies like bitcoin. Adams has been a crypto booster and even said that he bought bitcoin and ethereum with his first paycheck. On June 21, the mayor had a meeting to discuss the city’s storm tracking and notification system, and the following day, there was a meeting discussing “strategy to handle intense rain storms.”
A BACKSLIDE FROM TRANSPARENCY
Those meetings are just one small piece of what was released. It’s a massive information dump, with 178 days of schedules holding as many as two dozen calendar entries per day. It is also, at times, nearly unreadable. The Freedom of Information Law requires the state and local governments and their agencies to make public by request a wide array of records, with several exceptions, including information that interferes with a criminal investigation or invades personal privacy. Still, that leaves a lot of information on the table, and under the law, “record” is defined somewhat broadly as “any information kept, held, filed, produced or reproduced by, with or for an agency or the state legislature, in any physical form whatsoever.” This FOIL response may comply with the letter of the law to release public information, but not the spirit of the law of public accountability.
For example, some of the entries are incredibly vague. We know at 2:30 p.m. on Jan. 15, Adams scheduled a “Zoom with elected officials.” No names are provided, nor is a topic of discussion. At 8 p.m., on Jan. 22, Adams had an hour blocked off: “hold for a meeting with Congressman.” No location is provided, nor is the name of the Congress member. On Jan. 30, there is an hour blocked off for an “external call” with further information.
Sometimes, the schedule – presented on the page as entries in an online day planner – is so crowded that information is obscured. At 5 p.m. on Sunday June 4, the mayor has a “Zoom with Co” a “New York Cit” and a “DKC/.” All entries are cut short, providing the public with no information. This brevity can be maddening for those interested in how the city’s most powerful official is spending his time. On June 16, there is an in-person meeting at City Hall on “Resetting the relationship between” – but between whom is cut off.
It’s a far cry from the public schedules released by de Blasio’s administration when he was mayor and his wife Chirlane McCray, who served as a top adviser. Schedules were proactively released onto a FOIL Tracker web page. Documents were divided by month, and meetings and events listed included the names of all staff members who attended, or even sat in on calls. The online documents were searchable, adding another level of transparency to the operation.
Asked about this backslide away from the sunlight, Adams’ press secretary Fabien Levy emailed City & State saying “we are continuing the practices we inherited from the last administration and are following all laws when it comes to the release of information and schedules.”
The practices, however, are clearly different. Levy declined to elaborate. Though a former de Blasio aide speculated the difference could reflect poor record keeping by Adams’ City Hall. “My guess is that most of this is not nefarious subterfuge, but dis-
Adams has met with JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon, left, and Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon.
organization,” the aide said. However, that change was a disappointment to the former staffer. “It’s important for the public to see what you prioritize. The schedule isn’t just a movement document for the mayor, it’s a list of choices. And the public has a right to know those priorities.”
De Blasio wasn’t perfect – public schedules for the final 10 months of his administration were never released. And he was criticized in the press for inconsistencies in revealing who was on the receiving end of some phone calls, and not including every last thing on his schedule, even in the delayed FOIL responses.
Adams is now following those same practices, to a much greater extent. His calendar reveals that the press officers sending out the daily schedule emails are selective about what does and does not get included. The emailed public schedule on Thursday, June 9, listed 10 public events – a particularly busy day for the mayor. The mayor’s 2 p.m. “roundtable on cannabis” was publicized in advance, even though it was closed to press, but the 1 p.m. meeting on “yeshivas and private schools” was not, even though it was in the same room, one hour earlier – possibly because of the touchiness of the topic. Surprisingly, the daily schedule did not include Adams attending a street renaming ceremony in East Flatbush for a gun violence victim. And while his Puerto Rican reception at Gracie Mansion that evening was included in the emailed schedule, the mayor’s attendance at the New York City Police Foundation Gala at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum was not. The mayor going to the 40/40 Club for a birthday party LuShawn Thompson and Tamika Mallory was also left off the schedule.
And some of the mayor’s meetings with political figures were left off both the emailed public schedule and the more detailed calendar released last week. Adams reportedly had dinner with former Gov. Andrew Cuomo at the mayor’s preferred restaurant Osteria La Baia on Feb. 1. Two days later, Politico reported that Adams dined at his favorite private club, Zero Bond, with San Francisco Mayor London Breed. Neither meeting is included on the calendar. Instead, there’s a schedule item saying “hold for mayor.”
In his nine months in office, Adams has faced some criticism about his level of transparency with the public and the press. That includes criticism following his formal cancellation of a policy to stop disclosing when administration officials meet with lobbyists, his hesitancy to release his tax returns, his use of a second, undisclosed office blocks from City Hall, his use of the messaging app Signal, which allows users to set their texts to disappear, and more recently, his shift away from taking off-topic questions at press conferences.
ADAMS THE WORKHORSE
Adams’ official calendar seems to reflect his hard-earned reputation as a workhorse who takes pride in his lack of sleep. The mayor, who typically begins his days no later than 8 a.m. with a team meeting, apparently did not take 24 hours off between Jan. 4. and June 30.
The schedules also provide some additional – if limited – insight into how the Adams administration is dealing with controversial issues. Though meetings with other elected officials or Adams’ deputies often don’t detail what subjects they’re discussing, a series of meetings throughout February and March between the mayor and several New York City Council members were marked as discussions about borough-based jails. Council Members Lincoln Restler, Lynn Schulman, Diana Ayala and Christopher Marte were all noted as having discussed borough-based jails – which are set to replace Rikers Island – with the mayor in February, followed by a “meeting to discuss BBJ with council members” in March. The other attendees at that meeting are not specified.
Since taking office, Adams has not often discussed the plan to close Rikers and replace it with four smaller jails in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. Last month, he questioned whether the four smaller jails would be adequate, in light of an increasing jail population. Marte, who represents the Lower East Side, suggested at his inauguration ceremony two days after his meeting with Adams that he had convinced the mayor to oppose the plan to build one of those jails in Chinatown. Representatives for the mayor did not confirm or deny at the time where Adams stood on the Chinatown jail, and Marte later walked his comments back a bit. ■ – with reporting by Holly Pretsky
