Members of the IDC (IDC)

Advocates Say What Matters Is Support of Issues, Not Conference Alignment

Tenant's PAC treasurer Michael McKee doesn't have any faith in the recent announcement that the Independent Democratic Conference (IDC) will abandon Senate Republicans to create a power-sharing agreement with Senate Democrats. Even if McKee trusted IDC leader Sen. Jeff Klein and the deal Klein and Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced on Wednesday, it wouldn't matter because he feels Klein has worked against pro-tenant legislation for his entire legislative career.

On tenant rights and protections, McKee wants a replacement for Klein, so he is aggressively backing Klein's primary challenger, former city council member Oliver Koppell.

In recent interviews, Klein has dodged questions about how he will work with Senate Democrats and focused on the fact that he and his fellow IDC members face or may face primary challenges. Klein says he will focus on the new coalition after he secures his re-election. The joint statement from Klein and Cuomo released Wednesday doesn't actually promise any particular result, just that "all IDC members are united and agree to work together to form a new majority coalition between the Independent Democratic Conference and the Senate Democratic Conference after the November elections..."

Critics of the deal, including Senate Republican Leader Dean Skelos, have characterized the promise as being a political ploy by Cuomo and Klein: Cuomo gets to say he is a loyal Democrat, supporting progressive issues and reigning the wayward Democrats back in, while Klein effectively kneecaps his primary challenger and perhaps wards off other challenges to the IDC. But, the announcement does not seem to have saved the IDC from primaries.

Saying he does not believe Klein will follow through on his promise, Koppell has said he plans to stay in the race. And he'll continue to have the backing of Tenants PAC, among others skeptical of Klein's intentions. Koppell told Capital New York that he feels responsible for Klein's promise to work with Democrats. "I have been successful in getting Jeff Klein to, at least for this moment, divorce himself with the alliance he made to Dean Skelos and work with the Democrats to get the agenda passed that I've talked about," Koppell told Capital. 

Meanwhile, sources inside the campaign of former New York City Comptroller John Liu, who is challenging IDC member Sen. Tony Avella, said that Liu has always been focused on legislative issues and not on the IDC. Liu currently enjoys the support of 13 Senate Democrats as well as a host of labor unions.

It seems unlikely he will drop his campaign.

Along with many unions, control of the Senate is of monumental importance to tenant advocates: rent laws are set to expire on June 15th, 2015. These laws maintain rent-controlled apartments in the city, though advocates say the laws are so full of loopholes that affordable apartments are becoming extinct even with them on the books. There is a great deal at stake, says McKee. "We will be in real serious trouble if Skelos is in charge next year," he said. "However, our concern is that Jeff Klein is an operative of the real estate lobby and if the Democrats have the same deal with Jeff that the Republicans had and he has veto power, our bills won't come to the floor. We have a specific history with this legislator that he will vote for our legislation if it comes to the floor, but he works overtime behind the scenes to kill it."

McKee and tenant advocates want to see legislators push to end the practice whereby landlords jack up rents by various means, drive tenants out, and take apartments off rent control rolls. They say that 2015 will be of the utmost importance because the real estate lobby has been increasingly successful in blocking any efforts to keep apartments under rent control.

Rewind a decade and McKee had a different outlook on Klein when, in 2004, Klein was running to replace jailed Republican Sen. Guy Velella. In fact, McKee and his organization phone-banked for Klein, and McKee gave Klein's campaign $500. "Don't think we didn't know that we were getting a conservative Democrat," said McKee. "We supported Klein and [IDC Sen. Diane] Savino to get us closer to the majority, but we are way past supporting Democrats for the sake of electing Democrats - it hasn't worked."

Progressives say Klein has used his Republican partners as scapegoats while blocking more liberal legislation. McKee said that Klein has been perpetually unreliable and has broken promises at every turn. "The man has no political center," McKee said, "He is interested in power for power's sake and the trappings of power."

A number of Senate Democrats, while excited about their possible return to the majority, aren't holding their breath for it to happen and are dreading the idea of working with a man they feel stabbed them in the collective back and betrayed the party. Some Democrats have threatened to simply quit if Klein returns to caucus with them, while Klein has made it clear in recent interviews that tension still exists and he isn't exactly fond of mainline Democrats.

Democratic legislators acknowledge that if Klein and the IDC do coalesce with the mainline Democrats it could put focus back on inadequacies of the Democratic Conference. A number of issues that progressives have blamed the IDC for blocking in tandem with Republicans may not actually have the votes to pass even with an IDC/Democratic alliance - and Klein has already seized on that message, a message that is not dissimilar to McKee's assessment that all 'Democrats' are not necessarily going to vote from the left. In other words, advocates are hoping Democratic control will give them more leverage on issues, but it isn't nearly a sure thing.

Sen. Brad Hoylman said that he is "hopeful" that the new coalition would open up legislative possibilities, including for the passage of two bills he champions that were bottled up by Senate Republicans last year. "I think a coalition where Democrats are in charge of the chamber gives life to bills that have been stalled over several years, including GENDA and a ban on conversion therapy," Hoylman said.

Another mainline Democrat, Sen. Gustavo Rivera, has a contentious relationship with Klein (and faces a primary challenge from New York City Council Member Fernando Cabrera, who has said he would caucus with the IDC if he wins) and said that Democrats will be cautious in assuming the leadership of the Senate. Rivera notes that Democrats want to do everything they can to avoid the "dysfunctional" label they were saddled with the last time they held the majority. Rivera added that he plans to support Koppell "as long as he is in the race."

Both Hoylman and Rivera say they hope to see action on The Women's Equality Agenda, The DREAM Act, and a bill that allows the city to set its own minimum wage.

There is not absolute Democratic solidarity, though. Sen. Ruben Diaz is a staunch opponent of a woman's right to choose and an expansion of LGBT rights. His vote could matter on bills like the Women's Equality Act and GENDA. Democratic Sen. Cecelia Tkaczyk opposes farm workers' rights legislation that would protect immigrant workers from extraordinarily long work days and dangerous working conditions. These are two examples of several.

Despite these caveats Democrats are heartened by the possibility of a coalition with the IDC and hope that if these bills come to the floor that a number of them will enjoy some Republican support. But, they acknowledge Republicans may work in lockstep to defeat key legislation and weaken the new coalition.

During an interview on Wednesday with The Capitol Pressroom's Susan Arbetter, Klein focused on the idea that not all Democrats support issues like campaign finance reform, a woman's right to choose, and The DREAM Act. He dodged a question on whether Senate Democrats should no longer be considered "dysfunctional."

An IDC spokesman did not return a Gotham Gazette request for comment.

"We have to elect Democrats who support the issues the IDC stands for," Klein told Arbetter. "It's very clear it's not just about a Democratic majority; its about getting the things done that the IDC wants to get done." Klein noted that all members of the IDC support issues like a woman's right to choose and The DREAM Act.

Klein dodged questions about whether the IDC will be involved in challenging sitting Democrats, but said, "We are going to have a litmus test on who we support" and cited that candidates they back would have to support campaign finance reform, The DREAM Act, and other progressive issues.

McKee acknowledges that Klein's possible coalition with the Democrats isn't making it any easier to challenge him. "Fundraising is never easy with tenants," said McKee. "We don't have any money." But McKee feels that tenants need victories in the Legislature this year or more working families will find themselves unable to live in the city. "The real estate lobby is working very hard on this. There is nothing stopping them from jacking up the rent. I have three friends who have packed up and left the city."

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by David King, Albany editor, Gotham Gazette
@DavidHowardKing

Brian Lehrer in his WNYC studio (photo via @BrianLehrer)

Brian Lehrer is a New York City institution. On his WNYC radio program, The Brian Lehrer Show, Mr. Lehrer speaks with international, national, and local newsmakers and journalists, and lots of New Yorkers of all stripes. The show won a Peabody Award for radio that builds community rather than divides, something both host and station are quite proud of. Mr. Lehrer, the iconic WNYC radio host, is approaching his 25th anniversary at the station this fall and sat down with Gotham Gazette to discuss his career in journalism. The interview, filmed in a WNYC studio, covers a wide range of topics, including Mr. Lehrer's start in journalism during college and at WNYC 25 years ago; his favorite on-air moments (including unexpected call-ins from Hillary Clinton and Arthur Ashe); his radio heroes; his approach to interviewing guests, taking calls, and improving his craft; and much more.

The interview is segmented into five parts, each can be found below. They are arranged by topic, not necessarily chronology of the interview.

Brian Lehrer discusses his favorite on air moments, including unexpected call-ins from Hillary Clinton and Arthur Ashe, auditioning for WNYC 25 years ago, and more:

Brian Lehrer discusses changes in the media landscape, his approach to technology and interactivity, interviewing quiet guests, and more:

Brian Lehrer discusses his radio heroes and early role models, his first on-air gigs, and more:

Brian Lehrer discusses his early entrance into journalism, his assessment of mayors Bloomberg and de Blasio, his recollections of September 11, 2001, and more:

Brian Lehrer describes the nature of his show, his relationship with his audience, and more:

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The Brian Lehrer Show airs weekdays on WNYC 93.9FM from 10 a.m. to noon.

Be sure to listen to The Brian Lehrer Show as Mr. Lehrer approaches his 25th anniversary on air at WNYC this fall.

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@BrianLehrer
@GothamGazette
@TweetBenMax 

Video production generously donated to Gotham Gazette by GZIPUSA.HumanityCode.com

Wall Street (wikicommons)

This article is part of NYC Street Signs, a product of the NYCity News Service at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism

In 1888, the wealthy furniture-man-turned-politician James J. Coogan woke up a day after losing a mayoral election to discover a potent signal that his influence over the city had disintegrated. Someone, presumably affiliated with his opponents, had taken down all the street signs for Coogan Avenue, where he lived in what is now Harlem.

Like many streets in New York City then named after wealthy landlords, Coogan Avenue was only unofficially named when Coogan posted the signs himself. The Board of Aldermen soon officially named the street Bradhurst Avenue, after another landlord. That name remains unchanged to this day.

Coogan's political fall and subsequent elimination from the city's streetscape is one of the stories that Don Rogerson tells in his book, "Manhattan Street Names Past and Present." The story of how the city's streets were named offers "a framework to trace back to the city's history and culture," according to the Iowa-based author.

"Street names are a directly accessible link to the history of a place," Rogerson said. "Every time we give a street address we push that history forward. They give us an easy opportunity to transform something usually thought of as mundane and practical into a regular reminder of our place in history."

Modern New Yorkers may see the names of those streets on green signs or mobile mapping apps, but few know where the names come from. Residents and visitors most often remain oblivious to these artifacts of New York City's history and culture dating back to the 17th century, when the earliest city maps were made.

Each street name tells a story, and it's not always one you may expect. New Street is ironically among the city's oldest, built by the Dutch in 1679. Delancey Street, the iconic dividing line between the Lower East Side and the East Village, took its name from James Delancey, a New York chief justice and colonial governor who stood against the Americans in the Revolutionary War.

A matter of practicality
Naming the streets in 17th-century New York City was a matter of practicality for Dutch businessmen. They named the streets after whatever natural or manmade features were physically there. Mill Street had a mill on it, Stone Street was paved with stone.

"We have many names that come from obvious characteristics of the streets," said Gilbert Tauber, a retired city planner and creator of the website oldstreets.com, which catalogues the city's street names.

Broadway, the symbol of the city's theater world, was named by the literal-minded Dutch describing the street's girth, Rogerson said.

Battery Place ran along the old fortification, or battery, on the southern tip of the island.

The name of the legendary Wall Street, which has become synonymous with the financial world, had nothing to do with money. It came from a wooden fortification built around the city in 1653 that protected the Dutch from Canarsie tribe attacks.

From royals to locals
Over the last 400 years, the naming of the city's streets has seen a populist shift, from well-known and influential people to many who possess neither wealth nor power.

Under British rule, from 1664 to 1783, streets were named after royalty, including King Street and Little Queen Street. They were later renamed Pine Street and Cedar Street, said Sanna Feirstein, author of the book "Naming New York: Manhattan Places and How They Got Their Names."

"The City Council wanted to eradicate associations with the British aristocracy," she said, adding that in the last few decades, the populist trend has intensified, with more and more streets taking names after regular people. "They are people who are important to each community."

Street signs as commemoration
In more recent years, city street signs have increasingly commemorated victims of tragedies, including people who died on September 11, 2001 or in traffic crashes.

Our analysis of the last 15 years of "honorific" street naming (co-naming a street in tribute to someone deemed worthy by the City) found that about 14 percent of New York City "co-named" blocks or streets are named after 9/11 victims, while another 15 percent are named after the police officers and firefighters who were involved in rescue efforts following the attacks.

As the writer Joan Didion recalled in her essay "Goodbye to All That," the street names themselves are deeply evocative, even to non-New Yorkers: "To those of us who came from places where no one had heard of Lester Lanin and Grand Central Station was a Saturday radio program, where Wall Street and Fifth Avenue and Madison Avenue were not places at all but abstractions ("Money," and "High Fashion," and "The Hucksters"), New York was no mere city. It was instead an infinitely romantic notion, the mysterious nexus of all love and money and power, the shining and perishable dream itself."

NYC Street Signs is a product of the NYCity News Service at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism

See the full project here

City Council members applaud Speaker Mark-Viverito at budget announcement (William Alatriste)

NEW YORK - When the New York City Council passed rules reforms in May, one of the most significant changes made was to the system of allocating member items. According to the new rules, the money, also known as discretionary funds and used to support non-profits in members' districts, would be doled out in a more equitable way than in previous administrations.

Late Tuesday evening, the Council released "Schedule C," the portion of the budget that shows how member item money will be allocated. An analysis by good government organization Citizens Union shows Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito abided by the rules she helped pass, with members receiving from $685,000 to $760,000 in expense funding.

"The City Council has lived up to its promise of further reforming the distribution of discretionary funding to its members by making more equitable and needs-based funding decisions," said Dick Dadey, Executive Director of Citizens Union. "This is a sea change from previous years, and creates a Council where power is shared with individual members and their constituents benefit."

Each Council member received a base of $400,000 as well as $110,000 for aging initiatives and $150,000 for youth initiatives. Members received additional funds of $25,000, $50,000, $75,000, or $100,000 based on the levels of poverty in their districts. Poverty levels were estimated using the 2012 American Community Survey.

Speaker Mark-Viverito, along with four other council members (Maria del Carmen Arroyo, Ritchie Torres, Vanessa Gibson, and Fernando Cabrera) received the maximum allocation of member items, $760,000. Each of the five represents portions of the Bronx, the borough with the highest poverty rates.

While the member item playing field is now more level, during this transitional year 15 council districts will receive less funding than the previous year. No district was hit harder by the leveling out of the funding than that represented by freshman Council Member Mark Treyger, of Brooklyn. His district, represented by Domenic Recchia last session, will receive $853,464 less in expense funding this fiscal year, according to the Citizens Union analysis.

In an emailed statement Treyger said his predecessor "benefited from a broken political system," and praised the reforms passed by the Council.

"We are still working to also ensure that outstanding nonprofit organizations that do important work in districts around the city are not unfairly and inadvertently punished as a result of these reforms," Treyger said. "I am continuing to work with Speaker Mark-Viverito and my colleagues to make sure that groups serving our constituents will have the funding necessary to continue their critical work on behalf of millions of New Yorkers."

He continued, "The bottom line is that I expect that local organizations serving local residents will in the end receive the funding needed to continue to effectively serve my community."

On the other end of the spectrum, Council Member Inez Barron's Brooklyn district received a sizable bump in discretionary funding. The district, which was represented by her husband Charles Barron last session, will receive $330,536 more member item funding, according to the Citizens Union analysis. Charles Barron was not afraid to speak out against former Speaker Christine Quinn, and despite representing one of the poorest areas of the city, was often given the smallest member item sum.

Gotham Gazette emailed Council Member Barron's office to see how the increase would affect her district. There was no response by press time.

A total of 36 council districts are receiving more discretionary money than last year, while the other 15 are receiving less than a year ago. The total for each council member is detailed in the chart below, along with the increase or decrease in funds from the previous year.

"The true beneficiaries of this reformed discretionary funding process are the constituents in each district," said Rachael Fauss, Policy and Research Manager of Citizens Union who analyzed the budget items. "By distributing funds equitably and based on measures of poverty, the residents of each district will be more fairly served in the city's budget process."

Part of the council rules reform package was to bring greater transparency to the member item process. This year's Schedule C document includes a detailed description of how the Council arrived at member item allotments, something not done in the past.

But, the document was still released as a PDF online, making it difficult to analyze. A spreadsheet was sent when a request was made to the council press office, but not all of the information was included in the new document. Totals for members were not included in either document, which is where Citizens Union stepped in (Citizens Union Foundation publishes Gotham Gazette).

The rules reforms did not require this year's budget to be in machine-readable format, but Council Member Ben Kallos, an open data advocate, has pushed for making all council documents machine readable so the data can be analyzed more easily. As part of the rules reform, the Council will form a technology working group to determine best practices for data transparency going forward.

"As part of the City Council's already largely successful and ongoing push for greater transparency, I look forward to working with my colleagues to ensure that the Schedule C funds are released in the best possible and most searchable format and will be looking into ways to make sure that happens," Kallos said by email.

The budget documents will be published on the City's open data platform in August.

Access the full spreadsheet via Google Docs here.

*This article has been updated with comments from Council Members Treyger and Kallos 

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by Kristen Meriwether, Gotham Gazette
@MeriwetherK

NYC Taxi (nyc.gov)

NEW YORK—It all started with a tweet. "It's #metricmonday again! Today's #infographic shows data on yellow taxis on the road by day and time. #nyctaxi," tweeted the Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) from @nyctaxi on March 10 at 12:18 p.m.

The TLC had no idea that its seemingly innocent tweet would lead to an unintended revelation of medallion and license data, bringing into question how city agencies handle the FOIL process, especially for large open data requests.

Chris Whong, open data advocate and co-founder of BetaNYC, saw the tweet and tweeted back, "is the data available?" Whong got a response from TLC shorty after saying the TLC trip records were available via Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request and included a link to submit the request.

Whong filed the FOIL request by email and received a response within hours. The email informed him that to receive the data he would need to bring an unopened 200 GB external hard drive to the TLC offices where officials would provide the data.

Within a few days time, Whong made the hard drive purchase, dropped it off to the TLC, and picked up the data the following morning.

"Overall, I have to say I was impressed with the TLC's responsiveness, professionalism, and the fact that they allow email correspondence for this sort of thing in the first place." Whong posted on his blog, "Despite the annoyance of two in-person trips and the expense of a brand new hard drive, I was able to go from viewing the FOIL information page to possessing the data in just 2 business days."

The fare and trip data, totaling nearly 20 GB, includes full 2013 info for the following: medallion and hack license numbers, pick up dates and times, trip times in seconds, and the latitude and longitude coordinates for pick-up and drop-off locations. Whong posted screen shots of some of the data and promised a graphic visualization of the data soon.

Within days, civic hackers began to comment on Whong's blog, asking him to post the data to a public space so they could also hack the data. On June 16, Whong posted two files available for download. Two days later, Andrés Monroy, a contact Whong met through social media, offered to host smaller chunks of the data to make downloading easier.

Word spread quickly through the civic hacking community that there was a new data set available and it became a hot commodity, with excitement over what seemed an open data victory.

But then things got interesting.

Vijay Pandurangan, CEO of Mitro and an internet security expert, saw the buzz on Twitter about the taxi data. He noticed a comment on Reddit that questioned how the same driver was making so many trips.

Pandurangan looked at the data and saw the medallion numbers listed in the datasets were not the actual medallion numbers. The TLC used an algorithm to encrypt the numbers, a process known as hashing. Each taxi was given a unique identifier so the data could be analyzed, but the idea was that the medallion number, and thus the driver, would not be identifiable. Pandurangan recognized the type of hash the TLC used (MD5) and spent a little bit of time researching it.

"I realized if you use a standard algorithm for generating a hash, it is the value for zero," Pandurangan said by phone Monday, June 23. "When I saw that, I knew they were probably hashing the license numbers directly which meant you could very easily go backwards and find all of the license numbers from the data, even though they didn't want you to be able to do that."

Taxi license numbers are six or seven digit numbers starting with the number 5, with a total of roughly two million possible numbers. The medallion numbers have three structured patterns: one number, one letter, two numbers or two letters three number or three letters, three numbers. All said, there are roughly 24 million possible numbers for licenses and medallions.

Because the numbers are so structured, Pandurangan said he was able to, in laymen's terms, 'crack the code' within a few hours of looking at the data. He could take the taxi license numbers and look them up online, thus identifying the driver.

"They took the taxi cab number directly but because there is a lot of structure in...the medallion numbers...you could compute this function for every single number," Pandurangan said.

Pandurangan wrote a blog post on June 21 documenting his experience, a post which went viral in the tech community. Motherboard, a Vice tech blog, posted a follow-up story, as did Ars Technica.

Over the phone, Pandurangan said TLC had good intentions by trying to anonymize the data, but he wasn't sure if proper protocol was followed.

The TLC acknowledged issues with the process and acknowledges changes will be made moving forward. "We will take a look at how the anonymization was compromised, and make whatever improvements we see as being necessary to the process," TLC spokesman Allan Fromberg emailed on Monday.

When asked if the FOIL request was reviewed by the legal department before the data was handed over, Fromberg did not answer.

Pandurangan said the process is very complicated and with the powerful computers today, it is much easier to work backwards through millions of possible combinations of numbers. As a simple solution, he suggested the TLC not use original medallion or license numbers the next time they release data.

In a city that is just beginning to open up more of its data, this is a valuable lesson, but one that does not have to be a deterrent to continued open data expansion. Mark Headd, former Chief Data Officer for the City of Philadelphia, wrote in a blog post that the incident shows an example of how FOIL requests for large data sets should be treated more like open data requests with an opportunity for review and feedback, not just a request to be checked off as filled.

"Because FOIA is viewed as a one and done task, there is no opportunity to iteratively release data – if the release of NYC taxi trip data had been viewed as a process (particularly a collaborative one), the Taxi & Limousine Commission could have opted to be conservative in their initial release and then enhanced future releases based on actual feedback from real consumers of the data," Headd wrote.

Pandurangan argues this instance should be used as a lesson to learn from, not a reason to keep data closed.

"I hope it doesn't prompt them to not release data," he said of the City. 'It allows people to build all kinds of interesting maps and tools and to figure out how the city works. I think it is valuable to do that."

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by Kristen Meriwether, Gotham Gazette
@MeriwetherK

Mayor de Blasio and Speak Mark-Viverito shake on a budget deal (William Alatriste)

NEW YORK—The City Council added $400,000 of its discretionary money to fund veterans services in the fiscal year 2015 budget, according to budget documents released late Tuesday, June 24.

The Council added $100,000 for veterans job placement initiatives, $100,000 for veterans legal services, $100,000 for veterans mental health services, $50,000 for veterans community development, and $50,000 for services for women veterans.

In its April preliminary budget response, the Council had asked Mayor Bill de Blasio to increase the budget of the Mayor's Office of Veterans Affairs by $400,000 and to allocate an additional $1 million toward veterans support services. De Blasio, who has voiced his support for veterans, did not add any additional funding, leaving the Council to use its own money.

When asked on Tuesday afternoon about the lack of funding, the mayor said, "We are evaluating how to proceed on veterans issues. It's very personal to me, as you know, and this country has not done enough for our veterans, particularly our wounded veterans." The mayor's father served in the American army during World War II, losing a leg in the Battle of Okinawa.

De Blasio continued, "We're going to be looking at a series of things we can do, we'll have announcements on that coming up."

Not waiting on further news from the mayor's office, the Council finalized its fiscal year 2015 funding plan. In addition to the general Council funds, council members individually allocated a total of $150,000 of discretionary funding to veterans causes ranging from homeless veterans services to funding for the Memorial Day parade, according to an analysis by Gotham Gazette.

Six council members from Queens are funding 12 non-profits that help veterans for a total of $55,500, the highest of all the borough delegations. The three council members from Staten Island are allocating $31,000 of member item funding toward seven veterans organizations. Two council members are funding three Brooklyn veterans organizations with a total of $26,500. Two Bronx council members are funding veterans organizations with a sum of $28,000. And, two Manhattan council members are giving a total of $9,000 to veterans support organizations.

Eric Ulrich, chair of the Veterans Committee, is funding two veterans organizations with $8,500.

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by Kristen Meriwether, Gotham Gazette
@MeriwetherK

Mariano Rivera unveils the street name in his honor (Sonia Rincon/1010 WINS)

This article is part of NYC Street Signs, a product of the NYCity News Service at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism

Stroll through any New York City neighborhood, and you’ll notice that many streets carry two names: the name on the map, and the name of a person. Unless you happen to be on a street named after a major cultural or historic figure that you're familiar with, such as (George) Gershwin Way (West 50th Street and Broadway in Manhattan) or (Mariano) Rivera Avenue (161st Street and River Avenue in the Bronx) perhaps, you may wonder who the person was and what they did to merit the honor.

Our analysis of more than 1,500 honorific street names recently compiled by retired city planner Gilbert Tauber offers a glimpse into naming trends over the past 15 years. The city has recognized a broad spectrum of New Yorkers — some famous, but many unknown beyond the bounds of their neighborhoods. Boulevards and ways, places and corners across the city offer testament to the city’s firefighters, teachers, community volunteers and business owners. Compared to the city’s historic street names, which tend to honor white men, these new street names reflect a much broader range of ethnicity and social class.

Some takeaways from the study:

We honor the fallen

The largest group of people honored between 1998 and 2013, making up about 30 percent of all co-named streets in this period, are New Yorkers who died in the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Street co-naming spiked in the years after, when the city named 438 streets after civilian victims and first responders.

As Tauber told us, many modern street names “are bestowed really in sympathy” for the families of New Yorkers who died tragically. These are not just 9-11 victims, but also police officers killed in the line of duty, and children who were struck by cars or caught in crossfire.

Our analysis found that 85 honorific streets (six percent) since 1998 commemorate civilians who died as the result of violence, illness or accident, sometimes at a young age. Around seven percent were named after men (but no women) who served in the military, many in World War II, but also in the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Another eight percent honor New York City police officers and firefighters, though not all of these died in the line of duty. (Many honorees fall into multiple categories, so categories add up to more than 100 percent.)

'Do-gooders' get their day too

The other major group of honorific streets bear the names of average men and women who made above-average contributions to their communities. The 419 streets (27 percent) named for people “active in community” include individuals who volunteered with charities, fought for better schools, coached little league or generally did good in their neighborhoods. Many also served their communities as religious leaders, community board members, or business owners.

We also took a closer look at some of the colorful characters who have merited a street name, and found that their individual stories illuminate the city’s richly textured history and culture. Why did the city name four streets after barbers, a Chinese crusader against the ancient opium trade, or a game of Scrabble?

Each borough has its heroes

If Brooklyn loves its barbers, who gets remembered in the Bronx? Each borough shows its own trends in the people honored.

Staten Island designated the most honorific street names, 414 since 1998. Home to many city workers, Staten Island also had the largest proportions of honorific streets named after civilians who died September 11, 2001, and first responders on the scene of the attacks that day.

Bronx communities designated the fewest honorific streets, only 184 in the past 15 years. Compared to the other boroughs, the Bronx named a larger percentage of its honorific streets after community activists, police officers and firefighters. Meanwhile, Manhattan lived up to its reputation as a center of arts and culture, naming 13 percent of its honorific streets after people in the arts — painters, writers, composers and photographers — far more than any other borough. Queens celebrated its status as the most ethnically diverse borough, naming streets in recognition of its Ecuadorian, Colombian and Maltese communities, among other historic and cultural sites.

Origins of the data

We started with the information on Gilbert Tauber’s honorific street names website. Tauber created the site by meticulously looking up city council documents for the hundreds of local laws that officially designated these street names. To create the data set, we developed categories that reflected the main reasons people or institutions were honored with a street name, then our team of reporters read through each entry and assigned it to one or more categories. The assignments are subjective, and may have varied depending on the interpretation of the reporter inputting the data. Many streets belong in more than one category, so the percentages of streets in each category add up to more than 100 percent. See the table below or explore the full data set.

NYC Street Signs is a product of the NYCity News Service at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism

See the full project here

(The Coast Guard via Flickr)

NEW YORK—There were plenty of handshakes and high fives when a budget deal was announced late this past Thursday, June 19. It is, after all, balanced and on time. But for the city's veterans, the budget announcement was not something to be cheerful about.

The City Council had asked for an additional $400,000 in funding for the Mayor's Office of Veterans Affairs (MOVA) to develop programs to assist veterans as well as an additional $1 million for mental health, employment, and legal assistance services for veterans. The additional funds were not included in the mayor's executive budget and do not appear to be a part of the budget agreement made last week.

While every final budget detail has not yet been released, there is also no indication that the budget provides funding for three veterans benefits counselors, currently paid for through a grant from the Robin Hood Foundation that is set to expire July 31st. The three benefits counselors, who are certified by New York State, will be let go if requisite funding is not provided.

"We are still figuring it out," MOVA Commissioner Terrance Holliday said at a City Council hearing on Monday. He added that he has spoken with the mayor's office about some proposals, but that no conclusion had been reached.

The three counselors have provided one-on-one support to 150 city veterans since December and have filed 60 claims on their behalfs with the federal Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) for compensation or pension, according to Holliday. He said he would like to continue to program, but could not fund it with his current budget.

In the Fiscal Year 2015 budget, which is set to be formally adopted this week, MOVA is allotted $240,332 for three full-time employees and $22,000 for goods and services. The State will provide $201,000, allowing for two additional full-time employees.

As the final details of the budget come into focus, the Council could choose to fund the benefits counselors on its own accord - though funding for them was not included among highlights released by Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito's office the night of the budget agreement announcement.

Gotham Gazette reached out to the mayor's office regarding plans to fund the benefits counselors past July 31. A spokesperson declined to comment on the record.

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by Kristen Meriwether, Gotham Gazette
@MeriwetherK

WEA rally (City of Syracuse via Flickr)

Albany - Despite a growing focus on the inequality women face in New York and nationally, and the specter of Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver's mishandling of sexual harassment claims by legislative interns, the Legislature failed to deliver on this year's number one priority of major women's rights groups.

And those disappointed groups say they plan to make themselves heard during the 2014 election cycle. Although smaller women's rights bills were passed by both houses, other bills that deal with a woman's right to choose were not even brought up for a vote in the Senate. "Women outnumber men in New York State and polls show that the majority of New Yorkers support our issues," said Tracey Brooks of Family Planning Advocates of New York. "It is their folly to take us for granted" Brooks said of legislators.

It was a game of chicken every one saw coming for months: Senate Republicans unwilling to vote on the abortion measure of the ten-point Women's Equality Agenda (WEA) and the Assembly unwilling to pass the rest of the measures without it; Democrats wanting to expose the Republicans' unwillingness to take a public vote on an abortion bill and Republicans trying to turn the tables by focusing on recent sexual harassment scandals involving Democrats as well as Democrats' unwillingness to vote on other vital WEA planks such as those relating to pay equity, sexual harassment protections, and the strengthening of laws to stop sexual trafficking.

When Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced the WEA two years ago during his State-of-the-State speech, its planks weren't new policies; most of them had been floating around as separate bills in the legislature for years. What Cuomo did, said Brooks, is "call attention to the fact that New York needed to do some catching up on women's rights."

Having Cuomo's backing made advocates and legislators believe the time had finally come for these issues to be addressed. The soon-to-follow Assembly sexual harassment scandal only confirmed to them that action had to be taken. But as can happen in Albany, even an initiative with momentum failed, and repeatedly.

On Friday, Cuomo told Susan Arbetter on The Capitol Pressroom radio show that the IDC/Republican Senate coalition is "a failure," adding: "I am going to do everything I can to elect people who support my agenda."

In the final week of this year's session, legislators from both sides of the aisle began to push for individual pieces of the WEA to get a vote in the Assembly; the Senate had already passed 9 of the WEA bills. The move caused a rift between some women's rights groups, with Family Planning Advocates and others wanting to see the entire WEA passed as a whole, and NOW-NYC and others advocating for the sex trafficking measure to be acted on individually.

Assembly Member Amy Paulin stood on the Capitol's West Staircase on Wednesday with other Assembly Democrats and Senate Republicans calling for the Assembly to vote on the trafficking plank of the WEA. Paulin emotionally recalled her sexual assault at the age of 14.

"Choice is paramount," said Paulin, "but the memory that I have, that lives on, that I can recall every minute of, is that of being sexually assaulted. I remember every instant of that. I don't remember what I had for breakfast, but I remember every minute of that experience. And the idea that we have 12- and 13- and 14- and 15-year-old girls being raped and being tortured multiple times in a day, in a week, in a month, in a year, in several years is unfathomable."

NOW-NYC joined in the push to pass the trafficking measure, legislation that would create the new crime of patronizing a minor and making bullying a child for sex a class B violent felony. The WEA bill also gives law enforcement better tools to stop sex trafficking, while giving victims more protections.

"Refusing to pass any measures at all is a bad gamble for women and a risk for Democrats this election season," said Ossorio in a Daily News op-ed. "Voters are as likely to remember progressives blocking legislation protecting prostituted children, as they are likely to remember conservatives opposing reproductive rights. As the session comes down to the wire, advocates are waiting to see if the Assembly leadership will actually go through with blocking this bill from coming to the floor for a vote."

Brooks, of Family Planning Advocates of New York, said that she found it unconscionable that any legislator would "pick or choose the pieces [of the WEA] women deserve." She noted that legislators could have fought for individual planks of the WEA before Cuomo put them all together.

Brooks cited recent polls that show over 70 percent of New Yorkers support Roe v. Wade, with over fifty percent of Republican New Yorkers supporting the Supreme Court decision that protected abortion rights. "I really question the leadership of the legislature if we can't get one Republican senator to stand up and say they support a woman's right to choose," Brooks said.

Brooks and other advocates say Senate Republicans "shut down" on the WEA last year after members were told by the Conservative Party that any who voted for abortion legislation would face a primary.

Although the WEA was being used for playing political, other women's rights legislation had more success this year.

State Sen. Liz Krueger saw mixed results with a number of bills she sponsored that would affect women's health and equality - as well as men's.

Krueger's bill banning sexual harassment of unpaid interns passed both the Assembly and Senate. The bill became necessary in Krueger's eyes after a federal judge found that a Syracuse University student could not sue the company where she was allegedly groped and harassed because New York's human rights law did not cover unpaid interns. The bill's Assembly co-sponsor is Daniel O'Donnell.

Additionally, Krueger's "Boss Bill" passed the Assembly earlier this year and was voted out of the Senate's labor committee, but Senate leadership refused to bring it to a vote. The bill would prevent employers from retaliating against employees for family planning choices.

The bill recently became an issue when chains such as Hobby Lobby began fighting for health plans not covering birth control. The Supreme Court is expected to rule on whether Hobby Lobby has the right to deny such coverage. "In New York, in the 21st century, no boss should be able to tell employees whether they can have access to birth control, or whether they have the right to be pregnant," said Krueger.

A bill sponsored by Krueger and Assemblyman Richard Gottfried, which would increase education and awareness about maternal depression, passed both houses and is headed to the governor's desk.

Family Planning Advocates of New York created a new political action committee (PAC) just earlier this month to support candidates who work for pro-choice legislation. Expect groups like Family Planning Advocates, NOW, and NARAL Pro Choice to be extremely active this election year because they don't want a repeat of the last two legislative sessions. Brooks said she intends to take "drastic action" during the election cycle to make sure the legislature "better reflects the values of New Yorkers."

Karen Scharff of Citizen Action NY and the Working Families Party said that even though the WEA was not expected to pass this year it doesn't mean that voters aren't upset about it. "If the Senate was responsive to voters they would have passed this last year. We need a new Senate."

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by David King, Albany editor, Gotham Gazette
@DavidHowardKing

Liberty Avenue Plaza, Ozone Park/East New York (Katrina Shakarian)

On a recent Friday afternoon at the juncture of Brooklyn and Queens in the center of Ozone Park's first pedestrian plaza, visitors sat amongst the plaza's colorful chairs and shrubbery, surrounded by merengue and dancehall beats flowing from passing cars. Dozens of men filed into the streets from a nearby mosque at the conclusion of prayers.

This is the scene at Liberty Avenue Plaza, located on 101st Avenue between Drew and 75th streets, straddling two boroughs, two neighborhoods (Ozone Park and East New York), two community boards (nine in Queens and five in Brooklyn) and three police precincts (75, 102 and 106). The plaza rests in a diverse enclave of South Asian, Caribbean, Latino, and Italian New Yorkers.

Liberty Avenue Plaza is one of 44 open public plazas across the five boroughs, built under the Department of Transportation's (DOT) NYC Plaza Program. Public spaces being carved out through the program show that not only do pedestrian plazas provide neighborhoods with much needed quality open space, but they are catalysts for community engagement and provide an entry point for constituents, particularly immigrants, into New York's local civic life.

"This is like a village to us,"said local resident Khairul Islam of Liberty plaza, created in October 2013. "Now they actually have a place where they can physically sit down and talk and chit chat and have a coffee....It's pretty special, I think," he explained, describing the plaza's impact on the neighborhood's sizeable Bangladeshi population, particularly women and seniors.

Liberty Ave Plaza

The process of creating a pedestrian plaza almost always emanates from the ground up; beginning with proposals from local community groups, followed by a collaborative design process between DOT and local stakeholders, and finally the construction of the plaza, which is funded by DOT. The subsequent maintenance and management of the plaza, though, is the responsibility of the community group that initially proposes it, though local elected officials can and do help with funding. Thus far, organizations that have proposed and manage plazas throughout the city include small Business Improvement Districts (BIDs), non-profits, all-volunteer groups, and merchant associations.

In the case of Liberty Avenue Plaza, that partner is the Bangladeshi American Community Development & Youth Services Corporation (BACDYS). The organization is a resource center that offers local residents services like English classes, academic tutoring, cultural programming, and assistance navigating city agencies.

BACDYS

Misba Abdin, President of BACDYS, first learned about the city's plaza program when he visited the grand opening of a plaza in the New Lots section of Brooklyn. Upon seeing the transformation of regular streets into a vibrant social space, he envisioned a plaza in his own community to provide children and seniors, in particular, with a place to congregate.

"In this area there's no space for our children to go out and play and sit down," said Abdin. "[In the] Latino and Bengali community, I see all these senior people. They don't send their parents to nursing homes. They keep them within the family. So, I see everyday after they go to Mosque and church, after prayer, you will see people [outside]. They have no place to sit down," he explained.

And so, Abdin embarked on a two-year process to get the Liberty Avenue Plaza constructed. BACDYS drafted a proposal, rallied local support through community workshops, made the pitch to DOT, and, upon being selected, worked with community members and DOT-contracted designers to customize a space for their Ozone Park/East New York neighborhood.

Under BACDYS' stewardship, Liberty Avenue Plaza has hosted a health fair and a Bangladeshi cultural festival. The Uni Project, a pop-up library installation for public spaces, will be featured in the plaza this summer.

Of course, expecting small organizations such as BACDYS to sustain pedestrian plazas over time is not without challenges. Community partners without the financial prowess of affluent neighborhoods often lack the resources "to keep a good thing going — or to get it off the ground in the first place," wrote Stephen Miller of Streetsblog NYC earlier this year.

Founded in the spring of 2013 by the Horticultural Society of New York, Neighborhood Plaza Partnership (NPP) exists to address this challenge. NPP supports community partners in under-resourced neighborhoods by providing operations and fundraising assistance, as well as subsidized maintenance services through Association of Community Employment Programs for the Homeless (ACE). ACE and NPP partner to train the homeless and formerly incarcerated for jobs maintaining plazas.

Annual maintenance costs vary from plaza to plaza based on labor for daily upkeep and horticulture care, plant materials and equipment. So far, NPP has "calculated annual maintenance estimates ranging from $20,000 to $50,000," for plazas all over the city, wrote NPP Project Manager Cheryl Tse via email. The maintenance of Liberty Avenue Plaza, specifically, costs approximately $42,000 a year.

Despite the funding and other challenges faced by small community organizations, placing them at the center of the plaza program generates unique kinds of civic participation on New York's municipal landscape, explained Laura Hansen, Executive Director of NPP.

"One of the benefits that we talk about is civic participation," she said. "A community-based organization is engaging in the community on behalf of a lot of people...a subset of that is the immigration integration piece."

As plaza managers, residents and their respective organizations "are navigating government on behalf of their constituents, they're working with the DOT, they're hosting those workshops, they're dealing with sanitation. You know, they're understanding the way that public policy and government works," explained Hansen.

Across Queens, in Jackson Heights, another public space, Diversity Plaza, was carved out of a dense commercial and transit hub between 73rd and 74th Streets, off Roosevelt Avenue. The idea for Diversity Plaza was borne of a DOT traffic study from 2009. It cited high levels of congestion and significant pedestrian safety concerns in the neighborhood.

"We have very little open space,"said Josie Bartlett, Council Member Daniel Dromm's communications director, about Jackson Heights. Dromm's district ranks 50th out of 51 council districts when it comes to amount of park space, she explained.

Diversity Plaza

Diversity Plaza, meant to ease congestion and carve out quality space in the neighborhood, was first established in 2012. Its appearance catalyzed neighborhood activism, both for and against it, as documented by Streetsblog. Although many residents and local business owners welcomed the space, others did not. Some local merchants claimed to have been left out of the planning process and alleged that the loss of car traffic through 37th road decreased their flow of customers.

Several meetings and protests later, Agha Saleh and Shazia Kausar, a married couple who own a business in the plaza, decided to take ownership of the issue and turn a point of contention into a true community asset.

"The only way we can recover this dent for this entire neighborhood and especially for this block," said Saleh, "[is] if we make this a destination." Saleh, Kausar, and their teenage daughter Fatima brainstormed how to make the plaza a colorful location that would attract visitors.

The family started a non-profit organization called Sukhi to act as steward of Diversity Plaza. It is an acronym for Social Uplift through Knowledge and Hope Initiatives. Sukhi is committed to improving quality of life in Jackson Heights, primarily through plaza maintenance and programming.

"This plaza for me has one objective, it is to integrate diversity into one nation," Saleh explained. We aim to "give equal presence to every single community who lives in this neighborhood."

So far, Diversity Plaza has hosted an array of events such as a five-day Eid Festival, a coffee and chai hour for locals to socialize, live screenings of the last election's presidential and vice presidential debates, and perhaps for the first time in New York City history, an outdoor Community Board meeting.

This past Saturday, June 21st, Diversity Plaza hosted a Summer Solstice Celebration. It featured free art and education workshops, an art exhibition and performances by "Make Music New York," a non-profit that stages participatory music celebrations for the summer and winter solstices (Saturday was the 2014 summer solstice).

Sukhi is not the only group to emerge on behalf of Diversity Plaza. Friends of Diversity Plaza is a coalition of residents and local organizations such as the Jackson Heights Beautification Group, the Jackson Heights Green Alliance, Birchwood Co-op Association, the Hibridos Arts Collective and Chhaya Community Development Corporation, which collaborate with Sukhi, Neighborhood Plaza Partnership and Council Member Dromm's office to make the plaza a vibrant community space that reflects the diversity of the neighborhood.

"Our coalition draws on the extraordinary talents and civic activism of organizations from all over Jackson Heights who are contributing in a variety of ways to making this neighborhood a special place," wrote Shekar Krishnan, chair of Friends of Diversity Plaza, by e-mail. "In bringing together so many groups and people from across our neighborhood, the plaza reflects the remarkable vibrancy and diversity of Jackson Heights. It's a little plaza with a big message!"

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by Katrina Shakarian, Gotham Gazette
@KatShakarian
@GothamGazette