Gov. Cuomo gives dire warnings about hospital capacity (photo: Darren McGee/Governor's Office)

City and state officials have been saying for over a week that as the spread of coronavirus continues New York's hospitals will not be able to provide life-saving treatment for everyone who needs it. One of the most immediate needs is ventilators, which are required to save the most critical COVID-19 patients and are already in short supply in New York City hospitals. With the note of alarm reaching a fever pitch in recent days, public health officials have not made available an official policy regarding ventilator triage, and have not said that any exist.

The pace of urgent developments and the overwhelming set of challenges posed by the unprecedented coronavirus crisis have left the state's highest officials themselves triaging the most pressing life-or-death matters. Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio have been calling on the federal government to provide more medical supplies -- most importantly ventilators -- while also pursuing them themselves.

Saying on Sunday that he had actually been able to secure an additional 6,000 ventilators, Cuomo said, "Ventilators are the most important piece of equipment and the piece of equipment that is most scarce.”

De Blasio is now saying New York City will need more ventilators very soon to avoid additional loss of life. The mayor said on CNN Monday morning that on Sunday evening he told President Trump and Vice President Pence, “if we don't get a supply of ventilators quickly, our public hospital system, literally after about a week or so, we will not have enough ventilators to keep people alive who could live through this crisis and could be saved.”

As of Monday afternoon, 1,500 of the city's 3,500 ventilators were in use, according to the mayor's office, and the administration is seeking 15,000 from the federal government by April. In the afternoon, the mayor announced the federal government was sending the city an initial 400 ventilators to help.

Calling ventilators “the number one precious commodity” during a Monday briefing from Albany, Cuomo said that there are 3,000 ICU beds across the state, but that “we may need between 18,000 to 37,000. That's my greatest concern because that's where we need ventilators to turn those ICU beds into beds for people suffering from the virus."

But as they predict dire situations and scramble to secure more ventilators, New York government and public health officials do not yet appear to be creating any ventilator allocation policies. 

And the likely shortfall and short timeline are worrisome for medical ethicists who say any government policy that may ultimately dictate who lives and who dies should be thoroughly communicated and publicly vetted.

Asked about ventilator triage guidelines and policy-making, a spokesperson for the city's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene told Gotham Gazette that such guidelines fall into the state Department of Health’s jurisdiction.

In response to a Gotham Gazette inquiry about how difficult decisions will be made by doctors when there are not enough ventilators to save every patient, a spokesperson for the state Department of Health (DOH) wrote: "Under Governor Cuomo’s direction, hospitals in New York State continue to rapidly modify their current operating function to accommodate increasing support for patients with COVID-19 as well as the rest of the hospital population. Specific tactics include stopping elective procedures, reducing current inpatient population and expanding bed capacity. Commissioner of Health Dr. Howard Zucker has discussed this with senior hospital leadership from throughout New York State, and this is being enacted throughout the state."

A council led by Ken Raske, president of the Greater New York Hospital Association, and Michael Dowling, president of Northwell Health, has been tasked by the governor with developing hospital surge capacity. That body would be responsible for making decisions about ventilator allocation, according to another DOH spokesperson.

At this point in the state's response, the council is discussing every aspect of managing hospital surge, that spokesperson said, with the focus now on ensuring that the required equipment and processes are in place. Cuomo has already made several announcements about how the state is increasing hospital capacity, including with federal help.

In 2015, the DOH's New York State Task Force on Life and the Law developed guidelines for ventilators in a influenza pandemic, which Zucker described as "a foreseeable threat" in the report's introduction. While the task force's guidelines were designed with a "severe pandemic" in mind, the DOH spokesperson said that it is not a binding policy document steering the state's response, though it has been well circulated and read recently within the Department.

Notably, an FAQ accompanying the report specifically mentioned that the state would not be able to stockpile enough ventilators for such a scenario. The stated question was, "Can the State stockpile as many ventilators as would be needed in a severe pandemic?" The answer reads, "Even if New York State purchases additional ventilators, the demand would quickly outpace supply in a severe pandemic. No matter how many ventilators are available, in a severe pandemic there will be shortages because so many people will be sick at the same time. In addition, even with enough ventilators, a sufficient number of trained staff may not be available to operate them, particularly because health care workers will be among the ill."      

The guidelines are broken into three different categories for triaging ventilators (adult, pediatric, and neonatal guidelines) and consider a set of exclusion criteria and mortality risk with treatment. Exclusion criteria include medical conditions connected with "immediate or near-immediate mortality even with aggressive therapy," according to a fact sheet accompanying the document.

Advanced age, disability, “social worth,” are not exclusion criteria under the guidelines. Healthcare providers assessing adult mortality risk use a scoring system called SOFA (Sequential Organ Failure Assessment). For pediatric and neonatal, determinations should be made through "physician clinical judgment, a structured decision-making process that carefully considers only specific clinical factors based on available medical evidence," the sheet said.

Ethicists have been thinking about this at least since the SARS outbreak in 2003, according to Dr. Alison Bateman-House, assistant professor in the Division of Medical Ethics at NYU School of Medicine attached to NYU Langone Health. "When we saw the SARS epidemic and there were more people critically ill than we had the machines to provide for, people actually did the hard work of sitting down and saying, 'Well, if we're going to have to make difficult choices, how do we make them?'"

"Obviously no one was planning per se for COVID-19, because it is new and novel, but the basic principles were there of, there is some sort of respiratory disease that is widely infectious and we don't have enough equipment, how do we prioritize?" she said of the 2015 task force guidelines.

The task force estimated that in a severe pandemic the state could see a shortfall of as many as 15,783 ventilators. President Trump, citing claims made in an op-ed published by former New York State Lieutenant Governor Betsy McCaughey, said Tuesday that New York's current projected shortfall is Cuomo's failure for not purchasing more ventilators in 2015.

The report briefly addresses the idea of stockpiling ventilators and illuminates the state's thinking in 2015. "The State’s current approach to stockpiling a limited number of ventilators balances the need to prepare for a potential pandemic against the need to maintain adequate funding for current and ongoing health care expenses," the report reads. At the time, the state had 1,750 ventilators in reserve.

A footnote later states: "There are significant financial burdens associated with obtaining, storing, and maintaining equipment and supplies. In addition, stockpiling results in significant opportunity costs when choosing stockpiling over another priority."

In terms of hospital capacity, Governor Cuomo has been focused on three things: reducing the rate of the outbreak's spread to help distribute the burden on hospitals over a longer period of time; building new hospital space with the help of the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and local stakeholders; and securing necessary medical equipment, from masks to gowns to ventilators. The state DOH says there are also plans to redistribute resources from hospitals in areas that have not been hit hardest.

With more than 60% of the confirmed coronavirus cases statewide, New York City's hospitals may experience the most imminent shortages. As of 6 p.m. Sunday, the Mayor’s Office reported 10,764 positive cases of COVID-19 and 99 related fatalities, with at least 1,800 people hospitalized due to the virus, and of those individuals, at least 450 in the ICU, where ventilators are typically used.

“I made clear to them what I need right now is action, not words, and every day counts because we're literally in that very tight window now that if we don't get the ventilators in particular we will actually start to lose lives who could have been saved,” de Blasio said on CNN Monday of his conversation with Trump and Pence.

The mayor is imploring the federal government to deliver ventilators, surgical masks, gloves and gowns using its emergency production powers, which have in previous times of crisis been used to mandate factories produce necessary supplies. Even as he also asks Trump to produce more ventilators and other essential supplies and deliver them to New York, Cuomo has been purchasing and otherwise securing such equipment. The governor made the Sunday announcement that the state has purchased an additional 6,000 ventilators and is redistributing existing ones to the areas with the highest needs throughout the state, he said.

As with the state, the city's public health officials have not formalized a plan for ventilator allocation and in some ways appear to be ignoring the issue.

A spokesperson for New York City Health + Hospitals, the city's system of 16 public hospitals and other health care facilities, told Gotham Gazette by email Friday that there were no plans to implement ventilator triage and that every patient who needs a ventilator would receive one. The spokesperson noted that Health + Hospitals is a single health system that could shift resources from one facility to another as needed, and that it is coordinating closely with city, state, and federal agencies to ensure the most clinically appropriate care is provided.

In response to an inquiry Friday seeking clarity on the apparently contradictory information coming from the Mayor and Health + Hospitals, a spokesperson wrote, "We expect to meet our patient’s [sic] needs."

In terms of the city's private hospitals and coordination with City Hall and the public system, mayoral spokesperson Freddi Goldstein said that "There is a daily call” among Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services Dr. Raul Perea-Henze, Health + Hospitals CEO Dr. Mitchell Katz, and Ken Raske, the president and CEO of the Greater New York Hospital Association, which represents 250 not-for-profit hospitals in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Rhode Island.

During an appearance this past week on the New York Times podcast The Daily, host Michael Barbaro asked Governor Cuomo about how the apparently imminent choices of which critical patients get ventilators and which do not will be made. "Well, I pray we don’t get there,” Cuomo said. “But if we get there, it should be a medical decision. Unless God intervenes and God makes the determination first."

Note: This article has been updated with the latest ventilator information from the mayor's office on Monday afternoon and Cuomo's Monday comments about ventilators and ICU beds, as well as additional information on ventilator stockpiles from the 2015 DOH Task Force report. 

A near-empty chamber conducts Senate business (photo: NY Senate Media Services)

As New York has become the country’s epicenter of the global coronavirus pandemic, Governor Andrew Cuomo has stepped onto the national stage as New York's (and the region's) captain, coordinating the state's response to the outbreak with a profusion of executive orders and fireside chats from the State Capitol, streamed daily and with PowerPoint.

The governor has signed 11 executive orders, suspending dozens of laws, as he, his top aides, and public health officials respond to the most pressing needs presented by the emergency. He has been speaking regularly with President Trump and is leading a growing coalition of states in taking unified action to battle the novel coronavirus.

"I accept full responsibility," the governor said Friday when he signed a sweeping order to require all non-essential businesses statewide to close or stop having employees commute to work. "If someone is unhappy, somebody wants to blame someone, people complain about someone, blame me. There is no one else who is responsible for this decision."

While the Legislature retains some significant power in an emergency, like the ability to override any executive emergency decree, it so far has settled into a role of limited checks on Cuomo's executive power as the disaster unfolds. Few question the necessity of swift, resolute government during a crisis like the COVID-19 outbreak in New York. But some watchdogs note the legislative branch has become marginal in governing during the crisis, while much of the state's complex legal and regulatory framework is pushed aside.

The governor's emergency powers come from a set of statutes known as the Executive Law, which give Cuomo virtually unilateral discretion to modify or suspend any law or regulation in a disaster. At his request, the governor's power in such circumstances was recently expanded through legislation passed by the two Democratic majorities of the Legislature, along with a $40 million package to help him fight the virus.

"The governor has very broad power to set aside, modify provisions of state and local law in a disaster to address the disaster," said Evan Davis, senior counsel at the law firm Cleary Gottlieb and former counsel to Governor Mario Cuomo in the 1980s. "And the limit on that power is: the Legislature may terminate...anything that the governor has done."

"They do have an ability to pull the governor back, but whether or not they have the interest in doing so is another question entirely," said Blair Horner, executive director of the New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG), a good government watchdog.

The reasons are complicated. The State Legislature is a huge, two-house, many-member body that operates on majority rule, and simply cannot act as quickly as the governor. Because of its congregational nature, its day-to-day operations have been profoundly disrupted by social distancing mandates (somewhat unique to the coronavirus, as opposed to a hurricane, terrorist attack, or many other emergency events). And the speed of new information about the outbreak and the number of new directives being issued by state, city, and federal officials daily is unprecedented in recent history.

On March 3, the Legislature passed and Cuomo quickly signed the bill freeing up $40 million in state funds to go toward emergency coronavirus management and amending the Executive Law to give the governor greater powers during an emergency, which will not expire until April 30, 2021, a move that has raised concerns among advocates like Horner.

The amended law gives Cuomo the power to suspend any law and authorizes him to issue "any directive" as long as it is "necessary to cope with the disaster." But the statute retains an important clause, which gives the Legislature power to terminate any order of the governor's through concurrent resolution. A majority vote in both chambers is sufficient to block any executive action.

"So it's sort of important that the Legislature stays open for business at the capacity to act, otherwise they lack all capacity to be a check on an absolute power by the chief executive," Davis said.

"Obviously you want to defer greatly to the chief executive in this kind of situation but absolute power is never a good idea," he added.

How exactly the Legislature "stays open for business" poses another challenge, with three lawmakers already testing positive for COVID-19, all in the Assembly, and activity in the chambers reduced to a trickle as government employees move mostly to remote work. Davis suggests the Legislature can use its termination power under the Executive Law as a check on Cuomo, to bring him to the table in setting the parameters for executive orders.

There is no provision in state law that requires the governor to give advance notice of executive orders to the Legislature, Davis noted.

"We are working closely with the Executive and the Assembly," wrote Gary Ginsburg, a spokesperson for the State Senate majority conference, by email. Spokespeople for Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, and Cuomo (all Democrats) did not respond to inquiries about the nature of communication among the leaders around executive orders, or whether norms around their vetting are being established.

Legislators have returned to Albany to pass some key bills, including paid sick leave, doing so using a special new approach to social distancing while debating and voting in the chambers.

Having moved largely to tele-commuting and facing the pressures posed by the outbreak, Horner fears legislators may have also lost ground in negotiating the state budget, which is due April 1.

"The governor is in the driver's seat to begin with, the Legislature now really is not even in the front seat anymore. They've moved to the back seat when it comes to the budget," he said.

Budget negotiations are happening, and legislators may return to the capital this week, possibly to vote on a deal if one comes together. Cuomo has insisted that legislators should continue to travel to the capital to do their work and pass a budget before the April 1 deadline, which starts the new fiscal year. He’s also said he wants to include a variety of policy decisions in the budget deal, an annual Albany practice but where the governor is potentially able to exercise even more leverage this year.

"It's not like they haven't thought about the [Executive Law], they just passed an amendment to it a couple of weeks ago,” Horner said of legislators. “They are well aware of their powers, they are well aware they could put the brakes on the governor if they wished, and there's no evidence that they wished to do so.”

State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli on state finances (photo: Governor's Office)

March 18, 2020 - Max & Murphy Podcast: Coronavirus' Impact on State Finances, with Comptroller Tom DiNapoli

New York State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli joined the show to discuss how the coronavirus crisis may impact state finances and more. The comptroller talked with us just after his office put out a new analysis, at the request of Governor Andrew Cuomo, of how the coronavirus outbreak and its impacts may reduce expected state tax revenue for next fiscal year, which showed a roughly $4 billion to $7 billion drop from the $88 billion previously forecasted. What does it mean? Listen in.

Listen to the conversation and let us know what you think -- we're on Twitter @TweetBenMax and @JarrettMurphy. 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.

Major challenges now & ahead for Mayor & Governor (photo: Rob Bennett/Mayor's Office)

New York has weathered financial storms before, including after the 2008 recession and the September terror attacks in 2001. But the COVID-19 pandemic threatens to eclipse the scope of both those emergencies. The fiscal impact on the economy is impossible to predict with any certainty but suffice it to say, it will put a major dent in the city’s and state’s budgets for the coming fiscal year.

In January, Governor Andrew Cuomo proposed a $178 billion executive budget for the 2021 fiscal year that begins April 1, which includes $105.8 billion in state operational spending (the rest comes from federal funds). In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio’s own preliminary budget proposal was for $95.3 billion for the fiscal year that starts July 1.

But state and city resources are expected to be taxed to their limits as officials mobilize to combat the spread of the coronavirus, while tax revenues to all levels of government plummet. Bars and restaurants have closed. Hotels are empty. Broadway is shuttered. Tourism is at a standstill. The cumulative impact on city and state tax receipts is expected to be in the billions, particularly as the pandemic could also trigger an economic recession that experts had already been expecting in some form.

New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli released an estimate of the fiscal impact on state revenues on Tuesday, at the request of Governor Cuomo. He predicted that “the most optimistic revenue scenario” would be that tax receipts to the state are $4 billion lower than executive budget projections (of roughly $88 billion) and, if the stock market continues to decline and a recession sets in, that figure could be $7 billion. “Definitive estimates of the COVID-19 impact on the economy and State revenues are not possible, in part because the ultimate health and social impacts of the virus are currently unknowable,” the comptroller wrote.

DiNapoli noted that it would be tough to quantify mitigating actions by the federal government that could have a positive effect such as increasing unemployment insurance or assuming a greater share of state Medicaid costs.

“[O]ur budget as we prepared it is possibly overly optimistic,” Cuomo said in response to the comptroller’s projections on Tuesday, at his daily briefing on the coronavirus. State budget director Robert Mujica also noted that the comptroller’s estimate was done before a major stock market sell off on Monday and that the state will also have to wait to see whether the federal government decides to extend the date for filing personal income taxes, which make up the major share of state revenue.

“It really goes back to, essentially, the federal government will have to step in here to deal with this because we will have our own liquidity issues if we don’t get some relief,” Mujica said.

He said any state budget adopted during the pandemic would need to be adaptable. “We don’t know how long this is going to last...so we need a budget that’s in place that gives us the flexibility to hold payments back, modulate things, move payments ahead of time for health care.”

Cuomo said that if revenues continue to slow as he expects, “we have to have a built-in mechanism to adjust the expenditures.” (The governor has in the recent past pushed through measures to give himself more budget flexibility.)

The projections are dire, particularly as the state budget season already began with an expected budget gap of $6.1 billion, mostly from rising Medicaid costs that the governor hoped to close through another overhaul of the state Medicaid program. The state’s reserves are also a paltry $2.5 billion (which includes $428 million that is planned to be added by the end of the current fiscal year).

In the city, Comptroller Scott Stringer estimated that, conservatively, the coronavirus would lead to a $3.2 billion loss in city revenue over the next six months based on declining sales in restaurants, retail, and real estate, and falling occupancy rates at hotels.

Stringer called on the mayor to aggressively take steps to cut $1.4 billion in spending across city agencies, with lower savings mandates for social services agencies and exemptions for the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and NYC Health + Hospitals, which are obviously on the frontlines of fighting the virus and its medical aftermath. He also urged measures to protect small businesses and the non-profit human service providers that the city contracts with for many vital programs.

“As we brace for the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, we must protect our children, our seniors, our small businesses, and the arts and cultural organizations that are core to our economy and our identity as a city,” Stringer said in a statement. “We’re facing the possibility of a prolonged recession — we need to save now, before it’s too late, if we’re going to weather the downturn ahead.”

The city does have a fairly robust well of reserve funding – nearly $6 billion – but Stringer and other watchdogs like the nonprofit Citizens Budget Commission have warned the de Blasio administration for years that those funds would be insufficient to survive a prolonged recession, which seems more likely by the day.

Across the entire state, a confluence of factors may wreak havoc on jobs and income. The economy gets a large portion of revenue from Wall Street, which has been roiled by the effects of the coronavirus on global markets. Out-of-work employees not only won’t be paying taxes, but there’s already been a surge of applications for unemployment benefits that will itself tap state resources in a significant way. And the largest growing employment sector has been health care, which accounted for 40% of job growth in New York City in 2019. Within that, home health services accounted for 78% of health care jobs added and is one segment where providers and clients will be particularly vulnerable to the virus itself.

For fiscal watchdogs who have raised red flags about increasing state and city spending for years and warned about stormy weather on the horizon, the rainy day they expected is here albeit in a form than they imagined.

E.J. McMahon, founder and research director of the Empire Center for Public Policy, urged in a blog post on Tuesday that the state should swiftly pass a budget that gives the governor the flexibility to which Cuomo alluded. McMahon pointed out that, as currently written, the law limits how the governor can adjust spending once a budget is adopted. He can either cut from agency spending, which makes up one-fifth of the budget or cut local assistance funding by 1% of state operating funds, which would amount to just over $1 billion.

“Even assuming the governor squeezes 10 percent out of agency operations, the further cuts allowed by the discretionary provision would fall $1 billion short of DiNapoli’s best-case revenue scenario, and $4 billion short of the worst case,” McMahon wrote. He said the longer it takes to resolve the budget, the worse the problem will be and it will fall squarely at the governor’s feet regardless.

DiNapoli is also pointing out that if the federal government takes what appears to be a likely step of allowing people to file their taxes at a new deadline past the typical April 15 date, that could impact the state’s receipts, even temporarily, and cause cash flow issues.

New York City, with its reliance on property taxes, may be more steady over the next few months than New York State. Maria Doulis, vice president of Citizens Budget Commission, said it’s unclear “whether this is sort of a blip and then economic activity rebounds or whether it is going to punch us into a more prolonged recession.” She pointed out that in previous recessions, the city lost between $15-20 billion in revenue over three years compared to projections. “What the city has available to deal with that is just a fraction of that amount,” she said.

Doulis said it was surprising that the mayor has not already announced a Program to Eliminate the Gap, which would mandate savings and efficiency targets at city agencies. Unlike the state, the city’s budget is required by law to be balanced so that expenditures match revenues. “While the response [to the coronavirus] is going to necessitate greater spending on certain areas, it's all the more important to tighten the belt in the other areas of the budget,” Doulis said.

“This is something that's affecting all state and local governments and it's not clear that New York will be disproportionately favored in any federal government response,” she said.

Nicole Gelinas, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, believes the city may be hit harder than what the comptroller has estimated. She noted that taxes dropped by nearly $3 billion “almost overnight” after the 2008 recession, about an 8% reduction. “If we were to lose 8% of tax revenues this time, looking at next year's budget, we'd be looking at a $5 billion tax revenue drop,” she said.

Gelinas noted that the coronavirus pandemic is also unlike the effects that the recession or the September 11, 2001 terror attacks had on the city’s economy. The attacks did not lead to an extended virtual shutdown of the city and most businesses outside of ground zero that did close were soon back up and running. After the recession, the tourism industry helped the city rebound faster than other municipalities.

“This is a very different case. I mean, we have huge swaths of the economy just shut down,” Gelinas said.

The emergency might require drastic budget measures, she said, noting that spending has gone up by $20 billion under de Blasio. “We didn't enter this from a very good condition but the fact of the matter is now it's a pretty big emergency. So I don't think we're gonna get out of this just by cutting back the workers that de Blasio added to the payroll, which in itself is a difficult thing to do,” she said of the mayor’s massive expansion of the city workforce.

The city may also have to take unpopular steps to contend with the crisis, including by potentially instituting a wage freeze for municipal employees who have received raises through union contracts. “This is certainly going to rival the 1970s fiscal crisis in terms of the immediate cash crunch that it gives us,” she said.

Gelinas also worries that the property tax base would be hit by restaurants, retailers, and commercial tenants seeking moratoriums on their rent.

James Parrott, an economist at the New School, told the Wall Street Journal that the city could lose as many as 500,000 jobs by the end of the month, while Gelinas believes that number is also an understatement. She noted that the leisure and hospitality industries employ 450,000 New Yorkers and nearly 60% of those are likely facing temporary layoffs. Retail has another 340,000, which won’t be as badly affected, but will probably see “double digit percentage declines” nonetheless. And the financial industry will probably also see layoffs with markets cratering.

And though the city budget may not be affected by it, Gelinas also noted that the MTA will “run out of cash very quickly” as New Yorkers stop using mass transit during the pandemic (transit authority leadership asked the federal government for a $4 billion bailout on Tuesday).

Ronnie Lowenstein, executive director of the city’s Independent Budget Office, echoed Gelinas on the unique aspects of this current fiscal emergency. She noted that the city was already heading into a downturn when the September 11, 2001 attacks happened, and while the federal government pumped aid to the city, the state relaxed financial rules for the budget. “And the city fought its way back,” Lowenstein said.

The 2008 recession, on the other hand, was precipitated by the subprime mortgage crisis, which had less impact on a city that’s mostly home to renters than some might assume, and again the federal government soon intervened to bail out some Wall Street banks. Jobs contracted but at a far lower rate than previous recessions and even far lower than the national average.

“It's hard to see how New York could be so lucky a third time in a row,” Lowenstein said.

Assuming the state does not suspend the requirements that the city balance its budget, Lowenstein said there are three options, which may all leave the city at the mercy of the state and federal government: “Tap into other levels of government for aid or find ways to raise revenues either permanently or temporarily, almost all of which, except for the rate on the property tax, has to go to Albany.”

NYCHA is on the brink (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)

Despite significant attention from Mayor Bill de Blasio and some from Governor Andrew Cuomo, the New York City Housing Authority, public housing home to more than 400,000 New Yorkers, continues to crumble. While both the mayor and governor, as well as many others, point to federal disinvestment in NYCHA, dissatisfied elected officials say that initial drafts of next fiscal year’s state and city budgets aren’t sufficiently addressing the problem.

As they push for more funding to a public housing authority with well more than $30 billion in estimated physical needs to enter a state of good repair, some have even threatened to vote against any budget that does not include a massive infusion of funds for NYCHA.

A growing chorus calling for more state and city money for NYCHA has been somewhat muted, at least temporarily, by the coronavirus outbreak, which is sure to bedevil the ongoing budget discussions. A new state budget is due by April 1; a city budget by July 1.   

For decades, public housing has been underfunded by the federal government, leaving the state and city to pick up the slack. But successive administrations showed little indication of taking the issue seriously, which left a ticking time bomb that exploded on de Blasio’s watch. While public housing is largely governed by federal law, the mayor appoints the leadership of the authority and is responsible for its day-to-day operations and conditions.

The latest federal budget proposed by the Trump administration would also slash funding for public housing further, including completely eliminating capital funding (which is currently about $582 million), $5 billion in cuts to Section 8 rental vouchers (the city would lose about 6,300 vouchers), and a 10% cut to operating funds for public housing agencies across the country (which would equate to about $100 million for the city).

NYCHA has had a few victories and mostly setbacks under the de Blasio administration. The administration was able to bring NYCHA’s operating expenses under control and has also put into place NYCHA 2.0, a plan to raise $24 billion in capital funds for repairs and maintenance at housing developments. But those funds are not only a long way from being realized, they are also eclipsed by the agency’s $32 billion capital need, which could rise to as much as $68 billion by 2028, noted Council Member Vanessa Gibson, at a NYCHA budget hearing on Friday, March 13. (Council Member Alicka Ampry-Samuel, who chairs the public housing committee, was absent and Gibson, who chairs the capital budget subcommittee, chaired the hearing in her stead.)

Early in the hearing, Gibson raised the red flag about NYCHA’s worrying funding gaps for critical capital repair and maintenance. “While NYCHA 2.0 is a big and bold plan, it still leaves about $9 billion in unfunded capital needs across its portfolio and does not account for the fact that NYCHA’s capital need could as much as double by the end of the ten-year plan,” she said.

NYCHA is also currently under the purview of a federal monitor, Bart Schwartz, installed last year in agreement with the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, after the authority was found to have falsified lead abatement reports for years. Lead and mold at housing developments continue to plague the city, which is undertaking a concerted effort to remediate those conditions. Heat and hot water outages have become all too common in the winter, though emergency measures and a milder winter have meant fewer outages this year. Adding to the authority’s woes is the coronavirus outbreak, which has affected the operations of the entire city government.

NYCHA’s budget cycle begins in January, as opposed to the city’s, which begins in July. Its 2020 budget was adopted in December. The agency has a $3.75 billion annual operating budget, and was projecting a surplus of $91 million in revenues at the end of the year.

At the budget hearing, Greg Russ, chair and CEO of NYCHA, detailed the authority’s various efforts to meet its obligations under the federal agreement, including putting $2.2 billion in city funding towards capital repairs over the next ten years. “Mayor de Blasio has committed an unprecedented level of resources to the authority,” he stressed in his opening remarks, “a total of $6.4 billion, including $1.3 billion to repair nearly 1,000 roofs and $200 million to replace boilers and upgrade heating systems.”

He also previewed several other measures the agency is taking to improve operations and conditions at housing developments. An additional $100 million in state capital funds will go to fulfilling the federal agreement, after a spending plan for the allocated money was approved by the state. He promised that a new organizational plan for the authority will be released this summer.

NYCHA is also creating a small projects management team for capital projects as well as a new staff position to act as a liaison with the City Council to oversee current and future capital projects funded by the city. The agency’s lead action plan is being submitted to the federal monitor for his approval. 

Even as NYCHA contends with a capital needs gap, the proposed federal cuts “would completely spin us in the wrong direction in terms of the investment that we have to make,” Russ said. “These are significant cuts that the President and the administration have proposed and they're unconscionable.”

He did say he did not expect federal capital funding to be zeroed out, putting faith in the Congress to push back against the cuts. And he said the authority could continue to manage day-to-day operations even if operating funds were reduced.

Russ also testified about aspects of the NYCHA 2.0 plan that are underway to raise funds for the authority’s housing stock and renovate and repair 62,000 apartments by 2028. Those particularly involve utilizing the Permanent Affordability Commitment Together (PACT) program and federal Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) program. Under PACT, the housing authority partners with private entities to maintain and repair developments, with housing units transferred to the Section 8 housing program. Through the program, Russ said the city has so far addressed $1.1 billion in capital needs by converting almost 7,800 apartments in 30 housing developments to Section 8 funding. He said 21,000 apartments would be “in the conversion pipeline” by this spring. Just last month, the authority selected five development teams to convert 5,908 apartments in Manhattan and Brooklyn to the program, agreements expected to cover $1.5 billion in critical capital needs.  

There was, however, little discussion of other parts of the plan, including the sale of air rights and allowing private developers to build mixed-income housing on NYCHA land, also known as infill development. Infill projects were aimed at raising as much as $2 billion for the agency over ten years but have failed to move forward so far. Some air rights sales have been completed, though. 

On March 19, the New York State Assembly's Manhattan delegation released a report that highlighted conditions at NYCHA developments and tenant needs. Among several recommendations, the delegation urged the state to find a dedicated funding stream for the ailing agency as well as to provide more transparency around existing funding and how it is utilized. "Written prior to the COVID-19 State of Emergency, the pandemic further highlights that, for over 400,000 NYCHA tenants in substandard housing, the public housing crisis is a public health crisis,” said Assemblymember Richard Gottfried, dean and Chair of the delegation, in a statement. "New York State can act now with serious funding commitments and lead the way towards the restoration of NYCHA."

Though the City Council in its initial response to the mayor’s preliminary budget pledged to advocate for more funding for housing, there was no particular mention of NYCHA. It’s unclear what additional commitments the Council may request in its official response, which was due after budget hearings that have since been suspended amid the coronavirus outbreak.

But it’s clear that Council Speaker Corey Johnson is looking to Albany for additional funding from the state government. “The city can’t do it on our own,” Johnson said at a rally in early February outside City Hall, according to a New York Daily News report. He called for $2 billion more from the state. “We put up a lot of money — we should put up more money — but we need a state partner to put up money with us.”

Advocates and elected officials have also been critical of the state for its slow support for NYCHA. It was only in November that the state released $450 million in funds appropriated for NYCHA in 2017 and 2018. The funding was repeatedly put on hold as the city contended with the lead testing lawsuit and the subsequent negotiation over the federal agreement. Governor Cuomo eventually said he would not release the funds until an independent monitor was appointed to oversee its disbursement.

“For years the New York City Housing Authority was underfunded by the Federal government and its administrators, and to help, New York State stepped up and made an unprecedented commitment to NYCHA for reliable heat, safe elevators and a better quality of life,” said Freeman Klopott, a spokesperson for the state Division of Budget. “In all,” he said,” the executive budget Cuomo released in January that forms the basis for budget negotiations with the Legislature, “includes $650 million in ongoing support for NYCHA projects so that their 400,000 residents will finally see results.”

“Is there always a need for more funding for public housing? Absolutely,” said Bronx Assemblymember Michael Blake, a legislator who has repeatedly called for more NYCHA funding, in a phone interview. He said the state’s first priority should be to release $100 million for NYCHA that was allocated by the state Legislature last year, atop the $450 million that had already been set aside for the agency. And he called for an urgent response to ensure public housing residents are protected during the coronavirus pandemic without having to forego day-to-day maintenance.

“We have to make sure that we don't have a scenario where the funding that we're going for that is needed for the everyday repairs comes at the risk of the present emergency upon us,” he said. “While, yes, coronavirus is an emergency, so is a lead paint crisis.”

Other elected officials at the state and city level have already declared that they wouldn’t support any spending plans that don’t substantially increase NYCHA funding, though it is worth noting those promises came before coronavirus seemingly changed everything.

“I repeat. I will not vote for a budget without funding for our public housing,” tweeted Manhattan Assemblymember Yuh-Line Niou.

Manhattan Assemblymember Harvey Epstein echoed the sentiment. “I am with you @yuhline I will NOT vote for a budget without a substantial investment in public housing!” he tweeted.

New York City Council Member Carlina Rivera of Manhattan wants to see the city cough up more funding. “The City and State must step up this year and contribute billions more dollars in their own budgets, and we will be calling on our colleagues in the Council and State Legislature to fight for this as well,” Rivera wrote in a joint op-ed with congressional Rep. Nydia Velazquez in Gotham Gazette.

The Legal Aid Society, a member of the Upstate Downstate Housing Alliance which is behind the Housing Justice for All campaign, released data last week showing that between October 1 and December 31, 2019, there were 1,246 heat and hot water outages at NYCHA complexes, affecting about 178,267 apartments that are home to 391,661 residents.

“NYCHA is clearly still unable to ensure that utility systems seamlessly provide for residents, and these numbers confirm what we hear from our clients on a regular basis,” said Lucy Newman, Staff Attorney with the Civil Law Reform Unit at The Legal Aid Society. “These outages could be meaningfully addressed with the right resources. As Albany continues to negotiate the Fiscal Year 2021 budget, we demand that lawmakers allocate $2 billion to NYCHA to help the Housing Authority address these and other outstanding issues that still plague tenants.”

Note - this article has been updated with a reference to a new report released by the New York State Assembly's Manhattan delegation. 

Wrestling with government during a pandemic (photo: Ed Reed/Mayor's Office)

Governor Andrew Cuomo suspended aspects of the state's Open Meetings Law with an executive order Friday, as officials grapple with how to keep government running during a pandemic without jeopardizing public health or sacrificing accountability.

As state and city officials continue to prepare for the long haul of coronavirus (COVID-19) management, and as most public events are postponed to limit the virus’ reach, one emerging question is how government agencies will continue to hold meetings in full public view, as is required by the Open Meetings Law, while maintaining recommended social distancing.

Cuomo’s executive order, one of several he’s issued in recent days, permits government bodies to move in-person meetings to a remote form of conferencing, "provided that the public has the ability to view or listen to such proceeding and that such meetings are recorded and later transcribed." Transparency watchdogs say the move goes much further than provisions in his March 7 emergency declaration, when he authorized just two public health bodies to meet and take action without quorum or in-person public access, as long as the meetings were webcast and provided a "means for effective public comment."

"The Executive Order signed by Governor Cuomo today is less in the spirit of the Open Meetings Law than the order from last week," said John Kaehny, executive director of Reinvent Albany, a good government group with a focus on transparency, on Friday.

New York State law requires most meetings in which government officials convene to "conduct public business" or "[perform] a governmental function" to be open to the public, meaning they are held in accessible locations, broadcast whenever possible, and occur with advanced notice to the news media and public bulletins. According to the Open Meetings Law, which outlines these requirements, doing so "is essential to the maintenance of a democratic society" and "is the only climate under which the commonweal will prosper and enable the governmental process to operate for the benefit of those who created it."

Under normal circumstances, this means most government hearings and meetings, and many instances of official decision-making, are held in public locations where people can attend in person, often with an opportunity to testify before officials. But as the coronavirus outbreak shuts down many aspects of typical daily life, essential government actions that cannot be postponed are being moved out of the settings where they are generally known and away from public view.

"There are concerns," said Kristin O'Neill, assistant director of the Committee on Open Government, a state agency responsible for interpreting and providing advisory opinions on the Open Meetings Law, during an interview with Gotham Gazette. "We have received inquiries from municipalities about having open meetings and having large gatherings of individuals in a confined space."

Some public meetings have been cancelled or postponed, and others moved online. The news has been trickling in piecemeal, leaving a dearth of information about where New Yorkers should be going to remain enfranchised and civically engaged, and how government will remain transparent and accountable to the public.

Cuomo's Friday executive order came just after Senator Brad Hoylman, a Manhattan Democrat, proposed a similar legislative solution to in-person meetings, which has more safeguards from abuse but lacks a companion bill in the Assembly and could take time to pass.

Like the executive order, the proposal would allow public meetings to be held remotely during a state of emergency. But it would require the public to be notified about the alternative platform for viewing or participating in it, and would require the body, like a commission or council, to justify why the emergency precautions must be taken. The bill is more in line with what transparency watchdogs, like Reinvent Albany, wish to see.

State and city officials have been moving to curtail “community spread” of coronavirus by reducing the density of people in public spaces. On Thursday, Cuomo announced regulations on large crowds, banning gatherings of over 500 people and requiring any smaller ones to cut their capacities by half (that closed Broadway theaters, but left exceptions for public places like schools, hospitals, grocery stores, and mass transit, though all will likely see changes in operation because of the outbreak).

Mayor Bill de Blasio declared a state of emergency in New York City on Thursday, further encouraging businesses to institute work-from-home policies, and setting his own example with 10 percent of the city workforce set to be given work-from-home orders in the coming days. On Sunday, de Blasio announced the closure of city schools through at least April 20.

But some public meetings simply cannot be cancelled if the city and state are to maintain a functioning government. In New York City, community boards are raising alarms about how they will hold their City Charter-mandated monthly meetings, while avoiding undue risk to their attendees, who skew older and are thus more susceptible to coronavirus.

The New York City Council continued to hold budget oversight hearings at City Hall, which draw crowds like the one Friday on the city's parks department budget that prompted one Council member to call for the Open Meetings Law to be suspended.

“The Council has an obligation under the charter to hold public budget hearings,” said a Council spokesperson in response to a Gotham Gazette inquiry. “Under State law, the mayor may proclaim an emergency and suspend local laws such as this requirement. Guidelines on all public events are evolving rapidly but we will alert the public to any changes on hearings as soon as possible. We are taking measures to allow social distancing and we encourage the public to watch online and submit written testimony when possible.”

"We are looking into this and will have more to say soon," a spokesperson for the mayor wrote in response to a Gotham Gazette inquiry.

And it appears that what's more is that the mayor will on Monday sign an executive order "temporarily suspending the deadlines for council budget hearings, ULURP related votes and the requirement for the Council to hold two stated meetings each month. Therefore hearings and the Stated Meeting next week will not be held," according to a letter from City Council Speaker Corey Johnson to Council colleages that was shared with Gotham Gazette on Saturday night (just after the Daily News first reported the Council decision).

"The City Council’s offices at 250 Broadway and in City Hall are also closing," the letter continues. "Council Staff are not to report to 250 Broadway and City Hall unless asked to as part of our effort to move Council staff to a work-from-home posture. The aforementioned offices will be otherwise closed until further notice."

News also broke on Saturday night that two members of the New York State Assembly, Helene Weinstein and Charles Barron, both Brooklyn Democrats, have tested positive for COVID-19. Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and Governor Cuomo announced the cases and said the state Capitol and legislative office building will undergo a major cleaning and the Capitol will be closed to visitors immediately.

"We are working hand in glove to contain and mitigate the impacts of COVID-19 in New York but we will continue to act aggressively to protect the public health," the governor and speaker concluded. State legislators are due back in the capital this week for legislative session days, with a new state budget due by April 1.

The State Legislature's 'interest and intent' in a state of emergency
"The question is, can open meeting laws be applied during a period when public meetings processes are being suspended because of public health concerns. The answer is no," said Kaehny.

Both Cuomo's executive order and Hoylman's bill get at the ability to flex the existing rules to more easily facilitate remote access to public meetings. But unlike the executive order, which effectively suspercedes aspects of the Open Meetings Law, Hoylman's bill works within its framework. It sets up more protocols for and restrictions on its usage and maintains the existing law's enforcement mechanism, which subjects abuse to challenge in the courts.

Hoylman's bill was drafted in consultation with the executive director of the Committee on Open Government, Shoshanah Bewlay, according to a press release issued by Holman’s office.

"One of the reasons we support it is because it provides a sensible framework instead of just leaving a vacuum where local officials and state officials have to try to make do in impossible circumstances," Kaehny said of Hoylman’s bill.

Kaehny believes it is important for the state Legislature to fully exercise its powers and duties, and passing Hoylman's legislation would help establish norms during an emergency. That concern is heightened, he said, because of the sweeping powers the Legislature recently granted Cuomo as part of an emergency response to the coronavirus outbreak.

Along with an emergency $40 million appropriation, the Legislature expanded the governor's emergency powers to suspend laws in times of impending danger, not only after disaster strikes, as well as to require quarantines, and more. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle criticized the move as a power grab but it still passed the two houses with wide margins.

"FOIL [the Freedom of Information Law] and open meeting laws are essentially legislative mandates on the executive branch and this re-enforces the Legislature's interest and intent here," he said, of a legislative solution to shortcomings in the Open Meetings Law. "If anything the Legislature should be more energetic and assertive during an emergency about clearly establishing norms so that they are not establishing a temporary dictatorship."

Those new powers, the governor "hasn't abused yet but the potential for abuse is huge and everyone should be keeping a careful eye on it," Kaehny told Gotham Gazette, shortly before Friday's executive order was made public.

Note: this story has been updated with news of the City Council's temporarily suspension of business, with news of the positive COVID-19 tests of two state Assembly members from Brooklyn and related fallout, and news of the city's closure of public schools.

Big decisions to be made in the state capitol (photo: Mike Groll/Governor's Office)

A State Supreme Court judge in Niagara County struck down the state’s new campaign finance law which was based on the recommendations of a controversial state-created commission that took effect in December. The state Legislature could not give the commission the authority to make binding changes to state law, the judge ruled.

The New York State Public Financing Commission, established in the state budget last year, was a nine-member body made up of appointees of the governor and leaders of both major parties in the State Senate and Assembly. The commission was created as a compromise after the Legislature and Governor Andrew Cuomo could not come to agreement on a major campaign finance overhaul, including lower contribution limits and public matching funds for candidates, long-time demands of advocates and some elected officials who criticized the preponderance of wealthy donors and special interests in state elections.

The commission was tasked with formulating a new campaign finance system for state elections (similar to the system currently used in New York City) with a price tag of $100 million for a four-year election cycle. But seemingly at the behest of Cuomo, the commission also recommended changes to ballot petition requirements and party qualification thresholds, claiming that too many candidates of various parties on the ballot would bankrupt any new system and raising questions about how valid some of the state’s parties really are.

The commission recommendations became law in December after the Legislature took no action to amend or reject them.

A lawsuit against the commission led by the Working Families Party and joined by several rank-and-file members of the state Legislature, challenged the constitutionality of the law that created the state commission. A judge ruled in the WFP’s favor in a summary judgement handed down on Thursday.

Niagara County Supreme Court Justice Ralph Boniello ruled that “the Legislature, clearly and unequivocally, empowered the commission to legislate new law and repeal existing statutes. The line between administrative rule-making (which can be delegated) and legislative action (which cannot be delegated) has clearly been transgressed.”

Boniello wrote that creating new laws or repealing existing ones “is a function reserved solely to the Legislature under the Constitution.”

The judge also noted that though the statute that created the commission had a severability clause so that if one aspect was struck down, the rest would survive, “the Statute is an improper and unconstitutional delegation of legislative authority to the Commission.”

“This ruling is a victory for the voters of New York State,” said Sochie Nnaemeka, state director of the New York Working Families Party, in a statement. “We need more choices, not fewer, to build a strong democracy.” She added, “As we have consistently said and the courts confirmed today, an unelected commission has no right to interfere with New Yorkers’ constitutional right to fusion voting.”

Besides establishing lower contribution limits (though they remain relatively high) and creating a system to provide matching public funds for small-dollar campaign contributions to qualifying candidates, the commission had increased the number of petition signatures required for a statewide candidate to get on the ballot to 45,000 from 15,000.

Most controversially, it also increased the number of votes a political party needs to earn on its gubernatorial and presidential ballot lines in order to automatically qualify for a ballot line in subsequent elections within the same two-year period, from 50,000 votes every four years in a gubernatorial election to 130,000 votes or 2% of total votes cast, whichever is higher, every two years. Those moves seemed to be aimed at undermining New York’s smaller parties and the fusion voting system that keeps them alive. As a result, multiple lawsuits including the one by the WFP were filed against the commission, legislative leaders, and the governor (who was later dropped from the suit).

The Legislature could still choose to pass the struck down recommendations into law, though several elected officials and advocates have called for tweaks including reducing contribution limits further, quicker implementation, and placing the system under a new administrative body that is completely separate from the state Board of Elections. And there are many calls to also do away with the ballot status requirements in the event of a new system moving forward.

Jessica Wisneski, co-executive director of Citizen Action of New York, called on the Legislature to enact a small-donor public matching funds program through the regular legislative process. “New Yorkers have demanded action for years to reduce the influence of hedge fund billionaires, luxury real estate developers and the charter school industry,” she said in a statement. “We need immediate solutions that put power in the hands of those without the resources to write thousand-dollar campaign checks.”

The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law urged the governor and legislative leaders to avoid using the legal ruling as an excuse to let publicly financed elections wither on the vine. “Albany can’t use today’s court ruling as an excuse to derail a public financing program that was promised to New Yorkers,” said Lawrence Norden, director of the Election Reform Program at the Brennan Center, in a statement.

Norden noted that the commission crafted its law after hearing months of testimony from campaign finance experts and members of the public who agreed on the need to reduce the influence of money in elections. “For decades, Albany’s wealthiest donors have drowned out everyone else. By following through on their promise of public financing, the governor and lawmakers can give more New Yorkers a say in the decisions that shape their lives,” he said.

Spokespeople for Governor Cuomo, Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie did not respond to requests for comment.

The commission’s recommendations made for odd bedfellows. The Conservative Party lies on the opposite end of the political spectrum from the WFP but nonetheless the two were allies when it came to opposing the new party thresholds. The Conservative Party had filed a separate lawsuit against the commission, mirroring the WFP’s. New York Conservative Party Chair Gerard Kassar called Thursday’s judgement a “total victory for political freedom in New York, and a reminder to Governor Cuomo that he is an executive and not an emperor. Reason has won out over Machiavellism, and New York is better for it.”

The 2020 Census begins now (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)

The 2020 Census process kicks off today -- Thursday March 12 -- as the U.S. Census Bureau began sending out mailers across the country and its territories to inform people about how to fill out the decennial questionnaire, which was also just made available online.

Every ten years, the Census attempts to collect information on every resident of the United States and its five territories. In all, the Census Bureau asks ten biographical questions about individuals – name, age, residential location, race, ethnicity, number of children in the same household, and more. (After a protracted battle, there is no question about citizenship status.)

Census data is used to determine how the federal government distributes billions of dollars in funding to states for everything from infrastructure and education to social welfare programs like housing rental vouchers and food assistance for low-income families. The Census is also used to draw electoral districts at the local, state, and federal levels and affects how many seats a particular state will hold in the U.S. House of Representatives.

The Census count officially began on January 21 in Toksook Bay, Alaska, as is the custom, but on Thursday the federal government began the broader process in earnest. It will last through July 31.

For the first time, the Census Bureau is largely relying on digital methodology rather than paper questionnaires, at least for the initial effort to count the population. That could pose a challenge for parts of the state and city that lack access to high-speed internet and technological infrastructure.

New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer noted in a July report last year that 29% of city households, representing about 2.2 million residents, did not have home access to broadband internet. Even statewide, though 83% of households have internet access, many of them do not have high-speed internet, according to a report by the New York State Complete Count Commission. There are some efforts underway to overcome the so-called digital divide, including library partnerships.

Between March 12 and March 20, most households will receive a mailer that contains instructions on how to fill out the Census online or on the phone, while a smaller number of households will receive a paper questionnaire right away. According to the CUNY Mapping Service’s Census project, for New York State, about 97.2% will receive a mailer from the Census Bureau; only 2.8% of housing units will initially receive hand-delivered Census packets.

About 15.2% (or 1,258,303) of all New York households will receive a Census packet that also includes an English-only paper questionnaire; another 6.2% (or 513,296) will receive an English and Spanish questionnaire. 

The Census is carried out in phases. The initial phase is focused on getting people to self-respond, which yields the most accurate data. In 2010, the average self-response rate at the national level was 76% (which was about the same for New York State) while in New York City it was only 62% and is projected to drop to 58% this year because of fears of data privacy, general apathy, and a sense of suspicion and distrust of the federal government. 

The self-response rate is used to determine which populations and areas are considered “hard-to-count” – for 2010, the threshold was a 73% self-response rate. Hard-to-count segments of the population include native Americans, children under the age of five, seniors, homeless individuals, people living in group quarters, public housing residents, those who cannot speak English or have limited English proficiency, immigrants (particularly undocumented immigrants), and African-Americans at all income levels. 

Parts of the state and city have strong concentrations of such populations. Brooklyn (or Kings County), for instance, was the hardest to count county in 2010, with only 67% of households self-responding to the Census. 

People filling out the Census are meant to tell the Census Bureau where they live as of April 1, which is Census Day. The last day for self-responses is July 31. 

Over three days, between March 30 and April 1, the Census Bureau will undertake a count of homeless people across the nation. On the first day, enumerators (individuals hired by the Bureau to conduct an in-person count) will track people at shelters. On the second day, they will count people at soup kitchens and mobile food vans, while on the third, they will tally homeless people living on the streets. 

Through April, the Bureau will also begin counting individuals living in group living arrangements who could otherwise slip through the cracks such as students living on and off campus, in senior centers, military barracks, correctional facilities, and even maritime and military ships. 

In May and running through July, the second main phase of the Census will launch, with the Census Bureau beginning its operation to count those households that haven’t responded to the questionnaire. Those households will be visited several times by enumerators if needed, and, if they are unsuccessful in reaching anyone who lives at a particular household, an enumerator may obtain information from a neighboring “proxy” household or use the neighboring hosuehold’s information to impute information about the non-responsive household. The Census Bureau will also attempt to fill in gaps in data through administrative records. 

All these methods, however, tend to be prone to errors and produce inaccurate data, according to demographic experts, making self-response the preferred method for obtaining data.That is why the Census Bureau, and state and local officials, have been trying to drive home the point that it is in the best interest of an individual and their community that they fill out the form. For instance, if the number of children under the age of 5 are undercounted in a community, it could affect federal funding for childcare programs or the decisions that local and state authorities make about school funding.   

The city and state are undertaking efforts, though with differing levels of urgency, to ensure an accurate count. New York City has put $40 million towards its census outreach, which includes $19 million in direct grants that have been doled out to community-based organizations that can reach hard-to-count populations on the ground. Taking note of the online methodology and disparities in internet access across the city, officials have made it a point to provide tablets to community partners and are collaborating with the library system to provide Census assistance at 110 branches, among other measures.

The state’s preparations have been somewhat lackluster in comparison. Though the state Legislature approved $20 million in funding in last year’s budget for community outreach, similar to the city’s grants, none of that state funding has been distributed. Governor Andrew Cuomo has also pledged that state agencies will be carrying out various census activities that will equate to about $40 million in spending, and he is also seeking another $10 million in the budget for the next fiscal year that begins April 1. 

In all, the Census Bureau will provide translation services for 59 languages besides English. In New York, State Senator Julia Salazar is hoping to expand translation services currently available through the Department of State to ensure maximum outreach in a state where more than 200 languages are spoken by residents.

[Read Gotham Gazette’s full 2020 Census coverage here.]

New York City Hall

What to watch for this week in New York politics:

The week begins with continued focus on the spread of the new coronavirus, COVID-19, in New York, with more cases confirmed in the city and state, and new guidance from government leaders as they try to contain the virus’ spread without taking drastic measures. On Saturday, Governor Andrew Cuomo declared a state of emergency, allowing the state to suspend certain rules around procurement, personnel, and facilities, while also unlocking new powers given to the governor by recent legislation whereby the Legislature also approved a $40 million emergency appropriation to fight the virus.

On Sunday afternoon, Cuomo announced 16 additional cases since his last update, bringing the statewide total to 105 confirmed cases of COVID-19. Of those, 82 are in Westchester, 12 in New York City, and 6 on Long Island. Cuomo also called on the federal government to expedite “approval of private labs and automated and manual testing to expand New York State's testing capacity. He also encouraged New Yorkers to work from home, telecommute and avoid densely populated spaces whenever possible to help contain the spread of the virus.”

Cuomo was able to announce some results from his advocacy on Sunday evening: "After days of advocating the FDA and the federal government to expand testing capacity for the novel coronavirus in New York State and working with Northwell and Wadsworth to expedite the process, we just received word that Northwell Laboratories has been authorized to test under Wadsworth's emergency use authorization. Manual testing of 75 to 80 samples per day will begin at Northwell immediately, but we still need automated testing approved so we can perform thousands per day. While this approval is a good first step, the FDA must increase the testing capacity for the State and private labs, because the more tests we run, the more positive people we will find and the better we can control and contain the virus. It's one thing for the federal government not to have the testing capacity in place themselves - that was bad enough - but there's no excuse for them not to be authorizing existing labs to do the work."

Mayor de Blasio gave similar new guidance on Sunday, while announcing that the city’s total confirmed number of cases is now 13, though the city and state appear to be slightly different in their accounting of at least one patient who is from Westchester but being treated in the city.

“As we continue to see community transmission between people who have no direct connection to travel to one of the affected countries, we are asking New Yorkers to adjust their routines to stem the spread of the virus where they can," de Blasio said in a statement. “I cannot reiterate enough that if you feel sick, stay home; we need every New Yorker to do their part to keep their neighbors safe.”

Along with working from home/telecommuting and avoiding large gatherings when possible, de Blasio asked New Yorkers to stop shaking hands, try to avoid packed subway cars, use alternate modes of transportation, and alter their work schedules to reduce rush hour density.

“The City has ordered local government workers to cancel all non-essential international travel, effective immediately,” the administration announced, and for the most vulnerable people, said: “The City is advising those with chronic lung disease, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, or a weakened immune system to avoid unnecessary events and gatherings. If you have family or friends who have one of these conditions, do not visit them if you feel sick.”

The city is adding nurses to school buildings and working to ensure every school has enough supplies for cleaning, proper personal hygiene, and other measures. And the city is starting to offer zero-interest loans to small businesses (under 100 employees) that have seen a 25% or more drop in revenue as the coronavirus has spread.

New Yorkers can call 311 for more information and/or text COVID to 692-692 for regular text message updates.

Meanwhile, the city and state are attempting to continue with most business as usual. A variety of government (and non-government) events appear to be continuing on as scheduled, including City Council hearings on de Blasio’s preliminary budget plan and two days of legislative session in Albany, where a state budget is due by April 1. And, the early voting period is set to begin this coming Saturday in the special election for Queens Borough President, which has an election day of March 24, while the 2020 Census officially begins on Thursday. Council Speaker Corey Johnson is set to give his 2020 State of the City address on Thursday at noon.

See our day-by-day rundown of events below. But, please watch for event cancellations given new COVID-19 guidances and any other precautions that institutions may take -- try to confirm any political events, including those listed below, before you head to them.

As always, there's a great deal happening all over the city, with many events to be aware of - see our day-by-day rundown below.

***Do you have events or topics for us to include in an upcoming Week Ahead in New York Politics?
e-mail Gotham Gazette editor Ben Max: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.***

The run of the week in detail:

Monday March 9
On Monday Mayor de Blasio will appear on NY1’s Mornings on 1 at 7 a.m., then on CNN Newsroom at 9:45 a.m.. He'll hold a media availability on COVID-19 at 1:30 p.m. from the city's emergency management office in Brooklyn. And in the 7 and 11 p.m. hours, he'll appear on NY1’s Inside City Hall with Errol Louis.

Governor Cuomo will make an announcement at 11 a.m. from Albany.

Preliminary budget hearings continue at the City Council Monday:
--At 10 a.m., the Committee on Transportation will hold a hearing, along with the Subcommittee on Capital Budget, hearing from representatives of the MTA and the city Department of Transportation.
--At 2 p.m., the Committee on Hospitals will hear from representatives of the city’s public hospital system, New York City Health + Hospitals.

At 2:30 p.m. Monday, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams will hold a “press conference with elected leaders and clergy members to coordinate borough-wide response to COVID-19,” at Brooklyn Borough Hall. At 5:30 p.m. Adams will appear on News12 BK’s “Ask the BP.”

At 4 p.m. Monday, the New York State Board of Regents, led by Regent Elizabeth S. Hakanson, will hold the latest in its series of public sessions to review New York State graduation requirements, at the Oneida-Herkimer-Madison BOCES in New Hartford.

At 6:30 p.m., the Brooklyn Historical Society will hold a panel titled “When Pregnancy is a Death Sentence: Race and Reproductive Healthcare.” The panel will address the high maternal mortality rates among black women and racial inequality in maternal healthcare. Panelists include Ancient Song Doula Services founder Chanel Porchia-Albert, historian Deirdre Cooper Owens, and Assistant Commissioner of NYC’s Health Department Bureau of Maternal, Infant and Reproductive Health Deborah Kaplan. The panel will be moderated by Dana Davis, author of Reproductive Injustice: Racism, Pregnancy, and Premature Birth.

Tuesday March 10
The State Legislature will be in session on Tuesday in Albany.

At 8 a.m. Tuesday, the Center for an Urban Future will hold a policy forum titled “Boosting Low Income Entrepreneurs in Manhattan.” The forum will “explore the opportunity to increase the number of low-income entrepreneurs and examine how to ensure that more of the New Yorkers from low-income backgrounds who do turn to entrepreneurship have the tools and resources to succeed.” Speakers include Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, Ms. Mac’s West Indian Food founder Sarah Adams, Highlo Barber founder Angela Elizalde, and more.

At 8:45 a.m. Tuesday, the Hunter College New York City Food Policy Center will hold a seminar titled “The Impact of Food on Academic Behavior, Attendance, Performance and Attrition” in the college’s auditorium. Speakers include Professor Cara Cuite of the Department of Human Ecology at Rutgers University; Professor Andrea Deierlein of the School of Global Public Health at New York University; Professor Christina Fernandez of the Department of Pediatrics at Columbia University’s Irving Medical Center; Principal Kevin Froner of Manhattan Hunter Science High School; and Dr. Amy Schwartz, a pediatric neuropsychologist. The seminar will be moderated by Dr. Charles Platkin.

Regent Judith Chin will hold two public sessions on the Board of Regents’ review of New York State graduation requirements in Queens on Tuesday. The first session is at 9 a.m. at the Helen Marshall Cultural Center in the Queens Borough Hall Atrium. The second session is at 5:30 p.m. at York College.

At 9 a.m. Tuesday, the New York City Board of Corrections will hold its monthly public meeting.

At 6 p.m. Tuesday, the Association for a Better New York will hold a policy brief on OMNY, the MTA's new fare payment system, with Sana Arshad, Program Manager, Cubic Transportation Systems, Inc. Ms. Arshad will “discuss the ins and outs of the system and the role of technology in NYC transit.”

At 6:30 p.m. Tuesday in Queens, the New York City Economic Development Corporation will host another in a series of public workshops to discuss the progress of the Brooklyn-Queens Connector (BQX) streetcar. The public workshops “provide an opportunity for attendees to learn about and discuss the BQX planning work that’s been done to date, and the process moving forward.”

At 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, City & State NY will hold the 2020 Law Power 100 Reception at the Ainsworth in Chelsea. City & State will “highlight New York’s 100 most influential lawyers with the Law Power 100 list, identifying and ranking New York’s legal leaders based on their achievements, track record and sway in political and policy matters.” Queens County District Attorney Melinda Katz and NYC Corporation Counsel James E. Johnson will serve as guest speakers.

At 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment and The School of Media Studies at The New School will co-facilitate a panel on “The Future of Local News.” Speakers include David Cruz, Editor-in-Chief, Norwood News; Alyssa Katz, Deputy Editor, The City; Steve Waldman, President & Co-Founder, Report for America; and Liena Zagare, Publisher & Editor, BKLYNER. NY1 Anchor Pat Kiernan will moderate.

At 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, the Brooklyn Historical Society and the Vera Institute of Justice will jointly hold a discussion titled “Girls Behind Bars: A Historic Wrong and the Fight to End It.” The discussion will address the intersections of racial and gender discrimination against young women in the juvenile court system. Speakers include Vera project director Lindsay Rosenthal; National Black Women’s Justice director Dr. Sydney McKinney; associate professor of applied psychology at New York University Dr. Shabnam Javdani; associate professor of history and Africana studies at the University of Delaware Dr. Cheryl D. Hicks; and social justice activist Cali JordanGotay. WNYC investigative reporter Cindy Rodriguez will moderate the discussion.

Wednesday March 11
The State Legislature will be in session on Wednesday in Albany.

At 8:30 a.m. Wednesday, the Regional Plan Association will facilitate a discussion titled “Remedies to Address Combined Sewer Overflows and Stormwater Pollution in NYC Waterways.” Speakers will “broadly discuss different parts of the city’s water system infrastructure, [with] particular emphasis on stormwater infrastructure and sustainable practices for water quality management, including efforts promoting the use of green infrastructure.” Speakers include Shino Tanikawa, New York City Soil and Water Conservation District; Julie Welch, SWIM Coalition NYC; and Mike Dulong, Riverkeeper.

On Wednesday on Staten Island, Regent Christine Cea will host two public sessions in the ongoing series by the Board of Regents on New York State high school graduation requirements. The first session will take place at 9 a.m. and the second session will take place at 5:30 p.m.

At the City Council Wednesday:
--At 10 a.m., the Committee on Economic Development will hold a preliminary budget hearing.
--At 10 a.m., the Subcommittee on Zonings and Franchises will meet.
--At 1 p.m., the Subcommittee on Landmarks, Public Sitings and Dispositions will meet.

At 11:30 a.m. Wednesday, the Queens Chamber of Commerce will hold its annual St. Patrick's Day Luncheon Celebration. Special Guests and honorees include NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea and Dan "Dee" Tubridy of the Bungalow Bar.

At 5 p.m. Wednesday, this week’s Max & Murphy show will air on WBAI radio, 99.5FM or wbai.org, and feature a discussion of the Queens Borough President special election, just ahead of early voting set to begin on Saturday and the official election day of March 24.

At 5:30 p.m. Wednesday in Rochester, Regent Wade Norwood will host a public review of New York State high school graduation requirements.

At 6 p.m. Wednesday, the Waterfront Alliance, in partnership with the New York City Department of City Planning (DCP), will hold an interactive public workshop on the future of the Brooklyn waterfront, hosted at Brooklyn Borough Hall. The meeting will be “the first in a series of borough-specific workshops, which are a key opportunity for the public to learn about and engage in key waterfront issues, promote equity and environmental justice, and to actively inform the next NYC Comprehensive Waterfront Plan.”

At 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, the Civil Complaint Review Board will hold a public meeting at the town hall of Bronx Community Board 12.

At 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, New York State Attorney General Letitia James will hold a Community Conversation in Jamaica with Queens Council Members Adrienne E. Adams, I. Daneek Miller, and Donovan Richards. Participants will first hear “a discussion on local topics that matter most to [them], followed by a Q&A.”

At 7 p.m. Wednesday, Transportation Alternatives, Riders Alliance, and the Queens transportation advocacy community will hold a Transit Forum for the Queens Borough President candidates. Candidates will have an opportunity to “share where they stand on a range of transportation issues important to you, including how to make streets safer for pedestrians and cyclists, how their office will work to improve transit through the borough, and other hot transportation topics.” The event will be co-moderated by Christine Chung, Queens Reporter for The City; and Joby Jacob, Ph.D,  assistant professor at LaGuardia Community College.

Thursday March 12
At 8:30 a.m. Thursday, the Manhattan Institute will host “Public Safety in an Era of Criminal Justice Reform.” “Manhattan Institute senior fellow Jason Riley will join Harvard University’s Roland Fryer to discuss the diverse set of concerns driving America’s debate on criminal justice, followed by a discussion with police chiefs and leading academics on the front lines of these reforms.”

At noon Thursday, "New York City Council Speaker Corey Johnson will deliver his second annual State of the City address at CUNY’s Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC) in Lower Manhattan."

At 5:30 p.m. Thursday, New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer will hold a Women’s History Month Celebration at the American Museum of Natural History. The event will honor three women: Radical Health founder and CEO Ivelyse Andino; Alliance of Families for Justice director Soffiyah Elijah; and Assemblymember Linda Rosenthal.

At 6 p.m. Thursday, the Association for a Better New York will hold “Get Out the Count: A Benefit to Support ABNY's Census 2020 Initiatives” at Katz’s Delicatessen. ABNY will honor three individuals “for their work to ensure the most accurate count”: New York State Attorney General Letitia James, president and CEO of New York-Presbyterian Dr. Steve J. Corwin, and president of the United Federation of Teachers Michael Mulgrew. This event has been postponed.

Friday March 13 & the Weekend
Mayor de Blasio may make his weekly appearance on the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC at 10 a.m. Friday.

At the City Council Friday:
--At 10 a.m., the Committee on Parks and Recreation will hold a preliminary budget hearing.
--At 10:30 a.m., the Committee on Immigration will hold a preliminary budget hearing.
--At 1:00 p.m., the Committee on Public Housing will hold a preliminary budget hearing.

At 12:30 p.m. Friday, the Museum of the City of New York will host “College Basketball and NYC: The Remarkable Journey.” The event will be “an afternoon of lively conversations moderated by sportscaster Dave Popkin about Madison Square Garden, aka “The Mecca” of college basketball; the BIG EAST Tournament as the nation’s longest-running postseason college basketball tournament at the same venue; and some of the many great players and coaches that have played at both the conference and at MSG.” This is the opening program for City/Game: Basketball in New York.

Beginning Saturday, March 14 (through Sunday, March 22) select sites in Queens will offer early voting for the Special Election for Borough President, which will also take place the election day of Tuesday, March 24.

***
Have events or topics for us to include in an upcoming Week Ahead in New York Politics? E-mail Gotham Gazette executive editor Ben Max any time: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (please use "For Week Ahead" as email subject).

***
by Ben Max & Claire Del Sorbo
@GothamGazette

American Indian Community House is working on the 2020 Census (photo: @AICHNYC)

The decennial Census is an exercise in counting every single resident of the United States of America, but the tragic irony of the process is that it routinely undercounts the very people who first called this continent their home. Native Americans, who now make up about 1% of New York State’s population, worry that it may happen again this year, perpetuating the official apathy to their people that they have come to expect from the federal government.

About 194,000 New Yorkers identify as American Indian or Alaska Native, according to U.S. Census population estimates as of July 1, 2019, though that number could very well be low given undercounting issues. More than half of that state population lives in New York City, comprising one of, if not the largest urban Native American populations across the country.

As with many other segments of the population, Native Americans are considered “hard-to-count” – a term used for those groups of people where the rate of initial self-response to the Census was below 73% in the 2010 Census. That status stems from various factors including income levels, geographical distribution, language diversity, and of course, their complicated relationship with the federal government.

The 2020 count, which begins Thursday, March 12, will be additionally complicated by its heavy reliance on a digital questionnaire, which requires internet infrastructure that is not as readily available in rural parts of the state and on reservations. There are ten American Indian territories in New York.

There’s much at stake if there’s an undercount. Census data determines the redrawing of federal, state, and local electoral districts and the number of seats New York is allocated in the House of Representatives, and it forms the basis for the distributions of many billions of dollars in federal aid for everything from infrastructure projects to education and healthcare services. Inaccurate data could mean underfunding of programs for the most underserved populations, including food stamps and housing vouchers.

In 2010, nationwide, American Indians and Alaska Natives living on reservations were undercounted by 4.9%; for those living outside of reservations, the statistical error was close to zero, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates from 2012. But that overall undercount was far higher than for other populations. There was a 2.1% undercount of the black population and 1.5% for Hispanics, while non-Hispanic whites were overcounted by 0.8%, according to the Census Bureau.

The Census Bureau has acknowledged the challenges of reaching Native Americans and has been working to ensure an accurate count. “With the Native American community, that's something we work on throughout the decade,” said Jeff Behler, director for the U.S. Census Bureau's New York Regional Office.

Behler laid out the procedures necessary for better counting Native Americans, particularly those who live on tribal lands and reservations. “We always follow the protocol as defined by the tribe itself,” he said. Coordinating with tribal leadership, the Bureau could choose several ways of conducting the Census including hand-delivering census questionnaires or sending an enumerator to go door-to-door, instead of mailing out questionnaires.

The Bureau also typically hires people who live on tribal land to act as enumerators that can personally reach and count the residents of the land. The Bureau has also partnered with 1,500 specialists across the country who are direct representatives to communities, which includes tribal partnership specialists.

As with efforts at the state and city level, the U.S. Census Bureau is focused on encouraging Native Americans to self-respond, which yields the most accurate data. For that, Behler said, the most important step has been educating and enlisting tribal leaders who can then spread the message to their people about the importance of filling out the Census and press tribal resources into that effort. For instance, the Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe, located in Akwesasne by the border with Canada, will use a community center to help their members fill out the Census online, he said.

“We have this saying that the Census is a national event, but in order to be successful, it has to be conducted at the local level,” Behler said. “We have to make this their Census and we certainly understand we need their input in order to do that.”

“When it's coming from that trusted voice, it penetrates so much deeper,” he added. “We certainly understand that the message can be the same but it's the messenger that sometimes is the most important thing. The Census Bureau knows we are not necessarily the best messenger.”

Tribal members seem to agree. “There has been, and there still is some apprehension amongst our own community members to participate in any type of processes that are external in nature, specifically those that come from the federal government, given our history and our relationship,” said Brendan White, communications director for the Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe and a member of its Census-focused Tribal Complete Count Committee, in an interview. The committee has been disseminating information about the Census through radio and print ads, signs, newsletters, and even distributing tote bags (after the state’s recent plastic bag ban went into effect) to try to drive home the message that filling out the Census is in the best interest of tribal members.

“We are trying to dispel any myths that people have and to assure them that the information that's being collected by the Census Bureau is solely to count the population in the households that exist to ensure that we receive the federal funding that we need to meet the growing needs of our community,” he said. “One thing that is helping us in getting that message across is that we are ensuring that the federal government fulfills its fiduciary responsibility to Indian country...because we drive on these roads, we utilize healthcare services, we have kids who are going to college that need scholarships. And just like any other community, we have our
own natural events that require an emergency response and a lot of our services are dependent on federal funding.”

Much of the effort is driven by the tribe itself, with assistance from the Native American Rights Fund and the National Congress of American Indians, which launched its own “Indian Country Counts” nationwide initiative.

New York State has yet to take any specific measures to conduct outreach among Native Americans. Governor Andrew Cuomo has announced a $70 million effort that includes $20 million in direct funding for community-based organizations and advocates that can reach hard-to-count populations. But while the state has been soliciting applications for that $20 million, it has yet to be released and it’s unclear if any groups that directly serve Native American populations will receive any funding.

A spokesperson for the Department of State simply referred Gotham Gazette to Behler’s office for comment, while emphasizing that the state’s effort is directed at all New Yorkers that live in hard-to-count communities. Most of New York’s Indian territories are located in the western part of the state, with other territories in central and northern regions.

New York City on the other hand has already awarded $19 million to community-based organizations conducting Census outreach, as part of a $40 million city effort to increase the count. Among those organizations is American Indian Community House, which received a $50,000 grant to do its work.

Melissa Oakes, executive director of AICH, was disappointed though. AICH has partnered with two other organizations to create a “consortium,” she said, to count Native Americans. The funding they received was half of what they sought. “That says a lot about how important our data matters, but that’s the reality of what we have to deal with,” she said.

Oakes, who is Mohawk, said the U.S. Census Bureau seems to have a particular blind spot when it comes to Native Americans living in urban centers like New York City, where the population is spread out across the five boroughs. “We're the most underrepresented and underfunded and it's almost like an erasure of urban Natives,” she said. “It's like, unless you're on the reservation, they don't want to deal with us. And I think it's irresponsible and neglectful.”

AICH, which based in downtown Manhattan and represents members of 72 different tribes, is taking various steps to reach the city’s Native American population, adding a Census outreach element to cultural events. Through June, they are hosting bi-weekly “maker sessions,” workshops to draw New Yorkers with a native background to train them and others in producing native art. Attendees will be asked to fill out pledge cards saying they will fill out the Census, or will be aided in completing the Census once it launches.

AICH also hosts various trainings on social justice and civil rights issues. Those will involve a Census component as well. They plan to organize monthly brunches for tribal elders, with a focus on the Census. AICH will also have a weeks-long art installation at Governor’s Island on the Native American community, with several related programs that will emphasize the importance of the Census. And they’ll also dedicate staff to help people fill out the Census at various street fairs over the spring and summer.

One of the issues AICH faces, Oakes said, is a massive loss of funding from the federal government, which has left the organization struggling to keep a permanent home while looking for more physical locations to conduct Census operations. She is hoping the city can offer a vacant space to create a community center.

“They do it for a lot of other communities and I don't understand why the original people of the territory of the land are being ignored,” she said. “It's almost like they need to unlearn how to treat us...It's like a conditioning. They're conditioned to just ignore us or erase us or shove us under the carpet like we don’t exist.”

The city has been focused on increasing the initial self-response rate to the Census, which for the five boroughs was 62% in 2010, compared to the national average of 76%; the Census Bureau projects New York’s self-response rate to fall as low as 58% this year due to several factors that broadly apply to the Census process including “apathy, privacy concerns, fear of repercussions, and general distrust of government.” City officials say organizations like AICH are the best messengers to prevent that.

“Funding an organization like American Indian Community House is very, very important to us because we know that American Indian Community House has a unique blend of cultural programming, linguistic competence, and also direct social service provision that enables them to really potentially be very effective in ensuring that the Native population is participating in the Census,” said Amit Bagga, Deputy Director of NYC Census 2020, a city-government office set up by Mayor Bill de Blasio.

Bagga added, “This is the first and only time in New York City's history that the city has ever constructed a program such as this. There have never been any public dollars that have been put into this type of community engagement and civic engagement, particularly for Native communities.”