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City to Codify Office of Food Policy and Require 10-Year Food Plan


corey jphnson participate

Council Speaker Johnson at a food pantry (photo: John McCarten/CityCouncil)


The City Council is expected to pass a package of food policy legislation on Tuesday, central components of an agenda laid out by Speaker Corey Johnson last August to strengthen relevant governance and food policy planning, while combating inequality and waste in the food supply chain.

One bill, sponsored by Council Member Vanessa Gibson, would require the Mayor’s Office of Food Policy to develop a ten-year plan to address food access and build a sustainable and economically viable agricultural landscape serving New York City. The second bill, carried by Council Member Ben Kallos and co-sponsored by Johnson, would codify the Office of Food Policy in the City Charter as a permanent office responsible for coordinating food-related initiatives across multiple city agencies, with an emphasis on promoting nutrition in communities with limited access to healthy food because of “economic, racial, or environmental factors.”

Both bills passed out of the Committee on Economic Development on Monday and will be up for a vote by the full City Council on Tuesday, where they are expected to pass.

“Food is a human right, and in one of the richest cities in the world, it is completely unacceptable that one million New Yorkers are food insecure and that many communities have inequitable access to healthy food,” a Council spokesperson for Johnson said in a statement. “The Council’s food equity legislative package is part of Speaker Johnson’s vision to promote food justice in this City, and we are thankful to all the Council Members and staff for working hard on these bills as we move closer to ending the food equity gap.”

Johnson’s platform, first proposed in a report entitled, “Growing Food Equity in New York City,” takes aim at rampant food insecurity, including in low-income communities and communities of color, and the structural inequities that contribute to that problem and others, including inconsistencies in access to healthy food. It comprises a number of provisions, many of which were contained in a package of fourteen bills and two resolutions heard in Council committees last September, including several being voted on Tuesday (several other pieces of the package were passed through the Council’s general welfare committee on Monday).

In addition to the food policy office and ten-year plan bills, Johnson’s full agenda includes legislation to enhance food metric reporting, expand public assistance like food pantries and SNAP benefits, targeted support for seniors and students, farm-to-city programs, and food procurement reforms.

The number of New Yorkers living with food insecurity -- defined as lacking adequate access to affordable and nutritious food -- between 2015 and 2017 was 1.09 million, according to a report by Hunger Free America and cited in the Council’s report. While constituting a 22 percent drop in food insecurity from the 2012-2014 period, the figure also represents a 22 percent rise since the pre-recession period from 2005 to 2007, according to the Hunger Free America report. The number of children who experienced food insecurity between 2015 and 2017, 324,432, improved at a slower rate (16 percent) than the overall population from the previous three-year period.

A particular emphasis is on food justice and ameliorating the disparate access to healthy foods in predominantly low-income neighborhoods. The expected passage of the bills comes shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled as constitutional the Trump administration’s public charge rule, making it harder for immigrants to obtain a green card when they receive public benefits like food stamps.

“The City of New York is responsible for feeding a large portion of our population, whether it’s 1.1 million public school students who are entitled to free breakfast and free lunch, or it’s people in our senior centers...or people in our shelter system who we’re feeding, or just the countless New Yorkers who rely on food assistance in the form of SNAP,” Kallos, a Manhattan Democrat, told Gotham Gazette.

The city has a tremendous amount of sway over food policy and can have meaningful impact by utilizing it, according to Nevin Cohen, research director at the CUNY Urban Food Policy Institute. “Agencies procure food for various purposes, they control land that food can be grown on, they provide resources for business like food manufacturing business. So food spans the gamut of city agencies and having an office that can coordinate food related policies is really essential,” Cohen said in an interview with Gotham Gazette.

The two bills passed by the economic development committee are a package that work in tandem, one establishing the food policy office in the City Charter and one requiring it to develop a ten-year plan. The bills are written to go into effect simultaneously.

Under Gibson’s bill, the Office of Food Policy would be required to draft a comprehensive ten-year plan -- coordinating among myriad agencies, community-based organizations, and other stakeholders -- that would bring the city’s approaches to governing food production, sale, and supplemental assistance under one umbrella. The plan would be required to make recommendations on “reducing hunger, improving nutrition, increasing access to healthy food, reducing food waste, developing and improving food and farm economies, and increasing urban agriculture and sustainability.”

“There has been no shortage of food policy ideas and strategic documents and recommendations from different parts of city government, but there hasn’t yet been a cohesive food plan for the city of New York,” Cohen said. “That’s been a major gap that this bill will fill.”

The ten-year plan would include strategies for successful implementation with benchmarks and the Office of Food Policy would be required to give progress reports to the mayor and Council speaker.

“I believe this legislation will have a tremendous impact on thousands of families that deserve access to healthier high quality food options. However, we must continue to work together as legislators with community advocates and stakeholders to ensure we establish concrete goals to reduce hunger,” wrote Gibson, a Bronx Democrat, in an email. The Hunger Free America report called the Bronx the “hungriest borough,” with one in four residents experiencing food insecurity.

Kallos’ bill, in codifying the Office of Food Policy, outlines the powers and duties of the director in the City Charter. Currently, the role of Director of Food Policy is housed within the mayor’s office and exists at the mayor’s discretion. After former Director of Food Policy Barbara Turk stepped down in March 2019, the position went vacant for six months until a new director, Kate MacKenzie, was appointed by Mayor de Blasio this past October. Under the legislation, the office could be established either directly within the mayor’s office or in another mayoral department, with the director appointed either by the mayor or the department head.

Supporters say codifying the office will bring a degree of accountability over the city’s food policy efforts, which are currently controlled largely through executive action. The bill establishes four official responsibilities of the office: make recommendations to the mayor; coordinate interagency initiatives; conduct outreach to key stakeholders; and promote efforts designed to increase equitable access to nutritious food.

“I think the fact that [the Mayor’s Office of Food Policy] was vacant for so long explains why it needs to be codified in the law: so that it is something that we can hold accountable. I am very glad Mayor de Blasio appointed a director, one who has been empowered to do so much, but the mayor could have just as easily eliminated the position,” Kallos said.

The mayor’s office says it supports the bills.

“The Administration strongly supports these bills and the broader food equity vision outlined by the Speaker. I look forward to working with the Council and advocates in creating and formalizing a robust food policy plan for the City of New York,” MacKenzie wrote in an email.

Kallos believes codifying the office’s general responsibilities will also give it leverage in negotiating among city agencies, which often operate as independent fiefdoms.

“When I was chair of Governmental Operations I had oversight over half a dozen agencies and it is incredibly difficult to force agencies to work together. By giving the food policy director this power in the Charter, it means there is something they can point to when they are trying to force people to the table who otherwise might not want to work together,” he said.

To some extent, codifying the office is a statement about how much city resources should be expended on comprehensive food policy.

“I think a really important need is for the city to adequately fund the Office of Food Policy. Since its inception the office has really had only one or two staff people, and for a city the size of New York that’s just not enough,” Cohen said.

Kallos’ bill does not appropriate city funds for the office or say how many staff members it must have, but Cohen believes the legislation can still be a boon.

“Local laws generally don’t have specific appropriations of funding attached to them, but my feeling is that by putting the office in the City Charter it adds significant importance to the office and it will enable advocates both inside and outside of city government to advocate for sufficient funding,” he said.

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by Ethan Geringer-Sameth, reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

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Experts Dissect How the City Economy is Working and Who It's Working For


cornell tech school

(photo: Edwin J. Torres/Mayor's Office)


New York City has seen a lot of growth and some large shifts in its economy and workforce over the last decade. Unemployment is near record lows, but much of the growth has been in low-wage industries and many New Yorkers are underemployed or working full-time but still struggling to make ends meet. Automation is increasing, and technology has become both its own industry and part of every other sector of the economy.

Between 2010 and 2016, the tech sector in New York City grew 57%, and tech jobs in non-tech industries increased 31%, twice the rate of other jobs, according to a 2017 report by State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli’s office. 

Despite an exceptionally low unemployment rate of 4.3%, there is a “donut hole” in the local economy, according to Julie Samuels, executive director of Tech:NYC, a nonprofit advocacy coalition. Samuels says that the city has a lot of jobs that are at the wage extremes, but the middle is lacking.

“We don’t want a two-class system here,” Samuels said during a recent appearance on the Max & Murphy podcast. “What are we doing to ensure that as we’re bringing more and more jobs here, that more New Yorkers have access to them? I think a lot about what and how the city should do to attract entry-level jobs because what we have in New York is a lot of low-wage jobs and a lot of high-wage jobs. Those jobs in the middle are incredibly important for training. You need on-the-job training."

The most recent NYC Quarterly Economic Update from New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer’s office confirms the “donut hole.” Of new private sector jobs during the quarter, the report says 9,400 were in low-wage industries, 2,100 were in high-wage industries, and medium-wage industries saw a loss for the second consecutive quarter.

With the rapid integration of technology into so many workplaces came an influx of tech jobs and changes to what skills are necessary to be employed in so many sectors.

“The real issue is training,” said Joey Ortiz, the executive director of the New York City Employment and Training Coalition, during the same podcast conversation. “Providing access to quality training for individuals from marginalized communities.”

While many of these programs exist, Ortiz pointed out that many New Yorkers don’t have access to them, either because there aren’t enough of the programs due to limited funding, or because potential enrollees don’t have the skills to even enter the training programs.

"More than anything, it’s really about investment into those programs…there is a large percentage of the population that is well removed from even being able to participate in those programs, cannot access those trainings because they have certain skill deficits,” Ortiz explained. “It might be language skills, math skills, or digital skills.” One answer, he said, is “bridge programs” that “provide the support that they need in order to pipeline into those [training] programs.”

These bridge programs, which provide training for primarily low-literacy and low-numeracy populations, are said to be important because they provide an on-ramp to the training pipeline that allows New Yorkers to be ready for the shifting job landscape. Gaps evident in the need for both the bridge and training programs also highlight that the pre-K to 12 and higher education systems could be doing better in preparing New Yorkers for the changing job market.

Samuels said there are some signs of response. One example she cited is the de Blasio administration having launched a 10-year computer-science-for-all (“CS4All”) program to integrate computer science curriculum into all New York City public schools.

“It’s totally working,” Samuels said. “The numbers for who’s taking the advanced placement computer science exams is off the charts compared to our peer cities especially in regards to who those people are. I feel really optimistic. We are thinking about the pipeline optimistically.”

The CS4All program has seen huge increases of students taking the classes and the AP exams. According to a city Department of Education press release, there has been a 72% increase in students taking computer science since the program’s inception, and the number of students sitting for the AP exam went from 1,137 to 5,190 in the first two years.  

Ortiz agreed, saying, “There’s no question that the education system requires a deep overhaul and rethinking particularly at K-12. I think that the city has done a pretty good job addressing some of these issues in recent years. CS4All is an example. Pre-K for all  is a huge win for the educational system.”

After a decade-plus of rapid economic change, Ortiz and Samuels predict more of the same in the coming years, highlighting the need for educational and training programs. 

“We are forecasting that there will be a growth of a number of jobs but they’re going to look very different and require different skills,” Ortiz said.

The availability of jobs in the city is a key ongoing issue: there’s been a decade of record recovery and growth since the Great Recession, but recent forecasts say to expect a significant slowdown in growth, though not a recession. The growth of the tech sector and tech jobs across sectors has been essential to the city’s economic boom and its diversification, whereby the city has been less reliant on the big traditional sectors, especially finance. But there are some questions about how much the tech sector will continue to grow in the city, something Samuels is focused on every day in her work.

She said that while New York City is thriving in terms of tech jobs, the geographic diversity is not as ideal because most of the jobs are in Manhattan or downtown Brooklyn. When asked about the Amazon “HQ2” project that was said to eventually bring 25,000 jobs to a massive new Long Island City campus before the company pulled out of the deal with the city and state about a year ago, Samuels said those jobs would have been beneficial to help create that geographical diversity in the tech industry, not to mention all the opportunities for spinoff tech startups that often accompany companies like Amazon. Still, Amazon is growing its footprint in New York City, albeit in much smaller numbers of jobs and mostly in Manhattan, other than its warehouses and fulfillment centers in other boroughs.

“Yes, Amazon is now bringing thousands of jobs. Significantly fewer than would have been part of HQ2, but the fundamental difference is that those jobs are going to be in Hudson Yards and not in Long Island City,” Samuels said.

Key to the Amazon debate and all economic growth in the city, Samuels reminded, “for all sectors in New York, is functional public transit...being able to live places and get to work is a part of this conversation too.”

Ortiz said that the Amazon HQ2 project highlighted the need to work with communities and hear their concerns about transit or housing, all of which have an impact on one’s ability to enter the workforce.

“If there was any good that came out of the process, is that people are thinking about how to integrate the communities and those concerns into an earlier stage of the process and ensuring that growth can be more inclusive,” Ortiz said.

Going forward, the city must prepare workers to participate in a rapidly changing economy. Samuels said she hopes politicians at the city and state levels will have the “courage and political fortitude” to keep pushing for economic growth.

[LISTEN to the full conversation: Max & Murphy Podcast: How the City Economy is Working & Where It's Heading]

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by Katie Kirker, Gotham Gazette

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City's $20 Billion in Contracting Takes Another Step into Modernity


comptroller dinapoli event

(photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)


New York City government spends roughly $20 billion per year on goods and services through contracts with non-governmental vendors, including thousands of opportunities for companies of all types and sizes to work with the city. But the contracting process has long been arduous for vendors to navigate and difficult for watchdogs to closely monitor. Officials say that is now changing as a multi-step effort has unfolded over the past few years to modernize the technical infrastructure and databases that support city contracting.

And on Wednesday, the Mayor’s Office of Contract Services (MOCS) in partnership with City Council Member Ben Kallos announced the launch of updated in-person and online terminals where key information about city contracts and vendors is now accessible. The announcement is part of an ongoing effort that began in 2016 to implement a new electronic system -- the Procurement and Sourcing Solutions Portal, or PASSPort -- that will serve as a one-stop-shop for agencies, vendors, oversight entities, and the public involved or interested in government procurement.

The latest update corrects some of the growing pains that emerged while moving to the more modern, “end-to-end” platform intended to expand accessibility and transparency to city contracting and streamline the process for vendors and agency staff.

“Whether it’s vendors who are competing with one another, reporters, or just members of the public who want to know where their tax dollars are going, it’s important that folks can find it,” Kallos said about the newly accessible databases.

At a ribbon-cutting ceremony at MOCS headquarters in Lower Manhattan, Kallos, an Upper East Side Democrat who chairs the City Council’s Committee on Contracts, and MOCS Director and Chief Contracting Officer Dan Symon reported that a rebooted “public inspection terminal” had both now been synchronized with the new wrap-around system, PASSPort. Accompanying the new in-person terminal, which they hope current and potential contractors will use, is a new online portal, which is also now using most of the same data sets. Those data sets now include information on vendors, their principals, and affiliated entities.

“PASSPort will be a complete, end-to-end online procurement platform that the city and vendors and other stakeholders and oversights will use together to do their work. That never existed before. This is one output of that huge effort,” Symon said, referring to the PASSPort overhaul.

MOCS is the city agency responsible for facilitating and providing one degree of oversight of the city’s procurement of goods and services. It coordinates among city agencies, potential vendors, and other oversight bodies, like the city comptroller’s office, to make the process efficient and compliant with procurement rules.

As part of the transition to PASSPort, MOCS had previously digitized the vendor disclosure process, making it possible for vendors to update their information online and significantly cutting the time it takes to update the database. It is the type of digital efficiency that is seen as essential for many firms doing business with the city, especially smaller ones and those operating at slimmer margins that may not be able to hire sufficient compliance staff.

The second phase allowed city agencies to shop and purchase contracts online. When fully implemented vendors will be able to submit bids and proposals online, agencies will be able to evaluate vendors and make awards, and vendors will be able to track the entire process. Phase three is planned to begin this spring and Symon expects the entire system to be in place by this time next year. The project has been criticized for cost overruns: what had been a $30.5 million contract with French firm Ivalua in 2016, ballooned to roughly $47 million in 2018. Symon has said the additional spending came after MOCS decided to expand the scope of the project due to demand and early successes.

The “public inspection terminal” is a computer database used for in-person access to MOCS contract and vendor information, which is available for any member of the public to use without special authorization. It is located on the 9th Floor of 253 Broadway (a photo ID may be required to enter the building, which houses a number of city government offices). Upon arrival, members of the public must sign-in and be logged into the database by MOCS staff. Information found on the portal can be emailed or printed onsite free of charge.

The in-person terminal has been in use since the late 1980s, and for most of the last 30 years has operated a system called VENDEX, which offered computerized data-tracking but lacked the integrated features of a one-stop shop for government procurement. When Kallos became chair of the Council contracts committee last year, he said his office found that in a number of areas the terminal was using legacy data from VENDEX rather than the more complete and up-to-date information contained in PASSPort. The same was true for the online portal, which was established under a 2017 law sponsored by Council Member Brad Lander and launched as part of the second phase of the PASSPort rollout, which formally began in April 2019.

“Almost everything now is going to be in PASSPort,” Kallos said. “So we found a little bit of a conflict. What previously might have happened is that you would have read it in the newspaper but we have a really great working relationship...so we’ve been working with [MOCS] trying to get this done.”

Now available through PASSPort are a broad range of reporting from basic identifying information about vendors and their principals to performance evaluations on vendors that do business with the city. Of particular interest to reporters and ethics watchdogs, according to Kallos, is the Current Related Entities Report, which shows entities that control or are affiliated with a vendor, an important tool for tracking potential conflicts of interest.

Moving the system online has “made doing business with the city a lot easier,” said Jennifer Geiling, MOCS’ press secretary.

Previously, a vendor would have to fill out a paper questionnaire and deliver it to the MOCS offices where a staff member would have to key their information into the database. “Here we made the terminal for vendors to interact with completely online, they are submitting their disclosures online in their own locations, so it’s an online platform,” Symon explained.

“It used to take somewhere around 30 days median time for an average size organization to go through the VENDEX process, but today it takes less than a day, because it’s now gone online, it’s digital, it’s available at all times for vendors to update,” noted Geiling.

Kallos and Symon believe moving to a more modern system will have a big impact on vendors competing for city contracts, especially smaller businesses that may have fewer resources to facilitate navigating the procurement process.

“The people who do business are keenly aware because they have something at stake. We have 18,000 vendors who are going to be taking advantage of this. Those 18,000 vendors have tens if not hundreds of thousands, or millions of employees, altogether. So I think they will be paying attention,” said Kallos.

“One of the goals that we have with PASSPort generally is greater transparency, which allows greater accessibility,” Geiling added.

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by Ethan Geringer-Sameth, reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

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