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Cell Phone Ban


There has been almost daily news coverage of a fatal boating accident that has exposed the failure of New York City's 911 tracking system . That is not the only news so far this year involving technology issues and government action, or inaction.

For a list of technology laws passed in 2003 so far, go to Gotham Gazette's Searchlight Voting Records.

LEGISLATING COMMON SENSE

As we made clear in Gotham Gazette's issue of the week on cell phones, -- and as you made clear on the accompanying message board -- many New Yorkers cringe at the ringing of cell phones. A law, restricting the use of cell phones in places of public performance, was passed by the City Council on February 13. Mayor Bloomberg vetoed the bill on the premise that it would be impossible to enforce, but the City Council overrode the veto and turned the bill, which had been introduced by Council Member Philip Reed, into law.

This law, which is the first such law in the nation, imposes a $50 fine for violations. Cell phone use is prohibited in theaters, libraries, museums, galleries, movie theaters and concert halls, except in the case of emergency. Whether or not this law is adequately publicized by venues and enforced, it is hoped that it will raise cell phone user awareness of the aggravation they cause.

LIFE SAVING CELL PHONES

As much as cell phones can be a public nuisance, they also have the potential to save lives. Unfortunately, this month, the lives of four teenage boys were lost. On January 24, one of the boys placed a frantic 12-second 911 call from a sinking boat off the coast of City Island in the Bronx. The call was mishandled by a 911 operator (whose supervisor is now facing disciplinary charges) and emergency crews were never dispatched.

According to a January 29 New York Times article by Kevin Flynn, the boating accident has "underscored an intolerable delay in creating a tracking system to trace the location of emergency calls from cell phones in New York." Currently, emergency calls from cell phones can only be traced to the nearest cell tower, which could be miles away from the caller.

Since 1991, $162 to $200 million in surcharge fees intended for an advanced tracking system have been collected from cell phone users. Despite this, the city is planning to spend $25 million on the 311 system that is for non-emergency calls. The 311 system is expected to reduce the burden on the currently flooded 911-system.

Mayor Bloomberg said that 911 operators and their supervisors need more training so that standard emergency procedures are followed. The 911 system also may need more staff to keep up with the growing log of emergency calls that has grown 30 percent in the past five years without a similar increase in the number of operators.

Days after the horrific event, New York police officials said that the city was still three years away from installing an advanced system that could track phone numbers and pinpoint their locations. But, the accident has prompted the police to speed up their efforts to install an advanced tracking system by the end of the year according to testimony before the City Council Public Safety Committee.

DIALING TOO MANY DIGITS

A new federal law went into effect on February 1 that requires New Yorkers to dial 1 plus the area code in order to make phone calls. However, many people reported dialing seven-digit calls as usual without problems. According to Verizon, this was due to "blind spots" in the telephone system that overlooked the missing numbers. But, these will be weeded out relatively quickly.

The law was prompted by a penchant of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for fostering competition among local telephone companies in cities with multiple area codes, no matter how inconvenient it seems to consumers. While the New York Public Service Commission protested the regulation, the FCC declined to waive the requirement.

EFFICIENCY

The City Council has also issued two reports on on-going initiatives to make government agencies more efficient. One of the reports updates an October 2002 report on e-procurement. The other is on the human services extranet project begun in 1997 (report forthcoming on the City Council Select Committee for Technology in Government Reports page.)

Laura Forlano is a doctoral student studying communication technology policy at Columbia University.

New York City Council STATED MEETING - FEBRUARY 26, 2003



New York City Council Stated Meeting Report

Every two weeks the New York City Council meets for its Stated Meeting, where the 51 members of the council introduce and pass legislation. As a regular feature, Searchlight covers these meetings and posts a summary of what bills were passed.

STATED MEETING - FEBRUARY 26, 2003

Quote of the Day:
"There were over 2,000 rapes last year in this city and rapes tragically continue to rise. By passing these bills, we will know that if a woman is raped and goes into an emergency room, she will be offered this important medical intervention." – Councilmember Christine Quinn on legislation to make emergency contraception more readily available.

Meeting Summary:
On February 26, the New York City Council passed three bills that aim to give women greater access to emergency contraception.

Emergency contraceptives are high-dose birth control pills that if taken within the first 72 hours after unprotected intercourse or rape can reduce the chance of pregnancy. The legislation was the result of a council investigation http://www.council.nyc.ny.us/pdf_files/reports/ecp.pdf (in PDF format) last year that found that nearly half of all pharmacies in the city do not carry the emergency contraceptive drugs Preven or Plan B, which were both approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1997. The council's legislation does not address the drug RU-486.

The three bills passed by the council are: - Legislation (Intro 278-A) which would require pharmacies that do not carry the drugs to post signs indicating that they are not sold at that location. - A bill (Intro 281-A ) requiring hospitals that contract with the city to inform rape victims that emergency contraception is available and to offer it if requested. - A measure (Intro 285-A) requiring the Department of Health to make emergency contraception available at health clinics, centers, and stations.

The bills passed with little debate, although several council members voted "no" out of religious or moral objections. The piece of legislation requiring pharmacies to post notices was the most controversial, but still passed with 36 "yes" votes, 8 "no" votes. (Democrats Michael McMahon, Tony Avella, Allan Jennings, Simcha Felder, and Peter Vallone Jr. and Republicans Dennis Gallagher, Andrew Lanza, and James Oddo voted against the measure.)

The council also passed two resolutions. One calls on the U.S. Congress to pass legislation that would allow undocumented immigrant college students to obtain resident status. Another urges the New York State Legislature to restore the right to vote for those who have committed felonies and are now on parole.

However, an anti-war resolution did not reach the council floor for a vote.

Some members were hoping that New York City would join some 100 other local municipalities that have already passed resolutions voicing opposition to a possible war in Iraq. But a vote on the resolution - which has the support of the majority of the City Council and Speaker Gifford Miller – was delayed over details in the wording. Some council members want kinder words for President George W. Bush, harsher words for Iraqi President Sadaam Hussein, or different criteria for what could justify a war. Now council members on both sides of the issue complain that the resolution has been watered down and has lost even symbolic significance.

"It's so vague, it could mean anything you want it to," said Councilmember Peter Vallone, Jr. who plans to vote against it.

The next stated meeting is scheduled for March 12.

 

Felons and the Right to Vote


One of the greatest achievements of the civil rights struggle was the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which removed most of the obstacles that kept African Americans away from the ballot box and enabled Americans who did not speak English to vote. But the voting rights movement never reached the last excluded segment of our democracy: our prisoners.

A legal action filed last month seeks to fill that gap in voting rights law. It argues that New York State's laws that take the right to vote away from many people convicted of felonies disproportionately harms black and Latino communities. As a result, these laws violate the Constitution, the Voting Rights Act and international law.

Currently, 1.4 million African American men in the country - 13 percent of all black men - are disenfranchised because of a felony conviction. This is seven times the rate for all Americans.

While laws vary from state to state, in New York only convicted felons who serve time in prison lose their right to participate in the democratic process. They cannot vote for the entire time they remain behind bars and for any time they are out of jail on parole, when they are required to check in regularly with an officer and meet various other requirements. People convicted of felonies but sentenced to alternatives to prison such as probation retain their right to vote.

In New York, race and ethnicity have a lot to do with whether a convicted felon gets sent to prison. Blacks found guilty of felonies are twice as likely as their white counterparts to be sentenced to prison as opposed to probation. Blacks comprise less than 16 percent of New York State's population but account for almost 51 percent of the 71,000 people in prison and 50 percent of those on parole. Latinos, about 15 percent of the state population, are almost 30 percent of the prison population and 32 percent of those on parole.

The disproportionate arrest, conviction, and imprisonment of African Americans and Latinos has diluted minority voting strength in New York State since only incarceration triggers the denial of voting rights.

Our three organizations seek to change this. The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the Community Service Society of New York and the Center for Law and Social Justice at Medgar Evers College have filed a class action lawsuit charging that New York State laws denying the vote to individuals who are incarcerated or on parole are unconstitutional and discriminatory. They argue that these laws were originally intended to deny full rights to African Americans, and their continued application today disproportionately harms black and Latino communities.

The suit, Hayden v. Pataki, was initially filed in September, 2001, by Joseph Hayden while he was a prisoner in New York. Hayden, who is now on parole, was to represent all black and Latino prisoners denied the right to vote.

Now the three organizations want to add three groups to the original complaint: blacks and Latinos incarcerated on a felony conviction, blacks and Latinos on parole for a felony conviction, and black and Latino voters from specific communities in New York City who are collectively denied an equal opportunity in the political process because of the disproportionate disfranchisement of African Americans and Latinos. These communities include East Harlem, Washington Heights, the Lower East Side, Hunts Point, Morrisania, Soundview, Central Brooklyn, East New York, Jamaica and St. Albans.

The request to expand the Hayden case was made to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York last month. The court is awaiting a response from the governor's office and the New York State Board of Elections, the defendants in the case. Then it will decide whether to allow the expansion.

New York State has a long history of racial discrimination in its voting laws. Like so many other states, New York enacted these laws when racial discrimination against African Americans was legal and commonplace. As far back as 1777, the framers of the state's first constitution gave only free men and property holders the right to vote.

In 1821, as a limited number of blacks became free men and property holders, the state constitution was changed to explicitly apply higher property requirements only to men of color. That same year, the state constitution was amended to deny the vote to anyone convicted of what it called "any infamous crime." By the mid-1800's, the "infamous crime" disqualification was renewed in New York State with the full understanding that blacks were 13 times more likely than whites to commit an "infamous crime."

It took the Civil War and the passage of the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to nullify these laws. Nevertheless, New York State re-enacted the "infamous crime" provision in 1894. This antiquated provision still remains in our State Constitution and is interpreted today to include all felonies, i.e., crimes that may result in jail sentences of one year or more.

Official discrimination against African American and Latino citizens in New York continued throughout the 20th century with literacy tests, English-only election procedures and discriminatory purging of voter rolls. It took the Voting Rights Act to restore a fair election structure in New York. The act targeted three counties in New York City - Bronx, Kings, and New York - requiring special measures to guard against discriminatory voting laws and policies. These provisions remain in force today.

Disproportionate disenfranchisement is made even worse by the fact that the U.S. Census counts prisoners as residents of the communities in which they are incarcerated, not as residents of the communities from which they come. The state uses these Census numbers to shape redistricting decisions that determine state and federal representation. Since all prisons built in New York State since 1982 are upstate, the voting strength of communities of color - mostly located in New York City - is further weakened.

Some argue that people who violate the law should not have a say in determining what the laws should be. Others fear that including convicted felons in the body politic would weaken law enforcement institutions. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has remarked that allowing convicted felons to vote would mean that "rapists, murderers, robbers and even terrorists or spies" could vote.

These arguments reflect the typical knee-jerk reaction against anything that appears, however minimally, to benefit persons convicted of crimes. In fact, allowing persons who are convicted of crimes to vote may make it less likely a person will break the law again. After all, voting gives people a stake in society and reflects the basic truth about what it means to be a citizen of the United States.

Prisoners and parolees are merely seeking a voice in society. They ask rightfully: What is America afraid of? What legitimate penal interest is served by taking away our vote, our badge of citizenship?

The United States incarcerates more people per capita than any other country in the world. Eighteen European democracies permit incarcerated prisoners to vote, as do Canada and Puerto Rico. In the U.S., only the states of Maine and Vermont do so. No democracy other than the United States bars parolees from voting.

Martin Luther King once wrote, "No nation can long continue to flourish or to find its way to a better society while it allows any one of its citizens to be denied the right to participate in the most fundamental of all privileges of democracy -- the right to vote." At the time - 1965 - King was referring to the need for a law that would ensure the right of all African Americans to vote. But his words apply today to the effects of New York State's discriminatory disenfranchisement laws.

Juan Cartagena is General Counsel for the Community Service Society of New York. Janai Nelson is Associate Counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Joan Gibbs is General Counsel at the Center for Law and Social Justice at Medgar Evers College. The three organizations represent the plaintiffs in Hayden v. Pataki.

 



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