As State Budget is Negotiated, A Closer Look At Mayor Adams' Albany Agenda
Mayor Adams & Governor Hochul (photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)
With a new state budget entering final negotiations, Mayor Eric Adams traveled to the state capital this week to pitch Governor Kathy Hochul and the State Legislature on his administration’s fiscal and policy priorities. Funding for migrant asylum-seekers and the MTA as well as other fiscal matters remain at the top of his list as the mayor has otherwise presented a limited policy agenda in Albany amid attempts to recalibrate his relationship with legislative leaders.
Last year, Adams’ intergovernmental and Albany operation seemed under-developed as the former state senator managed his first state budget process as mayor. Adams’ approach to state lawmakers, including the Democratic majority leaders, was the source of significant criticism, even as he developed a strong working relationship with Hochul.
Some of his top priorities, particularly an appeal to overhaul signature state bail reforms, received a cold welcome and the mayor was faulted for limited communication with many of his fellow Democrats as he also sought an extension of mayoral control of city schools, and more. Adams came away from his delayed first trip to Albany as mayor fuming not at legislators but at the media coverage that highlighted his halting efforts pitching his agenda.
Eventually, when the budget was approved and in the legislative session that followed, Adams did claim several victories, especially in concert with Hochul. Adams won major investments in child care, an increased Earned Income Tax Credit, expansion of the city’s speed camera program, a new ‘preservation trust’ to raise needed money for public housing improvements, and more. But he only received a two-year extension on mayoral control of city schools, rather than the four he wanted, along with a mandate to cut down on class sizes that he opposed. His push for a replacement of the now-expired 421-a affordable housing tax credit also failed. And his calls for a major revamp of bail laws were rejected in favor of moderate changes for which he could claim some credit. But overall, Adams appeared to get off on the wrong foot with many members of the Legislature, including the legislative leaders whose allyship he needs.
This year, Adams has been focused on pushing back against a series of cuts and cost shifts proposed by Hochul that he says will cost the city billions of dollars each year. And he has taken a different approach, taking apparent steps to reconcile differences with Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, the top Democrats whose assistance is crucial to Adams’ goals.
The mayor’s main priorities have been well-publicized. He wants more funding to help provide shelter and other services to tens of thousands of asylum -seekers, to avoid a major cost shift for the MTA that could cost the city $500 million more annually, and to beat back a variety of other Hochul proposals that could cost the city money. While the mayor is supportive of expanding charter schools, as the governor has called for, he has said that any such growth in the sector should be accompanied by state funding to help pay for the schools’ rent.
But there are also several other issues Adams is pressing for, such as proposals in the governor’s housing agenda, and other items that have flown under the radar, including an expansion of health care to undocumented immigrants, expansion of the Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit, changes to procurement and other regulatory matters in order to help complete infrastructure projects more efficiently, community hiring legislation, and an “income disregard” proposal for public benefits.
Asylum-Seeker Funding
The costs of the migrant asylum-seeker crisis have ballooned and Adams has continued to make it his top priority. His administration estimates that it will cost the city about $4.2 billion in the current and next fiscal years. And those costs have put pressure on the city’s finances ahead of its own budget deadline for the July 1 start to its fiscal year.
Hochul has proposed about $1 billion to the city, which Adams insists will not be enough, forcing the city to cut from departments and services. The city also doesn’t expect additional funding from the federal government before the current fiscal year is over, even as Congress appropriated an $800 million pot of funding in December to help cities across the country deal with an influx of migrants.
“I've always stated that the top issue for us I think that will undermine our city the most is the migrant issue,” Adams told reporters in Albany on Monday. The challenge also has the potential to deepen starting in May as the federal government is aiming to lift Title 42, a pandemic-era immigration policy that expelled more than 2 million asylum-seekers at the border. “We have to find an additional $4.2 billion. That is going to really undermine our city. That's going to impact every service that we have,” Adams said.
MTA
The mayor has also pushed back against a proposal in Hochul’s executive budget that would require the city to provide an additional $500 million annually in operational assistance to the MTA. That funding would cover the state’s share of the cost of the city’s paratransit program and discounted MetroCard program for students, she said.
The mayor and his administration have argued that the actual costs would be closer to $526 million in the next fiscal year and more than $540 million every year after that, on top of the $2.4 billion that the city already puts into the MTA — not to mention all of the other ways in which city residents and businesses fund the transit authority. The mayor was met with receptive ears among Democratic lawmakers: both the Senate and Assembly rejected the governor’s MTA funding proposal in their one-house budgets.
“[H]alf a billion dollars is just something that we cannot take on at this time,” Adams said. “And both houses heard us and in their one-house proposals, they came up with counter proposals and now it's time for the deliberation process to take place.”
Charters Schools
The governor’s proposal to eliminate the cap on charter schools in New York City has become one of the more heated points of contention in this year’s budget negotiations. Hochul has argued that the privately-run public charter schools offer choices she wants to provide to parents while many Democratic legislators are opposed to the largely non-unionized schools.
But both legislative chambers omitted her proposal from their one-house budgets and even Adams, a proponent of charter schools, has argued that the state must help the city with the projected $1 billion price tag associated with the measure if it were to pass. According to state law, the city must pay rent in private buildings for charter schools if no public space is provided.
Housing
Though he has not been especially vocal about it, Adams has been generally supportive of Governor Hochul’s proposed “Housing Compact,” a broad policy agenda that aims to build 800,000 new homes across the state over the next ten years.
“We have to build more and we have to find the pathways to build more low-income, middle-income, and market rate, all three of them, and that is what our plan is looking at,” he said at a housing-focused forum hosted by WNYC radio last week.
Adams is pursuing his own housing plan, somewhat reliant on state action, and there are several items in the governor’s housing proposal that he has been specifically lobbying for including easing conversions of underutilized office space to housing; eliminating the floor-area ratio cap to allow denser buildings in the city; a replacement for the 421-a tax credit that encourages apartment building development with some affordable housing included and an extension of the completion deadline for existing projects to receive 421-a benefits; replacing the expired J-51 tax incentive, which helped property owners renovate housing in exchange for making it affordable and new safety standards for basement and cellar apartments.
“We need to have a real conversation about 421-a, a real vision of it, we need to look at J-51. There are things that is taking place right now in Albany,” he said at the WNYC forum. “And I really take my hat off even to the governor, what the governor's doing about regional [housing]. We need to look at the region because this is a regional problem.”
According to a City Hall spokesperson, the mayor is also pushing for new tenant protections in Albany. However he has not taken any public positions on major proposals – Adams has repeatedly said he supports the concept of a “good cause” eviction bill but that small property owners should not be adversely affected by it.
Adams is also pushing the state to provide rental assistance for NYCHA residents, as the public housing authority faces a major pandemic-era rent-arrears crisis that is threatening its bottom line. Both houses of the Legislature have supported that push with additional funding allocated in their one-house budgets.
Criminal Justice
While Adams was one of the most prominent advocates last year for creating a “dangerousness” standard that judges could use while deciding to either set bail or remand a defendant into custody pre-trial, he has been less vocal on the issue this year. He has, however, gotten behind the governor’s proposal that would eliminate the “least restrictive standard” that judges use for setting bail in cases of violent misdemeanors and repeated offenders. Adams has made serial recidivists the focus of his push, saying they are responsible for a massively disproportionate number of crimes in the city.
Bail changes insisted upon by Hochul last year, leading to a late budget, were supposed to address the issue of bail eligibility for more serious misdemeanors and repeat offenders on alleged crimes like retail theft, but she has now argued that too many judges have either inappropriately used their discretion to allow pre-trial release without requiring bail or believed that the least restrictive standard required them to allow such release. Both Hochul and Adams appear to want judges to have and use bail more as a proxy for pre-trial remand, an apparent workaround for the dangerousness standard.
In Albany this week, Adams shifted the focus from bail alone to broader criminal justice reform. “I am not going to allow people to focus on one terminology that's not going to be a magic bullet,” he said of bail reforms, in similar comments to what Hochul has said as she also seeks tighter bail laws and other measures. “I think that lawmakers up here are going to deliberate over exactly what's going to happen on ‘least restrictive.’ It is up to them to come to a final solution to that.”
Adams has emphasized that the state needs to also increase funding for prosecutors and public defenders and make additional changes to the criminal discovery law to reduce the massive criminal court backlog caused by the pandemic. He is also in favor of Hochul's proposed additional investments in reentry services for those leaving the justice system.
Hochul’s budget did propose more funding for prosecutors, particularly to help with criminal discovery compliance. But public defenders didn’t receive a comparable funding boost in her plan. While her budget would increase wages for certain types of court-appointed defense attorneys, it did not fully provide funding to implement those increases, which will cost the city an additional $18 million each year if passed as-is.
Capital Construction and Procurement Reforms
Adams’ administration is undertaking a significant effort at reforming the city’s broken capital construction process, which includes a slew of state legislation to approve alternate project delivery methods, allow the use of progressive design build, establish the Department of Design and Construction as a public authority, change procurement to increase contracting with Minority- and Women-owned Business Enterprises (M/WBEs), among other proposals.
[Read: Promising Projects Faster and Cheaper, Adams Administration Pursues Capital Construction Reforms]
Community Hiring Legislation
Adams is also pushing for the state to approve community hiring legislation that would give the city the authority to mandate that companies receiving city contracts hire local community members. “Promoting community hiring will allow us to help 36,000 economically disadvantaged workers connect to good jobs every year,” he said in his State of the City speech in January.
Income Disregard
Adams has pushed for an “income disregard” bill that would allow low-income New Yorkers who complete a state or federally recognized job training program to continue receiving state public benefits such as Medicaid, child care, or rental assistance for six months even after obtaining a job. The proposal would mitigate the “benefits cliff” that individuals face when their income increases and puts them beyond the threshold for public assistance.
Expanding Tax Credits
Last year at Adams’ urging, the state approved an expansion of the city’s Earned Income Tax Credit for the first time in 20 years. Adams pledged $250 million annually to implement the expanded EITC while the state pitched in another $100 million of its own.
Last week, Adams rallied with labor leaders and lawmakers to call for enhancing the EITC and the Child Tax credit even further. Currently, only New Yorkers with Social Security numbers can avail themselves of the two benefits. Adams is pushing the state to broaden that eligibility to anyone with an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, which would expand the credits to hundreds of thousands of immigrant New Yorkers, including undocumented immigrants.
Extending Health Care to Undocumented Immigrants
Governor Hochul’s budget included a proposed expansion of the state’s Essential Plan to provide health coverage to those with incomes up to 250% of the Federal Poverty Level, up from the current threshold of 200%. But immigrant advocates and lawmakers have called on the governor to go beyond that and expand eligibility to undocumented immigrants under the “Coverage for All” proposal. The proposal has even been backed by insurance providers.
Mayor Adams lent his voice to that advocacy this week, in a letter to the governor, according to a Spectrum News report. “We rarely have the opportunity to improve the lives of so many New Yorkers through a single policy modification,” he wrote.
Accessibility for undocumented immigrants would also reduce related costs on the state's Medicaid program, he argued. “Expanding EP eligibility to undocumented adults is an imperative of both moral and economic consequence," Adams said in the letter.
Medicaid Funding
Enhanced Federal Medical Assistance Percentage (eFMAP) funding supplements localities’ spending on Medicaid, in which huge numbers of New Yorkers are enrolled. But Hochul proposed that the state would retain 100% of that funding, inviting consternation from Democrats and Republicans alike. Mayor Adams was among the critics of that proposal, which he said would cost the city about $343 million annually.
Sales Tax and Distressed Hospitals
The governor yet again proposed extending a measure that would intercept about $150 million in sales taxes from New York City and divert it to the state’s Distressed Hospitals Fund. The fund, however, has not helped support struggling New York City Health+Hospitals facilities, and Adams has pushed for the governor to stop dipping into the city’s tax revenue for it.
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by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
@samarkhurshid @GothamGazette
City Law Department Defends Approach to Lawsuits Over NYPD Misconduct
Corporation Counsel Sylvia Hinds-Radix (photo: Ed Reed/Mayor's Office)
With the NYPD costing taxpayers tens of millions of dollars every year in lawsuit settlements over misconduct claims, City Council members on Wednesday questioned the city’s Law Department about its approach to defending the police department and whether the city could benefit from being less combative when taken to court for police misconduct.
A Legal Aid Society analysis released in February found that the city paid $121 million in 2022 to settle lawsuits over allegations of NYPD misconduct, the highest amount in five years and $34 million more than in 2021. Among the payouts were high-profile cases that made up significant amounts of the settlements, including a $13 million settlement paid to Muhammad Aziz, who was wrongfully convicted in the assassination of Malcolm X and spent more than 20 years in prison. Seven other settlements ranged from $10.5 million to $13 million.
The city has also paid millions in lawsuits stemming from the police response to Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 after the killing of George Floyd, which prompted hundreds of complaints against the NYPD, and led to 226 full investigations by the Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB), an oversight agency.
At Wednesday’s City Council hearing on Mayor Eric Adams’ preliminary budget for next fiscal year, which begins July 1, Council members had tough questions about those settlements for the Law Department, which represents the city and its agencies in legal matters.
Corporation Counsel Sylvia Hinds-Radix, who runs the Law Department as appointed by the Mayor, sought to explain why the city paid out more in settlements in the last fiscal year than in recent years. She said the pandemic in general caused an increase in the number of lawsuits filed against the city, with the department’s tort division facing 28,000 pending cases, more than 2,000 over last year and 4,000 more than two years ago. Tort claims involve lawsuits against city agencies and employees for issues arising from their official duties.
“Pre-pandemic, we were able with the assistance of the City Council to add resources to the tort division, which enabled us to improve case outcomes through increasing early settlements, engaging in better case preparation, and enhancing our state court trial practice. We have experienced a total erosion of those resources these past two years and will need to focus existing resources on handling the increased caseload,” she said, noting that high personnel attrition in the department has increased caseloads across the board.
Payouts for settlements have also increased overall, which Hinds-Radix attributed to the court system returning to normal operations after the disruption of the pandemic. In fiscal year 2022, the city paid $794.7 million in settlements overall, compared to $576 million in fiscal year 2021, and $623 million in fiscal year 2020 (which began July 1, 2019, pre-pandemic).
Hinds-Radix also noted that settlements for wrongful convictions drove the numbers up. “Just a few of those large settlements cause the amount of judgment and claims to increase significantly,” she said.
Responding to a question from Council Member Sandra Ung, a Queens Democrat and chair of the governmental operation committee, Hinds-Radix also said the department takes steps to reduce the amount of settlements every year. “We look to settle cases early where we can. We also look to investigate as thoroughly as we can because by being prepared litigants, we are able to limit our liability,” she said.
But Council members specifically expressed concerns about the NYPD, which has in recent years been the biggest drivers of the total settlements paid out every year by the city. In most cases, the city settles without admitting any wrongdoing and officers escape severe discipline.
Council Member Lincoln Restler, a Brooklyn Democrat, pointed to a specific case to air his frustrations with the Law Department’s approach to alleged police misconduct.
He cited a ProPublica report from December about Karl Ashanti, a Law Department attorney who, while heading to work at his city office, was confronted and arrested by an NYPD officer on what turned out to be false charges of resisting arrest and allegedly shoving the officer. The department gave Ashanti the choice of resigning or being fired. Video evidence later showed that there was no shoving and, after most of the charges were dropped, Ashanti was found not guilty on one charge of harassment. He left the department, and sued the city and the officer.
That lawsuit is ongoing and Ashanti told ProPublica that the city is “fighting tooth and nail against me.” What makes the case particularly ironic is that Ashanti was part of the city’s Special Federal Litigation Division, defending the city in federal lawsuits over the exact type of NYPD abuse that he is alleging he suffered.
Restler echoed Ashanti’s words, taking issue with “the mentality of the Law Department to fight tooth and nail in defense of alleged police abuse and misconduct.”
“I found it really troubling,” he said, “and I'm concerned about the approach of the Law Department over many years.”
Hinds-Radix disagreed with the “characterization” of the ProPublica story. “The Law Department's role is to ensure that it protects the city…As attorneys, we have an ethical obligation as officers of the court to ensure that what we present to the court is not frivolous. And so to suggest that the Law Department just fights that as the article does, and does that without evaluating what is before us is something that I would have to disagree with vociferously,” she said.
The department evaluates each claim on a case by case basis, she insisted, and litigates when the result may be beneficial to the city. “In an overwhelming majority of the cases that we do, we realize that the defense of the police department is defensible and…since we have the obligation to defend those things, we do,” she added. “And the cases that need to be settled, we evaluate them and we settle them.”
“When there is police misconduct, there needs to be accountability,” Restler said, urging Hinds-Radix that, in such cases, “don't go to the mat defending it, but instead work to support and meet the needs of New Yorkers who have been victimized.”
“That is clearly our intent, Council member,” she responded. “To ensure that as we go to protect the city, that we do it in an ethical manner, and we will continue to do that.”
Council Member Gale Brewer, a Manhattan Democrat, raised similar concerns, questioning whether the department is taking a “no pay” effort – as Ashanti alleged in his case – against the type of civil rights claims involved in police misconduct cases. “I happen to be very supportive of the police department, but you have bad apples like you’ve got bad elected officials. And the question is not to have them cost the city of New York a fortune,” Brewer said.
“That has not been our approach, just a ‘no pay’ effort,” Hinds-Radix said. “Our attorneys are well aware of the fact that we expect them to go into court and act ethically…We have the city's interest to protect and we try to do that every day.”
At a separate budget hearing this week, an NYPD police official noted that settlement amounts have been dropping for years, which was true until they rose again in 2022. “I think it's important to note that cases are settled for a variety of reasons and they're not always indicative of wrongdoing, and that settlement amounts have been trending down for many years,” the official said, according to video of the exchange posted by Council Member Tiffany Cabán. The Council member and other progressives have stressed that for the hundreds of millions of dollars in annual NYPD settlements and overtime spending, the city could fund many of the social services that they argue would better create public safety than more aggressive policing.
“$121 million is nearly four times what the mayor is proposing we cut from libraries next year, for example, which the Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens Library Systems say would severely impact their ability to provide critical services, resources and programs to patrons or to stay open for their regular hours,” Cabán said in response.
Criminal justice reform advocates have been broadly critical of the NYPD’s continued lack of accountability and that the NYPD commissioner continues to weaken disciplinary measures even as taxpayers are eventually on the hook for police abuse of power.
“Rampant NYPD misconduct continues to cost New Yorkers tens of millions of dollars each year, and Commissioner Keechant Sewell’s entrenched resistance to meaningful accountability means many of the officers involved in these lawsuits likely received a mere slap on the wrist, if any discipline at all,” said Maggie Hadley, a legal fellow with the Criminal Defense Practice’s Special Litigation Unit at The Legal Aid Society, in a statement when their analysis of settlements was released. “Officers who commit egregious or persistent acts of misconduct should not wear a badge or carry a gun, and the Department’s continued refusal to hold problematic officers accountable only perpetuates the culture of impunity that thrives at precincts throughout New York City.”
As Hadley indicated, Commissioner Sewell, like her predecessors, has consistently pushed back against outside oversight of police misconduct by the CCRB. The New York Post reported in December that Sewell intended to change the NYPD’s disciplinary matrix – which establishes standards for police disciplinary procedures – after she found that many disciplinary recommendations made by the CCRB and internal police judges were “manifestly unfair to the officers under review.”
The CCRB informed the City Council this month that Sewell went against its disciplinary recommendations in 425 cases, accounting for more than half of cases in which the oversight body recommended some form of discipline for police officers. In fact, she has punished officers at a far lower rate than the two commissioners before her.
Mayor Eric Adams has also failed to follow through on a campaign promise to publish a watch list of NYPD officers that the department is monitoring for violent behavior and other serious misconduct.
[Read: Nearly A Year In, No Sign of Adams' Promised NYPD Watchlist]
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by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
@samarkhurshid @GothamGazette
‘We Have Been Behind for a Really Long Time’: Borough President Vanessa Gibson’s Vision for Lifting Up the Bronx
Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson (photo: William Alatriste/City Council)
Vanessa Gibson ran for Bronx Borough President in 2021 on a platform focused on improving public housing and jumpstarting COVID-19 recovery. Now, just over one year into her term, she is advancing her agenda with a focus on public health, economic and housing development, and more. Gibson recognizes the Bronx’s many challenges, including as the borough with the highest rates of unemployment, poverty, crime, and unhealthfulness, but is also focused on its many positives and, especially, opportunities to uplift Bronxites.
On March 1, Gibson delivered her first State of the Borough address, emphasizing the importance of access to jobs, mass transit, and affordable housing. Also high on the agenda was improving public health, especially major crises around maternal mortality and diabetes, as well as fire safety measures, increasing tourism, and more. Two days after her speech, Gibson, the first Black person and the first woman to serve as Bronx borough president, joined Gotham Gazette’s Max Politics podcast to discuss her priorities for the borough.
“Some of the top priorities for our administration moving forward is really focusing on the Bronx being a borough of opportunities…boosting tourism and focusing on cultural institutions, and really bringing tourism back to the Bronx,” Gibson said on the podcast. “Economic development is the pathway to prosperity — when you talk about jobs, good paying, stable, union jobs that really create stability for many of the families I represent.”
There are many major proposed and ongoing infrastructure projects in the Bronx, including the Hip Hop Museum that’s being built, renovations at Orchard Beach, the construction of the Bronx Detention Site in the borough’s Mott Haven neighborhood as part of the plan to close Rikers Island, and much more.
There’s also a proposal for a Bally’s casino on the 17-acre plot currently housing the Trump Organization golf course and the early ongoing exploration of what will be done with the vacant, massive Kingsbridge Armory.
Before becoming borough president in January 2022, Gibson spent a few years in the New York State Assembly then eight years representing the 16th City Council District. During her time in the City Council, from 2014 through 2021, she chaired the public safety committee and the capital budget subcommittee.
Perhaps her most significant policy move as a Council member was as lead co-sponsor of the Right to Counsel law, which requires free-of-charge legal representation for low-income tenants facing eviction in housing court or NYCHA proceedings. Her lead co-sponsor was then-Council Member Mark Levine, who is now also a borough president, in Manhattan. The law passed in 2017, and led to a significant decrease in eviction rates pre-pandemic, proving a success that then-Mayor Bill de Blasio and the Council later expanded from high-need neighborhoods to all of New York City in 2021. Recent numbers show that after the pandemic eviction moratorium expired last January, only a small percentage of low-income New Yorkers are being assigned legal representation, which has caused alarm for Gibson, Levine, and many others.
Gibson was elected Borough President during a competitive 2021 race, and effectively won during the June Democratic primary given the Bronx is overwhelmingly Democratic in voter enrollment. The role entails distribution of discretionary funds, weighing in on many land use matters, appointments to community boards and other bodies that have influence over policy, working with City Council, the mayor, and many other elected officials. The Borough President cannot vote on legislation, but has a significant bully pulpit and can work with other entities to introduce and advocate for legislation, budget allocations, and other government action.
The Gibson interview continued a series of conversations with Borough Presidents just after or pegged to their State of the Borough addresses — Manhattan Borough President Levine, Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, and Queens Borough President Donovan Richards each joined the podcast in recent months. (A conversation with Staten Island Borough President Vito Fossella is in the works.)
Cannabis
During her State of the Borough address, Gibson said legalized adult use cannabis has “the potential to be an economic engine” for the Bronx. She spoke about the potential of the industry to empower new business owners and those previously incarcerated or disenfranchised due to charges related to the drug, which she noted on the podcast were majority Black and Latino.
“I fully believe that cannabis is an industry that we must embrace,” Gibson said on the podcast. “I look at it from both an equity and justice perspective. Equity because we want to create the next emerging entrepreneurs and small business owners, but we also know, from a justice perspective, we want to right the wrongs of systemic racism and mass incarceration due to marijuana prohibition.”
Gibson spoke about her role in opening the Bronx Dispensary Showroom, a three-day-long cannabis retail pop-up led by her office and the Bronx Community Foundation in December of last year. The showroom offered retail goods, but also professional development training and speakers, as well as resources and information provided by cannabis advocacy organizations. She explained that it can be difficult for small business owners to break into the cannabis industry due to barriers such as capital and credit requirements. A group she is a part of — along with The Community Foundation and The Bronx Defenders — is offering complimentary legal assistance to those interested in starting legal dispensaries.
“We really showcased what cannabis is all about,” Gibson said. “We want this industry to be emerging, but we want to make sure it's done in a legal way.”
Of the recent increase in illegal cannabis dispensaries and a subsequent law enforcement crackdown, Gibson said these shops undermine the efforts of those who are trying to enter the industry legally. She said that many smoke shops in her borough have experienced robberies and violence in recent months as well, threatening the safety of everyone. Gibson called for increased communication among the city, the state, and law enforcement and recommended a potential increase in training for the NYPD, which she said had been slow to properly address the proliferation of illegal sellers.
“We have to do more education, more outreach,” she said, and suggested more public service and advertisement campaigns on the implications of legalization. “I do believe that there is a big divide when it comes to generations. What I'm trying to do as a borough president is find a medium, find a balance — how can we embrace it in a legal way, crack down on the unlicensed, but also do a lot more to educate?”
[LISTEN: Max Politics Podcast: Borough President Vanessa Gibson on the State of the Bronx]
Public Safety
One of Gibson’s priorities is the creation of an Office of Public Safety stationed at the Bronx Borough President’s office to address concerns about crime and community, coordinating different stakeholders and consistently communicating with the NYPD about areas of concern.
“It doesn't get lost on me that at any given time, there's something that's happening in my borough,” Gibson said on the podcast, while referencing the recent broad daylight quadruple shooting on East Tremont Avenue that left three wounded and one dead as an example of the violence plaguing the borough.
Gibson said something like the office she’s soon launching has “never been done before.” She plans to work with law enforcement, first responders, anti-gun violence advocates, clergy, members of the general public, and others to address crime and supply victims with all the resources they may need — whether that entails funeral and burial expenses, counseling, relocation services, and more. Gibson said she wants to “holistically” and comprehensively address crime and safety in the borough.
“I cannot tell you how often my office has had to work with these families that are affected by violence — the shootings, the stabbings, the school violence,” Gibson said. “We reach out to these families and they are broken and they need a myriad of assistance…It is hard. That is a job in itself, and I've been doing that since I've been an elected official. And now as borough president, it’s magnified even more because I deal with the whole borough.”
In response to a question about how the role of the NYPD and the Office of Public Safety will intersect, Gibson said that the office will handle elements of crime and its aftermath that law enforcement cannot always focus on due to high caseloads and other responsibilities.
“The goal of mine is to also have the human touch — and that's one thing that I don't think the NYPD always does, because if you're a victim of a crime, and you have to work with the detective bureau, their job is to investigate,” Gibson said. “We've heard concerns from many families that there's not always that level of sympathy.”
Gibson also said that many of her constituents have expressed that they want to see more police officers along main roads and commuter routes, adding that this year was the first in a long time when the Bronx has been given an adequate number of police officers — each of the borough’s 12 precincts received new officers. She credited Mayor Eric Adams’ continued support of and attention to the Bronx.
“I appreciate that as representative of a borough that hasn't always been given that priority,” Gibson said of Adams, the former Brooklyn borough president. “He won the Bronx in high numbers.”
More on Development and Economic Opportunity
Gibson cited job creation as a top priority for keeping people, especially of younger generations, in the Bronx. Though the unemployment rate has dropped drastically since the height of the pandemic, she is looking to stimulate local union jobs, as well as apprenticeship programs that will offer new jobs “right now.” Her office is placing focus on tech, including gaming, and research, which she hopes will open up new jobs in the medical field.
“We have been behind for a really long time, and I feel like a lot of times we have to play catch up,” Gibson said on the podcast. “We not only have to play catch up, we have to double our efforts just so that we can compete at a level playing field with our other counterparts in the city of New York. Realizing that it’s the Bronx — we have to make it attractive. You have to be able to stimulate the economy using some of our existing infrastructure to bring more people to the Bronx in a real tangible way.”
She also spoke about the borough’s many ongoing development projects, mentioning the new Universal Hip Hop Museum, which is under construction, the opening of a new space for the Bronx Children’s Museum last December, and the planned Metro North expansion, which will add four new stops to the East Bronx by 2027 and is the subject of rezoning planning that is underway at the Department of City Planning.
She also mentioned the newly-revived effort to finally redevelop the vacant Kingsbridge Armory, a planning process to transform the historical military complex that’s been vacant since 1996. Gibson said that due to current zoning laws, housing at the complex is most likely not an option, but she has formed a list of non-negotiables that she would like to see in the new facility.
In Gibson’s view, the new facility should center the borough’s culture, boost tourism, and create jobs and support small businesses, including street vendors. She is also advocating for a recreation space for young residents, health care services, vertical farming or something similar, and workforce development training.
“It's huge. It's the largest in the country and has the potential to do so much for the Kingsbridge neighborhood, and for the entire borough and the city,” Gibson said. “It can be a game-changer.”
Of the potential plans for a casino in the Bronx near the current Trump Links golf course, Gibson has mixed opinions. She called conversations about the plan “worthy and important” to have, but is concerned that the Bronx’s infrastructure is not ready to support such an addition and shared concerns about creating a facility that would attract so many tourists rather than investing in the community that is already living in the neighborhood and borough.
Gibson said she supports the expansion of the Empire City Casino in Yonkers, a move that would expand the casino’s license to a full casino, as she appreciates the many jobs it provides to Bronx residents, with the potential for more. The process is underway to award three downstate casino licenses, two of which could go to expanding the existing partial casinos in Yonkers and Queens, but there are many proposals for casinos throughout the five boroughs and in the suburbs.
“You’re building a whole neighborhood within a neighborhood, and you're bringing in clientele,” Gibson said of a potential new casino. “I want to make this beneficial for the Bronx…I want to make sure the community is in the conversation.”
Housing
Gibson spoke favorably of Mayor Adams’ and Governor Kathy Hochul’s housing plans, which she called “ambitious,” and said that a lot needs to be done before they can be put into full effect. She expressed concern that the shelter and temporary housing system is overwhelmed, and said she is working to make Section 8 vouchers, which help low-income families find housing, more accessible.
She also expressed a need she sees in her borough for affordable housing options more comprehensive than middle-income housing options already available. She added that not every neighborhood has done its part in providing these affordable housing options, explaining that she believes others are providing more than their fair share.
“Affordable housing is the prerequisite to homeownership,” Gibson said. “We don't want tenants to be lifetime tenants. We eventually want them to move towards a pathway, upward mobility of becoming homeowners.”
Gibson mentioned an ongoing $2 billion Fordham Landing redevelopment in University Heights, which will include more than 2,000 new apartments, hundreds of them affordable units. With new housing and new or larger communities, Gibson said she has spoken with Mayor Adams about making resources like schools, grocery stores, and health care facilities automatically included in or near new housing developments. Gibson acknowledged anxiety among some that comes with the prospect of more housing development, but said there must be more housing across the borough and the city, while addressing many important concerns.
“This is a new administration — this is a new wave of leadership and we have to be responsible,” Gibson said. “We have to be collaborative, and ultimately we can and we will support responsible development that brings jobs, that brings stability. At the end of the day, we have gotten to be a ‘City of Yes’ that welcomes residents from all communities, and we can’t have this idea that affordable housing brings criminals and crime.”
Public Health
Promoting public health continues to be a priority for Gibson, she said. Maternal health is at top of mind for the borough president, who cited higher childbirth death rates impacting Black communities. She said that her office is currently working on creating a Bronx Birthing Center to support new mothers throughout the pregnancy and birth processes — something she said exists in other places across the city but not in the entire Bronx — and that it will release Birthing Center Reports once the facility is up and running. The project is still in its early stages, Gibson said.
“We want to make sure that all birthing individuals have access to care in the Bronx, and to me, it's a matter of equity and justice and fairness in the system,” Gibson said.
Gibson is also focused on creating a Diabetes Task Force to address a disease that impacts Bronx neighborhoods disproportionately. Her office is also seeking to address lupus and fibroids, two conditions that primarily affect women of color. She mentioned the office’s HIV/AIDs Task Force and Domestic Violence Task Force as other avenues of care, but expressed concern that the Bronx remains ranked as the unhealthiest of New York’s 62 counties, calling it “alarming” and attributing it to systemic racism that must be addressed.
[LISTEN to the full conversation: Max Politics Podcast: Borough President Vanessa Gibson on the State of the Bronx]
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by Abby Wilson, Gotham Gazette
@GothamGazette
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