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De Blasio is on Right Track, But Mental Health Response Teams Need Crucial Changes to Really Work


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Emergency response (photo: Benjamin Kanter/Mayoral Photo Office)


Last month, Mayor de Blasio unveiled his Executive Budget for Fiscal Year 2022, which included a $112 million line item to expand his mental health teams pilot, yet to get off the ground, citywide. Minimizing the role police officers play in responding to mental health crisis calls is a sure sign of progress, but the fact of the matter is that there is absolutely no role for law enforcement in a truly compassionate and appropriate crisis response system.

Eighteen New Yorkers experiencing mental health crises were killed in police encounters in the five-year period spanning 2015-2020, to say nothing of the many others injured and otherwise harmed.

De Blasio’s proposal stops short of the transformation that’s needed to help New Yorkers get the right support in their time of crisis. There are two key issues that must be addressed if the system is to save lives: the role of police must be eliminated, beyond the 30+% of calls the city estimates will still require police intervention; and involvement of peers—those with lived mental health crisis experience—on the teams is essential.

According to the city, the proposed mental health teams, composed of a licensed clinical social worker and emergency medical technicians from the city’s Bureau of Emergency Medical Services (EMS), are to be dispatched to “urgent, non-violent mental health needs.” Whether or not police will be dispatched is entirely up to the existing 911 call center staff, who are to use their judgement to determine if someone poses a “public safety risk.” This is a pivotal decision, and one wholly inappropriate to embed within the existing 911 processes. Leaving this decision to the discretion of the NYPD’s 911 call center leaves little hope that police will be used judiciously, and endangers those in need of care.

Meanwhile, the city’s failure to meaningfully involve trained peers is unacceptable. We can’t design or deliver new services without involving the expertise of those who are most affected by those systems. “Nothing about us, without us,” has been a clarion call of the disability rights movement for decades. Why, then, has the administration failed to incorporate the recommendations of those with lived experience as they have moved to reform our crisis response system?

Our system is in need of transformation, not merely reform, and including peers in the service delivery system is the way to ensure transformative change. Without peers as required components of the new teams, the city risks replacing one flawed system with another. 

Correct Crisis Intervention Today in NYC (CCIT-NYC) has developed a proposal, first shared with the de Blasio administration last spring, that properly addresses these issues. Our mental health teams consist of one trained peer and one independent emergency medical technician (EMT). Given the embedded nature of the city’s EMS within the current, flawed system, as well as EMS’ own admission that they do not wish to take on this task, we believe independent EMTs are a better choice. And, we have built our proposal on successful models found elsewhere in the country, like CAHOOTS in Eugene, Oregon, which has a nearly 40-year track record of responding to mental health crises without a single injury to those experiencing a crisis or to its staff. 

Most importantly, our proposal was developed by the very people who are likely to be on the receiving end of such a system. Indeed, many of us have had experience with police officers when experiencing a crisis.

De Blasio’s initiative is a welcome first step, but the city must take another look and get this right. Failure to do so puts New Yorkers in crisis at risk of serious harm from police violence. System transformation is possible. It is long overdue. And it must happen now. 

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Cal Hedigan, CEO of Community Access, and Carla Rabinowitz, Advocacy Coordinator at Community Access, are members of Correct Crisis Intervention Today - NYC (CCIT-NYC). On Twitter @ca_nyc and @ccitnyc.

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Dream Big Dreams: How Federal and State Covid Relief Can Be Used to Revitalize New York City’s Public Schools


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Students at school (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)


In 1951, Langston Hughes famously asked, “what happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun, or fester like a sore and then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over—like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode?”  

For years, the dreams of children in our community have been deferred. They have been deferred through an army of overcrowded classes, an assembly line of underfunded schools, and a sea of broken promises. The result: far too many low GPAs, poor standardized test performances, and a high rate of placement in special education programs.  

However, with the passage of the federal American Rescue Plan Act, plus an additional $1.3 billion from the State on top of expected funding, New York City is looking at an additional $8.2 billion in public school support. It’s a once in a generation opportunity to reimagine schooling in our city.  Here’s how we can get it done: 

1. Create an Individualized Success Plan for Every Student
Every child needs to know that we are invested in his or her future. This starts by taking a more personalized approach to the learning process.   

Each child should receive an individualized success plan that accounts for academic performance, home environment, and any non-academic variables that impact his or her ability to learn. There should also be benchmarks at every stage of the child’s learning cycle, and students and families should be encouraged to provide feedback during the plan-making process. By having an individualized success plan, we can make sure our kids aren’t falling behind. 

2. Increase Academic Enrichment Opportunities and Aggressively Tackle Learning Loss
There is a direct connection between the amount of time students are engaged in learning and academic achievement. The more time we can devote to teaching our students, the better they will do academically. To put it bluntly, we need longer school days and more after-school tutoring. We must expand summer school and explore Saturday school options.  

I’ve seen firsthand what additional academic enrichment can do for student achievement.  Four years ago, I started a free tutoring and mentoring program called DREAMChasers. In a short amount of time, we’ve been able to get our students into top schools such as Brooklyn Technical High School, the Bronx High School of Science, and Stuyvesant High School.  

The reason our program works is because our students have more time to focus on their studies. No matter where our kids matriculate, they enter high school with over 300 additional hours of tutoring in math, English, and reading comprehension.  

The more opportunities we give our kids to succeed, the more likely they are to reach their potential. 

3. Experiment with Offering Mastery Level Learning Classes in Public Schools
At the Khan Academy, they employ a teaching philosophy called “Mastery Learning,” where they focus on developing a deep understanding of concepts and mastering skills before moving to the next subject.  The Khan Academy is a world-renowned educational organization that provides free, world-class education to anyone, anywhere online. It empowers students who can handle more academic work to move faster through subject areas, while allowing students who need additional assistance ‘mastering’ core concepts, additional time before moving on to more advanced lessons.  

We need to transition to a mastery learning system here in New York. Too often, students advance without developing a proficiency in the basics. They’ve experimented with incorporating mastery learning into California public schools and are already seeing promising results. Switching to a mastery learning model could be the key to ensuring that our students are receiving a quality education.

4. Transforming Public Schools into Community Schools
A community school is a school that offers wrap-around services that address the well-being of our children.  They provide students with access to health care, mentoring, and social services, making it easier to thrive academically.  Community schools have been effective in increasing graduation rates, curbing absenteeism, and increasing academic achievement for students coming from low-income, English language learning, disabled, and temporary-housing home environments.

If we can transform more of our local schools into community schools, we can make sure students dealing with physical, emotional, or social challenges have the help they need so they can focus on their studies.  

And, in the early evenings, community schools could be used as sites for young moms and dads who want to finish high school – offering free child care while their parents learn.  

It’s a holistic approach to teaching that makes it easier for our kids to learn.

5. Expand College or Career Readiness Fellowship Programs for Out-of-School and Out-of-Work Students
We need to do a better job preparing our young people for life after high school. As of December 2017, the three-year graduation rate at CUNY community colleges was just 22%. That is an incredulously low number! Furthermore, nearly 25% of all young people ages 18 to 24 are unemployed and not enrolled in school. The answer is more college or career readiness opportunities so that disconnected youth can thrive in college and build a career. 

For high school graduates interested in enrolling in college, they would attend classes that would help them improve their math, writing, and reading comprehension skills, as well as prepare them for life as a college student. If they’re more prepared for college, they are more likely to graduate.    

For those interested in a career, course work would be focused on preparing them for jobs in high-need and high-growth sectors. Even now, there are job opportunities in areas such as information technology, financial services, climate-resiliency, and health care. With the proper training, we can put our young folks on track to securing jobs that pay a competitive wage and achieve the financial stability needed to raise a family. It could make all the difference for youth in danger of becoming disconnected. 

In 2019, the city created CareerReadyNYC, to help disconnected youth prepare for the workforce.  However, because of the pandemic, things have changed. Here in Southeast Queens, we’ve seen a surge of out-of-school and out-of-work students. By increasing our investment in career readiness programming, we can get some of our most vulnerable young folks back on track. 

With the state and federal funds we are about to receive, we have a bona-fide opportunity to reset our public school system and offer a quality education to our students.  

Let’s make the commitment to individualize the learning process and expand enrichment opportunities.  

Let’s implement a mastery learning system and build more community schools.  

Let’s expand college and career readiness programs that give our kids the support they need after graduating high school.  

Dreams only defer if we let them.  It’s time to take back our children’s future.  

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Jason Myles Clark, Esq. is the founder of the free tutoring and mentoring program DREAMChasers and a Democratic Candidate for City Council in Queens’ District 27. On Twitter @jasonmylesclark.

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A Simple But Essential Step to Help Limit Recidivism


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Rikers Island detainees (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)


In New York, our rates of recidivism are unacceptably high. An estimated 45% of all parolees in New York City experience a re-arrest within two years. 

Eliminating barriers to reintegration into society is a proven, fact-based way that we can reduce recidivism, and that starts by treating formerly incarcerated people as regular people. 

In New York, we place a needless hurdle in the way of enabling a formerly incarcerated person from succeeding. Currently, when a person is released from prison, they are given a temporary ID card from the Department of Corrections. In essence, they carry around a card labeling them as a former convict.

This makes it much, much harder for someone returning home to proceed with the day-to-day things they need to succeed in re-building their life. Imagine trying to do something as routine as applying for an apartment and having the broker look at you with fear after seeing that you were incarcerated, or going to a job interview and having the employer immediately question whether you can be trusted. This is what New Yorkers who have paid their debt to society face right now, and it’s not fair.

Reintegrating into society after incarceration is a daunting task. Half the people who get out go straight into a homeless shelter. They need to find a place to live. They need to find a job. Giving them a card that labels them as a former convict only makes this even harder. Instead of providing a released person with the same kind of identification we all have, they are given something that simply makes it more difficult for them to succeed, which is the goal not just for the person returning to society, but for all of us. The stigma associated with these IDs is both unnecessary and extremely harmful. 

Our system of incarceration has lost its focus -- we should be doing everything in our power to reduce incarceration and recidivism, and lowering these rates should be our measure of success. 

We cannot continue to incarcerate Black and brown New Yorkers at such alarming and disproportionate rates, and we need to step back and refocus our efforts on both keeping people out of prison and giving them the tools to succeed and avoid recidivism once they are released. While reforming our policing is part of the equation, it’s on our lawmakers to take action now to reverse this damage.

The truth is this: there’s no public safety reason that anyone can articulate as to why these stigmatized Corrections-issued IDs are necessary in place of a regular, non-driver ID. Why are we complicating the process when what we really need is assistance for people focused on reintegration back into society, finding a job, and spending time with loved ones?

This issue may seem like a small one, but it will make a world of difference for someone who is trying to rejoin society and obtain a job. The number one thing we can do in our state to reduce recidivism is eliminate the barriers to reintegration. 

Our legislation, S1149/A4905, will require the state to provide returnees with a non-driver identification card — which is available to any New Yorker — to each incarcerated individual upon their release from custody. These IDs will help formerly-incarcerated people obtain jobs and live normal lives after their release, which will in turn help to lower our rates of recidivism by supporting reintegration. The state already has the information necessary to issue every person released from prison with a non-driver ID, so implementing this should be easy.

Let’s cut through the bureaucracy and simplify the process.

There’s ample precedent that proves such a program could work. In New York City, there is an already established partnership with the Department of Motor Vehicles that assists parolees in obtaining a non-driver ID. It should be easy for us to use this already existing partnership to provide IDs that don’t carry a stigma to those who have been released from prison.

This issue shouldn’t be a controversial one. A state-issued ID could be the difference for someone struggling to readjust to life on the outside, and it could be the key to reducing recidivism in our state.

This is common sense legislation, and our colleagues in the New York State Legislature should join us and pass S1149/A4905 now.

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Senator Brian Benjamin and Assemblymember David Weprin are members of the New York State Legislature, and are both candidates for New York City Comptroller. On Twitter @NYSenBenjamin & @DavidWeprin.

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A Small But Mighty Model for Community-Driven Development


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New Yorkers participating (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)


Decisions around development are among the most controversial and consequential that our city leaders face. Whether a single building or an entire neighborhood, rezoning can change the face of a community for years to come. With New York’s desperate need for affordable housing and economic recovery competing against corporate profits and big developers, it is not surprising that these decisions are so contentious. 

Yet as we recover from this pandemic, we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to forge a new path forward on zoning decisions to put communities first and ensure new affordable housing that prevents the further displacement of low-income communities of color. 

In my community of Sunset Park, the rezoning of a residential building at 737 4th Avenue provides a small but powerful example of developers succeeding by actually listening to the needs of the community and moving forward in partnership for the common good. 

But this kind of responsible development is the exception in this city when it should be the norm. Without a commitment to community-led development, comprehensive city planning, and real reform to our land use process, we’re leaving our city’s future up to powerful corporate interests when it should lie with the people. 

Over the past several years, Sunset Park’s waterfront has been the focus of many fights over large-scale development projects. As Chair of Brooklyn’s Community Board 7, I fought hard for community voices to have a seat at the table in discussions around the rezoning plan at Industry City that effectively fell apart last year. The project had the potential to create new jobs and spur economic growth, but from day one the private developer ignored the voices of the community. We held more than 25 community meetings on the issue and sought a comprehensive community assessment to inform the negotiations and understand the long-term impacts of the project. The developer refused to change their proposal and moved forward with the process in defiance of the community they hoped to fundamentally reshape, or, more accurately, replace. 

The rezoning at 737 4th Avenue stands in stark contrast. From the outset of the project, the local developer participated in Community Board hearings, heard our concerns, and made key changes to the plan that will benefit our community for years to come. Sunset Park is incredibly diverse, and our immigrant and low-income families desperately need more affordable housing. By listening to advocates — the people who know this community best and want to see it thrive — the developer was able to focus on building much-needed apartments for families, not studios that would attract gentrifiers. Our recommendations helped us win a guarantee of 25% affordable housing and sustainable, good-paying jobs. Due to our efforts and the willingness of this developer to make responsible changes, the rezoning passed unanimously in the City Council. 

While the plan isn’t perfect — we can always fight for greater affordability and more guarantees for the community — this process has proven that we’re being served a false choice by wealthy developers: jobs and economic opportunity in the midst of a recession or affordable housing and services for the community. We can have both — we just have to empower and engage communities in rezoning, and force the developers to take our concerns seriously.  

First and foremost, we need a comprehensive, citywide rezoning plan. We need to stop reacting to one-off development projects, an approach that leaves community members playing defense against powerful interests. Our current approach favors developers and the well-connected and fails to center the needs of those most vulnerable to displacement, homelessness, and the effects of environmental racism. Year after year, we spend precious time and resources fighting harmful proposals like Industry City where developers have the upper hand and can take advantage of hidden loopholes. To build a stronger city, we need to plan for the long-term and enact our vision — the community’s vision — for sustainable, equitable city planning. 

Next, we need to make the land use review process, ULURP, more equitable. If we want to level the playing field and create a real plan for New York City, we need to reform the process from the ground up. Throughout any land use process, our city government has to be open, transparent, and engaged directly with community stakeholders.

On Brooklyn Community Board 7, we’ve worked hard to make meetings accessible, offering simultaneous Chinese and Spanish translations, guaranteeing childcare for working parents, and providing food. To ensure real community engagement, not just the illusion of it, the city needs to provide funding and resources for Community Boards to hire experts, expand language access, and ensure residents can be involved every step of the way. Moreover, we should be utilizing ULURP to support a fully unionized workforce for any new project. 

As with so many issues, this pandemic has created a pivot point in our city’s future. If we want to solve our affordable housing crisis, it’s obvious we need more development. And as we recover from this pandemic, we need to be thinking of new ways to spur economic growth and create more good-paying jobs. But that needs to be driven by the people who live in a community, not developers who would prefer to drive them out.

Projects like the 737 4th Avenue rezoning show us what’s possible when you view the community as key partners, not adversaries. When community voices lead, everyone benefits. 

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César Zuñiga is a Democratic candidate for City Council in Brooklyn’s 38th District. On Twitter @Cesar4Council.

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Homeless Young Adults Must Have Equal Access to Housing in New York City


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A discussion with young adults (photo: Edwin J. Torres/Mayoral Photograph)


New York City Department of Youth & Community Development (DYCD) shelters and drop-in centers are specifically designated for youth and young adults ages 16-24. Yet, those same youth, when between the ages of 18-24, are not eligible to receive housing vouchers unless they move into a Department of Homeless Services (DHS) adult shelter. For its entirety, the de Blasio administration has withheld critical housing vouchers for young people in DYCD programs rather than provide a viable solution for permanent affordable housing to these individuals. When will it end?

The time for a solution is now – no more band-aids. Year after year, Safe Horizon’s Streetwork Project witnesses youth in this age group cycle in and out of homelessness because they cannot readily access a housing voucher at the very facilities created for them. Our own overnight youth shelter cannot issue housing vouchers to our clients, a true disadvantage to them, and we must direct them to a DHS shelter to go through the “proper channels.”

This ineffective policy is hurting these youth in the worst possible way. Housing is a right not a privilege. To that end, access to housing vouchers and priority access to NYCHA apartments for this age group cannot be put on hold by the city administration any longer. And the COVID-19 pandemic has only heightened this urgency, especially when it comes to safety.

Our clients feel safer in DYCD shelters among their peer group. DYCD shelters were created specifically for young people because of their unique needs. This age group is at a different stage developmentally, socially and emotionally. DYCD youth facilities have staff trained in youth and adolescent development to support and address their needs as we prepare youth towards independence. It is critical to have this particular age group in a setting where staff is skilled in addressing their behavioral health within this specialized focus.

As a resource to young adults seeking safety, stability, and housing, we are faced with the harsh reality of having to tell them we cannot provide them with a housing voucher and have them go down the “rabbit-hole” of obtaining one which in some cases can take years.

A transgender client who recently came to our overnight shelter and felt safe staying with us had to make the tough decision to leave and go to a DHS shelter to possibly obtain a voucher. She is under 21, single with no children; criteria that makes it twice as difficult for her compared to others. Being transgender, she has already experienced rejection from her community. Being homeless and transgender, she is also at greater risk of harm on the streets, as well as at a DHS shelter, which is most often not equipped with the same staff or resources to make her feel safe.

The longer someone is homeless, the prolonged exposure to the violence and poverty only intensifies mental health needs, placing an unnecessary strain and burden on communities. For those who end up on the streets, public survival behaviors such as petty crime, substance use, and sex trade activity, often result in avoidable harm on communities, particularly those of color. Bias and discrimination against poor and homeless young people begets stigmatization, oppression, and consequential outcomes such as drug overdose, incarceration, and dissolution of families.

The ripple effect of leaving DYCD shelters to go to DHS shelters for the purpose of obtaining a housing voucher is another unnecessary step that further exacerbates the city’s homelessness crisis. Providers who offer shelter and services to homeless youth want to work in tandem with the city administration. Eliminating inefficiencies of the system, streamlining processes, making it less complicated to navigate the system, and leveling the field of eligibility for young adults are the keys to getting them into housing. Lack of investment in homeless youth does not benefit the adults they are to become, and it does not benefit the city they call home.

Equal access to vouchers and priority for NYCHA housing is a right for these individuals. They face the same challenges as others being homeless. Though age discrimination is deemed illegal by landlords, why are these young adults being subjected to it as a result of the systems created to assist them?

As New York City transitions into a new mayoral administration for the start of next year, a sound and resolute policy for providing housing vouchers and priority access to NYCHA housing to young adults while in DYCD shelters and programs is imperative. One simple step to accomplishing this is to have all DYCD and DHS shelter and program administrators report to one primary contact in the administration. This alone can streamline communication and align policy-making for equality to be a priority instead of division.

Everyone deserves a home. Everyone deserves an equal chance at obtaining housing. New York City’s young adults deserve to know that is a fact and an easily attainable reality for them, not an abyss of red tape that serves no one.

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Carolyn Strudwick, MSW, is Associate Vice President of the Streetwork Program at Safe Horizon. On Twitter @SafeHorizon.

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A Resounding No to Deadly No-Knock Warrants


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NYPD (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)


As a City Council Member and Chair of the Council’s Public Safety Committee, I understand that people need to feel safe, particularly in their homes. One aspect of this safety is an assurance that authorities will not haphazardly burst in. This is enshrined in the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, which grants everyone freedom from unreasonable search and seizure. That means there must be probable cause to raid a home.

However, the NYPD and other law enforcement agencies seem to think otherwise. Because instead of substantive evidence, their burden of proof is often nothing more than hearsay from an informant, who may be compensated. Judges are willing to go along and issue warrants. And not just any warrant, but a no-knock warrant. 

Having gained more attention since Breonna Taylor’s death, a no-knock warrant allows law enforcement to raid someone’s home without announcing themselves, often in the middle of the night or early morning, and using military gear. The justification is that the operation would be too dangerous or evidence would be destroyed without the element of surprise.

The NYPD has abused the use of no-knock warrants to an egregious degree, including in my own Southeast Queens district. Early one morning in March, the NYPD broke down the door of my constituent, Tijuana Brown, an African-American woman, on the grounds that her nephew was allegedly dealing drugs. They tore through her home and even cut a hole in her nephew’s bedroom wall, only to find a miniscule amount of cannabis, consistent with personal use. Her nephew was arrested for possession, but the Queens District Attorney’s office later dismissed the case. An officer at the scene allegedly remarked, “Well this was a bust.”

That “bust” traumatized Brown, who now has trouble sleeping, and also cost her almost $1,000 to replace her door, not to mention hours of cleanup.

This was not an isolated incident in my district. In 2017, officers burst into the Far Rockaway home of Nigerian-American husband and wife Isaac Okoli and Millycent Atuegwu in the early morning, pointing guns at them and their children, tearing off Okoli’s sleep apnea device and rolling him to the ground, and startling Atuegwu out of bed. Officers claimed they found cocaine and arrested Okoli for possession. He insists officers planted the drugs, a practice a former NYPD narcotics officer admitted is common. Regardless, the Queens District Attorney quickly dropped the charges. The search warrant listed someone else with the name Okoli at a different address nearby, suggesting the NYPD went to the wrong home. 

These raids have got to stop. The justification, that people would be in danger if officers were to announce themselves, does not hold water. Strangers unexpectedly bursting into someone’s home in the wee hours of the morning has just as much potential for disaster, if not more, for everyone involved. 

For example, in March officers also raided the Queens home of Debra Cottingham, an African-American woman who is a retired correction officer and former NYPD staffer, in search of her boyfriend’s son who no longer lived there. Cottingham owns two legal firearms, which she could very well have discharged at the sound of intruders. Then there was the 2003 case of Alberta Spruill, a 57-year-old African-American woman with a heart condition, who died of cardiac arrest from the shock of NYPD officers breaking down her door and detonating a flash grenade. The officers were searching for drugs, based on an unverified tip, and found none.

Indeed, there have been many deadly incidents stemming from no-knock warrants: the New York Times found that at least 94 people across the country died in no-knock raids from 2010 through 2016. Of these deaths, 13 were law enforcement officers.

Unsurprisingly, these no-knock warrants disproportionately affect and target people of color. And before someone says, “Well that’s because they’re the ones committing the crimes,” consider the fact that law enforcement rarely uses them for white-collar suspects, who tend to be white people. And in a rare case where law enforcement does, like the FBI raid of Donald Trump associate Paul Manafort’s home, multiple legal scholars denounced it as excessive. 

Why is it excessive? After all, one justification of no-knock warrants is that officers announcing themselves would prompt the suspect to destroy evidence, often citing that a drug dealer could start flushing contraband. Would the same not apply to a white-collar criminal, who could easily start deleting files and shredding documents in response to such a knock? 

Encouragingly, state legislation to restrict no-knock warrants might finally pass after decades of floundering. The bill would limit the use of such warrants to cases where there is an “imminent threat to human life,” such as terrorism, human trafficking, kidnapping, or an active shooter. The bill would also require greater oversight of no-knock warrants.

However, even this legislation is probably not enough. Given the NYPD’s track record of what the department calls “threatening,” one can only imagine what inventive excuses police would make to claim there is an imminent threat. We need legislation establishing a burden of proof greater than hearsay, such as weeks of surveillance, as justification for a no-knock warrant.

It is true that law enforcement needs tools at their disposal to keep us safe. However, one of those tools cannot be bursting into people’s homes in military gear based on a sliver of evidence. No-knock warrants are an affront to our Constitutional rights, and must stop in almost every situation. Because a home is meant to be a safe place, and the NYPD must recognize and respect that.

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City Council Member Adrienne Adams represents parts of Queens in District 28 and chairs the Council’s public safety committee. On Twitter @AdrienneEAdams1.

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New York City Gets Back in Bed with a Bad Bank — But There’s a Better Way


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The Mayor on Wall Street (photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)


This past week, an obscure public body, the New York City Banking Commission, decided that the city can resume banking with Wells Fargo — meaning the scandal-scarred bank could hold billions of public dollars for at least the next two years. 

The Commission, composed of the Mayor, Comptroller, and Commissioner of Finance, voted to redesignate Wells Fargo during an 11-minute remote meeting with no opportunity for the public to weigh in.

You’ve heard of three men in a room. Meet three men on a Zoom.

Stakes were high, transparency was low, and New Yorkers deserve better. That the Commission even considered placing city deposits in Wells Fargo again underscores how entangled New York City’s finances are with Wall Street — and the extent to which big banks call the shots in our city. 

Prior to the meeting, members of the Public Bank NYC coalition and the New York City Council strongly urged the Banking Commission to reject Wells Fargo’s request to hold city deposits. Ignoring widespread opposition, the Commission voted 2-to-1 in favor of the notorious predatory lender and climate destroyer. A representative of Comptroller Stringer voted “no,” but his vote was overridden by two “yes” votes by representatives of Mayor de Blasio and Commissioner of Finance Sherif Soliman, a mayoral appointee.

The City cut ties with Wells Fargo in 2017 ostensibly in response to the bank receiving a long overdue downgrade of its Community Reinvestment Act rating. In fact, environmental and indigenous rights activists, racial and economic justice groups, and many others had raised multiple justifications for dumping the bank.

Wells Fargo’s misdeeds and scandals are too numerous to list, but here are some lowlights: 

Wells Fargo’s shameful record raises a question we’re tired of asking: How bad does a bank have to be before it faces real consequences? We need a public option for the city’s financial holdings—a public bank for the public good. 

Public banks are owned by and accountable to the people. Rather than being driven solely by profit, a public bank would be mission-driven and chartered to meet the needs of the city, particularly historically-redlined Black and brown neighborhoods.

A public bank would give the city a powerful new tool to help ensure a just recovery and strengthen our ability to withstand future crises. It would partner with community-based lenders to deliver responsible financing and emergency funding to small and worker-owned businesses hardest-hit by COVID-19.

Public banks around the world responded quickly and effectively to economic devastation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, shoring up small businesses and other critical infrastructure. That’s because public banks specifically invest in sectors that provide direct economic, social and environmental benefits.

We can bring that success here, with a New York twist. 

Through public banking, New York City can support permanently-affordable housing, small and worker-owned businesses, green infrastructure, and other equitable development in Black and brown neighborhoods—and divest from Wall Street banks that actively harm New Yorkers, our economy, and the planet.

The broad-based Public Bank NYC coalition has charted a path for the city to follow to establish the country’s first municipal public bank.

For starters, the City Council must advance “The People’s Bank Act,” a transformative legislative package that lays groundwork for the creation of a public bank. The Mayor should work with the Council to establish a public bank capitalization fund.

In Albany, legislative leaders must pass the “NY Public Banking Act” this session, paving the way for cities and counties across the state to pursue public bank charters.

Reopening the door to Wells Fargo suggests that city officials have not learned the lessons of the past year, or decades. In the face of New York’s severe affordable housing shortage, climate devastation, and extreme racial wealth inequality—all exacerbated by COVID-19—we need bold action.

A public bank would build wealth and power in communities hardest hit by the pandemic. It’s needed now more than ever.

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Andy Morrison is Associate Director of New Economy Project. On Twitter @NewEconomyNYC.

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Don’t Let Kathryn Garcia Get Hillary’d


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Kathryn Garcia with Andrew Yang (photo: @aqreno)


“A competent woman losing a job to an incompetent man is not an anomalous Election Day surprise; it is Tuesday in America,” writes New York magazine’s Rebecca Traister in one 2016 presidential election debrief. Unfortunately, five long years of hindsight later, this dynamic persists. On Tuesday, June 22, Kathryn Garcia stands to get Hillary’d in the Democratic primary election for New York City Mayor.

Garcia is a career public servant who most recently served as commissioner of New York City’s Sanitation Department. She has led the city through multiple crises, overseen tens of thousands of employees, managed multi-billion-dollar budgets, and served across departments and at different levels of city government. She has won the endorsement of The New York Times Editorial Board, which noted, “Her ideas and experience stand out in a crowded field of Democratic hopefuls.” At the first official primary debate earlier this month when NY1 anchor Errol Louis asked the eight leading candidates who other than themselves they would vote for – the plurality chose her.

Still, Garcia has at times struggled to break through the noise created by her male competitors.

Despite her bona fides, Garcia had, until recently, been flailing in this highly consequential primary, polling well behind Andrew Yang, a man of dubious accomplishment, and Eric Adams, a man with a penchant for controversy. Much like the 2016 election, Garcia’s quiet, consistent, and effective work to keep the city functioning has not earned the same attention as her viral and mercurial male opponents.

Yang’s first real engagement with politics was when he ran for president in 2020, winning 0 delegates to the Democratic National Convention. Prior to his run for mayor, Yang joined the ranks of Rick Santorum as a commentator at CNN. His other endeavors were rife with complaints about his management style, including charges of racial and gender bias. Still, Yang has long-been a frontrunner in this primary despite never voting in a New York City mayoral election. At this moment, a man who fled New York City during the pandemic still appears more likely to be the city’s next mayor than Garcia, who oversaw the cross-agency effort to ensure all city residents had access to food during this crisis. If Yang’s lack of experience suggests he is unqualified to be mayor, his comments on a host of New York City issues this past week remove all doubt.

In assessing Garcia’s candidacy, Gotham Gazette writes, “she’s had her head down helping to run city government, not developing a donor network.” Prioritizing public service over campaign funding is not an affliction Eric Adams, who has also polled ahead of Garcia for most of the primary, appears to suffer from. The Times recently reported on Adams’ long history of using his “government power to benefit donors and advance his political ambitions.” While it cannot be said Adams, Brooklyn borough president, lacks the experience Yang does – he has maintained relevance in the primary through more of a cult of personality than thoughtful policy or accomplishments.

This dynamic was laid bare at the May 13 primary debate. Analysts described Garcia’s performance as “plenty substantive” but feared she “failed to introduce herself to voters…because she laid too far back from the fray.” In contrast, Adams repeatedly attempted to create reality TV moments, while offering dodges and clarifications in lieu of specific answers. He said civil rights lawyer Maya Wiley was acting “desperate” and being “nasty” due to her lagging behind in the polls. His exchanges with competitors were laced with terse retorts like “let me give you some facts.” He told Wiley “we both know how much [the Civilian Complaint Review Board] was a failure under you” and lambasted Yang as “disrespectful and appalling” for taking credit away from Stacey Abrams and other Black women organizers regarding the recent Georgia Senate run-offs that helped deliver Democrats a razor thin Senate majority.  

Beyond their media and social media antics, Yang and Adams have demonstrated almost no principle with regard to their policies. Both candidates have flip-flopped on issues both large and small. This ideological inconsistency underscores their form-over-substance campaigns. Meanwhile Garcia consistently offers some of the most detailed and comprehensive plans to solve big city problems. Just as Hillary Clinton’s campaign policy book “Stronger Together” apparently wasn’t interesting enough to earn media coverage commensurate with Trump’s racist, ill-conceived, proposals, Garcia’s plans don’t earn the headlines won by Yang’s thoughtless street-vendor crackdown proposal or Adams’ dangerous gun-baiting.

Electing attention-grabbing men over competent women comes at a very real cost. From pandemic management to policing – the lives of New York City residents are literally on the line. The winner of this Democratic primary will all but inevitably become the city’s next Mayor. We’ve seen this movie before. New Yorkers have less than 30 days to rewrite the ending. Latest polling shows this is an incredibly close race among Adams, Garcia, and Yang. It’s time to start paying attention and getting engaged. On that Tuesday in June, let’s make sure the qualified woman wins.

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Kaivan Shroff is a political commentator and alumnus of the Hillary for America Digital Team. On Twitter @KaivanShroff.

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Stop the Ranked-Choice Fear-Mongering — If Maine Can Do It, So Can We


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Voting (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)


I moved from Manhattan to Maine in early 2020 to run the Democratic Party’s inaugural voter protection team in the Pine Tree State, trading lox for lobster rolls and the deep blue West Village for a purple battleground. But while Maine still had a Republican senator and had only recently dumped proto-Trump Governor Paul LePage, it did have one major liberal leg up on New York: far more voter-friendly ballot access laws.

Here in the Empire State, the Constitution bars no-excuse absentee voting and same-day registration, we choose city officials in off years, and a patronage-addled Board of Elections system prevents career professionals from running our elections. These endemic issues leave New York straggling on voter participation. Compared to other states in the Northeast, we’re dead last. On one front of fairer and more representative democratic processes, though, New York City is finally catching up to the redder Maine electorate: we now have ranked-choice voting.

Unfortunately, many New York leaders—including progressives who should be celebrating this improvement to our democratic processes, and some of the candidates competing in the races for mayor and other offices—are parroting fear-mongering talking points about RCV straight out of the LePage playbook. This rhetoric misinforms New Yorkers and risks a failure to fully reap the upside of a more engaged and energized electorate. 

Worse, misplaced criticism of RCV can stoke distrust in the integrity of the election; after living through propagation of the Big Lie about the 2020 presidential race and the resulting insurrection, that’s the last thing we should want to emulate in the Big Apple.

On a recent episode of the Max & Murphy podcast, for example, two former mayoral candidates, former City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and former Comptroller Bill Thompson, were among the latest Democratic leaders to misguidedly criticize RCV. Ranking candidates might depress turnout by confusing voters, they said. Besides, we don’t need it, since we already have a diverse City Council. And it’s easier for voters to decide on one candidate than to make decisions more complex than A vs. B. And only a few places in America use RCV: is it really necessary here?

Quinn and Thompson aren’t alone in driving this narrative. Mayoral candidates Eric Adams and Ray McGuire have spoken out against RCV; an Adams spokesperson said the Brooklyn borough president is “deeply concerned that ranked choice voting will disenfranchise voters of color.” As of May 21, neither Adams nor McGuire had even confirmed that they would accept ranked-choice results. 

Beyond the candidates, six City Council members, including Majority Leader Laurie Cumbo, unsuccessfully filed suit in December 2020 to delay RCV’s implementation. Just this week, Cumbo and three other Council members—endorsers of Adams and Andrew Yang, who is now lagging in some polls—introduced new legislation to repeal RCV. The repeal would still have to go in front of city voters as a charter amendment, but these electeds are doing all they can to undermine voters’ faith in our voting processes just weeks before we go to the polls.

While concerns about RCV may be sincere, they are simply not borne out by the facts—nor by the experiences of Mainers, who have been voting via ranked-choice for years. They have twice affirmed their preference for RCV in statewide ballot referenda; once voters get a taste, they don’t want to go back. That’s because plurality voting, though we’re used to it, has obvious drawbacks. With eight major candidates on our Democratic mayoral ballot, a candidate could come in first with just 20% of the primary vote—around what the current first-place candidates are getting in polls—and then advance to a lower-turnout two-person runoff with another candidate who polled even lower in the initial balloting.

Even the old runoff system didn't guarantee broad consensus on a party nominee. Multi-candidate primaries that didn't require the 40% threshold for a win without a runoff -- races for borough-wide and City Council seats -- were decided with a winner getting less than that amount nearly 30% of the time. And in the last open mayoral primary, Bill de Blasio narrowly dodged a runoff with just over 40% of the vote: he was the first choice of just 282,000 New Yorkers, less than 3.5% of the city’s 2013 population and it was enough for him to end up in Gracie Mansion given the uncompetitive general election. 

That fact alone is galling, and it’s augmented by the circumscribed campaign strategy it incentivizes: just marshal a small block of die-hards, perhaps along demographic or geographic lines, and forget appealing to voters citywide. If this sounds familiar, it’s because Donald Trump won the Republican presidential nomination riding a similar wave of plurality-winner-take-all primaries. New Yorkers should want an election system that is as representative as possible, and that means one where a primary winner has to be near the top of most voters’ lists. Indeed, New Yorkers do want RCV: the switch was chosen by a 3-to-1 margin in a 2019 referendum.

Moreover, as progressives, we pride ourselves on following facts, and social science research proves that RCV has its intended impact. Directly contravening the assertions of RCV critics, studies show that RCV drives higher turnout by engaging more voters (with multiple studies showing a roughly ten-point increase), leads to more civil elections given the candidates’ needs to reach more voters, with RCV voters reporting greater satisfaction with the tone of campaigning; and leads to elected officials of greater diversity, specifically benefitting women and candidates of color.

On Max & Murphy, Quinn said we already have a racially diverse City Council, but it still underrepresents women and AAPI New Yorkers. And we’ve only had one non-white mayor—and no woman, as Quinn knows first-hand. There is no reason to be satisfied with our electoral status quo, especially given the terrible turnout we often see in citywide elections. RCV is a time-tested and data-driven solution to these problems.

Both Quinn and Thompson also spoke for many critics in calling this first covid-era citywide race “the worst time” to roll out RCV, implying that pandemic restrictions are forestalling face-to-face voter education. But we should take the opposite view: the high levels of attention on the open mayoral race makes it a remarkable opportunity to excite every voter with their ability to choose more than one candidate. Far more alienating than ranking multiple candidates would be a voter picking just one of over a dozen people, each with little chance to win—far worse would be conducting a primary election in which 80% of voters could see their candidate come up short. 

Education is more than possible with proper political will. Last year, I led an effort to ensure all of Maine’s general election voters—roughly the same number who will likely vote in our primary in June—could successfully request, complete, and return their ballots. Our educational lift was huge. Unprecedented numbers of citizens learned to request absentee ballots to cast by mail; at the same time, we worked to expand early voting opportunities and get the word out; and, after our advocacy, Maine rolled out new methods for curing defective ballots so they’d be counted even if voters made small mistakes. 

We saw record turnout—including myriad first-time and non-English-speaking voters. Maine is home to many immigrant voters who speak Somali and Arabic and others who are native speakers of Spanish and French. Learning how to register, get a ballot, return it, and cure it: these were the obstacles that threatened to keep voters out of the process. Filling in first-choice and second-choice circles next to candidates’ names was far more intuitive than navigating the broader bureaucracy of election administration.

Now it’s our turn. Not only will RCV be better for New York voters this year, but it will drive more engagement with local elections over the long-haul. By embracing RCV, we can foster a more aware and activated electorate that expects better from elections administrators and demands more from the officials we put in City Hall—even if those officials aren’t the number one choices on our ballots. 

My experience as voter protection director for Joe Biden and down-ballot Democrats in Maine threw into stark relief how important all (small-d) democratic reforms are. After the January 6 insurrection and the raft of suppressive laws being churned through state legislatures that followed Biden’s victory, the task of reinforcing our democracy is even clearer. Any process to increase voter participation and representativeness in our elections and government is crucial far beyond the implications of any one race; the dots from a ranked mayoral ballot to a thriving American democracy are, to me and other voter protection professionals, easy to connect. 

Thankfully, the Campaign Finance Board is running a $2 million education campaign, and initial skeptics like the New York City chapter of the NAACP are getting on board, among many other education efforts by the de Blasio administration, local civic groups, and others. It’s time for the rest of New York’s political leaders, and the still-mum mayoral candidates, to connect the dots on RCV—for themselves and their constituents. Besides, we’re the greatest city in the world. If Farmington and Fort Kent can do it, the five boroughs certainly can too.

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Ryder Kessler, a former executive board member of Manhattan’s Community Board 2, served as the Maine Democratic Party’s 2020 Voter Protection Director for Joe Biden and down-ballot Democrats. On Twitter @ryderkessler.

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The View from Above and Below: The Helicopters and Our Commons


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Helicopter in flight (photo: Julia Vitullo-Martin)


Like many of my neighbors on the Upper West Side I profoundly dislike and resent the tour helicopters that seem to unceasingly harass us on beautiful days, lining up equidistantly over the Hudson as if they were jets ready to land at JFK. Only they don’t land. They tremble and hover and circle stridently.

Still, I recognize that there are those who love them because the tour helis fly constantly and, apparently, full.

I decided to see for myself.

I booked directly with FlyNYON, which seems to have a semi-permanent 60% off & more sale. This means that basically you pay $350 per person, give or take a few dollars, for a 30-minute doors-off flight. You have to make your way to Kearny, New Jersey, which sits beneath the dazzling Pulaski Skyway. FlyNYON’s headquarters, housed in a handsomely converted warehouse, is landscaped and welcoming. Check-in is friendly and courteous, the video informative, and the waiting room pleasant. Likable employees outfit you with a harness that could hold a pony in place, and direct you to a van for a short ride to the helipad.

They really do mean doors off. No door whatsoever I learned, clutching my friend as we took off and trying to remember my high school physics class on centrifugal force. Something about vertical lift and equal and opposite reaction. We flew above industrial New Jersey, Manhattan looking like some fantastic futuristic kingdom in the distance. The pilot banked over the Hudson, tilting my side down almost perpendicular to the river. Awful sensation. No one else on the flight—all Gen Y—was worried in the least.

We cut over to Central Park via the 70s, which was common in pre-pandemic days, less so now. We circled slowly and noisily above Belvedere Lake and the Great Lawn for 8-10 minutes, reversing directions twice so that everyone could get their preferred photo, then turned East towards the river. “God, New York is beautiful,” said a young Serb, who had brought along his national flag, carrying the royal coat of arms that has replaced the Red Star. “Maybe the most beautiful place we’ve been,” murmured his friend, as we passed the towers of East Midtown. As we flew over the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty could be seen, growing larger and ever more thrilling as we approached. The Serb had hoped to photograph Lady Liberty beyond his proudly held Serbian flag, which wasn’t allowed.

I was the only one on the way home interested in photographing Port Newark-Elizabeth, which, with its immense container operation, had replaced Brooklyn, now a tiny remnant of its World War II glory.

For purposes of balance I also took a tour with Helicopter Flight Services, flying from the Downtown Heliport, a somewhat forlorn-looking facility that once booked 60,000 flights yearly. To fill out the flight’s 30 minutes we headed to the Verrazzano Bridge, skirting the Statue of Liberty, then flying over a pretty empty New York Bay. We returned, and flew up the Hudson, never crossing land as was agreed in 2016 when heli companies based at the Downtown Heliport contracted to reduce the number of flights by 50%, not fly over Governors Island, and turn around before the George Washington Bridge.

Our Heli Flight pilot never hovered. He was well aware of the landmarks, which he identified accurately, including the newly-opened Little Island, which he simply praised and moved on.

What I Learned in NJ: Complaints Matter
The most important lesson for those troubled about New York’s helicopter invasion is: Complaints make a difference, so keep up the protests. I asked our FlyNYON pilot why we did not pass the Empire State Building, as promised in the brochure. “The boss made a deal with the Eastern Region Helicopter Council to stay away from the Empire and the Chrysler,” he said. “Also the World Trade Center. Too many complaints.” This was confirmed by Jeffery Smith, ERHC’s vice president for operations and governmental affairs.

The redirection of routes away from Midtown and Chelsea is good news for those who had been under the old flight paths that had come close to clipping celebrated towers, but bad news for those suffering under the new flight paths—especially Central Park, which really does seem like Apocalypse Now on weekend days, as well as New York Harbor, the Brooklyn waterfront, and Governors Island. All of this is likely to get worse in the coming months.

Know Your Bad Guys
As we waited I spotted Bell helicopter N216MH parked on the tarmac beneath the Pulaski Skyway. That helicopter has often been castigated on social media as an especially bad (even “criminal”) FlyNYON tour heli. It is indeed a tour helicopter, but not for FlyNYON. Its customers were dropped off in a colorful van emblazoned “MiamiHelicopter.com” along with a non-working phone number. Our pilot said the real operator was newyorkhelicoptertours.com.

Many of the helicopters flying low and aggressively over New York are without callsigns or any identifiable registration. Some are Wings Air, flying out of Westchester; some are news helis, especially Channels 7, 8, and 11; and some are random private owners from neighboring states deciding to joyride around Manhattan. A Robinson 44 with a blocked registration from deep in New Jersey regularly circles and hovers at low altitudes late at night. No one can identify him and the FAA doesn’t care.

The point is that the FAA lets anyone—absolutely anyone—fly over New York, which has had more than its share of terrorist bombings over the years. To the FAA the skies are just a highway—skyway is the FAA term—that should be open to all, just as highways are open to all. In an attempt to understand and control the air traffic, Mayor Giuliani had mandated that all helicopters be marked with identification that could be clearly seen, much like MTA buses and NYPD patrol cars. Then-district court judge Sonia Sotomayor blocked him, enjoining the city from imposing any regulations.

What has helped us is not the federal government at all but private sector flight apps like FlightRadar and FlightAware that allow citizens to identify most of the offending helicopters. Some helicopters, however, such as the R44 cited above, turn off transponders and block all identifying data. This should not be allowed, but is, under the FAA’s free-for-all transpo policies. This is a matter of which the ERHC and industry groups could be productive, encouraging their members to identify themselves—and behave properly.

Save Our Parks!
To the FAA, our magnificent New York City parks are runways—open space with few or no buildings that are easily crossed at low altitudes by planes and helicopters. The FAA actually names its designated skyways after parks, the most notorious being “the Central Park route.” Jeff Smith points out that “the Central Park route letter of agreement with the LaGuardia tower is that we fly at 1,500 feet. Period.” That’s much too low, of course, for those below trying to enjoy a peaceful outing. The huge commuting Sikorskys that thunder through the park are especially destructive and, more often than not, fly well below 1,500 feet. Mayor Giuliani’s attempt to ban Sikorskys was also blocked by Judge Sotomayor.

Former New York City Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe, now President and CEO of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, says, “With its route from the Hamptons the FAA is managing to kill some six parks across Brooklyn, starting with Floyd Bennett, then Marine Park, Greenwood Cemetery, Prospect Park, us, and Brooklyn Bridge Park.” Prospect Park is actually in the middle of what the FAA calls “the park route.” Brooklyn Community Board 6's district manager told Gothamist in 2014, “The air traffic over Prospect Park is in the approach to runway 3-1 at LaGuardia Airport and by the time they get to us the planes are around 1,000-3,000 feet overhead, which is quite low and loud. Prospect Park is an emergency landing zone, which is partly why they use the trajectory which brings them over our neighborhood.” This is still true. Says Benepe: “The places we go to get away from noise are exactly the places the FAA sends helicopters and planes over to make noise.” 

Even as we spoke, Benepe’s voice was muted by the helicopters circling above the Botanic Garden, which planned to hold “An Evening of Remembrance and Reflection” that night. Benepe was worried that the audience would have trouble hearing the performance of Breathe, a work for an ensemble of 20 brass and percussion musicians. Multiple news helis plus one NYPD helicopter had been circling over nearby Barclays Center, which was hosting a protest on the anniversary of George Floyd’s death. 

Why do we need news helis? he asks. Good question. In the old days news helicopters were useful for traffic, alerting drivers to accidents and blockages. But no more. Now we use phones and apps. But multiple news helis still fly to cover crashes—especially if they’re serious—and protests. And why? Helicopters cost some $200-400 and up per hour to operate and are likely to produce only a few minutes of footage to air. Fuel alone costs a Robinson R44 $113/hour, a Bell205A $380/hour, and a Sikorsky SK92 $755/hour. Why not set up a pool reporting system? This should be on the next mayor’s agenda: negotiate with the news stations for pool reporting.

The Tragedy of the Commons
Many New Yorkers would like the heliports closed. But that’s unlikely to happen, partly because of existing contracts but also because New York is a world city that needs to allow presidents, foreign dignitaries, and generic CEOs to fly in and out easily. We can rail about privileged big shots, but they’re crucial to New York’s economy and image (think Succession). “If the Pope can’t land you’re not a world city,” political consultant Jay Kriegel had said during an earlier push to close the Downtown Heliport.

But we need a return to a 1960s-type discussion of public goods, to resurrect an old Paul Samuelson term. Public goods are available to all and include such things as air, lighthouses, national defense, and public parks. The problem, Samuelson noted, can come with “free riders,” those who exploit, even damage, the public good without paying their fair share or paying anything at all—as in FlyNYON’s flights over Central Park, degrading the park experience for its legitimate users without paying a dime for its upkeep.

Or take the Tragedy of the Commons, in which an individual’s exploitation of a public good results in its depletion, imposing substantial damage on others. Examples include the original overgrazing of common lands in England, as well as over-fishing, over-hunting, or damage to broader goods like climate.

We all now pretty much agree that companies should not be freely polluting the air and water around them, and we all pretty much agree that noise is a form of pollution that should be curbed. As Benepe says about helicopters: “Noise is 80% of the problem.”

Noise can be corrected in at least two ways. First, helicopters should fly higher, which means the next mayor should be negotiating with ERHC and the FAA to rework FAA standards by which helis fly excessively low over our rivers and somewhat higher—but still too low—over land. Rob Wiesenthal, CEO of Blade Urban Air Mobility, says that his operators avoid flying over New York’s cityscape whenever possible. “And we are 100% supportive of a prohibition of flying over Central Park,” he adds.

A return to the old prohibition of flying across Central Park would be a productive initial step.

Second, noise can be corrected technologically—and will be in the next few years as Electric Vertical Aircraft, which are quiet and emission-free, come on line. Wiesenthal notes that heliports aren’t being built around the country these days because of noise. That will change as the industry changes.

In the meantime, let’s get the tour helicopters that are destroying our commons out of our skies.

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Julia Vitullo-Martin is a long-time editor and writer on cities. On Twitter @JuliaManhattan.

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State Education Commissioner Errs in Yeshiva Ruling


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Kids in Brooklyn (photo: Benjamin Kanter/Mayoral Photo Office)


Just when you thought the world of New York City yeshiva education couldn’t get any more like “Alice in Wonderland,” along comes a new ruling by New York State Education Commissioner Betty Rosa that, in Lewis Carroll's words, just makes the years-long dispute over lack of secular education at Hasidic yeshivas "curiouser and curiouser." 

Here’s the background: In September 2019, the mother of an eight-year-old boy attending a Brooklyn yeshiva filed a petition with Commissioner Rosa. The mother claimed that the New York City Department of Education (DOE) and the yeshiva are violating state law because her son was not receiving anything approaching the "substantially equivalent" secular education required by state education law on required instruction and patriotism & citizenship

The mother submitted sworn testimony on her visit to the school. She told Commissioner Rosa that the yeshiva’s “Principal of English” admitted that the school only teaches “tidbits” of required English classes because there isn’t enough time in the day given the yeshiva’s almost exclusive focus on Jewish religious texts. The City admitted that it had no idea what was going on in the school and the yeshiva put in no evidence at all on what English classes it teaches, how it teaches them, or for how many hours (or minutes) a day.  

But despite the uncontested evidence of state law violations and clear denial of the child's educational rights ("highly concerning," bemoaned the Commissioner), Rosa ruled that the State Education Department she runs lacks jurisdiction over the yeshiva when it comes to education; cannot investigate the mother’s allegations; and cannot force any changes at the school. Further, with topsy-turvy logic, the Commissioner conceded that while the Education Department has jurisdiction over yeshivas for some of their activities, it most certainly doesn’t have jurisdiction over the education they are (or are not) providing. Passing the hot potato back to the city, she said that responsibility rests solely with the DOE, which, according to the mayor's own Department of Investigation (DOI), delayed similar investigations Rosa now claims only the city can do. The DOI concluded that the City had improperly delayed similar investigations for years. Moreover, even when 26 of 28 investigated yeshivas were found in violation, the DOE never issued a final report, leaving the state education commissioner, in her self-paralyzing decree, without jurisdiction.

Not only is the Commissioner's decision educationally misguided, it is wrong on the law. State Education Law § 215 specifically empowers Commissioner Rosa to "visit, examine into and inspect" any school she wishes to; and it requires the school to report on any information requested. Violation of the request can lead to loss of "any of the rights and privileges of such institution,” including state funding.

Or consider this statutory requirement:  “The commissioner shall be the entity that determines whether nonpublic elementary. . .schools are in compliance with the academic requirements” of substantial equivalency.  

The law is clear: yeshiva kids must receive a secular education that is substantially equivalent to the education public school kids get. Period. The law has been on the books for over 100 years but no political or educational leader has shown the courage to face down the politically powerful yeshivas and their allies, groups that fight against any public agency looking into their instructional practices. And why do they fight so hard? Because the answer is so obvious: the yeshivas are in blatant violation of the Education Law and they don’t want the truth to come out.

Now Commissioner Rosa can add her name to the many Profiles in Cowardice. It’s not her first time: just last week she abandoned substantial equivalence regulations that had been three years in the making. Rosa’s refusal to investigate the specific charges against a single yeshiva by a parent consistent with administrative procedures is an abdication of her powers and, without such intervention, the parent's plea will go unremedied.

Justice delayed is justice denied. In a modern version of the Biblical story, David here is a mother protecting her son's right to learn English, History, Science, Math, and the Arts. Goliath is the voting bloc led by ultra-Orthodox yeshiva operators whose immense political strength protects them from legal compliance even as they feast on public funds. The mother's courageous stand supports family values, common sense, and her son’s clear legal and constitutional rights. Goliath must somehow fall again. 

As a result, the parent is now appealing the Commissioner’s decision to a New York state trial judge. If politics, power, and emotions are set aside to make room for the law and the facts, Goliath should finally meet his match. And the eight-year-old child at the complaint's center will finally get the education he and thousands of other ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students are owed under New York's Constitution and Education Law.

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David C. Bloomfield is Professor of Education Leadership, Law, and Policy at Brooklyn College and The CUNY Graduate Center. David J. Shapiro is petitioner's attorney in Appeal of B.W., Commissioner's Decision No. 17983.

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