Max Politics Podcast: Teachers Union President Michael Mulgrew on Pandemic Schooling, Class Sizes, & Mayor-Elect Adams
UFT President Michael Mulgrew (photo: @UFT)
December 7, 2021 - Max Politics Podcast: Teachers Union President Michael Mulgrew on Pandemic Schooling, Class Sizes, & Mayor-Elect Adams
New York City teachers union president Michael Mulgrew joined the show to discuss where things stand in city schools amid another pandemic school year, vaccine mandates and covid testing, learning loss and other classroom themes, the UFT's relationship with Mayor-elect Eric Adams, and more.
Listen to the conversation and let us know what you think, on Twitter @TweetBenMax. You can listen to the show through the embedded audio below or download the episode wherever you get your podcasts at Max Politics.
'I'm Very Social Services Oriented': Diana Ayala on Mental Health Policy, Running for City Council Speaker, and More
Council Member Diana Ayala (photo: Jeff Reed/City Council)
The New York City Council Speaker should be someone who deeply understands people’s struggles and will take a social services focus to the powerful leadership position, argues City Council Member Diana Ayala.
During a recent appearance on the Max Politics podcast from Gotham Gazette, Ayala discussed her experience representing the 8th Council District, which includes East Harlem and the South Bronx, the city’s approach to mental health care, the effort to close Rikers Island, her bid to become the next Speaker of the City Council, and more.
“I've suffered from homelessness, food insecurity, I know what it's like to be on the verge of eviction, I come with a different perspective, right, on the issues that matter the most to my constituency,” said Ayala. “That level of experience is important because people like myself, I consider myself a very social services-driven member, understand the nuances in government because those have been our lived experiences. We didn't read about it, we didn't hear about it, we don't just sympathize, we understand that very intimately because it's been our experiences.”
Following this year’s city elections, the race to become the next City Council Speaker is in full swing, with Ayala among seven candidates, all Democrats, vying to be named by their colleagues as the legislative leader. The 51 members of the Council, only a handful of whom are Republicans, will vote on the new Speaker come January, but it is likely that someone will lock up the requisite 26 votes before the new year, as has been tradition. Along with Council members themselves, there are many other powerful figures involved in selecting the Council Speaker, including labor unions, members of Congress, other elected officials like Mayor-elect Eric Adams, and more.
The City Council Speaker is essentially the second most powerful elected official in city government, with significant sway over the legislative agenda and calendar, important committee assignments that impact both legislation and oversight, a major role in negotiating the city’s massive budget with the mayor, control of certain pots of funding, the bully pulpit to impact public policy in many ways, and more.
“The fact that we have no Latino representation in citywide positions is important to me,” said Ayala, who was born in Puerto Rico and represents a district with large Latino communities, about what makes her stand out as a candidate for City Council Speaker. “Secondly, there are no women in citywide positions, that's important to me. But most importantly is the fact that we lack leadership that is kind of in-tune with the issues that impact communities of color in the way that I am.”
On the podcast, hosted by Gotham Gazette editor Ben Max, Ayala discussed her experience as the former chair of the Council’s Committee on Mental Health, Disabilities and Addictions. Explaining that she has three close family members who suffer from bipolar disorder, including her brother who she said has been incarcerated a number of times, Ayala said she was vocal about the “deficiencies” the government has when trying to address mental health.
Ayala said the de Blasio administration’s Thrive NYC mental health program had issues but also has not necessarily gotten the credit it deserves amid a great deal of criticism. "I really want to say that the First Lady deserves a lot more credit than she gets," Ayala said of Chirlane McCray, the mayor's wife who spearheaded the launch of Thrive NYC. "I think that most people were not talking about mental health in the way that we've been talking about mental health."
While saying that the program heralded a “very necessary first step” in addressing mental health issues, Ayala also acknowledged its flaws and said she wants to see more resources available to New Yorkers suffering with severe mental illnesses, including those in or leaving incarceration. Better services can help keep people with the most serious mental illnesses from landing in jail in the first place, she pointed out.
“We have to start building those relationships prior to discharge because oftentimes they don't make it to those appointments,” said Ayala, drawing on the experience of her brother. “They are required and expected to fill out their own applications to make that one appointment, to show up, and many of them, quite frankly, just don't have the mental capacity to do that. To me, that's the equivalent of asking a child to follow through with the necessary steps to get access to care. I think that, unfortunately, they do require a little bit more handholding and our system is just not really prepared to do that.”
Ayala also discussed her efforts supporting the closure of the Rikers Island jail complex and building of four new jails, including one in her district, in the South Bronx. Since the plan was announced, with Ayala’s support, there has been some criticism about the planned jail in Mott Haven. Ayala said that while she did not advocate for the new jail to be placed in her district per se, she is supportive of it given the importance she sees in the closure of Rikers Island, the use of a city-owned site, and the relative proximity to loved ones and the courthouse for those Bronxites who are ultimately jailed there.
“I get it, right, this is a very difficult pill to swallow, but I think that there's a bigger picture here and I think that this has the potential to do a lot of good in terms of reducing recidivism and keeping families connected and ensuring that people have equal access to health care, mental health care, you name it,” said Ayala. “I mean, there are so many benefits to it. So if they find a better location, I am also supportive of that, but it has to go somewhere.” Given the status of the borough-based jail project, which was approved by the City Council two years ago and is moving along in the design and construction process, it is unlikely that the Bronx site will be changed.
Asked about how the East Harlem rezoning has panned out, Ayala said she thinks it has been going well so far, several years after it was passed under her predecessor, then-Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, for whom Ayala worked in several roles before being elected to replace Mark-Viverito when she was term-limited out of office.
“I think that when people hear the word ‘rezoning,’ they automatically assume displacement. And I think that in this case, we were very purposeful in terms of the locations that were being upzoned,” said Ayala, noting displacements had fallen since the rezoning began. “I think that for us, the rezoning hasn’t been a negative.”
In the podcast’s final segment, Ayala discussed her relationship with Mayor-elect Eric Adams and how she is pitching herself to colleagues in trying to become the next Speaker of the City Council.
Acknowledging that she has support in her Speaker bid from Mark-Viverito, the former Speaker, and U.S. Rep. Adriano Espaillat, Ayala said that among the next class of Council members, as of the November 24 podcast recording, “we have a block of about seven or eight members today that are hard commitments, and then, you know, several others who have expressed an interest in supporting as well that are kind of trying to figure out how to work through some of their own internal politics.”
She declined to name any of those seven or eight “hard commitments” beyond Council Member-elect Althea Stevens, who had already told City & State of her support for Ayala.
“I envision myself as a leader that is going to be working very closely with the new members,” Ayala said. “Really, really excited about the new class of incoming members. We have a lot of really great new talent, a lot of wonderful new ideas, just really great energy....I have been very careful not to create my own platform or agenda. Because I think that it would be irresponsible to do that without really having more robust conversations with the incoming members about what their priorities are as well.”
As for Mayor-elect Adams, who also grew up in New York City under challenging circumstances, and working with him if she is leading the Council as Speaker, Ayala said, in part:
“I think that, for the members, it's important that we maintain a level where we are the check and balance for the admin and that means that needs to be protected at all times. But we all look forward to a working relationship with the new administration, and I'm excited about what that means. I think that the Mayor-elect and I have a lot of things in common, in terms of our own personal stories and our upbringings. I am very excited to see what that translates into in terms of his policy work. But obviously we're here to work. We're here to get things done and we will do that as kindly as possible and as professional as possible. But, there shouldn't be any misunderstanding that when we need to push back as a body we will be pushing back.”
[Listen to the full podcast episode with Council Member Diana Ayala here]
[Find Max Politics episodes with each of the seven City Council Speaker candidates here]
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by Lachlan Hyatt, Gotham Gazette
@GothamGazette
City Council Democrats Appoint New Bronx Commissioner to NYC Board of Elections
Voting (photo: Edwin J. Torres/Mayoral Photo Office)
Update: The Council Democratic conference unanimously confirmed Jodi Morales as the Bronx Democratic commissioner for the New York City Board of Elections at the December 6 meeting. At the meeting, the Council's chief compliance officer, Charles Davis, said the Bronx Democratic Party voted to nominate Morales but failed to file the paperwork with the City Clerk, leaving it up to Council Democrats to appoint her. Council Member Ben Kallos, a Manhattan Democrat, said he interviewed Morales before Monday's appointment vote where he said she committed to a number of measures sought by election reformers, including addressing nepotism at the Board, registering more voters, and increasing the number of early voting and Election Day poll sites. "In our interview, Morales said she would take on nepotism by forming a committee for ethical hiring processes," Kallos said at the meeting. "Morales said that when it comes to patronage, qualifications and competence matters." He also said she expressed support for provisions currently in the hands of state and city lawmakers, including online voter registration, no-excuse absentee voting, same-day registration, and non-citizen voting in municipal elections.
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The New York City Council’s Democratic majority will likely confirm Bronx defense attorney Jodi Morales to the New York City Board of Elections in a meeting Monday morning at 10 a.m.
Morales will be the seventh commissioner appointed to the board since the June primaries, when the city’s Board of Elections made national headlines for publishing inaccurate preliminary election results -- the latest in a series of gaffes that have partially overshadowed most elections in recent years. The appointments, all made in the waning days of the City Council term ending this month, are for the remainder of a four-year term that ends in December 2024.
The Board of Elections is a ten-member, five-borough, bipartisan body that is picked, according to state law, by Democratic and Republican Party leaders (in most cases) to run city elections. Reform advocates say the selection process makes the board unaccountable to the public, enabling political patronage and administrative incompetence.
Morales is the sixth commissioner and first Democrat this year to be selected directly by the Council, which normally confirms party committee choices. This appointment route is used when county party leaders fail to nominate a candidate to the Council for Board of Elections approval. Of the seven who have been appointed or reappointed in the last three months, three are incumbents and four are new. Most if not all of the new selections are party insiders and none are known experts in election administration.
"The fact that so many of these commissioners lack experience administering elections and that so many are being appointed through such a rushed process tells you everything you need to know about the NYC BOE," wrote Tom Speaker, a policy analyst at the transparency advocacy group Reinvent Albany, in an email. "It is one of the last relics of the bad old days and needs to be replaced with an independent, professional agency."
Good government groups have been frustrated by the lack of notice and public scrutiny of the appointments. Watchdogs monitoring the Board of Elections were only notified of the meeting to appoint Morales last Tuesday, six days before it would take place. That’s still more notice than was given recently when the Council’s tiny Republican minority met to confirm the full GOP half of the Board of Elections.
Reform advocates have called for overhauling the state election law to make the Board more professional and less partisan, and for the City Council to use the appointment process and the city budget to hold its commissioners to account.
“Other counties use the budget to rein in or prohibit the board from doing unacceptable things. Our city does not,” said Susan Lerner, executive director of the good government group Common Cause New York, back in 2019, referring to some of the BOE’s missteps, like the illegal removal of thousands of registered voters from the rolls in 2016.
In September, just a week after Commissioner Miguelina Camilo, a Bronx Democrat, quietly stepped down to become the board's associate general counsel, the City Council voted unanimously to appoint Jenny Low, a recently unsuccessful candidate for the Council, to fill the seat left by another commissioner, Manhattan Democrat Tiffany Townsend. If confirmed, Morales will take Camilo's seat just weeks before City Council Speaker Corey Johnson, a Manhattan Democrat, and a majority of the City Council will be term-limited out of office.
In November, the Council's three-member Republican minority conference appointed all five Republican commissioners to the Board of Elections, three incumbents and two new members, without the formal input of the five Republican Party county chairs in New York City.
One of the new commissioners was Michael Coppotelli of Staten Island, an associate superintendent at the Archdiocese who also serves on the board of of directors of the social service organization that recently hired Council Member Steven Matteo, the outgoing Republican minority leader, as its executive director (Matteo abstained from voting in Coppotelli's appointment).
In the event that county party chairs fail to file nominating paperwork by the statutory deadline, their party's conference in the City Council may confirm the commissioner(s), alone, without a vote of the full body or even a public hearing. A video of the brief Republican conference meeting is available on the Council's website but Morales' meeting Monday does not legally have to be open to the public.
Before her appointment in September, good government groups urged Johnson to publicly vet Low, who was selected by Manhattan Democratic Party Chair Keith Wright, disclose any conflicts of interest and release her resume. The groups, including Common Cause, Citizens Union, NYPIRG, and Reinvent Albany, wanted to be sure Low had the "experience and fitness to administer elections," according to a letter sent to Johnson and Majority Leader Laurie Cumbo in September, and for it to be demonstrable to the public. The City Council asked some questions related to her expertise at the confirmation hearing, but has yet to release Low's resume or other professional materials, according to Citizens Union.
"The Council is not required to rubber-stamp the parties’ recommended candidates," the letter reads.
Johnson had defended Wright's choice in Low earlier in the month. “She is a completely competent, good, thoughtful person who has been involved in elections for a very long time, has interacted with the Board of Elections as a district leader so she understands where there are issues and where there are problems,” Johnson told reporters in September.
When asked by Gotham Gazette, a spokesperson for Johnson did not say whether the City Council Democrats consulted with Bronx Democratic Party leaders before selecting Morales. Nor did they say if the meeting would be public, whether Morales would be testifying, or if Democrats would "require the nominee to commit publicly to reforms," as the reformers asked of the Low hearing, "including implementing bills passed by the City Council, hiring election staff based on merits rather than party-based patronage, allowing the Board’s Executive Director to unilaterally hire and fire employees, and publicly posting all open job positions."
The other three Democratic commissioners — for Brooklyn, Staten Island, and Queens — were all appointed or reappointed at the end of last year for the term ending in December 2024.
[Correction: Morales and the five Republican Board of Elections commissioners were confirmed at meetings of their respective City Council conferences, not at public hearings as was originally written.]
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by Ethan Geringer-Sameth, reporter, Gotham Gazette
@GeringerSameth @GothamGazette
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