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Open Government

Open Government

Stated Meeting City Council April 23, new bills


At each of the City Council's stated meetings, council members introduce bills, most of which will never become laws (for the process by which bills become laws, click here). As a regular feature, Gotham Gazette discusses some of the legislation proposed at each meeting.

Caregiver Status and Discrimination

The city would expand the field of people protected by discrimination on the job under a bill introduced by Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum, Councilmembers Bill de Blasio, David Weprin and Gale Brewer. Intro 565 would prohibit employment discrimination based on a person’s status as a caregiver responsible for a child or ill parent. The issue for such caregivers arises at work and when applying for jobs and often concerns such matter as compulsory overtime, schedule flexibility, opportunities to make phone calls and potential for promotion.

Gotbaum’s initiative was prompted by a phone call from John Dallas, a New Yorker who cared for his ailing mother for eight years. He contacted the public advocate’s office after her came under pressure not to leave work to tend to her and instead to send her to a nursing home.

A report by the Center for Worklife found that 57 percent of working caregivers have had to disrupt their work schedules to provide care. Another report by the Center for Worklife showed that New York is among the states with the most discrimination lawsuits arising from family responsibilities and that the East Coast region has the highest proportion of victories for plaintiffs in these cases. According to a 2004 report by the National Alliance for Caregiving mentioned in the text of the bill, over 20 percent of Americans and nearly two million New Yorkers care for family members or friends. De Blasio asserted that these caregivers need support and should not have to fear losing their jobs to tend to loved ones.

Intro 565 would amend the New York City Human Rights Law, which is among the most comprehensive in the nation, to add caregiver status to the list of traits that employers may not discriminate against. The most recent amendments to the human rights law added protections for partnership status in 2005 and for victims of domestic violence, sex offenses and stalking in 2003.

Currently, the District of Columbia is the only place in the United States to prohibit employment discrimination because of caregiver responsibilities.

Gotbaum also supports the state legislature’s Working Families Time to Care Act, which would provide temporary paid leave to an employee to care for a family member.

Enforcing Energy Conservation

The day after Earth Day and Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s speech on creating a sustainable New York, Councilmember Dan Garodnick introduced bill 564 to improve the enforcement of the state Energy Conservation Construction Code and to create stricter standards for projects not normally covered by the regulations.

The proposal would require specific and thorough documentation of a building, subsystems (such as lighting and ductwork) and equipment (such as escalators and plumbing) when substantial renovations occur. Currently, state regulations require that buildings undergoing reconstruction that affects more than half the structure comply with the Energy Conservation Code. By July 2008, this bill would extend that requirement to buildings with smaller construction projects and institute basic minimum standards for lighting, windows, heating, air conditioning and ventilation.

Also seeking to reform New York City construction, Bloomberg last week announced plans to reform the city’s building codes, which have been described as “Byzantine” and “Talmudic.” His proposals would especially apply to new construction projects with regard to safety, conservation and efficiency.

Watercraft Regulations

Councilmembers Lew Fidler and Michael Nelson introduced bill 563 to regulate the sale and use of personal watercraft, primarily jet skis. Current New York State Navigation Law requires riders in personal watercraft to wear life vests, not drive recklessly, stay at least 500 feet from designated bathing areas and not drive in the dark. The law also requires crafts to have proper engine ventilation and be equipped with a horn, hazard light and emergency break latch. The proposal would require buyers of the crafts to be at least 16 years old. For their part, sellers would need to demonstrate the vehicle’s safety features and keep the purchasers’ information on record. Without the cap and controversy of the pedicab regulations, this bill has received minimal if any coverage in the press.

Apologizing for Slavery

Councilmembers John Liu, Larry Seabrook and Robert Jackson introduced Resolution 824 that expresses “profound regret for slavery and historic wrongs rooted in racial and cultural bias.”

Though in the North, New York City had a long history of not only participating in the slave trade and profiting from slave labor, but also of having been reluctant to emancipate slaves.

An inclusive declaration, the resolution states, “African American, Hispanic-American, Asian American and Native American communities continue to suffer from financial and social inequities, patterns of housing segregation, deficiencies in educational resources, and de facto remnants of formerly codified racism.”

In discussing the resolution, Jackson emphasized the lingering impacts of slavery on African American New Yorkers, such as high incarceration rates and a lack of access to quality healthcare and education.

Councilmember Albert Vann cited the fact that freed slaves, “never received the 40 acres and a mule that was planned,” and added, “I think the least of what we can do is to apologize.”

The New York State Legislature also is considering a bill apologizing for slavery. These city and state apologies are relatively uncontroversial, but Assemblymember Hakeem Jeffries admits that winning passage of his bill to create a reparations commission would be “tough.”

In April, the University of Virginia board passed a resolution apologizing for its use of slave labor. The states of Virginia, North Carolina and Maryland have made similar apologies, and Alabama and Florida are considering such resolutions.

Commemorating Religious Freedom

Councilmember Helen Sears proposed Resolution 825 to commemorate the 350th anniversary of the Flushing Remonstrance. This was the first exercise of freedom in religion in the United States, as the signers rebuked then governor of New Amsterdam Peter Stuyvesant for banning all religions except the Dutch Reform Church. A ceremony with descendants of the original signers is planned for December 27, 2007.

Street Names Redux

Twenty-nine council members introduced an amended street naming proposal that removed Sonny Carson Avenue from consideration. Bill 556 retained the other 51 thoroughfare recommendations.

Speaker Christine Quinn had called for removing Sonny Carson from the rest of the bill because he was “divisive.” No council members commented on the change during the April 24, but two members of the community board that made the initial recommendation to honor Carson described the removal of his avenue designation as “arbitrary and capricious” and are filing a lawsuit.”

Carson, a black activist who died in 2002, was heralded by for his civic work in the community and for his efforts against police brutality, but was also convicted of kidnapping in 1974 and was known for making anti-white statements and boycotting Korean groceries.

If Carson does eventually become an Avenue, he would not be the first controversial figure to receive such an honor. Gates Avenue is named after slave owners, and Corbin Avenue initially was named after an anti-Semitic real-estate developer and later renamed for a Revolutionary War heroine with the same surname. And, in another contentious honor, entertainer Al Jolson who frequently performed in blackface, may soon be inducted into the City Council Hall of Fame.

State Legislature

The City Council also proposed two resolutions concurring with a state legislative proposals and one seeking action. Resolution 37 supports a bill which would allow any registered nurse or midwife who is a member of the New York City Employee Retirement System to participate in the age 55 improved benefit plan, a retirement program for people in physically taxing professions.

Resolution 38 calls for the passage of a bill that would enable certain city employees who were laid off, specifically after the 9/11 cleanup, and later rehired to be able to buy back pension credits for the time of their suspension and be treated as continuously employed for the purposes of seniority and promotions.

In Resolution 823, the council urges the legislature to make Elderly Pharmaceutical Insurance Coverage available to people eligible for social security disability insurance benefits.

 

The Hard Choices Ahead


Mayor Michael Bloomberg's energy plan should be lauded for its focus and vision. In what may be, by his own reckoning, the most important part of his overall plan for sustainability, the mayor has taken an activist approach to our energy future and made some extraordinarily wise observations. Efficiency, renewable supply, expanded resources, response to demand, a more mature financial market and upgraded reliability are the right challenges to focus upon.

Respectfully, what we need now to begin to "finish the job" on energy and protect the long-term interests of our citizens and our city lies in the fine print- in more specific, and in some cases, more challenging initiatives to achieve the mayor's far-sighted goals.

Case in point: The mayor rightfully puts his finger squarely on what may be the greatest barrier to more energy efficiency in our city: The individual tenant. Here we have an energy user who, due to the typical lease structure, often has little incentive to consume energy efficiently and little or no opportunity to improve energy efficiency. Yet I don't see an initiative in the mayor's plan that would address this. How does the mayor intend to get owners and tenants singing the same tune, in a key that will resonate with energy savings?

Paying the (Real) Price

One idea is "advanced metering," which provides more detailed information on when and how consumers use energy. This is a fine initiative to for larger facilities, but hardly the right stuff for the average Joe or Jane. Imagine installing a $600 meter in an apartment that consumes $800 in electricity for the whole year! Talk about a non-starter. But now imagine providing average consumers with inexpensive, one-way communication devices to let them know when electricity is most abundant and, therefore, least expensive and visa versa? Now we're talking a language that rings true to the pocketbook and could add up to huge energy savings for the city.

If, however, we do install advanced meters in all buildings by 2014, as suggested, let us think twice about authorizing Con Ed to do the job. Why should the regulated transmission owner install these meters? Why not give some of the power back to the people?

Con Ed has many important roles: to meter entire neighborhoods; ensure grid reliability; and provide rate plans that give consumers the opportunity to pay for consumption based on their actual usage. However, individual buildings and apartments should have a separate authority to see that people pay for the electricity they actually consume and also see to it that energy is literally owned by the user for the benefit of the deregulated marketplace.

"Real-time pricing," where consumer pay different rates, depending on what hour they use power, is another positive change proposed by Bloomberg. It could motivate people to change their energy ways---by using energy more judiciously and cost-effectively. However, its impact on the city would be greatest in the residential sector, which is difficult to engage in a city with more than 3 million small accounts.

Further, the New York Independent System Operator caps each hour's price. Can we get rid of that cap to truly allow the market to do motivational magic? The mayor has shown the vision; now will he help exercise the political will to accept the occasional $5 per kilowatt hours price for the larger goal of encouraging each of us to use less?

A Market for Sustainable Energy

Encouraging the use of renewable fuel sources, through tax benefits, is another laudable feature of the mayor's initiative. However, we need to think beyond tax incentives, to the more fundamental matters of how to inspire people to change their ways and how renewable energy markets should be structured if we are to achieve a truly sustainable energy market.

For example, should we require fossil fuel power plants to buy a certain amount of energy---or "green tags"-- from renewable power plants to sell? If so, how much, and what is considered a "renewable" power plant? If I use dollars from the New York State Energy Research and Development Agency to support the construction of a renewable power plant, do I own the "green tags" that will be generated and eventually sold?

Similar questions come up with respect to an energy efficiency market. Will power plants be required to buy back energy as "white tags" from those who install energy saving technologies? (Connecticut will require that, starting this year.) If so, how much energy will they be required to buy back? Will there be a cap on the price of these so-called white tags? If I use the New York City Energy Efficiency Authority to help fund a new installation, who owns the white tags -- the city, the utility or me?

The mayor is perfectly positioned to ask these questions, and, in partnership with consumers and energy firms like ours, to seek answers. Parts of his plan already demonstrate courageous leadership and a commitment to real and potentially far reaching change. For example, I very much respect his idea of dedicating 10 percent of energy costs paid by city facilities toward build a more efficient infrastructure.

Allowing power plants to sell electricity for the future, is also a smart initiative. With vision, Bloomberg has proposed taking this one step further, by allowing buildings to bid energy-efficiency projects into the market as if those projects were a power plant. So far, only New England has such a forward thinking policy.

Taken together, the mayor's plan has raised some very important questions, answered some, and so far, not fully addressed or engaged others. We in the industry immodestly think we have some pretty good ideas as to how to best answer many of fundamental questions and address the challenges that go to the heart of our energy future. Working in collaboration with the city and its energy consumers, large and small, we have the track record to help the mayor make a difference. Sometimes we're in synch with the city's vision; other times we may disagree; in still other cases, we seek to extend the boundaries for change beyond the expected, understanding that the right thing to do is rarely the easy thing to do.

Is Energy Too Cheap?

Perhaps the most politically uneasy question to ask-and answer--is whether we should pay more for our energy. The courage to raise such a question, requires a willingness to state a fundamental economic truth: Given Gotham's blossoming economy, the reassurance that there will be enough electricity to go around at a predictable price, is far more important to our economic well-being than what that price is.

Reliability of supply will be expensive. Ultimately, a courageous politician will admit that New York City's electricity prices are not high enough to sustain an economy that drives global markets.

Some, perhaps many, will disagree with my belief that energy should cost more. However, we need to decide together where we stand on this, and on many other basic energy matters.

Mayor Bloomberg's initiative is a constructive and potentially powerful first step on the path to a new, sustainable energy future. I know we can get there. But, if we are to get there we will all need to contribute hard advice and take courageous, sometimes unpopular, action. All of this seems a small price to pay to make good on the mayor's bold vision to build a lasting legacy in the energy infrastructure. More power to him.

Mike Gordon is an energy economist with more than 25 years of experience in the energy marketplace. He is president and founder of ConsumerPowerline, a strategic energy asset management firm.

 

Passing the "Do-Ability" Test


New Yorkers are well aware that lofty promises of elected officials and seemingly well-financed developers often never materialize. So what enabled Mayor Michael Bloomberg's plaNYC presentation to pass the immediate litmus test of "do-ability"?

After all, the Empire State's share of the national population - and political power in Washington that goes with it - is dwindling. In 1960, New York State had 42 representatives in the U.S. House of Representatives; today we have 29. According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, New York will lose six more seats in the Congress by 2030. Investments in public housing, mass transit and even sewage-treatment plant upgrades may be harder to realize as the state's share of U.S. population slides from about 7 percent today to about 5 percent.

At the same time, over the next quarter century, New York City's population is expected to increase by a million people, creating critical new needs for housing, transportation, and pollution controls.

When it comes to funding, New York City can not count on the federal government; we must become more financially self-reliant.

But in his plaNYC proposals, Bloomberg recognizes reality and faces these budget issues head-on. The mayor's speech was made more credible because it addressed the demand to "show me the money" that follows a presentation of any vision to New Yorkers. By incorporating the consideration of climate change into the city's planning process, planNYC has the potential to change the playing field of urban development and to deal with the financial challenges at the same time.

The mayor's plan addresses these critical needs in a number of ways:

Energy Conservation

Adopting a surcharge on electricity to pay for improvements in the system will create incentives for consumers to conserve, and at the same time, generate new revenues to fund a comprehensive effort to better educate the public and enable property owners to reduce their reliance on the old polluting energy sources.

Anyone who has ever been to their rooftop can see the hundreds of square miles of black-tar coated roofs that create the urban heat effect, forcing everyone to spend more on electricity at peak times to cool things off. Green roofs and "cool" roofs, which the mayor's plan promotes, cost more, but they are better for the health and financial well-being of the city.

Cleaning Our Waterways

Creating a revolving loan fund for brownfield clean-up, allocating money to greening underutilized street and sidewalk space, and fully funding the tree planting program will help break the cycle of massive stormwater runoff and in some cases infiltration. This can cause toxic contaminants in brownfields to leach out through groundwater and contaminate our waterways where they enter the food chain.

The goal with perhaps the greatest potential to improve water quality in our rivers, bays, creeks and canals is one that most people never see: Developing long-term plans for the more than 400 combined sewer outflows. For generations our solution for preventing our 14 sewage treatment plants from being overwhelmed by storm water runoff has been to simply to build bigger pipes. City water rates have risen 23 percent in the last two years, and they are projected to increase another 23 percent in the coming two years, driven in part by this short-sighted and multi-billion dollar approach. PlaNYC promises to take a different tack and find ways to maximize the volume of rainfall which goes into the ground, rather than adding these more than 25 billion gallons of rain to our already costly sewage treatment processes.

Congestion Pricing

Perhaps the most promising and necessary aspect of the mayor's plan is congestion pricing, through which the new SMART authority will be able to levy a fee on vehicle traffic entering the Manhattan business district during peak hours Monday through Friday. The additional funds raised through congestion pricing will be dedicated to mass transit, including ferries, which for too long have long-suffered neglect by New York's many transportation agencies.

Creating the SMART regional financing authority will help make sure that New York City gets greater say in transportation improvements. Too often the toll increases passed by the MTA and Port Authority at the bridge and tunnel crossings simply disappear into the budgets of other agencies.

It is easy to understand the knee-jerk reactions of garage owners, who are afraid that if fewer people drive into Manhattan then demand for parking will drive hourly parking rates down. But when we think about the fact that all of the pavement and asphalt dedicated to traffic also floods our sewer system because the rain runs right off the road (and costs the city billions as noted above), it becomes clear that every city dweller is already subsidizing these drivers in numerous ways.

Our transportation funding needs became even clearer recently when the Federal Highway Administration announced that in 2009 the Highway Trust Fund will be $21 billion short of what is needed just to maintain the roads we have today.

A Future Vision

Mayor Bloomberg's much-needed initiatives to improve the quality of our land, water, and air will rely on all of our ability to put special interests in their place and put the future of New York at the top of our agenda. From Oak Point to Arverne East, a vibrant New York City in the year 2030 has to start today.

Carter Craft is director of Programming and Operations for the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance and Editor in Chief of www.waterwire.net or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

 



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