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Max Politics Podcast: Governor Cuomo Faces Series of Scandals and Investigations


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Governor Andrew Cuomo (photo: Darren McGee/Governor's Office)


July 31, 2021 - Max Politics Podcast: Governor Cuomo Faces Series of Scandals and Investigations

Luis Ferré Sadurní, a reporter with the New York Times in the Metro section, and Marina Villeneuve, a reporter with the Associated Press, both of whom cover Governor Andrew Cuomo, joined the show to break down the numerous investigations and scandals the third-term Democrat is facing and what comes next, including the highly-anticipated report from New York State Attorney General Letitia James, the State Assembly impeachment inquiry, and more.

Listen to the conversation and let us know what you think, on Twitter @TweetBenMax. You can listen to the show through the embedded audio below or download the episode wherever you get your podcasts under "Max Politics."

Read more: Max Politics Podcast: Governor Cuomo Faces Series of Scandals and Investigations

State Senate Launches 2021 Election Oversight with Series of Voter-Centered Hearings, Board Reform on Menu


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State Senator Myrie (photo: NY Senate Media Services)


The New York State Senate election committee may be breaking the mold of cyclical and predictable debate about voting administration and its discontents with a series of public hearings meant to broadly chronicle the experiences and ideas of voters across the state.

The committee is holding four hearings "in every corner of the state" to give a platform to voters ahead of the traditional post-election oversight hearing where lawmakers interrogate election administrators and experts about how the process went. That hearing is scheduled for late September and will undoubtedly focus on election errors, particularly in New York City, and the rollout of the city's first major ranked-choice voting election in June. The hearings will be led by Senator Zellnor Myrie, a Brooklyn Democrat and the committee chair, who said he wants to use them to inform "the best solutions for reform and improvements."

"I wanted to hear directly from [voters] on what ideas they have for reform, how they felt the election went, and what they think we should be doing to improve the process," Myrie told Gotham Gazette in a phone interview. "Too often when we hold our hearings, most of the time is spent grilling the government institution of choice and then the public doesn't have that much time before the lawmakers."

While the public always has the opportunity to participate in post-election hearings, Myrie hopes holding multiple ones around the state geared specifically to everyday voters will yield a more detailed picture of election challenges and potential solutions. It could also provide a basis of public support for changes to the operations and structure of the State Board of Elections and local boards, now explicitly partisan and controlled in large part by party bosses, which experts say enables patronage, inefficiency, and incompetence.

"It's customary for us to hold town halls, we do a lot of community events. I sort of see it in that vein and in that spirit, where if you have an interest as a voter, you get put this on the record," Myrie said.

The first hearing is scheduled for Wednesday, July 28, at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn. Members of the public can participate in person or submit written testimony remotely. Two more hearings are scheduled for next week: the first at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse on August 4, and the next at the Monroe County Office Building in Rochester on August 5. A fourth hearing in Westchester County will be announced soon, according to Myrie's office.

The final oversight hearing, where the committee will solicit testimony from the New York City, state, and county boards of elections along with advocates and experts, is set for September 21. The timeline makes it very unlikely they will lead to any changes to state law ahead of the general election a few weeks later, and Myrie and others have made clear they are taking the long-view.

In a statement, Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, a Yonkers Democrat, said the body would be "taking what we learn from these hearings into the next legislative session."

Jarret Berg, an election lawyer and founder of the advocacy group VoteEarlyNY, called the hearing series "a fantastic thing." "I've never in my years doing this seen an aspiration to actually host a series of statewide hearings on this topic and hear from people in their own backyards," he said in a recent interview.

The hearings follow the latest in a line of high-profile administrative blunders that have disenfranchised voters and shaken public confidence in elections. The New York City Board of Elections provoked harsh criticism this summer for releasing an erroneous preliminarily vote count that contained 135,000 test ballots. Ahead of last year's general election, the board mailed up to 100,000 ballots to the wrong absentee voters, effectively voiding those ballots and necessitating a second mailing. In 2016, hundreds of thousands of Brooklyn voters were illegally purged from the rolls. The problems aren't confined to the city; last fall, election administrators in Oneida County failed to process 2,400 voter registration forms before the razor-thin race between Claudia Tenney and Anthony Brindisi for New York's 22nd Congressional District.

The State Senate hearings also come amidst major changes to voting laws in New York. On top of ranked choice voting in New York City, the state is in its third year of early voting, which was part of a series of reforms passed when Democrats took control of the State Senate in 2019 (joining with a Democratic majority in the Assembly and a Democratic governor). It is the second year of universal absentee voting in response to the pandemic, among other changes already being implemented based on new laws. Proposed constitutional amendments to make no-excuse absentee voting permanent and to allow for “same day” voter registration (where voters can register and vote on the same day) will go before voters this fall.

Reformers are now dusting off and honing their positions on the crown jewel of New York election reform: making boards of elections more professional and less partisan. Senate leaders have hinted that the body is open to exploring those changes.

"I think it is a worthy change to discuss," Myrie said of creating a non-partisan election system, which would require a constitutional amendment approved by the Legislature and voters, and fundamental changes to boards of elections. "The current structure was born out of a reform movement to eliminate the dominance of Tammany Hall at the time and I think perhaps that sort of structure has had its time."

"I would caution folks that that is a longer process -- a years-long process," he added. "I don't think voters want to wait for that before they get a product that they deserve. So I'm anxious for us to get to work and do things that might not require such an amendment."

One intermediary step is a bill sponsored by Senator Liz Krueger, a Manhattan Democrat, and Assemblymember Nily Rozic, a Queens Democrat, aimed at professionalizing the New York City Board of Elections. It would require commissioners to meet certain professional qualifications, and make changes to funding and procurement rules. The legislation would also create a bipartisan co-executive directorship requiring approval from the mayor and other elected officials. The bill has some support among good government groups but it doesn't impact jurisdictions outside the city and advocates say improvements to it can be made before potential passage.

"I think it is a good bill," Myrie said. "I don't want to presuppose any policy recommendation before we start hearing from voters and from other stakeholders. But I think the principle of the bill, speaking to professionalization, is certainly one that I think would find wide support publicly."

Making fundamental changes to the notoriously entrenched board of elections structure is a political unknown. It will require the buy-in of Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, former chair of the Bronx Democratic Party with strong ongoing ties to the party apparatus in the borough and beyond. Myrie sees "stiff resistance" from party leaders.

"When you are considering instances where people have gained power from their ability to staff-up boards of elections, you're challenging that power if you say we have to do something differently," Myrie said. "Ultimately everyone is going to have to come to an agreement that we can't keep doing things the same way. If that ruffles a couple of feathers, if that makes certain folks uncomfortable then so be it. The voter is who we are supposed to be in service of."

Good government groups, like the League of Women Voters of New York State  and VoteEarlyNY, also want to see adjustments to the new voting systems. The Senate has passed legislation to allow counties to establish universal early voting sites and to require some college campuses to host polling locations -- neither of which has advanced in the Assembly. Legislation to require pre-paid postage on absentee ballots has sat in committee in both chambers. The New York State John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act, named for the late civil rights leader and congressman and sponsored by Myrie, is an omnibus bill with numerous technical changes to election law. It includes the creation of a central database of information on voter behavior and pre-clearance from the state Attorney General for certain election policies. 

The League of Women Voters and VoteEarlyNY are also among those pushing changes to a law, first introduced by Myrie and recently signed by Governor Andrew Cuomo, that restricts the deadline to apply for an absentee ballot. Lawmakers said the bill, which shortens the deadline by eight days, is intended to address U.S. Postal Service and BOE constraints. VoteEarlyNY has proposed a chapter amendment that would create a deadline of 11 days -- longer than the previous seven-day cut-off, but shorter than the current 15 days.

"It's a perfect example of how New York lawmakers continue to take two steps forward and one step back, watering down these reforms without a good basis for doing so," Berg wrote in an email.

"If it has an adverse effect, just as if any other bill had an adverse effect, we'd take a hard second look at how to change it," Myrie told Gotham Gazette.

"My feeling is we should be legislating during the legislative session," he added of the annual January through June window, and occasional special sessions. "I'm not a huge fan of trying to legislate after the fact."

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by Ethan Geringer-Sameth, reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

Read more by this writer.

Max Politics Podcast: New York's Covid Emergency Rental Assistance Program


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Major housing questions linger in New York (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)


July 27, 2021 - Max Politics Podcast: New York's Covid Emergency Rental Assistance Program

Emma Whitford, a reporter for Law360 who covers real estate and more, joined the show to discuss New York's pandemic housing crisis, eviction moratorium, and state emergency rental assistance program, which has seen major initial problems in its rollout.

Listen to the conversation and let us know what you think, on Twitter @TweetBenMax. You can listen to the show through the embedded audio below and find Max Politics wherever you get your podcasts for this and many other episodes.

Read more: Max Politics Podcast: New York's Covid Emergency Rental Assistance Program

What's The [Data] Point? $150 Million, Alicia Glen on the Future of Governors Island


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What's The [Data] Point? $150 Million, Alicia Glen on the Future of Governors Island [You can download What's The [Data] Point? wherever you get your podcasts, including on iTunes]

Alicia Glen, former deputy mayor for housing and economic development and now chair of the Trust for Governors Island, joined the show to discuss the future of Governors Island and more.

Listen to the conversation and let us know what you think: on Twitter @TweetBenMax & @CBCNY. Listen below or download wherever you get your podcasts!

Read more: What's The [Data] Point? $150 Million, Alicia Glen on the Future of Governors Island

New York Redistricting Commission Kicks Off State's New Map-Drawing Process


Gotham Gazette:

NY State Senate Districts (image via Google Maps)


This year state officials will begin the once-a-decade process of redrawing congressional and state legislative district lines under a new system approved by voters back in 2014.

The lines will be drawn by a commission appointed by Democratic and Republican leaders in the state Legislature rather than by the Legislature itself. After a series of public hearings this summer and fall the commission will submit its proposed maps to the Legislature, which can either approve the lines or reject and ultimately redraw them. The latter possibility, which would take place if the Legislature rejects the commission's proposed maps twice, has increased concerns that the current Democratic supermajorities in the two houses may unilaterally draw district boundaries.

After delays in appointing members and allocating funding, the commission has a lofty task: carving out the proposed units of state and federal representation New Yorkers may know for the next decade.

The state and federal constitution and the Voting Rights Act prevent commissioners and lawmakers from drawing any lines they wish. Districts must be compact, contiguous, and have roughly the same number of residents "as practicable." They cannot be drawn to "discourage competition" or favor incumbents, among other limitations, according to the commission's website. The Voting Rights Act prohibits redistricting that limits the participation of racial groups and other protected classes.

The commission's task is complicated by a potential amendment to the state constitution that, if passed by voters in November, will change some of the redistricting rules and methodology.

The body is now at work, last week announcing eight of nine public hearings as part of an initial virtual "listening tour" to gather public testimony on the dynamics of communities across the state. The hearings are organized by region and commissioners are urging all residents to participate regardless of citizenship. The first hearing is Tuesday (July 20) for Nassau and Suffolk counties.

"Communities do not have to be geographic cities or towns. If your community centers around a local house of worship...that is worth telling the commission," said chair David Imamura, a Democratic district leader from the Village of Irvington, at a virtual press conference last week. "Anything that makes your community special or ties it together is information we want to know when we draw district lines."

New York has some notoriously gerrymandered state legislative districts like Senate District 22, which looks like a jigsaw puzzle piece spanning southern Brooklyn from east to west.

The commission, known officially as the New York Independent Redistricting Commission, has its work cut out for it. Born during the pandemic, it faced delays in confirming members and receiving state funding. A $1 million allocation in last year's state budget never materialized and commission staff worked on a voluntary basis for months, according to Imamura. State lawmakers allocated $4 million to redistricting in the current budget, passed in early April, and the body launched a website last week.

The commission's demographers must still rely on data from the U.S. Census Bureau, which has been postponed because of pandemic-related changes to enumeration deadlines in 2020 and other factors. Originally expected in March, commission staff will not receive block-level population data until August 16.

A month later, on September 15, the commission will publish a preliminary set of district maps and hold another round of public hearings to solicit feedback. Unlike the virtual hearings held this summer, the hearings after preliminary maps are released are statutorily required.

Final proposed maps will go to the Legislature for enactment by the January 1 start of the legislative session. But the Legislature still has the power to send the maps back if it doesn't approve them and after the second time can amend them as lawmakers please (within the statutory restrictions). The maps will ultimately go to the governor's desk, though the Democratic conferences in both the Senate and Assembly have enough members to override a veto.

Good government groups were divided on redistricting reform in 2014. For proponents, the commission was an added layer of insulation from the ruling parties in the Legislature and, with its public hearings, could help increase transparency and reduce gerrymandering.

But critics have said that layer is too porous. The commission has a distinctly bi-partisan character given eight of its ten members are appointed by legislative leaders, two from each majority and minority leader in both chambers, with the final two selected by the other commissioners. The state constitution also requires the commission’s co-executive directors be enrolled one each in the two major political parties.

And legislators still have their veto power and the ability to draw their own lines. (In the last redistricting, with parties splitting control of the two legislative chambers, Democrats kept a dominant hold on the Assembly and Republicans were able to craft Senate lines to help them keep a slim majority there, at least temporarily.)

"They're just appointed by the legislative leaders...and they talk about [their work] in terms of looking at it from the perspective of the appointing authority," said Blair Horner, executive director of the New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG), in a recent interview. "A judge looked at this when it was on the ballot [in 2014] and said you can't use the word ‘independent’ because it's not."

Because Democrats hold majorities in both the Senate and Assembly, the state constitution requires district maps be approved with a two-thirds majority in both chambers. But given their supermajorities in both houses, Democratic legislators will still have ultimate say and could even potentially override a veto from Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo (who has been known to favor a split Legislature in the past).

An amendment before voters this November could add more specificity to some of the criteria, as well as changing deadlines and voting requirements. It too has divided good government groups.

The amendment, first introduced in 2020, would permanently set the number of State Senators at 63 (there are 150 seats in the Assembly). It would explicitly require incarcerated people to be counted in the district they last resided in, not where they are incarcerated, and for residents to be counted regardless of immigration status.

The amendment also advances some of the deadlines for submitting and voting on maps and changes some of the voting thresholds required to pass the new boundaries. Among the changes are a requirement that maps may be passed with 60% of the vote in both legislative chambers and eliminates the requirement that the executive directors be registered party-members.

The League of Women Voters of New York State and Citizens Union, two good government groups that supported the 2014 referendum, oppose the new amendment, in part for lowering the vote threshold. "It disincentivizes the commissioners who have been nominated by the different parties to work together. Why am I going to work together if I know that my party people are not really going to have a say at the end of the day in this process," said Jennifer Wilson, the League’s deputy director, referring to the smaller legislative majority needed to approve maps and the diminished need for bipartisan support.

Other groups like NYPIRG and Common Cause New York, who opposed the 2014 amendment, view the new proposed change as an improvement on the system. "It clarifies and simplifies redistricting in New York and provides a uniform set of voting rules for the commission no matter who is in political power: an important objective for any government entity," said Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause in a statement last July.

Experts say the vote threshold change will not have a big impact on the current process, given Democrats' veto-proof majority in the Senate and Assembly, but may be consequential in subsequent decades.

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by Ethan Geringer-Sameth, reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

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Post-Primary Win, Bragg Promotes Plans for Manhattan DA's Office


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Alvin Bragg at NAN (photo: @AlvinBraggNYC)


Alvin Bragg, the former Chief Deputy Attorney General for New York State, appears likely to become Manhattan’s next District Attorney. After winning the Democratic primary, in the general election Bragg will face Republican nominee Thomas Kenniff, who has a very steep uphill battle given the overwhelmingly Democratic make-up of Manhattan's electorate and other advantages Bragg comes into the race with, including institutional support. Bragg ran a progressive primary campaign, while still treading something of a political middle ground between the more conservative ‘law-and-order’ candidates who were less reform-minded and the far-left candidates whose platforms focused largely on declining to prosecute many crimes, decarceration, and shrinking the district attorney’s office.

A civil rights attorney turned federal prosecutor and a Harlem native, Bragg would be the first ever Black district attorney elected in Manhattan. He has promised to bring a personal approach to public safety, informed by his own experiences, oft-mentioning on the campaign trail that he has had a gun pointed at him six times before the age of twenty-one, including, he says, “three by NYPD officers during unconstitutional stops...and also three by people who were not police officers.”

Since his primary win, Bragg has doubled down in press and other public appearances on the primary messages of his campaign -- community-based public safety that draws on his own lived experience and proportional prosecution based on harm.

“I feel like the voters of Manhattan responded to the message of marrying fairness and safety,” Bragg told Gotham Gazette editor Ben Max on the Max Politics podcast, adding later, “the key language I really tried to drill down on during the campaign is how we respond to those public safety issues. I’ve seen the failures of this, you know, ‘law and order,’ ‘war on drugs’ approach, which locks up whole communities. That’s not true public safety. That’s just bad public policy."

Bragg’s platform involves eliminating prosecution for ‘lower harm’ offenses such as turnstile-jumping, trespassing, and resisting arrest for nonviolent infractions. “We need to focus on things that have public safety implications and impacts -- the kind of things that Manhattanites are sitting around their kitchen tables talking about -- gun trafficking, sexual assaults, things that involve real harm” Bragg explained in a post-election interview with PIX 11 that aired July 11. 

Many major U.S. cities, including New York,  have seen significant increases in gun violence since the pandemic, and former NYPD captain Eric Adams’ success in the Democracic mayoral primary has been attributed in part to his ‘tough on crime’ platform, though Adams has stressed taking a holistic approach to both prevent and intervene in violent crime. Adams, now the Brooklyn borough president and poised to become the city’s second Black mayor, has proposed the reinvention of a special plainclothes unit in the NYPD to break up gun-running, gangs, and other illegal activity related to shootings. Bragg said in an interview with NY1 that he does not agree with this approach. “I don’t think the efficacy is there and I know that the civil liberty infringements are,” Bragg said, in reference to the plainclothes “anti-crime” unit that had a troubled history and the NYPD disbanded last year amid calls for police reform and an end to police brutality.

Combating gun violence remains a priority for Bragg, he assures, adding in the interview, “I certainly have plans to lower the number of shootings -- at the Attorney General's office we looked at every gun found at a crime scene and traced it to its last lawful sale. It's a blueprint for gun interdiction so we’re gonna do that.”

When asked about similarities with Adams’ campaign and messaging, Bragg said during the Max Politics interview the day after primary day that he and Adams have some differences on matters of policy that he will look to explore if they are both fortunate enough to ascend to district attorney and mayor, respectively, but that he has tremendous respect for the way Adams has shared his personal story throughout the campaign and that there is crossover between them there. “We need to, those of us that are in the public square, we need to tell those stories that are in some way everyone’s stories,” Bragg said on Max Politics. Adams talked of being beaten by police as a teenager and later joining the NYPD to make reform from within.

Adams spoke of unity on Saturday at a National Action Network rally hosted by Rev. Al Sharpton where both he and Bragg took the stage. “Our new district attorney and his concepts of how he wants to use that office to deal with public safety, to deal with crime -- it is no different than mine,” Adams said in his speech, adding, “Alvin Bragg is going to redefine a prosecutor's office and how we are going to ensure that we don’t criminalize young people everyday in this city and it’s so important because those that would try to pull us apart they would try and create these tensions and fights -- well Eric said this and you said that -- shut up.” 

Adams went on to pledge that he would work everyday to make Bragg’s job boring -- fighting to protect those with learning disabilities and mental health challenges before they enter the criminal justice system and to intervene in situations involving domestic violence. “His prosecution rate is tied to my educational failure rates,” Adams asserted. 

Speaking after Adams, Bragg mostly stuck to praise of Adams’ personal story and connection to people’s lived experiences, recollecting a speech given by Adams the last time the two were together at a National Action Network event, calling it “the most profound way I've ever heard anyone tell their narrative,” and saying it brought him nearly to tears. Adams has spoken movingly not only about his relationship with policing but also about being on the verge of homelessness as a kid, and more about his personal story that has helped him connect with New Yorkers.

The remainder of Bragg’s speech was centered around the historic nature of both his and Adams’ wins as well as a series of thank yous to the National Action Network, including Sharpton and many others, and a request for further prayers and support. On policy, Bragg returned to a familiar campaign promise to limit incarceration to only those cases in which he believes it is absolutely necessary.

“The state has the power to take away someone’s liberty,” Bragg said. “We are going to use that power judiciously and wisely. We are going to use that for fairness and for safety. We are going to address racial disparities, we are going to have one system of justice for all and we are going to address these guns on our streets.”

Bragg’s comments on gun investigations and tracing are in line with other comments he’s made during the primary campaign and since about the importance of following the “contraband” and punishing those pedaling it rather than the smaller actors who fall victim. “If you follow the money and the contraband they invariably will take you to the most culpable people,” Bragg explained on the Max Politics podcast.

A follow-the-data and address-the-root-causes approach is also apparent in Bragg’s argument against prosecuting small sales of untaxed cigarettes, which he said has been prioritized by the NYPD — including in the deadly case of Eric Garner, whose family Bragg is currently representing in a suit against the city where it is seeking more information about internal decisions about the limited punishment for officers on the scene of Garner’s 2014 killing. It’s much better to trace back those shipments and hold UPS and FedEx accountable, he said on the podcast, advocating for more emphasis on finding the “funders of criminal activity.”

 

“We don’t compartmentalize justice,” Bragg said on Max Politics of the decision to run to be one of the most important prosecutors in the country while involved with the case, where he’s representing Garner’s mother, Gwen Carr. “We want justice and fairness across the board; they're inextricably linked,” he said.

Bragg has been criticized by his Republican general election opponent and conservative media outlets as being ‘pro-crime’ in part because of his stance that not every gun-related crime should be prosecuted. He has indicated that some possession cases should lead to alternative programs. "We need to recognize that not every person charged with possessing an illegal gun in New York City is a driver of violence…,” Bragg’s campaign website states. “Sending these individuals to jail or prison increases the likelihood of recidivism. In short, it does not make Manhattan safer. Fortunately, New York City has a robust array of programming for appropriate gun cases, including a number of programs already used for gun cases in other boroughs.”

“The notion that I don't care about this, or I'm not focused on this is really antithetical to reason,” Bragg said on WNYC’s The Brian Lehrer Show on July 8, in reference to his approach to gun violence and gun crimes. “I've got to walk these streets. My family and loved ones walk in the street. My response is yes, of course, I care. If you look at my body of work, you look at what I've done, I've worked on both public safety issues and fairness issues. I find that a lot of people pushing this narrative don't want to talk about the fairness part. They don't want to talk about the police accountability. They don't want to talk about the effects and the collateral consequences of these cases that have nothing to do with public safety.”

On specifics of the prosecuting policy he plans to bring to the DA’s office, Bragg oft-explains his stance by telling the story of his brother-in-law who served over a year in jail after being rounded up by police after a fist-fight in which five were arrested on gun charges but only one participant had a gun. “There are some gun cases that I think shouldn’t be brought,” he said on NY1. “We’re going to use that kind of life-based experience as a guide to what is really public safety.”

Pressed on the trespassing ‘leniency’ Bragg returned to his common refrain, arguing that “If there’s real harm we’ll charge the real crime.” Trespassing in particular, he says, is a charge that “has sometimes been abused” and used with “great racial disparity,” citing the history of the NYPD’s vertical building sweeps. 

On softening the charges for resisting arrest in some cases, Bragg says this too is about systemic reform. “I’ve based these policies on my life experience and my work experience,” he told NY1. “I have never once seen a good stand-alone resisting arrest charge.” Most of these charges, he explained, are retaliatory, used against someone who is ‘mouthing-off’” to the police. 

For Bragg, these are all components of a larger philosophy he hopes to bring to the position that would reduce incarceration by declining to over-punish for low-level infractions and creating instead a robust and community-centered public safety program. “I think we need to restructure the office,” Bragg explained to NY1, saying, “we need to shift the office’s focus from what I call churn cases, cases where people are going in and out of the system but we’re not addressing underlying issues to more significant issues.” 

Bragg characterized the relationship he plans to have with the NYPD as familial, in his interview with PIX 11, vowing to always tell members of the police department the truth, even when it’s hard, and to share a spirit of cooperation though it’s unlikely they’ll agree on everything. If he is the next DA, his relationship with the next NYPD commissioner, likely an Adams appointee, will be important. In the primary, Bragg spoke a lot about police accountability; police unions endorsed candidate Liz Crotty, who ran the most conservative, traditional campaign in the Democratic field.

“I think there’s a yearning in Manhattan to fundamentally reform our system,” Bragg said on Max Politics. “We have gone throughout the borough and heard, in all corners of the borough, not just up here in Harlem or on the Lower East side, deep concern about police accountability. Deep concern about the types of offenses that we arrest people for that have little to no public safety benefits.”

His focus will always be on public safety implications, he added on PIX 11, saying, “If we don’t have accountability we don’t have community trust and without community trust victims and witnesses don’t come forward and we don’t have public safety.” 

Like Adams and others, Bragg also speaks regularly about focusing on underlying causes without turning first to a law-enforcement solution. His father, whom he oft-referenced on the campaign trail as well, worked in homeless shelters, which he says gave him an up-close view on the way poverty has been criminalized.

“Whether it’s the homeless person that’s taking up two seats on the subway—a real case from this past summer that was prosecuted—or the homeless person who the DA’s office recommended a sentence of internment of five to ten years for, you know, buying food or toothpaste with a counterfeit bill,” Bragg said on Max Politics, “those are not criminal matters for me, and we need to use other tools in the government toolkit to address those and save our criminal, carceral resources for things that are really what New Yorkers are up thinking about, talking about. True public safety issues.”

Bragg also said in the July 8 interview on The Brian Lehrer Show that it’s all about thinking about how to deploy the power of government, not ignoring the problems but also not putting them all under criminal sanction. 

Bragg says he watched his father battle addiction as well and has let that inform his desire to lean into diversion programs for New Yorkers with substance use disorders and to capitalize on the city’s mental health resources to address that crisis. The importance, he says, lies in “matching the right response to the real need and not just reflexively responding with police.” 

Once in office, Bragg would also take control of the case recently brought against the Trump Organization, which involves a 15-count indictment and could expand between now and the end of DA Cyrus Vance’s term, which goes through December, and/or during the next DA’s tenure. While he was unable to comment on specifics, he did tell PIX that he has a history of prosecuting complex white collar cases and feels “very equipped” to handle the matter.

Max Politics Podcast: Senator Liz Krueger on Her Bill to Reform the Board of Elections


Seantor Liz Krueger, center (photo: New York State Senate)


June 30, 2021 - Max Politics Podcast: Senator Liz Krueger on Reforming the Board of Elections

State Senator Liz Krueger has a bill to professionalize the New York City Board of Elections and joined the show in the wake of another BOE debacle to discuss its provisions and its chances of passage.

Listen to the conversation and let us know what you think, on Twitter @TweetBenMax. You can listen to the show through the embedded audio below or download the episode wherever you get your podcasts, under "Max & Murphy," and listen to Max & Murphy live on Wednesdays at 5 p.m. on WBAI radio, 99.5FM or wbai.org.

Read more: Max Politics Podcast: Senator Liz Krueger on Her Bill to Reform the Board of Elections

What's The [Data] Point? $209 Billion, Examining The New York State Budget


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What's The [Data] Point? Episode 108 -- $209 Billion, Examining The New York State Budget [You can download What's The [Data] Point? wherever you get your podcasts, including on iTunes]

$209 billion is the total amount to be spent this state fiscal year according to New York State's Enacted Budget for Fiscal Year 2022. That massive budget, adopted in early April, was bolstered by immense federal aid and higher than expected tax revenues as New York comes out of the devastation of the covid pandemic. The state also raised taxes and made a host of other important decisions that continue to play out as the fiscal year and recovery unfold. Three expert guests joined the podcast to discuss what is happening and what it all means for the state's fiscal future: State Senator Liz Krueger; E.J. McMahon of the Empire Center and Manhattan Institute; and CBC's Director of State Studies Patrick Orecki.

Listen to the conversation and let us know what you think: @TweetBenMax (@TweetBenMax) & @CBCNY (@CBCNY). Listen below or download wherever you get your podcasts!

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by Ben Max, Gotham Gazette
     

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‘Voters of Manhattan Responded to the Message of Marrying Fairness and Safety’: Alvin Bragg Discusses His Lead in the District Attorney Primary


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Alvin Bragg on the campaign trail (photo: @AlvinBraggNYC)


Alvin Bragg, the current frontrunner in the Manhattan District Attorney Democratic primary election, said during an appearance this past week on the Max Politics podcast that he is pleased with how voters responded to his campaign and expressed cautious optimism that his lead will hold when tens of thousands of absentee ballots are counted in the coming weeks.

“I feel good,” Bragg told host Ben Max of Gotham Gazette. “I feel that the voters of Manhattan responded to the message of marrying fairness and safety that I’ve been living for almost 50 years, I’ve been working on for more than 20, and I’ve been talking about on the campaign trail for quite some time now.”

Bragg emerged on top of the eight candidates vying to be the Democratic nominee for Manhattan DA in the fall general election after a tally of in-person votes late Tuesday night. If elected, Bragg, who most recently served as the Chief Deputy Attorney General for New York State, will be the first Black person ever elected to the office, which is Manhattan’s chief prosecutor and state law enforcement official.

The race, still too close to call, has Bragg ahead of Tali Farhadian Weinstein by 7,265 votes, or 3.42%, with almost all of the in-person vote tallied from the early voting period and primary day. About 212,600 in-person votes were tallied, and Bragg received just under 72,000, while Farhadian Weinstein received almost 64,700.

Despite Bragg’s sizable lead, the outcome of the race may hinge on the absentee ballot count -- as of Sunday night, the Board of Elections had received more than 39,000 absentee ballots back from Manhattan Democrats (more than 59,000 were sent out by the BOE upon request from eligible voters).

"We all knew going into today that this race was not going to be decided tonight and it has not been," Farhadian Weinstein said, in part, on primary night. "We are down about 3.9 percent with tens of thousands of ballots from today and about 50,000 absentee ballots left to be counted. And so we have to be patient."

Unlike all of the city government primaries on the ballot this year, the Manhattan District Attorney race is a state office, so ranked-choice voting was not at play. There are no runoffs, either, so whichever candidate gets the most votes wins the primary. The winner of the Democratic primary is all but certain to win the general election given Manhattan’s overwhelming Democratic tilt, but there will be competition from Republican nominee Thomas Kenniff.

While on the campaign trail, Bragg found himself comfortably between multiple leftist, de-carceral candidates—such as current third-place candidate Tahanie Aboushi, who trails Bragg by nearly 50,000 votes—and those further to his right, who took more of a hard-line stance on crime and safety, including Farhadian Weinstein.

After Bragg, Farhadian Weinstein, and Aboushi, the order among the other Democratic candidates in terms of in-person vote totals is Lucy Lang, Diana Florence, Liz Crotty, Eliza Orlins, Dan Quart. Final results will be determined by how the absentee votes break.

While Bragg was circumspect during the Wednesday podcast appearance, his campaign has since used more stark language, with an email to supporters on Sunday signed by Bragg himself with the subject line "Protecting our victory," and seeking to raise funds to help pay for legal battles that may ensue. "Thanks to you, we did something historic on Tuesday," the message says, in part. "While the math overwhelmingly shows we were victorious, our billionaire opponent has not conceded and there are rumblings of coming court challenges." Farhadian Weinstein's wealth became a focal point of the race, especially after she put more than $8 million of her own money into her campaign.

Bragg credits his lead to his campaign’s ability to balance safety and reform, as many voters have encountered both public safety issues and unfairness in the law enforcement and criminal justice system.

“The key language we tried to drill down on during the campaign is how we respond to those public safety issues, right,” he said. “I’ve seen this failure of this, you know, ‘law and order,’ ‘war on drugs’ approach, which locks up whole communities. That’s not true public safety. That’s just bad public policy."

In light of the recent increase in gun violence in the city, Bragg said he plans to enhance gun intervention programs, as well as follow money and contraband to find the most culpable criminals. Overall, he said, the DA’s office needs to pair a community-based public safety model, which can range from community violence interruption programs to hospital visits with victims of gun violence, with smart and effective prosecution.

Additionally, reforming the larger law enforcement system, Bragg said, would free up the DA’s office to focus on the pressing and significant threats to public safety.

“I think there’s a yearning in Manhattan to fundamentally reform our system...,” Bragg said. “We have gone throughout the borough and heard, in all corners of the borough, not just up here in Harlem or on the Lower East side, deep concern about police accountability. Deep concern about the types of offenses that we arrest people for that have little to no public safety benefits.”

One example of enforcement for these types of offenses is the NYPD prioritization of arrests for untaxed cigarette sales, he said. Tracing the sales back to shipments of untaxed cigarettes and prosecuting those in charge of shipments, according to Bragg, would help the DA’s office to truly hold the funders of criminal activity accountable and reduce any problems that occur at the community level.

He also spoke about his father’s struggles with substance abuse and how New York City is indisputably in the midst of a mental health crisis. Bragg said the DA’s office needs to put resources to good use to address the crisis and lean into substance abuse diversion programs.

Bragg criticized law enforcement criminalization of poverty, and asserted that the government should turn to other methods to address issues like homelessness.

“Whether it’s the homeless person that’s taking up two seats on the subway—a real case from this past summer that was prosecuted—or the homeless person who the DA’s office recommended a sentence of internment of five to 10 years for, you know, buying food or toothpaste with a counterfeit bill,” he said. “Those are not criminal matters for me, and we need to use other tools in the government toolkit to address those and save our criminal resources for things that are really what New Yorkers are up thinking about, talking about. True public safety issues.”

When asked about any parallels with mayoral primary frontrunner Eric Adams, a former NYPD captain, Bragg noted they appear to have some policy differences around the role of police, though he did not get into specifics, but acknowledged similarities around how they both highlighted personal experiences in pitching voters on their visions for justice and safety. Bragg, who grew up in central Harlem, said that those in the public square must continue to share their personal narratives as these stories hold power and resonate with voters.

“When we do that, we encourage others to tell their story and we develop public policy around real life experiences...,” he said. “ That power of narrative, and really meeting people where they are and talking about everyday experiences, I think is potent and I really respect Eric for bringing those forward.”

[LISTEN: Max Politics Podcast: Alvin Bragg on His Lead in the Manhattan DA Primary]

[WATCH: Decision NYC: Alvin Bragg Discusses His Campaign for Manhattan District Attorney (from March)]

Ben Max contributed to this story.

State Allows Psychiatric Facilities to Forcibly Vaccinate Patients Against COVID-19


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(photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)


The New York State Office of Mental Health quietly issued guidance in April allowing psychiatric centers to vaccinate patients for COVID-19 over patient objections and without a court order in a unusual break from treatment protocols. The policy makes psychiatric patients in state custody one of the only adult populations in New York subject to forcible vaccination.

The guidance, issued April 22, is a "clarification" giving hospital staff discretion to administer the vaccine without consent, an intrusive action clinical staff and lawyers working with patients say is unnecessary and alarming. It came more than four months after people living in state-run inpatient facilities became eligible for the vaccine and despite uptake being roughly equivalent to the statewide adult vaccination rate.

A spokesperson for the Office of Mental Health (OMH) told Gotham Gazette the agency has not followed through with any forced vaccination though at least one facility had initiated the process before patient representatives objected. OMH would not say how often facilities have attempted to force vaccinations or why the guidance was needed.

The news comes over a year after the coronavirus pandemic swept through OMH psychiatric facilities and disproportionately killed patients living there in close quarters with limited covid safeguards. While OMH said the policy has not led to any vaccination over objection, multiple attempts have been made by staff and it remains on the books. The state psychiatric system, where patients are held involuntarily, has been plagued for decades with due process concerns.

There has been virtually no public oversight of conditions in OMH psychiatric centers by either mental health committee in the State Legislature since the pandemic began.

Under the guidance sent to facility leadership from OMH headquarters, psychiatric centers "may pursue the usual treatment over objection process for routine medical procedures which do not require informed consent."

That means, unlike with psychotropic medications and medical procedures that are typically deemed by the hospital to require "informed consent" (itself a grey area) and a judge's sign-off, hospitals can pursue an internal administrative procedure and possibly avoid a court order to vaccinate a patient against their wishes. If it does get to court (only after multiple internal appeals), the burden of proof is on the patient to show the administration is incorrect or abusing its discretion, a playing field deferential to OMH, lawyers said.

Any medical treatment over objection is rare. In general, hospitals pursue treatment over objection for patients refusing to take antipsychotics and other psychiatric medication and almost never for something as mundane as a vaccine, according to people with knowledge of the facilities. If they do, they normally need a court order before administering any treatment thanks to a 1986 Court of Appeals ruling, Rivers v. Katz, that included treatment choice among an individual's due process rights.

According to one clinical staff member at an upstate OMH facility, employees sometimes discuss the possibility of seeking treatment over objection for medical purposes like kidney treatment or insulin for diabetes, but it usually comes to nothing.

“I’ve never heard of that actually going forward,” they said over the phone, speaking anonymously because they weren't authorized to talk with press. No lawyer or the clinician Gotham Gazette spoke with had ever heard of vaccines being given over objection to psychiatric patients in state institutions.

“Even if you are mentally ill, you are still able to make basic decisions about your medical treatment…To some extent everybody is allowed to make a bad decision for themselves. They might not be able to represent themselves in court, or may not be culpable of a crime but they’re still able to say, ‘I want a treatment’ or ‘don’t want a treatment,’” the staff member said.

But the April guidance says hospitals can unilaterally seek treatment over objection without a Rivers hearing under a more limited protocol used for "routine" and ostensibly non-invasive regimens. In these cases, appeals by the patient must go through multiple levels of hospital leadership all the way up to the OMH Commissioner before they can go before an external court. That is a matter of attrition and the objection may never reach a judge, lawyers say.

The agency has denied any vaccinations over objection have taken place under the guidance. "OMH has not vaccinated anyone over objection and we would not do so without a court order. The April 22 clarification is for patients without capacity who are NOT objecting," wrote OMH spokesperson James Plastiras in an email. He later clarified, after an inquiry, that the guidance did include instructions on vaccination over patients' objections: "The last line of the guidance points out that this does not pertain to patients with impaired decisional capacity who object. In those instances, facilities were directed to follow normal procedures for treatment over objection. In any case, OMH has not vaccinated anyone over objection."

OMH has not said why the guidance was needed or how many patients may have been targeted for the procedure. One facility did try to vaccinate patients over their objections, according to Plastiras, but voluntarily ended the process. People with knowledge of the situation said several patients were in line to be injected before the facility pulled the plug after lawyers and clinical staff objected.

"While an OMH facility did seek treatment over objection for patients with impaired decisional capacity as permitted under 14 NYCRR § 27.8, those notices were subsequently withdrawn. No OMH patients or clients have been vaccinated over their objection," Plastiras wrote. He did not say which facility or how many patients were targeted.

About two thirds, 68%, of the 3,390 people living in in-patient state psychiatric facilities have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, according to OMH as of June 15, compared to 70% of adult New Yorkers statewide. The rate among the roughly 12,500 OMH facility staff is 72%.

"As far as the patients are concerned, a lot of them saw their friends die. They were ready for the vaccine the day it was available," the clinician said.

Treatments over objection orders can be traumatic and in some cases dangerous. Often patients acquiesce to the treatment, which must be in the form of an injection. But when they refuse, they are either held down in their beds by hospital staff or put into a restraint bed and moved to a seclusion room.

“The preferable way is to have staff physically restrain because it’s much faster…it almost always happens in their bedroom, on the bed. But if a patient is fighting…then they do use a restraint bed,” the clinician said. From their own experience working with patients, they estimated about one in five cases of refusal require restraint and only a fraction of those are seriously violent.

The only similar situation is the state Office for People with Developmental Disabilities (OPWDD), a branch of OMH separate from psychiatric centers. OPWDD expanded the mandate of so-called Informed Consent Committees -- administrative bodies established at each provider to oversee consent for certain procedures -- to include COVID-19 vaccines in cases where clients could not consent because of a developmental disability and lacked a designated surrogate.

"For those who do not have another authorized surrogate decision-maker to assist them, Informed Consent Committees have been authorized to provide informed consent for the COVID-19 vaccine pursuant to regulation and based on each person’s wants and needs,” wrote OPWDD spokesperson Jennifer O’Sullivan in an email. She did not confirm whether ICCs have been used in cases where clients actively refused a covid inoculation.

The vaccination rate of people living in OPWDD residential facilities was 86.5%, according to O'Sullivan, well above the state average and dwarfing the 38.2% of OPWDD clients living at home or in their community. The office did not have data on the number of clients vaccinated through an ICC.

***
by Ethan Geringer-Sameth, reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

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