City & State - 11252015 - Rikers Island

November 25, 2015

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CONTENTS November 25, 2015

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CITY

Bills aim to protect more workers when companies change hands

By Sarina Trangle

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STATE

Will FitzPatrick plant’s closure jeopardize New York’s clean energy future?

By Ashley Hupfl

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BUFFALO

A glimmer of hope for the housing authority

By Justin Sondel

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CLOSING RIKERS

Is Rikers Island beyond saving?

By Ed Morales from City Limits

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Michael Gareth Johnson Editorial Director

In America we like to repeat the mantra that a person is innocent until proven guilty. This principle is a defining characteristic of who we are as a country.

But we don’t live up to this ideal when it comes to Rikers Island. Most of the inmates there are suspects still awaiting their day in court. But they are subjected to conditions that are cruel and unusual, living in a decaying facility where their lives are in danger and their dignity is slowly stripped away.

For lack of a better term, Rikers is diseased, and much of the debate is now centered on whether the massive complex can be cured with reforms or if it should be ended altogether with a vast overhaul of the correction system. This concept was the idea behind the cover for the magazine. By turning the physical map of Rikers Island into bacteria being examined cit yandstateny.com

under a microscope, we captured a truth about the facility’s future – highlighting the need to focus on what’s happening there on the most micro levels to better understand its failures and make sure they are not repeated in the future.

This issue also features a spotlight on minorityand women-owned business enterprises, or MWBEs. Increasingly, lawmakers both in New York City and in the state are giving more attention to the role they can play in helping increase business ownership for minorities and women through setting goals to give such businesses a growing percentage of government contracts. While it is admirable to say this is a priority, we are finding it is often complicated and difficult to reach these goals.

Our special section explores why, with some great reporting from Senior Correspondent Jon Lentz and staff reporter Sarina Trangle.

Also in the magazine, we have a small section highlighting our coverage from the Somos el Futuro fall conference. For the past two years we have committed large resources to better cover the close connection between New York, Puerto Rico and the more than a million members of the diaspora that live in the Empire State and care deeply about the future of the island. Our team spoke with dozens of elected officials including Bill de Blasio and Melissa MarkViverito while covering the events at the conference, and we heard a lot from lawmakers about their priorities for the upcoming legislative sessions.

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State MWBE contracting drops for the first time under Cuomo ... tips for getting government contracts … initiative aims to help MWBEs win city housing contracts

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RECAP: SOMOS EL FUTURO

Mark-Viverito says civil disobedience is a possibility … de Blasio says unequal treatment is behind Puerto Rico’s struggles … health care advocates pursue options for fiscal relief … Serrano, Velázquez say they’ll ram through bill

OPINION

Nick Powell says de Blasio overplayed his hand on supportive housing … Linda Sarsour says New Yorkers should stand with their Muslim neighbors … Eddie Borges on the shortage of Hispanic leadership in the city … Carmelyn P. Malalis on employment discrimination

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BACK & FORTH

A Q&A with Yusef Salaam of the ‘Central Park Five’

November 25, 2015

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Cover Guillaume Federighi

city & state — November 25, 2015

FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK

SPOTLIGHT: MWBES

61 Broadway, Suite 2235 New York, NY 10006 Editorial (212) 894-5417 General (646) 517-2740 Advertising (212) 894-5422 info@cityandstateny.com

CITY AND STATE, LLC Chairman Steve Farbman President/CEO Tom Allon tallon@cityandstateny.com

REMY TRAPPIER

PUBLISHING Publisher Andrew A. Holt aholt@cityandstateny.com Vice President of Advertising Jim Katocin jkatocin@cityandstateny.com Director of Sales and Events Jasmin Freeman jfreeman@cityandstateny.com Associate Publisher Samantha Diliberti sdiliberti@cityandstateny.com

city & state — November 25, 2015

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A note from Editorial Director Michael Gareth Johnson: The attacks in Paris have angered and saddened many people across the world. It has also hit home for our family at City & State. We work closely with a 3-D designer who lives in Paris named Rémy Trappier. He has designed several covers for us this year. We asked him to share his thoughts with our readers, which we’ve translated below.

One month ago I was having a drink near the Canal Saint-Martin not far from Le Carillon. Two weeks ago I tasted a porc au caramel with my girlfriend at Le Petit Cambodge. At the same time of night that the attacks took place, I had a drink on Rue de la Fontaine au Roi. All these places were part of my daily life.

I was at home watching the France vs. Germany match when my phone lit up several times. My family was asking me if I was OK. I had just become aware of what was happening – shootings just a hundred meters away. At that moment I couldn’t imagine the magnitude of the event. It seemed unbelievable that such a tragedy could happen in my own neighborhood, or at these hangouts.

After the shock and incomprehension, and then the national (and even international) mourning and reflection in tribute to the victims, this is what struck me most about those events.

With all these tributes from the four corners of the world, I felt that it was not just France that was affected by the attacks, but everyone in the world who aspires to freedom. It was unusual seeing the French national anthem sung from the heart by the English, or the French flag waved before an American football game by the Army’s players at West Point. These touching tributes lifted my spirit.

This worldwide unity against barbarism is the best message we could send. I think that these terrorists have failed. Even after 10 days, people are coming back here to drink, eat out, enjoy life with friends and see shows. France does not stop living and has emerged more unified. Finally, I expect Le Petit Cambodge to reopen, and I hope people go and taste their legendary porc au caramel!

-Rémy Trappier …

Business Development Scott Augustine saugustine@cityandstateny.com EDITORIAL Editorial Director Michael Johnson mjohnson@cityandstateny.com Associate Editor/Senior Correspondent Jon Lentz jlentz@cityandstateny.com Opinion Editor Nick Powell npowell@cityandstateny.com Albany Reporter Ashley Hupfl ahupfl@cityandstateny.com Buffalo Reporter Justin Sondel jsondel@cityandstateny.com Staff Reporter Sarina Trangle strangle@cityandstateny.com Editor-at-Large Gerson Borrero gborrero@cityandstateny.com Copy Editor Ryan Somers rsomers@cityandstateny.com Editorial Assistant Jeremy Unger junger@cityandstateny.com Editorial Assistant Jeff Coltin jcoltin@cityandstateny.com PRODUCTION Creative Director Guillaume Federighi gfederighi@cityandstateny.com Senior Designer Michelle Yang myang@cityandstateny.com Marketing Graphic Designer Charles Flores cflores@cityandstateny.com Digital Strategist Chanelle Grannum cgrannum@cityandstateny.com Multimedia Director Bryan Terry bterry@cityandstateny.com Copyright ©2015, City and State NY, LLC

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ARMAN DZIDZOVIC

City & State hopped on the ferry to celebrate the launch of its Staten Island Special Issue this month with a party at the Staten Island Museum. The event was attended by local officials past and present and featured remarks from Borough President James Oddo, New York Road Runners’ Michael Schnall and the museum’s Executive Director Cheryl Adolph.

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STARS BEHIND BARS

With its uniforms and numbers, the correctional system isn’t big on individuality. But in New York, some individuals are sure to stand out when they run afoul of the law. Here are six of the biggest names to spend time on Rikers. -JC

LIL WAYNE - Eight months March 2010-November 2010

DOMINIQUE STRAUSS-KAHN - Four days May 17, 2011-May 20, 2011

TUPAC SHAKUR - Two months December 1994-January 1995

SID VICIOUS - Two months October 1978 and December 1978-February 1979

SONNY ROLLINS - 10 months 1950

PLAXICO BURRESS - One day Sept. 23, 2009

The night of his first headlining concert in New York, police found a gun on the rapper’s tour bus. He was charged after a legal fight of more than two years, but his stint was postponed so he could get a root canal and again for a fire in the courthouse on his sentencing date. While jailed, his album reached No. 1 on the charts.

Mon dieu! The French IMF chief was quite a star back home in Paris, so his arrest on felony sexual assault charges was big news. Inconsistencies in the accusing hotel maid’s story kept prosecutors from launching a case and the charges were dismissed, but not soon enough to avoid a media frenzy with Francophone reporters camping out in satellite trucks across the bridge from Rikers.

Shakur was held while awaiting sentencing on charges of sexually assaulting a woman in a hotel room. He denied all wrongdoing, but ended up serving nine months in Dannemora. It was while he was at Rikers that Shakur sat down for a now-famous interview with the writer Kevin Powell in which he declared, “The addict in Tupac is dead.

The excuse maker in Tupac is dead.”

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city & state — November 25, 16, 2015 2015

The most provocative of the Sex Pistols was charged in the stabbing death of his girlfriend Nancy Spungen and sent to Rikers for a week before his record company paid his bail. Sent back months later after an assault at a club, he was reportedly raped and beaten at Rikers and died of a heroin overdose the night he was released on bail.

The “Saxophone Colossus” fought heroin addiction and got locked up at least twice – once for armed robbery.

Time behind bars was surprisingly productive. The future Kennedy Center honoree was commissioned to write music by officials at the jail’s chapel and ended up creating the jazz standards “Oleo” and “Doxy.”

Famous for catching footballs, the New York Giants star became better known for catching a bullet when he accidentally shot himself in his leg at a Manhattan nightclub. He spent the night at Rikers before serving almost two years upstate for criminal possession of a weapon and reckless endangerment. Burress had a productive season with the Jets after being released.

Is Rikers Island beyond saving? Read a City Limits report on Page 12 cit yandstateny.com

Ú

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CIT Y

UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT BILLS AIM TO PROTECT MORE WORKERS WHEN COMPANIES CHANGE HANDS

By SARINA TRANGLE Striving to ensure that privatesector workers keep their jobs – at least temporarily – when businesses change hands is a legislative move of choice on the New York City Council.

Earlier this fall, the Civil Service and Labor Committee held a hearing on legislation that would require incoming supermarket owners to maintain stores’ staff for three months. The same committee took up two measures Monday building on a worker retention law enacted in 2002. One would expand the scope of the law within the building service sector, and the other would add food workers to its purview.

Héctor Figueroa, president of the buildings service workers union 32BJ SEIU, said the first bill would extend

protections in the 2002 Displaced Building Service Workers Protection Act to an additional 50,000 New Yorkers. The law currently requires landlords or management companies adding a new building to their portfolio to keep its building service personnel for at least 90 days. New executives seeking to trim staff must retain personnel based on seniority under the current law, which also targets larger properties and only applies to companies overseeing residences of 50 or more units or supervising more than 100,000 square feet of commercial space.

The new building sector bill, which New York City Councilmen Robert Cornegy and I. Daneek Miller formally introduced Tuesday, would

eliminate a cap that cuts off the retention requirements when workers make more than $25 an hour. Figueroa said this cap has not changed since 2002 and should be lifted to ensure 23,000 commercial cleaning workers are covered when new labor contracts are signed.

The amendments to the law would extend the requirements to companies that lease at least 10,000 square feet of space and buildings where the city rents more than half the floor space.

“When the city is leasing more than half the space in a building, they are, de facto, the managing entity,” Figueroa said. “We want to make sure that the city can live up to the same standard as the private sector.”

Although he had yet to formally introduce the legislation, City Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez had a bill adding food service workers to the 2002 law pre-considered at Monday’s hearing. The measure would apply to those working in cafeterias or eateries in sports stadiums, entertainment hubs, universities and large law and business firms.

“We feel that it is important that workers that provide the services in the food service industry also be protected,” Rodriguez said. “(The law) creates a period of time where workers are able to get, to look for any other opportunities that they may have, when there is a new buyer of the business.”

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STATE

FITZPATRICK FALLOUT

WILL PLANT’S CLOSURE JEOPARDIZE NEW YORK’S CLEAN ENERGY FUTURE?

By ASHLEY HUPFL

city & state — November 25, 2015

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Plant this month announced it will close after its sole reactor runs out of fuel next year – and the plant’s supporters are blaming a system that ignores its value as a clean energy resource.

The plant’s supporters say the state is too narrowly focusing on ensuring energy reliability. And further complicating the picture, the political discussion surrounding the plant is being driven by the significant economic blow Oswego County could feel from its closure and, with it, the loss of more than 600 jobs.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo and local politicians quickly warned of the economic repercussions of the closure of the nuclear plant and vowed to try to stop its owner, Entergy, from shuttering it.

“I strongly caution Entergy not to use the threat of job losses as a means of prodding economic relief to help their bottom line,” Cuomo told the State of Politics blog in a recent statement. “This tactic has been attempted by others in the past and has been unsuccessful. In this state, an entity called the Public Service Commission has oversight over services deemed to be in the statewide public’s best interests. Entergy should keep that in mind. Any decisions will be made on the merits.”

Although Cuomo has vowed to take every “legal and regulatory” avenue to stop the plant’s closure, how much leverage the state has in preventing that outcome traditionally depends on the Public Service Commission’s determination on whether the state’s energy grid needs FitzPatrick’s output to ensure systemwide reliability.

Independent Power Producers of New York President and CEO Gavin Donohue warned against government involvement and said the state picking winners and losers and bailing out

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY

The FitzPatrick Nuclear Power

FitzPatrick Nuclear Power Plant around the time of its completion in 1973. Its owner, Entergy, announced the plant will close next year. some plants is a “recipe for disaster,” but stressed the importance of nuclear power for New York state.

A New York Independent System Operator report found New York’s six nuclear power reactors generated 30 percent of the state’s electricity last year.

According to Entergy, FitzPatrick had decreased in value and could not compete against low natural gas prices and a “poor market design that fails to properly compensate nuclear generators.”

On Nov. 18, Entergy said in a statement that discussions with state officials had been “unsuccessful” and had concluded. The company filed with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission a

formal notice of its intention to close the plant, which is the next step in the process of shutting it down.

Entergy already paid the New York Independent System Operator, which operates the state’s electric grid and monitors the wholesale electricity markets, for a confidential study of FitzPatrick which concluded that the closure would pose no problem.

Now that the company has officially announced its intent to close the plant, the commission will start its public review.

Though Cuomo is fighting to keep the FitzPatrick plant closed, he is also actively seeking to close Entergy’s other nuclear power plant, Indian Point, because of his safety concerns

due to the plant’s proximity to New York City. Located in Central New York, FitzPatrick does not pose the same safety risk.

But in light of the potential closure at FitzPatrick, industry sources are arguing that meeting clean energy goals – not just reliability – should be used as a basis for keeping power plants open.

In addition to the potential loss of two nuclear power plants, the Cuomo administration this year decided to ban high-volume hydraulic fracturing.

Industry experts argued that missing out on a potentially productive natural gas industry in New York could also jeopardize the state’s environmental goals, because the state would be forced

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reliable and they also like a diverse energy portfolio.”

Experts also noted the state provides incentives for solar and wind energy to promote clean energy, but has not offered nuclear similar investments. As just one example, Cuomo has invested heavily in the creation of NY Green Bank, a $1 billion state-sponsored financial entity which promotes clean energy growth for solar and wind.

“It will be very difficult to meet our

RGGI goals, our regional greenhouse gas goals, and it would be extremely difficult to meet those goals for the Clean Power Plan without nuclear assets,” said Darren Suarez, director of governmental affairs for the Business Council of New York State. “People are valuing clean power and we have those assets in upstate New York. Maybe that’s what we should be selling to upstate communities and maybe that’s how we keep FitzPatrick.”

STATE

Tom Kauffman, director of media relations for the Nuclear Energy Institute, said New York’s deregulated energy market makes it more difficult for nuclear power plants to thrive and grow.

“Deregulated markets – not in every case – are primarily driven on costs,” Kauffman said. “The regulated markets are markedly different in that they value the attributes of nuclear energy, which is carbon-free, baseload, highly

TIME HAS COME IN THE

Fight for $15

There’s a reason why the Fight for $15 is gaining momentum: It’s about economic fairness for all – not just low wage workers. If you’re working for a living, it has meaning for you.

wrong with the American work ethic. People are working harder than ever and finding it more difficult to earn a living and support their family on stagnant wages. Helping them get a pay raise is about fairness, plain and simple.

Governor Cuomo’s recent announcement that he will phase in a raise in People know that we IT’S ABOUT the minimum for state have an economy out of employees is welcome. balance. People know that CSEA had been calling on a few corporate CEOs him to do so for some time. and bankers have rigged FOR ALL The action has important a system so that it works — NOT JUST LOW practical and symbolic very well for them at the WAGE WORKERS. effects. The vast majority expense of everyone else. of CSEA represented state And we all know that’s employees already earn not right! more than $15 per hour.

There is tremendous anger about that all across Unfortunately there are significant pockets of the political spectrum and elected officials workers who do not and there are many others are starting to recognize that they have to do in local government, school district and not-forsomething about it. profit employment who are severely undervalued.

The message should be loud and clear that They’re recognizing it because large numbers of economic equality must be persued for the good people are joining together and speaking out for of our society. what’s right and taking back our Democracy.

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FAIRNESS

It’s right that low wage workers be raised up because it’s good for the individuals, their families, and their communities. When low wage workers have more expendable income, it will be spent in their local communities. Lifting those at the bottom of the pay scale will benefit everyone.

Despite the rhetoric from Business and other opponents, there is overwhelming evidence that raising the minimum wage is a very good thing for the economy. That’s long overdue in these times because it has been EARNED. There is nothing

9191_Advertorial Fight15 7.485x10 CS.indd 1

More people need to stand together and make our voices heard on an economy that works for all.

DA N N Y D O N O H U E , P R E S I D E N T

Danny Donohue is president of the nearly 300,000 member CSEA – New York’s Leading Union – representing workers doing every kind of job, in every part of New York.

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city & state — November 25, 2015

to rely more heavily on its dirtier coal plants.

In 2014, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced its Clean Power Plan, which establishes stateby-state goals for carbon emissions reductions. New York is already a member of a nine-state coalition called the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which has committed to the federal plan to reduce carbon pollution from power plants by 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2030.

Now, in the face of the loss of one or even two nuclear power plants in New York, some representatives of the energy industry are sounding more like environmentalists as they rally around the federal clean energy plan.

“If (nuclear) goes away, it’s not going to be easily replaced from an infrastructure standpoint, an environmental standpoint or – more importantly – a cost standpoint,” Donohue said. “Nuclear power is a very important fuel source. It provides diversity and flexibility in our system.

It needs to be factored in that way.”

The governor appears to be listening.

The New York Times reported that Cuomo will order the Public Service Commission to mandate that half of the state’s power be generated from cleaner, renewable sources by 2030.

State officials hope the mandate, which will promote relatively clean nuclear energy in the meantime, will delay the shutdown of FitzPatrick, although it’s unclear whether the plant will stay open as a result.

“Separately, so as not to lose ground in reducing carbon emissions, the Clean Energy Standard will provide support for upstate nuclear power plants whose operations are under threat because of low natural gas prices,” Richard Kauffman, the state’s top energy official, said in a statement confirming the Times report.

Prior to the Cuomo administration’s move, experts had told City & State that nuclear power plants are costly to operate and are competing in a market in which natural gas prices have sunk to very low levels.

“It’s a negative result, unfortunately, of the way the market is constructed,” said Matthew Cordaro, a trustee of the Long Island Power Authority. “From a clean energy perspective, (FitzPatrick) provides over 800 megawatts of non-carbon-based energy throughout the state. The unusual attributes of a nuclear plant, FitzPatrick in particular, are not recognized and it makes the operation of the plant a financial hardship.”

BUFFALO

HINTS OF HOPE AN UPBEAT CEREMONY AMID THE HOUSING AUTHORITY’S PERSISTENT PROBLEMS

By JUSTIN SONDEL

scheme to address its occupancy rate, which has hovered around 84 percent, earning a designation of “substandard.” The main funder of the city housing authority’s activities, HUD went so far as to threaten federal receivership if a plan was not submitted and implemented, a rare move.

At the ribbon-cutting, SandersGarrett, with Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown, Assemblywoman Crystal Peoples-Stokes and state Sen. Tim Kennedy all sitting directly in front of her, called on the elected officials to work to deal with federal funding cuts and bureaucratic hurdles in order to

city & state — November 25, 2015

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help the agency execute its plan.

“I want to take the time to thank everyone who has come out and joined us today, but I hope it’s not the last time,” Sanders-Garrett said. “The residents of public housing need you.”

After a brief conversation with Sanders-Garrett during a tour of one of the homes, Peoples-Stokes said she plans to take that message back to Albany.

“We’re going to start working on that right away and make sure during the budget process that we get our fair share,” Peoples-Stokes said.

She added that running the message up the chain to legislative leadership

Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown (sixth from left), BMHA’s Dawn Sanders-Garrett, Assemblywoman Crystal Peoples-Stokes, state Sen. Tim Kennedy and others at the ribbon cutting.

Standing in front of a two-story suburban-style home with yellow siding and white trim, representatives from the Buffalo Municipal Housing Authority, the city, the state, developers and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development posed for pictures while cutting a long yellow ribbon with a set of massive scissors. The dignitaries were celebrating the completion of the third and final phase of an affordable housing project – almost 10 years in the making – at the A.D. Price housing development. In total, 50 units at the site, already completely occupied, have been added to the authority’s portfolio.

Dawn Sanders-Garrett, the housing authority’s executive director, beamed from behind a podium in the nearby community center before the ribboncutting, speaking in an exuberant tone and noting the warm, bright sunshine outside – an uncommon occurrence for Buffalo in November. While the optimistic demeanor persisted throughout her comments, Sanders-

Garrett spent a significant amount of time detailing the many challenges that remain for her organization, and called on the elected officials in the room to push for more funding.

“When you have housing that is over 80 years old of course there’s going to need to be some money allocated to address the capital needs of this organization,” she said.

Surrounding the new units are the long, two-story brick buildings of the original A.D. Price Courts development, with broken windows and tattered sheets still hanging as shades. The relics sit empty, their 170 units deteriorating. The authority is seeking to tear them down and build more units like those on surrounding plots, but as of now no funding is in line for those plans.

Those units are among the 342 the housing authority is seeking to replace as part of a larger turnaround plan submitted to HUD this spring. The federal agency had required the housing authority to turn in a comprehensive

WHO DECIDED KIDS DON’T NEED PHYS ED?

For more information, contact PhysEd4All@heart.org.

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All New Yorkers All New Yorkers Need a Raise Need a Raise

By Stuart Appelbaum, President, Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union,

By Stuart Appelbaum, President, RWDSU, UFCW Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, RWDSU, UFCW ew York’s low-wage workers are facing another difficult holiday season. They know it ew York’s low-wage workers are facing will be a struggle to just pay the bills and put another difficult holiday season. They know it food on the table, before even considering what it will be a struggle to just pay the bills and put will take to buy gifts for their family. food on the table, before even considering what it Gov. Cuomo’s recent action to raise minimum will take to buy gifts for their family. pay for New York State workers to $15 an hour is a Gov. Cuomo’s recent action to raise minimum good first step toward helping working people in the pay for New York State workers to $15 an hour is a Empire State. The Governor deserves credit for this good first step toward helping working people in the move and we applaud his efforts to raise wages for Empire State. The Governor deserves credit for this hard-working New Yorkers. move and we applaud his efforts to raise wages for But there are still hundreds of hard-working New Yorkers. thousands of other workers Retail workers – who But there are still hundreds of throughout New York who need a represent the largest thousands of other workers Retail workers – who raise as well. Retail workers – who percentage of New Yorkers throughout New York who need a represent the largest represent the largest percentage of who work at minimum raise as well. Retail workers – who percentage of New Yorkers New Yorkers who work at minimum wage or slightly above – represent the largest percentage of who work at minimum desperately need more pay. wage or slightly above – New Yorkers who work at minimum wage or slightly above – desperately need more pay. Car desperately need more pay. wage or slightly above – wash workers, home health aides, desperately need more pay. Car food service workers, and many in other industries all deserve more wash workers, home health aides, than the terribly insufficient $8.75 minimum wage that New York State food service workers, and many in other industries all deserve more mandates. than the terribly insufficient $8.75 minimum wage that New York State And they can’t wait. We need immediate change to help working mandates.

New Yorkers build better lives and provide for their families. We’ve seen And they can’t wait. We need immediate change to help working the support that the public has for raising minimum pay rates. It’s New Yorkers build better lives and provide for their families. We’ve seen evidenced in polls, and it’s evidenced through the thriving nationwide the support that the public has for raising minimum pay rates. It’s Fight for $15 movement. Low-wage workers are staging strikes, and evidenced in polls, and it’s evidenced through the thriving nationwide thousands are rallying in support of action that would help the Fight for $15 movement. Low-wage workers are staging strikes, and estimated 64 million Americans who work for less than a $15 hourly thousands are rallying in support of action that would help the wage. estimated 64 million Americans who work for less than a $15 hourly Governor Cuomo and the New York Assembly have voiced their wage. support for raising New York’s State minimum wage to $15. The New Governor Cuomo and the New York Assembly have voiced their York State Senate needs to get on board, and realize that workers on support for raising New York’s State minimum wage to $15. The New Long Island and upstate New York need a raise as much as workers in York State Senate needs to get on board, and realize that workers on New York City. This action is needed now, and would strengthen our Long Island and upstate New York need a raise as much as workers in state, our communities, and our economy. It would be a game-changer, New York City. This action is needed now, and would strengthen our but we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that the best solution to income state, our communities, and our economy. It would be a game-changer, inequality is still unionization. Workers face many issues on the job but we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that the best solution to income besides low wage rates – they need control over scheduling, better inequality is still unionization. Workers face many issues on the job benefits, and representation in the workplace. besides low wage rates – they need control over scheduling, better Government action to increase wage rates – along with policies benefits, and representation in the workplace. that encourage and protect collective bargaining – Government action to increase wage rates – along with policies can help us realize the promise of a New York that encourage and protect collective bargaining – economy that serves everyone. can help us realize the promise of a New York economy that serves everyone.

BUFFALO

Our Perspective Our Perspective

Sanders-Garrett, Peoples-Stokes, Brown, Kennedy and others.

is necessary to highlight that it is an important issue for the Buffalo delegation.

“The governor is going to present his budget in January,” Peoples-Stokes said. “Hopefully he will have heard our opinion before then.”

While the $12 million project – funded by the housing authority, the state Office of Homes and Community Renewal and HUD – will provide new homes for many families, it does little to address the housing authority’s occupancy rate issues. The additional 50 units are a small percentage of the more than 4,300 total units on the authority’s books, and estimates suggest it would cost $300 million to address all its capital needs.

Joan Spilman, HUD’s Buffalo field office director, was also on hand for the ceremony. She praised the many parties involved in the housing development, noting that a number of factors, including funding cuts at the federal level, have made it necessary cit yandstateny.com

to bring many groups together to accomplish what used to be handled by a few agencies.

“Days are gone when one source of funding can provide this kind of development,” Spilman said. “It requires all of us working together and it’s a difficult process.”

After the press event Spilman told City & State that her office’s work with the housing authority on improving occupancy rates is a “challenge,” but that the authority has continued to work with HUD on its submitted plan.

“Some of their occupancy rate is because there are units that can’t be inhabited because they kept them out of occupancy and they don’t have funding to upgrade,” Spilman said.

But she said her agency will continue to meet with housing authority officials and work with them to improve.

“We expect things to work out,” Spilman said. “We expect them to get better.”

For more information, visit For more information, visit www.rwdsu.org

www.rwdsu.org

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city & state — November 25, 2015

JUSTIN SONDEL

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CLOSING RIKERS ISLAND

IS RIKERS ISLAND BEYOND SAVING?

A series by ED MORALES from CITY LIMITS

A note from City Limits Executive Editor and Publisher JARRETT MURPHY and City & State Editorial Director MICHAEL GARETH JOHNSON

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Rikers Island is more than a place on the New York City map. It’s also an idea about how the city deals with crime and dispenses punishment. And over the past year – not for the first time in recent history – Rikers has become synonymous with scandal, abuse, injustice and violence.

The debate over how to fix the city’s jails is certainly part of the broader national discussion about policing, incarceration and race. But Rikers presents a unique policy challenge with its aging infrastructure, its increasingly controversial role as a pretrial holding cell, and its physical isolation.

city & state — November 25, 2015

For many, the promise of reform is not enough. So a small but influential set of voices has begun calling not to mend Rikers, but to end it. They argue the problems plaguing the city’s correctional system aren’t the result of bad policies on the island, but rather the inescapable reality of Rikers itself – its location, its role, its history and the culture that exists there.

With a goal of adding substantive analysis and information to the growing debate, City & State and City Limits present this series of articles exploring Rikers Island, its problems, the proposals to fix them and the bold case for more sweeping change.

Photo: A cell block at Rikers Island on May 23, 1935. (John Rooney/AP)

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CLOSING RIKERS ISLAND

AP PHOTO/JOHN ROONEY

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THE CALL

A SMALL BUT GROWING CHORUS WANTS RIKERS ISLAND SHUT DOWN

The key question might not be whether the city should live without Rikers, or how it would do so, but whether it has the political will to finish the transformation that has already started.

The constant drumbeat of Justice Department reports, screaming headlines and impassioned editorials bemoaning the out-of-control violence and close to inhuman conditions on Rikers Island have been with us for over a year now. U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara’s report, issued in August 2014, dispassionately capped its central finding – that there is a “pattern and practice of excessive force and violence” at the city’s goto holding pen for pretrial detainees and short-term inmates – with a foreboding conclusion: “Rikers Island is a broken institution. It is a place where brute force is the first impulse rather than the last resort.” The case of Kalief Browder, who spent three years at Rikers without being charged with a crime only to commit suicide

Travis traces the idea to close Rikers Island back to his days as a member of the Koch administration in the 1980s.

“Herb Sturz was the deputy mayor and he proposed a swap of Rikers with the state,” Travis says. “Then the idea was, the state was building up prisons, so why not keep those incarcerated individuals close to New York, and use the money to build a distributed network of smaller pretrial detention facilities throughout the city?” Travis says the idea never materialized because the state couldn’t come up with the money, but he felt it was a strong proposal because it would allow state inmates the chance to be closer to their city relatives and “give the city the opportunity to rethink and refocus attention to build a distributed network of small, presumably better designed, more humane and effective smaller facilities.”

last June, months after his release, seemed to bring to a tipping point the question of Rikers’ role in the city.

A federal lawsuit and the onslaught of bad press generated promises of reforms. But a growing chorus of politicians, former correction officials and commentators is now saying that Rikers is beyond saving.

“I think we should close Rikers, sell it, and build small community-based facilities,” says Jeremy Travis, president of the John Jay College for Criminal Justice and former director of the National Institute of Justice under President Bill Clinton. “This is not an new idea. It’s not something I’m shouting from the rooftops but I believe it’s an idea whose time has come.”

Actually achieving that goal will be

difficult in the face of numerous obstacles, both political and practical – including the fact that in 2013 the city broke ground on a new jail on the island.

In some ways, however, the city is already winding down its reliance on Rikers. The island’s population has declined to just under 10,000 after cracking 20,000 in the early ’90s, and efforts to reform bail laws, treat mental illness outside of the correction system and speed up the courts have encouraged the notion that Rikers is increasingly obsolete.

Meanwhile, arrests are declining, the state prison system is dwindling and a nationwide, bipartisan consensus has formed around the need for criminaljustice reforms that would have been unthinkable a decade or two ago.

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FRANK FRANKLIN II A/AP

CLOSING RIKERS ISL AND - PART I

Loved ones attend the funeral of Kalief Browder, who spent years in Rikers without a trial.

“RIKERS ISLAND IS A BROKEN INSTITUTION. IT IS A PLACE WHERE BRUTE FORCE IS THE FIRST IMPULSE RATHER THAN THE LAST RESORT.” – August 2014 report by the office of U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara

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So far, the de Blasio administration is not seizing on the opportunity.

Instead, the city continues to put its faith in the reform process.

There has been a succession of jailpolicy changes since the Times’ series on the abuse of mentally ill inmates in July 2014 and the release of Bharara’s report that August. By last November, de Blasio was promising more money to treat mental illness in the correction system. A few weeks into the new year the city’s Board of Correction adopted changes to the minimum standards governing life of Rikers, and in March the mayor and Correction Commissioner Joseph Ponte

A coalition has circulated a petition calling for Rikers’ closing. announced a 14-point plan to address violence on the island.

In late June, the city agreed to an additional set of reforms that included the end of solitary confinement for all inmates under 18 – Browder had spent months in solitary – and the installation of a federal monitor at the Department of Correction as part of a settlement in a lawsuit filed by Rikers inmates through the Legal Aid Society.

The promised reforms included the use of body cameras by correction officers, increased video surveillance, a new use-of-force policy and new disciplinary guidelines. In addition, the settlement required the city to “make best efforts” to house inmates under 18 at facilities that would be accessible by public transit and allow for direct supervision.

On Oct. 7, the mayor quietly signed new legislation mandating additional Department of Correction reforms.

Among other changes, the bills established reporting requirements involving statistics on inmate demographics, the use of segregated housing units, visitation, bail amounts, sentence lengths and inmate grievances. An inmate “bill of rights” and a public posting of the department’s use-of-force policy are also now required.

The reforms have had mixed results so far. The end of solitary confinement for detainees and inmates under 18 and the reforms in the bail system pursued by the City Council have at least symbolically addressed some of the problems. But just a few weeks ago internal emails were released showing that the Bronx district attorney’s office has a backlog of about 70 cases of violence from Rikers and appears overwhelmed. A new lawsuit was filed by a jail visitor who claimed she was

groped by a Rikers guard who made her take her clothes off in front of her 5-year-old daughter. While it’s only fair to give the reforms time to work, there was a spike in violence at Rikers reported this July, and a newly released report by city Comptroller Scott Stringer’s office asserts that violence has exploded as the inmate population has declined.

The reforms implemented so far seem like common-sense measures, offering more reporting and transparency and an end to the practices most prone to abuse. But they mirror the policies being used to reduce incidents of excessive force by police – a reliance on technology here, a changing of codes there. The question for both sets of initiatives is whether they address the systemic issues at play. It seems unlikely that any modest reform will change the essential fact that Rikers is a dumping ground for pretrial detainees mired in a disgracefully slow case-processing system, a poorly suited home to thousands of the mentally ill, and a decaying physical asset on an isolated island that makes life difficult for everyone involved.

What’s needed, says John Jay’s Travis, is for the city to wipe the board and start over.

“Let’s think creatively about a system that treats individuals with dignity, gives corrections officers a good working environment, provides opportunities for people that are mentally ill to be treated like mental patients rather than inmates, treats young people differently and maybe not there at all – and let’s do the visioning exercise that says in 10 years, where do we want to be?”

Travis says. “If we did that, we would not want to keep Rikers.”

CLOSING RIKERS ISLAND - PART I

also painted Rikers as an evil that must be cured. The mayor has a chance to make a major statement in the country’s larger debate about criminal justice reform. And the island itself could even represent an opportunity for real-estate development with no risk of gentrification.

While much of the impetus for closing Rikers has come from policymakers and politicians, there is a growing grass-roots movement calling for change. Various groups like JustLeadershipUSA and the New York City Jails Action Coalition are part of a coalition that has circulated a petition on Change.org calling for Rikers’ closing. A significant component of the activist movement is motivated by a recognition that blacks and Latinos are over-represented in the criminal justice system, a critique deeply woven into the evolving national debate about race.

Of course, de Blasio faces real obstacles to making a move to shutter Rikers. Besieged by the governor, charter networks, tabloid editorial boards, activists who feel he’s contracting with and hiring too few minorities, and a number of potential challengers from within his own party, de Blasio isn’t exactly rolling in political capital. His reforms of the bail system have been modest compared with what closing Rikers would involve, and critics have already accused him of being “soft on crime.”

His greatest vulnerability has always been a rise in violence during his administration, and an uptick in the NYPD crime statistics could make closing Rikers all but impossible. Plus, the mayor already faces major fights over building affordable housing in certain neighborhoods; imagine the uproar in the communities where new jails would go.

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As recently as Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s second term, the city tried to disperse the Rikers population to borough-based jails. Martin Horn, correction commissioner under Bloomberg and now a distinguished lecturer at John Jay, attempted to double the capacity of the Brooklyn Detention Complex in Boerum Hill, as well as build a $375 million jail in the South Bronx. Horn believed that dispersed jails in local settings would actually benefit the community. “It would be better for families and for justice – it would make the prisoners more accessible to the lawyers and social service organizations,” Horn says now. Neighborhood opposition torpedoed the move. “Everybody would wring their hands and say, ‘Yes, it’s terrible, Rikers Island stinks, but nobody wanted to do anything about it,’” Horn recalls.

The idea of closing Rikers in the face of the level of opposition encountered in 2007 would be “very unrealistic,” Horn says. But the politics surrounding the issue have changed over the past eight years. A few elected leaders openly support a move to close the island. One of them, Queens City Councilman Daniel Dromm, says putting together a plan to “demolish Rikers” is a win-win. “We know we’re going to have (not-in-mybackyard) objections but I think we have to educate the public about why it is important to keep facilities close to home and we need to have elected officials who can stand up and have the courage to say this is the right thing to do,” Dromm says.

Neil Barsky, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, hedge fund manager and founder of an investigative journalism site called The Marshall Project, jump-started the debate this summer with an op-ed in The New York Times. Invoking comparisons to Guantánamo Bay (the analogy came up again in a recent Marshall Project post by former Gov. Eliot Spitzer) and Rikers’ significance in the growing national debate on criminal justice reform, Barsky described the potential benefits of its closure on several bigpicture levels. “I think it’s a great opportunity for Mayor de Blasio,” he said.

The political argument that advocates of closing Rikers make boils down to this: At a time when de Blasio is being battered by critics from the left and right, closing Rikers could be a crucial legacy-builder. While tabloid headlines scream about the perception of a spike in street crime, they have

Rikers Island on Dec. 14, 1980. (David Pickoff/AP)

CLOSING RIKERS ISL AND - PART II

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THE HISTORY

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HOW WE GOT RIKERS ISLAND – AND WHY IT DOESN’T WORK Rikers Island, located in the East River within spitting distance of Port Morris, the Bronx, and Astoria, Queens, has a foreboding aura that only island lockups have. It is at once amid the city, just a hundred yards from a LaGuardia Airport runway, and at the same time easily hidden by a sudden fog bank. It symbolizes the way Western societies have approached criminal punishment for more than a hundred years: No more public pillorying – keep the wrongdoers out

of sight, out of mind.

Today, with Rikers’ inmate population 90 percent black or Latino, experts say its isolating and ostracizing nature magnifies the racial discrimination at the heart of the criminal justice system. “The idea that we need to put people on an island away from us – it is a self-contained community where they’re locked up and the people who oversee their detention travel across a bridge to get there – almost begs for trouble,” says

Jeremy Travis, president of John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “This is a very old way of thinking about how we as a society manage the deprivation of liberty. We do it far away.”

Though Rikers Island was bought by the city in the 1880s, it wasn’t put into use as a site for detention until 1935, just a year after the creation of the infamous island prison, San Francisco’s Alcatraz.

Under Correction Commissioner Richard C. Patterson, a World War I veteran who

helped organize the American Legion in Paris, Rikers replaced the principal jail at the time, which was located on what is now Roosevelt Island – then called Blackwell Island, which also had a history of abuse.

The notion of a penal colony has existed since 17th century China, but their use peaked in the 19th and early 20th centuries – Kafka’s “In the Penal Colony” was published in 1919 – most often in European colonies. Theorists of biological determinism of criminality cit yandstateny.com

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While Rikers is not the only jail in New York – about 150 people are locked up in the Brooklyn Detention Complex, another 800 on the Bain barge docked off Hunts Point, and nearly 900 at the Manhattan Detention Complex, known as the Tombs – it is by far the largest. The epitome of a sprawling detention complex, Rikers consists of 10 jails and additional support facilities, including a visitors’ center and infirmaries.

Although construction is underway to build a new jail on the island, projected to cost $594 million and due to be completed in 2018, the rest of the facilities are over 50 years old, and their crumbling conditions and inadequate recreational spaces add to the isolating atmosphere.

Former Correction Commissioner Martin Horn even says the buildings themselves undermine efforts to reduce violence.

“They are poorly designed and they actually serve as an arsenal,” he says.

“Most of the weapons are being made inside the prison because the prison is so poorly built the prisoners can rip metal off the heating fixtures and off the lighting fixtures and sharpen them into lethal weapons.”

Among the problems resulting from Rikers’ physical deterioration are sewage backups, water main breaks, and lack of heat and ventilation. While most of Rikers is not currently in the 100-year flood zone, projections for the years 2050 and beyond show large swathes of it becoming vulnerable to coastal inundation. City Comptroller Scott Stringer says that during a recent visit to the island, he saw “floorboards that were destroyed by Hurricane Sandy that were never replaced” in a juvenile gymnasium facility. And although concentrating services on one island should create efficiencies, the overall inefficiency of the arrangement outweighs any advantages, critics say.

In the past, Rikers Island’s limited bridge access was used as leverage by the city’s correction officers to stage protests. Under Mayor David Dinkins in 1990 and three years later under

Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, correction officers blocked the bridge to protest working conditions and the failure of the city to reach a contract agreement with them. The 1990 episode was particularly tense, when, following a “bloody uprising” involving sustained clashes between inmates and guards, “600 guards blockaded the bridge, stranding thousands of inmates and workers on the island for two days,” according to The New York Times.

The difficulty of traveling to Rikers, its removal from the normal conditions of contiguous city life, even the fact that it is far from city courthouses, all heighten its sordid, outside-the-law ambiance, whether real or imagined.

Even the abuses and corruption that correction officers have been accused of – from active collaboration with drug gangs to simply running visitors through a gauntlet – are sometimes attributed to the island’s “out-ofsight” perception. John Jay’s Travis sees Rikers Island’s remoteness at odds with trends in criminal justice policy.

“Community courts are all around the city now,” Travis says. “This is part of a larger imperative for the country: to reduce the stigmatization of people who have been accused of, not even convicted of, violating the law. These are our brothers and sisters and fellow citizens, and putting them on an island conveys just the opposite image of the larger national project that’s underway right now to reimagine our justice system in terms of a citizenship and human dignity value proposition.”

Rikers’ long history as a facsimile of a penal colony makes it vulnerable to charges that it reflects the kind of institutionalized racism that criminal justice reform advocates inveigh against.

Isolating inmates on an island has the effect of ostracizing them, and can be seen as the first step toward an eventual denial of educational opportunities, housing and voting rights.

But while that systemic critique is in the background, the movement toward closing Rikers is largely driven by the more tangible reality of the jail’s problematic space and place.

“Rikers Island ... is chaotic, and that generates violence and brutality because of the culture of the place,” says psychiatrist Bandy Lee, who worked at Rikers. “To alter and ameliorate it involves tearing down the architecture, because of its effect on people’s emotional state and mental health.”

CLOSING RIKERS ISL AND - PART II

because Rikers – a jail and not a prison – functions mainly as a holding cell for the criminal court system. While some of its residents are convicted and serving sentences of less than one year for misdemeanor offenses, most of its inmates on a given day are pretrial detainees who, because they’ve been remanded there or unable to afford bail, wait there between court appearances.

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like 19th century Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso recommended that “incorrigible” repeat offenders be exiled to such colonies.

The relocation of Blackwell Island inmates to Rikers was, at the time, seen as a reform. Back in 1934, narcotics-trafficking gangs headed

by Joey Rao and Edward Cleary (whose mentor was the mobster Dutch Schultz) were the subject of an investigation to determine the extent to which they ran operations at the old jail.

Over decades the Italian and Irish gangs have given way to the era of mass incarceration of blacks and Latinos, and Rikers’ unsavory reputation is carried by a new demographic. It still functions as a depository for hardened street criminals, repeat gang offenders

and, increasingly, the mentally ill, and it has been nicknamed, like Alcatraz once was, “the Rock,” which calls to mind not only its rocky landscape and incomparable “hardness,” but also the term for cocaine that has been processed for street use.

The reaction to the crack wave of the ’80s was an aggressive system of drugwar policing that has led to the incarceration of many young men of color, often for relatively minor drug offenses. Since many lack the resources to pay bail, it has become a way station for the Kalief Browders of the world: those accused of possessing of small amounts of marijuana or committing petty larceny. These days Rikers’ resemblance to a penal colony is the byproduct of its grim past, its forlorn location and its place within an inefficient court process that delays justice for its staggering number of pretrial detainees.

Rikers’ physical reality, many agree, is a crucial part of its problem.

Much has been written about its narrow approach roads, inconvenient public transportation access, and remoteness from families who must confront interminable bus rides and a maze of sometimes hostile bureaucracy for a relatively brief encounter with their incarcerated loved ones.

“It takes a whole day to get to Rikers and back home,” says City Councilman Daniel Dromm. “You go out at 7 a.m. and you return at 7 at night. We should be making it easier for families to visit their loved ones.

Study after study has shown the decrease in the amount of recidivism when families can continue to be involved with their loved ones.”

For a resident of Hunts Point, the Bronx – which is physically only a little over a mile from the island – to visit a loved one or friend at Rikers, travel time would be around an hour and 40 minutes, requiring a subway trip to Midtown in order to cross into Queens to catch the Rikers bus.

As hard as it is for civilians to get on and off the island, it’s also difficult for inmates to go to and from court. The city spends roughly $25 million a year and devotes more than 300 employees to the Correction Department’s transportation division.

Without traffic, Rikers is 20 minutes from criminal court in Queens, 21 minutes from the Bronx courthouse, 26 minutes from Brooklyn judges, 27 minutes from Centre Street in Manhattan and 50 minutes from criminal court in Staten Island.

Access to courts is a critical factor

CLOSING RIKERS CLOSING RIKERS ISL AND - PART III city & state — November 25, 2015

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THE FIX

CAN NEW YORK CITY REFORM RIKERS SHORT OF REPLACING IT?

We are constantly reminded that real change, when it comes to social justice, often comes slowly. The current Broadway hit musical “Hamilton” tries to revitalize the image of a Founding Father who was deeply involved in the 18th-century abolitionist movement, but it took almost another 100 years for emancipation to actually take place.

The long-standing debate over whether Rikers can be reformed to gain a semblance of order, or is beyond hope and should be closed, seems to be coming to a tipping point. The layers of problems and issues the facility faces are like the countless coats of government-issued paint peeling off its crumbling walls: Advocates, civil rights lawyers and politicians continually chip away with one remedy or another. But will the small victories eventually add up to something New Yorkers can live with?

Glenn Martin of JustLeadershipUSA is one of the more compelling voices in the Rikers Island debate, particularly because, unlike most of the pundits, politicians, lawyers and visionaries involved, he experienced the horror of the place firsthand, having been stabbed there in 1988 while detained on a shoplifting charge. “I spent a year on Rikers 20 years ago, and I have three stab wounds in my body that remind me of Rikers every single day of my life,” Martin says. “What they remind me of is two decades of that kind of human carnage if not more. We forget that although there are (about) 7,600 people there on any given day, that translates into 72,000 admissions per year. That’s a significant amount of harm being caused, particularly when 82 percent of them are (pretrial) detainees, and half of them have bail under $2,000.”

Even before reports on horrors at Rikers began appearing in the press over the last year, Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration was trying to implement a broad range of reforms to

the criminal justice system – although the mayor has admitted he hadn’t thought about the specific need to fix the city’s jails before the ghastly headlines began appearing courtesy of The New York Times and the U.S. attorney.

The administration now seems committed to mending – not ending – Rikers, despite calls for the complex’s closure by voices like John Jay College of Criminal Justice President Jeremy Travis, former Correction Commissioner Martin Horn, and Neil Barsky’s Marshall Project, as well as activists like Martin, the New York City Jails Action Coalition and a social media campaign #ShutDownRikers, which staged a protest outside Rikers on Oct. 23.

In a statement to City Limits, de Blasio spokesperson Monica Klein said, “There have been a number of big, long-term ideas floated to reform the city’s jail system. Right now, Correction Commissioner Joseph Ponte is undertaking dramatic reforms to create a safer and more secure jail each day – including ending punitive segregation for 16- and 17-yearolds, launching a new housing tool to separate the most violent inmates, and tripling the number of security cameras on the island.” Some of the administration’s reforms are part of the settlement of a federal lawsuit over jail conditions.

The administration also stresses new efforts to improve vetting of Department of Correction personnel, as well as special training to deal with the mentally ill and adolescents, two major problem populations at Rikers.

In October, Ponte announced he would end solitary confinement, which he referred to as “torture,” for 16- and 17-year-old inmates. Yet solitary, which academic studies insist is a major trigger for self-inflicted violence among inmates, remains an option for everyone 18 and older. Efforts to scale back solitary have been consistently opposed by Correction Officers’

Benevolent Association President Norman Seabrook, who prefers to call it “punitive segregation” and defends it as “the most nonviolent/nonadversarial tool in DOC for enforcing rules and regulations.”

Part of the crisis that plays out on Rikers, however, is actually produced in the city’s courtrooms. One of the island’s major problems is the swelling of its pretrial detainee population due to court backlogs. Kalief Browder’s suicide came after he spent three years at Rikers awaiting trial. In April, de Blasio and the state’s Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman announced “Justice Reboot,” an attempt to tackle the unfortunate reality that more than 1,500 inmates at Rikers have been there for longer than a year because of backlogged courts and inefficient legal representation. One of the features of Justice Reboot is the collection of data to “map specific causes” of delays, with the goal of reducing cases that have been pending for longer than a year.

The Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice has posted new numbers showing that since Justice Reboot was announced in April, more than 60 percent of criminal court cases involving defendants that had been at Rikers for more than a year have been resolved.

But while some of Justice Reboot’s incremental goals are being attained, the negative headlines continue. A controversy arose this fall over revelations that a chief prosecutor at the Bronx district attorney’s office suspended felony prosecutions of inmates accused of crimes committed while at Rikers in an attempt to clear a backlog of cases. Seabrook immediately objected on the grounds that it was a double standard not to prosecute inmates but still prosecute guards for similar violations. Weeks later Charles Bracey, a Rikers correction officer, was accused of smuggling a small saw blade into the jail.

The jury is still out on whether reforms – such as segregating the most violent inmates in separate wings, increased surveillance to cut down on contraband smuggling, or speeding up the timeline to investigate incidents where force is used – will be effective.

An October report issued by city Comptroller Scott Stringer asserted that the rate of fight or assault infractions increased 19 percent in fiscal year 2015, with alleged assaults of staff members by inmates rising 46 percent, and incidents and allegations of the use of force by uniformed employees on inmates jumping by 27 percent.

It’s worth noting that Stringer’s numbers cover a period of time in which the administration’s reforms were still ramping up. Perhaps the most promising of the city’s policy moves are those that aim at reducing the imposition of bail. During her State of the City address in February, City Council Speaker Melissa MarkViverito announced a $1.4 million bail fund proposal (modeled on an existing Bronx Freedom Fund that has been in effect for years) that would help “qualified individuals” get bail. De Blasio announced in the spring that the city would no longer impose cash bail in some cases involving minor infractions. And in mid-October de Blasio introduced a “Bail Lab” to experiment with alternatives to cash bail.

But in an illustration of how the politics of the issue can shift, after the slaying of NYPD Officer Randolph Holder last month, de Blasio called for legal changes to broaden the use of bail by allowing judges to consider public safety in their release decisions. And for months, prison-reform advocates have been claiming that the “enhanced supervision housing” reform is a repackaging of solitary confinement, constituting a rollback of that reform goal.

At a recent forum at The New School’s Milano School of International Affairs, Management, and Urban

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Mayor Bill de Blasio and Correction Commissioner Joseph Ponte in march announce a 14-point plan to aggressively combat violence on Rikers Island. cit yandstateny.com

officers and failure to include officers in discussions of use-of-force guidelines.

In a November letter to U.S. District Court Judge Laura Taylor Swain, who oversaw the settlement in a brutality lawsuit filed by Rikers inmates through the Legal Aid Society, Seabrook asked for training on use-of-force techniques, as well as the parameters of the concept of “reasonableness” in the use of force against inmates while assessing a threat.

JustLeadershipUSA’s Martin, who says correction officers advised him not to file a complaint about his stab wounds because it would result in a bureaucratic delay, has some compassion for the officers, since his own brother became one.

“I’m not surprised that corrections officers, who arguably spend almost as much time as inmates on Rikers Island, would internalize the fact that they’re in a space that is alienating and figure out ways to survive in that space,” Martin says. “One way they would learn how to survive is to create a culture where they have unquestionable support for each other. The message is sent to them that this is how we handle rehabilitation, this is how we handle correction. And I think they have learned how to live in that space.”

CLOSING RIKERS ISL AND - PART III

While the de Blasio administration has taken steps toward reform that may alleviate some of Rikers’ problems, all those steps bank on the idea that Rikers is salvageable.

Bandy Lee, a Yale School of Medicine psychologist who worked at Rikers and helped write a Board of Correction report in 2013, says that’s not the case. She says Rikers’ culture is violent to a level she has witnessed “nowhere else” in her work, and that its “organizational chaos” generates violence and brutality.

This affects not only inmates, but their minders as well, she says.

“The correction officers have a large role in setting the culture because they’re from the same background as the prisoners, same income level, same neighborhoods, and the same education level,” she says. “This creates a recipe for this very violent, brutal culture and contest between correction officers and inmates, inmates versus other inmates, like gladiatorial contests.”

COBA’s Seabrook continues to insist that while the union is in favor of reform, violence against correction officers is increasing, and the current process is deeply flawed because lack of training provided for correction

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The mayor’s reforms have been a reaction only to the latest Rikers outrages – the treatment of teens and the mentally ill on the island, as exposed by the Times and the U.S. attorney.

But Rikers’ history reflects far deeper problems. Suicide numbers spiked in the ’80s and again in the late 1990s. There were riots during the Dinkins years, and

though violence fell during the Giuliani administration, concerns about overly aggressive control tactics mounted.

In the Bloomberg era, accusations flew about “fight clubs” arranged by correction officers. Medical care on the island has long been the subject of scrutiny. We all know Browder’s name, but what about Christopher Robinson, the teen beaten to death on the island in 2008 for refusing to join a fight club? Or Robert Konopka, the father of two who was awaiting trial in 2001 for verbally harassing a neighbor when correction officers locked him in a cell with Derrick Smart, who’d beaten his grandmother to death with a rubber mallet? Konopka’s autopsy photos showed Smart’s bootprints on his face.

Clearly the wave of Rikers reforms implemented or attempted in recent months are necessary – the “right thing to do,” as City Councilman Daniel Dromm put it. But the big picture remains unchanged, critics say. Rikers is a place – a permanently diseased space – that reinforces an outdated idea of punishment in which relatively minor offenders are housed on the same island as some of the city’s most violent criminals, in crumbling, often unsanitary buildings on land connected to the rest of the city by only a thin span of a bridge.

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Policy, the Marshall Project’s Barsky was dismayed with de Blasio’s criticism of Justice Patricia Nuñez for letting Holder’s accused killer go to drugdiversion rehab instead of jail. “I’m not as optimistic about closing Rikers as I was when I wrote the piece this summer,” Barsky said of his New York Times op-ed arguing that closing the facility could be a crucial legacy-builder for the mayor. “Are we one horrible event from backsliding? That’s all it took for the mayor to go to war against a judge who apparently complied with every guideline. … It’s a horrible signal in my opinion for what lies ahead.”

Notably, Barsky was sitting a few chairs over from the empty seat left by Elizabeth Glazer, director of the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, who, according to one of the event’s organizers, canceled at the last minute.

CLOSING RIKERS CLOSING RIKERS ISL AND - PART IV

THE END

CREATING A NEW FORM OF JUSTICE IN THE CITY

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ADI TALWAR / CITY LIMITS

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When one brings up the idea of closing down Rikers, there is a sense of great risk, that air of uncertainty that arises when you suggest reinventing the wheel – but at the same time, it’s bracing to think about the city taking on a policy change that is truly about more than tinkering around the edges.

Although her social justice advocacy organization, VOCAL-NY, has not developed an articulated position on whether or not the city should close down Rikers Island, Alyssa Aguilera seems to think that a consensus is slowly emerging among her peers. “I was in a meeting the other day with a

bunch of advocacy folks and we were saying, ‘If you could be mayor, what would you do?’ And so many of these people who I was not expecting to hear this from were saying, ‘Close Rikers, close Rikers, close Rikers.’”

“These were not lefty organizers,” she added. “They were social workers who ran youth advocacy programs.”

From the activists coalescing around #ShutDownRikers and the Jails Action Coalition who say Rikers is a “factory of human rights abuses” to the smattering of people in city government who have embraced the call, there is a sense that it is possible for the city to

bypass incremental reform in favor of wholesale change.

“You have to ask yourself, is reform at the margins enough?” says John Jay College of Criminal Justice President Jeremy Travis. “Maybe a monitor appointed by the federal court would help, maybe more (Department of Investigation) investigations would help, and maybe a special prosecutor would help. But if we step back from all of that, we ask ourselves, what’s the long-term vision for the city of New York, the most progressive city in America?”

It’s precisely because the “most

progressive city in America” now has a progressive mayor that advocates see an opportunity to close Rikers Island. Michael Jacobson, the former New York City correction commissioner and current director of CUNY’s Institute for State and Local Governance, says closing Rikers and replacing it with smaller and more community-based detention centers would require an enormous effort to re-educate the public, but that it is something progressive Mayor Bill de Blasio might be able to accomplish.

“Part of the issue with Bloomberg was as much as (Bloomberg’s Correction cit yandstateny.com

City Limits contacted all 51 members of the City Council, the five borough presidents and the three citywide officials to ask whether they support closing Rikers. Most were noncommittal.

Joining the vocal “close Rikers” position of Daniel Dromm, Councilmen Brad Lander and Corey Johnson voiced the most support for shuttering the jail. “What we need is a road map to close Rikers through smart, step-by-step reform,” Lander said in a statement. “That means locking up fewer people for low-level offenses, as the speaker has proposed.

It means more supervised release, where the mayor is leading. It means overall bail reform, so we’re detaining people when there is a public safety risk, not because they’re poor. It may mean using technology in new ways.

Step-by-step, we can dramatically reduce the number of people who are detained, so we can then close Rikers, which has become a shameful mark on cit yandstateny.com

GALE BREWER Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer said that while the idea to shift detainees to smaller community-based facilities “could make a lot of sense” and “is worthy of further study,” finding sites for the new facilities would be a “deeply arduous task, logistically, financially and politically.”

ERIC ADAMS Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams was strongly on the side of reform and against closing Rikers. “I believe closing down Rikers would create more problems for our city than it would solve,” he said in a statement.

“Eliminating the complex is not a safe option.”

Most of the City Council members as well as the Bronx, Queens and Staten Island borough presidents did not respond.

Public Advocate Letitia James stressed continued critiques of the system. “Too many people are being held on Rikers for low-level offenses,” she said, calling for reducing violence,

improving the quality of medical care, and protecting the correction officers on the island. She is also preparing to petition the Board of Correction to increase mental-health training for correction officers, and formally opposed recently proposed rollbacks in solitary confinement reforms. But she did not address the possibility of closing Rikers in her response.

City Comptroller Scott Stringer – whose stinging October report about Rikers was among the more damning – neither embraced nor rejected the idea when contacted in early November. “By every metric, Rikers Island is failing inmates, guards and taxpayers,” he said in a statement.

While he pointed out that Rikers’ costs are rising even as inmate population declines, he would only say that “the city must consider all options as we look to build a truly 21st-century correctional system.”

But in a sign of how quickly the conversation is evolving, Stringer had stronger words when he appeared at a New School forum on Nov. 18. “We need to create a corrections system that is a national model rather than an urban shame, and create a system that recognizes the difference between violent, nonviolent, mentally ill and most importantly child (offenders),” he said. “We’ve got to work together to figure out how to shut it down once and for all … transform our jail system from an aging embarrassment to a 21st-century success.”

Leadership on this issue is unlikely to come from a politician aiming for higher office – as many of the officials surveyed likely are. If a move toward closing Rikers is really going to be made, it would have to start with the mayor.

Talking about mothballing an institution that’s been key to criminal justice in New York City for decades would be an obvious and considerable political risk for the mayor, who has seen his political capital dwindle steadily since his election thanks to vicious attacks and personal missteps.

But it would seem that the potential game-changing effect of closing Rikers Island could enhance his chances of not only a second-term victory, but also an enduring legacy.

After all, de Blasio has run into criticism that he has not been “progressive enough” for much of his constituency, hence the putative mayoral candidacies of James,

Stringer and U.S. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries. Meanwhile, Bloomberg-style technocrats have faulted the mayor for failing to come up with truly groundbreaking ideas. Closing Rikers could appeal to both crowds. Besides, those New Yorkers who think de Blasio is too soft on crime are unlikely to vote for him anyway.

None of that is to say that closing Rikers would be a light lift for the mayor, or any politician. “Even liberals don’t like to get mugged,” says political consultant Hank Sheinkopf. “The fatal flaw in leftist thinking is that somehow crime doesn’t matter. The argument is that the housing of people in this manner is unnecessary and that abuses that have been uncovered and the cost of the policing and the personnel is overwhelmingly wasteful.

The real issue is what’s the midpoint that satisfies the body politic by making sure that they are safe, because average New Yorkers cannot make a distinction between sentenced inmates and detained inmates.”

Lawyer-activists like Khary Lazarre-White, executive director of advocacy group The Brotherhood/ Sister Sol, thinks the political push to end Rikers must be motivated by priorities about racial justice.

“If (reforming and possibly closing Rikers) has previously been articulated by policymakers, if we have an administration that says that it wants to transform the issue, where is the big-vision thinking? Why is it not occurring? Where is the political capital?” he mused at the New School forum. “I think the answer is that the people on Rikers Island are poor and overwhelmingly black and brown, and it is not a priority.”

The very scale of the task, and the deftness it would take to accomplish it, is why it could possibly cement the mayor’s legacy. “It would require a huge investment of political capital, and a lot of planning – this is not like figuring out how to replace the Tappan Zee Bridge,” Jacobson says. “Closing Rikers and shrinking the population or replacing Rikers with humane, stateof-the-art facilities ... whoever gets the credit, gets international credit for that.”

Some have suggested that the realestate development opportunities for the island could be enormously desirable, as well. If de Blasio could somehow thoughtfully manage the development potential of 413 acres of city-owned land (with river views, no less), it could be a late-innings home run.

CLOSING RIKERS ISL AND - PART IV

our city.”

Elizabeth Crowley, Rosie Mendez and Karen Koslowitz were undecided on the issue. Through her press officer, Mendez says she believes “major reforms” are needed to “address systemic issues so incidents like the ones that happened at Rikers never happen again.” She also said the relative accessibility of Rikers is better than having to travel upstate, although that is not necessarily where Rikers inmates would be relocated.

21

city & state — November 25, 2015

Commissioner) Martin Horn said, ‘I’m not really building new jails, I’m not building any new capacity, I’m tearing down capacity there and building it here,’ at some level they just didn’t believe him – or not him, they just didn’t believe Bloomberg,” Jacobson says. “That’s why I think de Blasio would have a big advantage there. I think that if he said a version of this, they would believe him.”

Certainly there is plenty in the air about criminal justice reform – not just in New York but all around the country – particularly since the anguished summer of civilian deaths at the hands of police in Ferguson and Staten Island last year, the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement, and President Barack Obama’s visit to the El Reno federal prison in Oklahoma last July, featured in an HBO/Vice documentary special. The intensified interest in law-enforcement injustices on the street – in traffic stops and quality-of-life encounters – would seem to dovetail with a greater awareness of the injustices that go on behind bars, away from citizen journalists armed with smartphone cameras.

Whether that heightened awareness translates into a death sentence for Rikers depends not just on the politics of closing down one of the largest correctional facilities in country, but on elected officials’ ability to come up with something to replace it.

CLDCLOSING RIKERS ISL AND - PART IV city & state — November 25, 2015

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NORMAN SEABROOK “Rikers ... happens to be a beautiful piece of land,” Jacobson says. “And you could imagine, whether it’s affordable housing, or CUNY campuses, whatever it is, the reuse value of that is potentially gigantic.”

Looming large in the equation is Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association President Norman Seabrook. While a recent New York Times piece ran a headline explicitly naming Seabrook the man whose “clout is a roadblock to reform,” he is a skilled and savvy political operator who might not be fundamentally opposed to change at Rikers.

“I happen to have a lot of respect for Norman,” says Horn, the former correction commissioner.

“He’s looked Elizabeth Crowley in the eye and said, ‘Are you volunteering to have the new jail in your district?’ And his members, you have members who live in the Bronx, who live in Queens, I’m sure they’d be happy not to have to travel to Rikers Island and not to have to cross the Triborough Bridge from the Bronx or Manhattan. I think making Norman Seabrook the demon is kind of a cop-out.”

The attack on a correction officer early this month that put Rikers on lockdown for two days has prompted Seabrook to at least indirectly critique what he views as top-down reform.

“On the eve of the release of new ‘use of force’ guidelines from the Department of Correction, which we were not consulted on, one of our members is laying in a hospital bleeding from multiple slash wounds to his head and face,” he said in a statement.

He went on to reassert that reform is the best route, as long as correction officers are part of the conversation.

“The Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association has been calling for real reform at Rikers Island for years,” he wrote. “In order to achieve the fundamental changes that we need to take place, we need the leaders of this city and the Department to bring all

parties – including Correction Officers – to the table and into the discussion.

Reform is a two-way street, and for far too long the 9,000 members of COBA have been left out of the discussion on how to fix the problems.”

In a reply to City Limits, Seabrook did not seem open to abandoning the island and its crumbling infrastructure, saying that although they “do not meet the standards of modern correctional facilities,” he called for making “a real investment as a city in making Rikers Island a safer, better place for the thousands of women and men who patrol that dangerous precinct every day.”

So far, the mayor seems to have been putting all his faith in a progressive and multi-pronged reform process. But the fact is, the reforms already in place and trends already in motion could make the task of closing Rikers easier – if not politically, then practically. As bail reforms and reductions in arrests slim the inmate population, the task of relocating that crowd off the island becomes somewhat easier.

But that raises the question of what to replace Rikers with, since the city would presumably still have several hundred inmates and pretrial detainees.

John Jay’s Travis envisions community-based “justice centers” that could be part of the country’s imperative to “reduce the stigmatization of people who have in this case been accused of, not even convicted of, violating the law.”

The Bloomberg administration tried to create two neighborhood-based jails during the mayor’s second term, with an ambitious plan to revamp the Brooklyn Detention Complex and a bid to build a new facility at Oak Point in the Hunts Point section of the Bronx. The Brooklyn plan was scaled back and the Bronx idea was scrapped altogether in the face of local opposition.

Horn chalks up that defeat largely to then-city Comptroller William Thompson’s 2009 suit to force the administration to put its Brooklyn plan through the uniform land-use review procedure, which made it vulnerable to very localized opposition. “If the City Council member whose district the facility is located in objects, then the council will not approve it,” Horn said. “We could conceivably have four facilities with no more than 1,600 people located in the boroughs, with sentenced prisoners remaining on

Rikers. It’s a matter of political will, but are the mayor and the speaker willing to lean on three council members?”

The local community board near Oak Point is still adamantly against any new proposal. “We have six schools in our district that are failing.

And yet the plan is to build another jail in New York City in a district that is so impoverished?” says Community Board 2 spokesperson Ian Amritt.

“We will fight it and I guarantee you we are going to win.”

“We have worked hard to get rid of Spofford,” he continues, referring to a juvenile detention facility in the area that was closed after intense lobbying.

The area already has one jail: The Vernon Bain barge, which supplements Rikers’ capacity, is moored on its shore.

“I think one is enough. There is no guarantee that locals would be hired to build and staff it. We would prefer capital projects be directed toward education and more police in our district.”

Wherever replacement facilities are located, fierce not-in-my-backyard opposition is likely to arise. “There’s an enormous political risk for the mayor,” Horn says. “You’re going to get tremendous opposition from the very groups that supported you during your election, and the test of political courage is whether you can look them in the eye and say that’s the right thing to do.”

JustLeadershipUSA Director Glenn Martin agrees that educating the public is essential. “The biggest pushback NIMBY-ism is going to come from the

very people who probably would benefit most from reducing bed space and holding officers accountable and getting rid of cash bail and all the stuff that it would actually take to close Rikers,” he says. “It’s not just about engaging those communities to avoid NIMBY-ism, it’s about engaging them to repair the harm that’s been caused.”

The re-education of New Yorkers, both middle-class moderates and the working class and working poor who live in the neighborhoods where the smaller jails would be built, should be seen as a gradual process, a 10year plan, Travis says. Rikers’ closure should be done in phases, he thinks, rather than all at once.

In a sense the re-education process about prisons and criminal justice is already underway, with a new national conversation coalescing around critiques of mass incarceration and overzealous policing, and how those things seem to feed an unending cycle of imprisonment and violence. After so many years of expanding the pool of social undesirables and dealing with them by locking them up so they can no longer be seen or heard, there seems to be a growing momentum for change.

“The end game (of closing Rikers) could be pretty attractive politically,” Jacobson says. “But how to make the political calculation is beyond me. In the meantime, while they figure it out, I think folks are working pretty diligently. Whether people come out for its closing or not, they are working to create the environment where that could happen.”

The Bain barge, moored off Hunts Point in the Bronx.

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city & state — November 18, 2015

The Must-Read Morning Roundup of New York Politics and Government

SPOTLIGHT

MWBEs MINORITY-AND WOMEN-OWNED BUSINESS ENTERPRISES

24

city & state — November 25, 2015

When you look at business ownership you can’t dispute the facts. According to the Small Business Administration, in 2012 there were roughly 27.7 small businesses, and 21.7 million were owned by whites. Less than 10 million were owned by women, with white women owning 7.2 million of the businesses in that pot. New York City and New York state are trying to combat that disparity by handing out a percentage of contracts to MWBEs – or at least trying to do so. In this special section we examine how the city and state are doing.

CONTENTS: 26...

28...

31...

For the first time, state MWBE contracting drops under Cuomo

By Jon Lentz

Tips from the experts for getting government contracts

By Jeff Coltin

Initiative aims to help MWBEs win city housing contracts

By Sarina Trangle

cit yandstateny.com

city & state — November 18, 2015

25

cit yandstateny.com

MWBES

STATE SLIPS

FOR THE FIRST TIME, MWBE CONTRACTING DROPS UNDER CUOMO

city & state — November 25, 2015

26

Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s impressive track record in boosting government contracting with businesses owned by women or minorities veered off course in the past year – and his administration has changed course by doing next to nothing to publicize it.

The value of state government contracts going to minority- and women-owned business enterprises fell by $267 million in the past year, according to recently published figures. State contracts awarded to MWBEs dropped to $1.69 billion, well short of the nearly $2 billion mark set the prior year.

The decline comes a year after Cuomo raised the state’s MWBE goal to an ambitious 30 percent of all eligible state contracts, which his administration touted as the highest target of any state in the country.

Since then the share of contracts going to MWBEs declined instead, to 23.23 percent, down from 25.12 percent the year before.

The Cuomo administration, which announced substantial gains each year since the governor took office in 2011, has downplayed the subpar results, doing little to make the general public aware of them. The updated figures were quietly published in late October in an annual report posted by Empire State Development, which compiles state MWBE contracting figures.

“It was put on the website, and we’re still on track for our 30 percent goal,” said Richard Azzopardi, a spokesman for the Cuomo administration.

The decline is a first for Cuomo, who has been an outspoken champion of MWBEs. Shortly after taking office in 2011, Cuomo signed an executive order creating a task force to explore ways to remove barriers such firms face and called on agency heads to take steps to award 20 percent of their contracts to MWBEs.

PHILIP KAMRASS / OFFICE OF THE GOVERNOR

By JON LENTZ

Gov. Andrew Cuomo touts his administration’s record at last year’s MWBE forum. He did not make an appearance at this year’s forum.

Until this past year, the governor had enjoyed consistent success. In the 2010-11 fiscal year, the state awarded slightly more than 10 percent of state contracting dollars to MWBEs. That more than doubled in Cuomo’s first term, rising to 16.67 percent in 2012, to 21.06 percent in 2013 and then peaking at just over 25 percent in 2014.

On the heels of such gains, Cuomo drew applause at the state’s annual MWBE forum in October of last year when he announced that the state had exceeded the 25 percent mark and raised the contracting goal for state agencies, offices and authorities to 30 percent.

This year, in contrast, Cuomo

skipped the state MWBE forum. The governor’s office also has not issued any press releases touting its MWBE numbers, unlike in years past, when it would make an announcement in early October in tandem with the annual MWBE forum.

A spokesman for the state Budget Division said that Empire State Development was still vetting the figures when this year’s forum was held on Oct. 1 and 2. The final report was posted online on Oct. 23.

However, such timing issues did not appear to be a problem when the administration had better news to share. In 2013, when the state first exceeded its 20 percent goal, Cuomo announced the accomplishment

in early October, even though the final report was not published until mid-December.

An Empire State Development spokeswoman also said that public announcements on MWBEs were made in 2013 and 2014 only because the state had exceeded its target, and that there were no such announcements in 2011 or 2012, either.

“I don’t know that there’s too many people who want to announce when things are slowed up,” said the Rev. Jacques DeGraff, a longtime MWBE advocate who was unaware of the latest state figures before being contacted by City & State. “It is a concern that with all that is going on cit yandstateny.com

City University of New York Advanced Science Research Center, Harlem, NY Project Team Exceeded MWBE Goal

LaGuardia Community College, Queens, NY Skanska’s Construction Management Building Blocks Graduating Class

Building Better Communities Supporting Local Businesses We partner with the local community to ensure businesses of all sizes have the opportunity to work on our projects.

And with ongoing initiatives like our Building Blocks program, and partnerships with U.S. DOT and the Port Authority, we don’t just aim to meet minority - and women-owned business requirements, we strive to exceed them.

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MWBES

in terms of Tappan Zee and Second Avenue construction and other projects, it’s like, don’t take your foot off the accelerator now.”

However, DeGraff and others said they expected the decline to be a minor bump in the road and expressed confidence that the Cuomo administration would be able to turn things back around.

“I don’t take it as a step backward,” DeGraff said. “I take it more as a stall than a decline. If it

happened consecutively, then I would be alarmed. I have confidence in the people who got us over 20 percent in the amount of time that they did that they’ll be able to right the ship.”

Much of the decline can be attributed to two major state authorities: the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the Dormitory Authority of the State of New York, which together make up about a quarter of the state’s total MWBE spending.

28

The MTA spent $23.8 million less on MWBEs than the previous year.

DASNY, meanwhile, spent nearly $60 million less than the prior year.

However, both authorities had smaller overall budgets that explain part of the decline in MWBE spending. The MTA, in fact, slightly increased its share of contracts going to MWBEs, even as its absolute spending totals fell.

Similarly, several sources noted that the $267 million decline in total state MWBE spending was in part the result of less overall spending.

However, that does not explain the smaller share of spending going to MWBEs, which was nearly two percentage points lower at 23.23 percent.

DASNY’s figures also stand out because the authority was the subject of an audit released by state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli in July that turned up evidence of serious reporting flaws, including double counting in previous years that had inflated some MWBE contracts by millions of dollars. DASNY disputed some of the comptroller’s findings, but acknowledged the problems with double counting and said it had taken corrective action.

The state budget spokesman asserted that DASNY correcting its over-reporting was not a reason

behind its lower MWBE spending.

Other state offices experienced even larger declines, led by the Department of Environmental Conservation, whose MWBE contracting plummeted from $203.9 million to $51.9 million, and the Transportation Department, which fell from $208.7 million to $65.1 million.

The DEC also had one of the steepest drops in percentage terms, from 59.2 percent of contracts going to MWBEs in 2013-14 to just 32.2 percent in 2014-15.

Some advocates say they still have confidence in the Cuomo administration, given its strong track record in recent years. As several observers noted, the state is still outperforming New York City, which has been mired in the single digits and has steered only 5.3 percent of its contracts to MWBEs, according to the latest figures.

“There’s an amount of fluctuation that one would expect in this area, in any business-related area over time, but the fact that they’re still hovering around 25 percent is a comfort,” DeGraff said. “The big immediate concern is New York City. Hundreds of millions of dollars are walking out the door, and the MWBE community is very distressed.”

FROM THE EXPERTS city & state — November 25, 2015

TIPS FOR GETTING GOVERNMENT CONTRACTS

So you own a business, and as a racial minority or a woman, you want a piece of some government contracts. What now?

First, forget everything you know about selling and providing value in the private sector, said Atul Sanghi of Sanghi Consulting. “You know Joe Schmo at the hospital down the street. Even if he loves you, loves your products, he can’t spend the money with you. It’s not his money.

It’s the taxpayers’. And all the controls and procedures that go into

spending that taxpayers’ money, that’s known as the procurement.”

Sanghi said it took years to learn procurement. But now his company provides IT services and management consulting for a number of state agencies.

“Sign up for the New York State Contract Reporter,” Sanghi advised.

“Only just to learn what type of services and products the state solicits for, and from whom.”

But others said it is less about what you know than who you know.

“Network,” wrote Sheila Hess of CC Environment. She has been doing environmental consulting work for government agencies since 2009.

With that experience under her belt, she says prospective MWBEs need to have patience. “Sometimes contracting/payment can be slower with government contracts.”

“Stick to exactly what you have to do,” said Stacy Seecharan of B&S Iron Works. I’m a steel girl. I can’t go and say that I’ll supply 2 million pieces of concrete. It’s not going to work

that way.”

Once you do get that government contract, it’s all about consistency.

“Follow the instructions, follow the rules,” she said. “They’re there for a reason. And don’t promise them something that you can’t give to them. Once you tell them you can give them something, a product, or you can install something and you don’t do it, they’re going to look to the other guy. They’re going to look to someone else.”

-JC

cit yandstateny.com

MWBES

ON WHAT CAN BE DONE TO IMPROVE MWBE PARTICIPATION ON STATE CONTRACTS ...

“The city and state can take steps to expand their outreach. There are so many MWBEs, but many of them are not certified. Outreach tends to be the most challenging in underrepresented and immigrant communities across the state due to limited resources. In addition, capital access and mentor/capacity building programs should also be expanded across the state, to better ensure sustainability of MWBE firms. Lastly, we need to ensure that MWBEs get paid in a timely manner. For a small firm, not receiving payment in a timely manner can be financially devastating.”

ON HOW MWBE PARTICIPATION BENEFITS THE OVERALL HEALTH OF THE STATE ...

“MWBE participation promotes economic inclusion, which directly impacts local communities and local hiring. Having concrete percentage goals attached to MWBE participation benefits the health of the overall state because it measures how well we are addressing the economic needs of communities across all demographics and essentially contributes to the overall economy by reducing risk factors such as high unemployment. When MWBEs succeed it has a real and tangible effect on the local and hyper-local level.”

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President and CEO

city & state — November 25, 2015

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RODNEYSE BICHOTTE

Chairwoman, Assembly Subcommittee on Oversight of Minority and Women-Owned Business Enterprises

ON NEW YORK CITY’S LACKLUSTER MWBE PARTICIPATION RATE …

“The advancement of businesses of color and women-owned enterprises is a challenge our city has faced for some time. Last year, only 3.9 percent of New York City’s procurement budget was spent with businesses of color and womenowned enterprises – a number that is not representative of the composition of our city. Mayor Bill de Blasio and I announced a new initiative to increase capital for MWBEs and reduce barriers in the RFP process, which is a small but critical step forward. If this administration is committed to ending income inequality, then together, we need to do more to give opportunities to businesses owned by women and people of color. We need to establish a chief diversity officer to ensure diversity at the highest levels of government, which would help to enforce and promote procurement among MWBE businesses. We need to revamp the public bidding process to increase openness and transparency about available contracts from the beginning. Lastly, we need to retrain our ACCOs to ensure they are rewarding contracts to a wide range of qualified candidates, rather than just returning to past vendors. New York communities of all ethnicities, religions and genders need to work on this together because we’re much more powerful as one than we are apart.”

LETITIA JAMES

New York City Public Advocate

cit yandstateny.com

MWBES

BUILDING A BIGGER ROLE POLITICIANS PRAISE THE MAYOR’S HPD CONTRACTING PLAN, BUT BUSINESS LEADERS AREN’T IMPRESSED

ED REED / FOR THE OFFICE OF MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO

By SARINA TRANGLE

De Blasio’s administration is altering the contracting process at HPD and NYCEDC.

As his administration plods away at an ambitious affordable housing agenda, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio unveiled initiatives meant to help minority- and women-owned businesses win housing contracts.

De Blasio’s administration said this month it was altering the contracting process at the city Department of Housing Preservation and Development and the New York City Economic Development Corporation.

Both plan to divide larger projects into multiple contracts that emerging businesses will have a better chance at winning. And they will pair small firms with larger businesses that can access more capital. HPD has

city & state — November 25, 2015

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MWBES

also committed to revising some of its qualification criteria and using a two-step process that prevents companies that are unlikely to win contracts from investing time and resources into the full application.

A $10 million predevelopment loan fund and a $10 billion bond pool will be made available to small firms and MWBEs, with the hope that they will enhance their procurement portfolio.

Elected officials who stood with advocates on the steps of City Hall earlier this year and demanded the administration do more business with MWBEs praised the plan, including U.S. Rep. Yvette Clarke, New York City Public Advocate Letitia James and City Councilwoman Laurie Cumbo.

City Council Contracts Committee Chairwoman Helen Rosenthal said an ongoing request for proposals at HPD shows the administration is listening to and incorporating input from MWBEs. HPD is currently culling applications exclusively from vetted MWBE firms for six affordable housing projects across the city. Based on feedback about the economic recession’s impact on the industry, the department decided businesses that had developed

at least 50 units of affordable homes at one or two sites over the past decade would be deemed qualified, rather than those that had done so at two sites over the past five years.

“These are specific things that I think are responsive to what the MWBE community is asking for, and that’s what’s so impressive,” Rosenthal said. “They’re taking this more seriously than I’ve ever seen an administration do before because they’re truly addressing the real problems, not throwing money at it or saying they’re going to do something.”

Not everyone had such an enthusiastic assessment.

James Heyliger, president of the Association of Minority Enterprises of New York, said the mayor should meet with his organization and other trade groups that have successfully ushered MWBE legislation and initiatives through City Hall for years. He said the business leaders could talk through the more large-scale and effective strategies they’ve been involved with, such as requiring firms to form joint ventures with a minority- or women-owned company before inking a deal – as the New York City Health and Hospitals

Corporation has done – or getting public agencies to help MWBE firms secure loans by agreeing to direct government project payments to banks which then take out fees and pass the money on to the businesses – as the Port Authority does.

“You’re trying to nudge them and push them, but in the meantime all the work is going out the window,” Heyliger said. “If I give you all this advice before you get elected, and you don’t pick up the phone and call me, you must not want my participation. …

By the time the third year rolls around and they see things working halfway of what they want, then they’re going to be looking for some of us.”

Heyliger was not alone in viewing the loans, bonds and contracting changes as piecemeal measures. In a report released this spring, The Black Institute suggested the city invest 1 percent of its pension funds in an MWBE funding pool. Currently, this would amount to about $1.6 billion, or more than 80 times the $20 million committed. As for request for procurement changes at HPD, it’s unclear what portion of the agencies’ contracts are done through some less

traditional procurement methods that don’t come with MWBE goals. Last fiscal year, 18.5 percent of HPD’s contract spending was classified as emergency or required source spending, which do not have MWBE goals.

Some have called for the city to rethink such exclusions. But first and foremost, a full-time chief diversity officer is needed to sort through and implement strategies from the top down, according to advocates like the Rev. Jacques DeGraff, a leader of the Minority Business Leadership Council and One Hundred Black Men. Currently, mayoral counsel Maya Wiley spearheads the city’s MWBE efforts, which the city has described as prudent because she reports directly to de Blasio.

“The Federal Reserve thinks it’s a full-time job; the comptroller thinks it’s a full-time job and the state of New York – all have full-time people. … That kind of leadership is necessary in New York City,” DeGraff said. “They’ve done it their way for two years, and in those two years you’ve seen 1 percent for the black community. … We respectfully urge that they now try collaboration.”

city & state — November 25, 2015

32

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SETH DIAMOND Chief operating officer,

Seth Diamond is the COO for

MetroPlus Health Plan, the low-cost health insurance plan that is partnered with the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation to provide low- to no-cost insurance to residents in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Bronx and Queens. Recently he sat down for an interview with City & State.

The following is an edited transcript.

City & State: I think the conclusion people are going to reach when they hear that MetroPlus is tied to the New York City Health and Hospitals is that you might only have service from those hospitals if you are a MetroPlus member. Is that correct?

Seth Diamond: I think that used to be the traditional view, that we were so closely tied with Health and Hospitals that our only business was from them, that everybody who signed up for MetroPlus got all their services from the Health and Hospitals Corporation.

But just as Dr. (Ram) Raju has worked to broaden the vision of the HHC, so it serves all of New York and it’s seen as a plan of choice for people throughout the city, MetroPlus is in the same position. We’re following that vision so that all New Yorkers could pick MetroPlus and we have something to offer. We’re the lowest-priced plan in the market and we have providers in over 27,000 sites – so a wide range, some of them within the Health and Hospitals Corporation system, but a lot of them in communities throughout the city. So we want all New Yorkers who feel we can meet their health care needs, particularly those who are looking for low-priced but value health care, they should sign up with MetroPlus.

C&S: You are lowering your prices for insurance this year. Why? SD: We have a broad range of plans available. We certainly want to have plans for people who are low income or have traditionally been uninsured. cit yandstateny.com

C&S: Since the implementation of the Affordable Care Act the health care industry has seen increased competition. How are you thinking differently since its implementation?

SD: It’s a whole different health care market. When I was growing up in New York City, if you were low income you had one choice where to get your care: You went to the Health and Hospitals system down the street.

If you got treated well, if you got treated poorly, you went back there the next time, because you had no other option. Now low-income people have lots of choices. All the hospitals in the city want their business, insurance companies throughout the city want their business. I have worked to advocate for low-income people my entire career, whether it’s in housing or employment and now health care, and the idea that they can have all these choices is wonderful, but what it does to us working with the Health and Hospitals Corporation is make it a much more competitive market. We have to fight every day for every customer. We can’t have any guarantees that they’re going to come to us. We don’t have a captive market.

We have to fight for every customer.

We have to show them that we have the lowest prices in the market. We have to show them that we have good customer service. We have to show them that we have doctors in the specialties where they need them. And by doing that we’re able to convince people to come to MetroPlus.

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One of the great barriers for people who have not gotten insurance is price. They’ve been afraid that health insurance is too costly, they don’t know that they can afford it, they don’t understand or they don’t know about the subsidies that are available to help people. MetroPlus is there for those people. We have the lowest-cost plans in the market and we have a new plan this year that’s just coming into effect called the Essential Plan, which offers insurance for people who don’t qualify for Medicaid – make a little more than the Medicaid limit – but are still low income, and the premium for that is zero or $20 a month. So it’s very low cost. But we also have other plans for other people who can afford to pay a little bit more, so we have a wide range of services. Dr. Raju has challenged us to make plans available to all New Yorkers who are interested in our services, and we’ve broadened our reach in response to that challenge.

RECAPPING SOMOS

34

RECAPPING SOMOS New York’s political calendar has a lot of consistency to it. One thing you can absolutely bank on is that a few days after the November general elections you will find many of the state’s elected leaders, lobbyists and advocates 1,600 miles to the south in San Juan, Puerto Rico. This year, City & State once again set up on the island, where the colony’s debt crisis and concerns over the future of health care were the top topics of concern. Our editorial staff conducted dozens of interviews over the four-day conference. In this section, we bring you some of the highlights from our coverage.

TAKING A STAND

SPEAKER SAYS CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE A POSSIBILITY IN RESPONSE TO PUERTO RICO’S DEBT CRISIS

city & state — November 25, 2015

By SARINA TRANGLE

MELISSA MARK-VIVERITO

New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito said she was prepared to engage in civil disobedience while pushing the federal government to assist Puerto Rico with its fiscal crisis and that such a strategy may make sense.

Mark-Viverito said it was time to publicly press for action, especially at a rally planned for Dec. 2 in Washington, D.C. “We really want as many people to show their faces there and be present and be vocal in D.C. to talk about the crisis,” she said in an exclusive interview at an event hosted

by City & State and sponsored by HITN, the Hispanic Information and Telecommunications Network. “I don’t think, at this point, that civil disobedience should be off the table.

And I think that that’s a tactic that we need to start thinking about and strategizing. We need to create a space for the president to do what he needs to do. You know, obviously, Congress is going to be difficult.”

Bronx Assemblyman José Rivera, like Mark-Viverito a native of Puerto Rico, had floated the idea of chaining himself to the fence of the White House to draw attention to the issue during an interview with City & State earlier this month at the Somos el Futuro fall conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

The City Council speaker said she was ready to stand beside Rivera.

Mark-Viverito has praised President Barack Obama’s proposal to let Puerto Rico file for bankruptcy, revamp Medicaid funding to ensure

the territory gets a similar amount of resources as states do and extend the earned income tax credit to its residents. However, she maintains the White House should explore executive action and other alternatives.

“There are other efforts that the president can engage in to make headway on this issue, whether it’s the department of the Federal Reserve or the Treasury Department,” MarkViverito said. “There’s ways that maybe something can be included for Puerto Rico in those budget negotiations. We have the State of the Union coming up in January. If we don’t see movement in one way or another, then I really don’t think that civil disobedience should be off the table … this is a humanitarian crisis.” cit yandstateny.com

DE BLASIO SAYS UNEQUAL TREATMENT IS BEHIND PUERTO RICO’S STRUGGLES

By SARINA TRANGLE

Or when there’s a natural disaster, we say, one for all, all for one. Why don’t we say that with Puerto Rico, too? Why is it even debatable in the Congress?”

Asked about a recent poll that found Puerto Ricans trust big box stores, the National Guard and religious leaders more than politicians, de Blasio said he cannot speak to the “everyday reality” in Puerto Rico. However, de Blasio said he understands what it is like to try to revive the public’s trust in government amid arrests of elected officials and gridlock in Washington, D.C.

RECAPPING SOMOS

DOUBLE STANDARD “I’m trying to do in my own way … to rebuild a little bit of public faith by saying, we’re going to do X, and then actually achieving X,” de Blasio said. “It makes sense that they won’t necessarily believe the first few times around that something has changed. It has to be sustained work.”

In New York City, for instance, de Blasio said he has fulfilled a pledge by instituting full-day and free prekindergarten. But, he said, “it’s going to take a lot more of that for people to feel the kind of faith they should.”

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cit yandstateny.com

De Blasio has attempted to position himself in the national debate by starting a national progressive committee and aiming to prod presidential candidates leftward. He endorsed Obama’s proposal, which would allow Puerto Rico to file for bankruptcy, increase federal government oversight over its finances, address long-standing inequities in the island’s Medicaid funding and institute an earned income tax credit for its residents.

Now, de Blasio said, Republicans in Congress must be made aware of the “human cost” of inaction.

“If we believe in equality in our society, this is a fight worth fighting,” he said. “After Katrina, we said, New Orleans is part of America.

We all have to attend to the needs of New Orleans. Now, our government didn’t do enough, but that was the feeling we had, rightfully. When we look at Detroit in trouble, we say, Detroit, one of our great cities. We all have to come to Detroit’s defense.

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New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee should continue President Barack Obama’s plan for Puerto Rico’s debt and health crisis, but noted that the evolving situation may require regrouping.

“The most important thing is to get the job done for the Puerto Rican people,” de Blasio said after a march in San Juan earlier this month with Puerto Ricans and U.S. officials calling for federal assistance in dealing with territory’s struggling health care system. “Sometimes, if something becomes quote-unquote politicized, there’s less chance of success. Sometimes there’s a way to build a consensus that’s in a sense above politics, and that might be true in this case. Other times the only way something changes is if there is struggle over it.”

“We’re very early in this trajectory,” the mayor added. “But if your question is should the Democratic Party stand for Puerto Rico, yes.”

FOLLOWING PUERTO RICO HEALTH CARE RALLY, ADVOCATES PURSUE OPTIONS FOR FISCAL RELIEF

By JOSÉ E. MALDONADO

After tens of thousands rallied in San Juan asking for parity in Medicare funding for Puerto Rico, the fight has moved to Washington, D.C., as headlines on the island have shifted from the health care issue to the chaotic fiscal situation of the Government Development Bank.

But that has not slowed local government officials and representatives from the health sector from their efforts as they continue to meet with federal officials and legislators to discuss the matter.

The Puerto Rico Healthcare Crisis Coalition, represented by its chairman Dennis Rivera and member Terry Bishop, and Ricardo Rivera-Cardona, executive director of the Puerto Rico Health Insurance Administration, will officially present their position on the proposed Medicare funding cuts of 11 percent for the island.

“There are also meetings taking place with our lobbyists to develop different strategies to work with Republican and Democrat legislators, because we understand that to achieve parity, we need action from Congress, since Puerto Rico is a territory,” said Dr. José Joaquín Vargas, president of the Independent Practice Association of Puerto Rico.

Vargas said the coalition is also

evaluating the possibility of suing the U.S. government because of the unequal treatment of Puerto Rico and to ask that the island be exempt from the Health Insurance Tax, included in the Affordable Care Act, which would have an impact on local health insurance companies.

Puerto Rico pays the same Medicare taxes as the states but receives 40

percent less in reimbursement, and about 70 percent less in Medicaid reimbursement, according to figures provided by the Healthcare Crisis Coalition, a group of patient advocates, doctors, hospitals, insurers, activists, labor unions and business leaders.

Puerto Rico’s health care system will lose $500 million across the board if Washington doesn’t restore the funding, including $150 million to hospitals and $65 million to pharmaceutical companies, the group says.

“If this matter is not resolved, we will face a chaotic situation and our patients will continue to leave the island, which would represent less funds for our health care system and would lead us down an abyss from which we won’t be able to escape,” Vargas said. “We have to be vigorous in this fight and we can’t continue to let others make decisions that affect us without our input.

“Just because we’re a territory, it doesn’t mean we as American citizens don’t have the same rights as the rest of the states,” he added. “People are leaving, families are being torn apart

and we can’t stand still with our arms crossed while this crisis takes hold.”

Sources said another alternative Puerto Rico is evaluating is asking President Barack Obama to set aside funds for health care on the island from his proposed $25 billion omnibus spending package.

“But that would be a more difficult proposition,” said one source close to the negotiations with the federal government.

The coalition is organizing a march Dec. 2 in Washington, D.C. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is also organizing a summit to discuss the issue, but a specific date is yet to be set.

“We’re very grateful in Puerto Rico for all the support we have received from the people and the officials in New York,” Vargas said. “We’re aware they’re giving 100 percent of their effort for us and we hope they continue contacting their senators and representatives to help us get out of this situation. If not, we’ll see them soon in New York, but as our next-door neighbors.”

PHILIP KAMRASS / OFFICE OF GOV. ANDREW CUOMO

RECAPPING SOMOS city & state — November 25, 2015

36

AFTER THE MARCH

Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Puerto Rico Gov. Alejandro García Padilla. Cuomo is organizing a summit to discuss health care in Puerto Rico. cit yandstateny.com

DEMETRIUS FREEMAN/MAYORAL PHOTOGRAPHY OFFICE

By SARINA TRANGLE

Mayor Bill de Blasio joined the state’s congressional delegation to discuss several issues, including the Puerto Rico debt crisis.

With President Barack Obama’s proposal to aid Puerto Rico stalled in Congress, members of New York’s congressional delegation said an effort would be made to force it through next month.

U.S. Reps. Nydia Velázquez and José Serrano said they expect Obama’s full proposal to alleviate the island territory’s debt crisis to be included in an omnibus bill on Dec. 11, which must be passed to keep the federal government functioning.

The White House proposal would permit Puerto Rico to file for bankruptcy, ensure the island receives Medicaid funding on par with what’s allocated to states and extend an earned cit yandstateny.com

income tax credit to its residents.

Both Velázquez and Serrano praised Obama’s proposal.

The two House members joined New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and six other members of New York City’s congressional delegation this month on the steps of City Hall, where they described a discussion they had this morning about Puerto Rico and other issues, including the renewal of the Zadroga Act. Some members of the Puerto Rican diaspora, including New York City Council Speaker Melissa MarkViverito, have called for Obama to take executive action if Congress continues to sit on his plan. But Serrano

disagreed, asserting that executive action would not be appropriate.

“It needs legislating,” Serrano said.

“It cannot be something that he does by executive order.”

Invoking his position as the “only New York City member of the Appropriations Committee,” Serrano said all the elements of Obama’s plan should be included in a “Christmas tree” proposal stacked with several priorities to compel Republicans to vote for it.

“Dec. 11, we include the full administration’s package in the omnibus bill, which is the only bill that must pass before the end of the year or the government shuts down,” Serrano

said. “The best way to legislate it, since time is running out, is to include it.”

A Dec. 2 “Day of Action” has been planned in Washington, D.C., to highlight the challenges facing Puerto Rico. Velázquez, the first Puerto Rican woman elected to the House of Representatives, said the event would put pressure on lawmakers ahead of the Dec. 11 vote.

“Congress changed the rules of the game,” she said. “Puerto Rico enjoyed bankruptcy protection from 1933 to 1984. When Congress passed reform on bankruptcy, they excluded the territories.”

De Blasio, who recently attended a march in Puerto Rico to call for more equitable federal health care funding, said he would reach out to his counterparts across the country to drum up support.

“There is no question that the president’s plan would address both the immediate financial crisis and the problem with Medicaid,” de Blasio said. “We have a clear roadmap on the table. I think it’s about developing maximum support for the president’s vision in as much of the country as possible.”

When asked how New York City’s priorities will fare with a Republican majority in the House of Representatives, both the mayor and U.S. Rep. Joseph Crowley argued that Democrats have had successes despite being in the minority.

“One only has to look at the recent passage of the Ex-Im (Export-Import) banking extension as an example of Democrats really driving the agenda,” said Crowley, the fifth-ranking House Democrat in his role as the Democratic Caucus’ vice chairman. “There are a myriad of issues, too long of a list to go into, whether it’s stopping the shutdown of government, that Democrats were so much a part of in the House of Representatives.”

RECAPPING SOMOS

SERRANO, VELÁZQUEZ SAY THEY’LL RAM THROUGH PUERTO RICO BILL IN CONGRESS

37

city & state — November 25, 2015

FORCING THE ISSUE

DE BLASIO OVERPLAYED HIS HAND ON SUPPORTIVE HOUSING

By NICK POWELL

city & state — November 25, 2015

38

There is a perception circulating in New York City that Mayor Bill de Blasio has been slow to acknowledge the city’s full-blown homelessness crisis, with 60,000-plus individuals living in shelters and on the street. While conservatives and the tabloids have been the primary culprits in feeding this notion, Gov. Andrew Cuomo has certainly played an outsized role in stoking that fire – declaring in not-sosubtle terms that his mission is to “save New York City.” Now, members of de Blasio’s own cabinet are following suit, with Police Commissioner Bill Bratton admitting on Thursday that the administration made a “mistake” by “not validating what we all were seeing.”

Evidently, the mayor has sought to debunk this idea that his administration is sitting on its hands as panhandlers run rampant in the street. He announced last week that the city would commit to building 15,000 supportive housing units over the next 15 years, breaking precedent by funding the construction outside of the framework of the NY/ NY initiative – a joint city and state program that has created 50,000 supportive housing units statewide since its inception in 1990.

City Hall and the governor’s office were at a stalemate over who would pay the service and operating costs for a fourth NY/NY agreement (typically 100 percent funded by the state), as well as the number of units they would

build – Cuomo offered a tepid 5,000 statewide, 3,900 in the city, over five years, while de Blasio countered with 12,000 statewide.

But by circumventing the structure of NY/NY, it is not clear what de Blasio gained other than an opportunity to score political points against a governor who has delighted in making him squirm.

The beauty of the NY/NY agreement is the balance of resources between the city and state – with the latter typically picking up 100 percent of the tab for service and operating costs, while splitting the cost with the city to house the target populations.

That give and take is the primary reason why this program has endured through both Republican and Democratic city and state administrations over the last 25 years. Both sides could hold each other’s feet to the fire to make sure the program had the necessary capital and would not be subject to petty politics. Without that level of security, if de Blasio fails in his 2017 re-election bid, there is no guarantee that his predecessor won’t undo the program.

The kicker here is that there is no appreciable improvement in the deal that de Blasio announced from what both sides put on the table during budget talks. If the stalemate to closing NY/NY 4 was the breakdown of funding, the mayor basically conceded to the state’s demands of closer to a 50/50 breakdown – the city is now paying 100 percent of the service and operating costs of the 15,000 units, as opposed to 50 percent of those costs for a more robust program.

De Blasio could have easily come to the bargaining table with the same proposal in hand, and challenged the governor to put up the capital for more citywide supportive housing.

Even if Cuomo refused to budge on the number of units, a NY/NY 4 with 20,000 statewide units (18,900 in the city) is nothing to shrug at, and much closer to the 35,000 statewide units that housing and homeless advocates

say are necessary to stem the boom of individuals and families living on the street.

And it’s not as if the mayor’s supportive housing announcement came after months of continuous back and forth with the state. Sources familiar with the NY/NY talks say they never really intensified after Cuomo’s initial offer and de Blasio’s counterproposal, with sporadic dialogue between budget personnel at city and state housing agencies that never rose to the principals at City Hall or the governor’s office.

So in the end, de Blasio gained a measure of control over supportive housing construction – likely focusing it toward the shelter and street population as opposed to long-term shelter stayers and high-use Medicaid patients that the state would like to target. But the mayor also missed an opportunity to, at least temporarily, declare an armistice in his ugly battle with Cuomo.

If this is, as many advocates suggest, a calculated play to nudge Cuomo back to the table, then the mayor has once again grossly underestimated the vindictiveness of his counterpart.

Cuomo is far more likely to redirect the money he budgeted for NY/NY 4 to an entirely statewide program (where financing would ultimately be cheaper), shutting out New York City entirely.

On a purely political level, Cuomo already appears to be plotting his revenge against de Blasio. Politico New York reported on Thursday that the governor threatened to cancel funding for federal tax-exempt bonds, or volume cap, that would finance the mayor’s affordable housing plan. While a follow-up report on Friday suggested that the two sides were still negotiating a fair allocation of bonds to the city, the posturing tactic is clearly an indication that Cuomo will go at any length to neuter de Blasio.

Of course, while the mayor may have overplayed his hand in taking sole ownership of NY/NY, lest we forget, it was Cuomo who saddled him with the homeless boom in the first place by canceling the Advantage program, which provided rental subsidies for homeless families seeking to transition to supportive housing. Had Cuomo and Mayor Michael Bloomberg not put the program on the chopping block in the name of austerity, perhaps we would have a more comprehensive, cooperative solution to the homeless crisis, rather than the perpetuation of a political feud with no end in sight.

Nick Powell is City & State’s opinion editor. Email him at NPowell@ cityandstateny.com or find him on Twitter: @nickpowellbkny

DEMETRIUS FREEMAN/MAYORAL PHOTOGRAPHY OFFICE

OPINION

OPINION

Mayor Bill de Blasio announces the city’s supportive housing plan last week. cit yandstateny.com

OPINION

NEW YORKERS SHOULD STAND WITH THEIR MUSLIM NEIGHBORS I am a New Yorker, born and raised in Brooklyn. Since Ellis Island’s heyday, New York state has been known for its tradition as a gateway to the shores of the United States and has welcomed generations of immigrants, including my parents. In honor of the innocent lives lost in the horrific attacks in Paris and Beirut at the hands of ISIS, I call on my fellow New Yorkers to stay above the fray of hateful and inflammatory rhetoric being spewed by 27 (and counting) U.S. governors, as well as media pundits and other American citizens, against American Muslims and refugees.

Over 35 years ago, my parents chose to leave Palestine, where they were living under military occupation, to raise their family in the United States, a country where they believed their children would live in safety and have many more opportunities to thrive. I am grateful every day for the choice that my parents made.

Unfortunately, after every horrific international attack by terrorists who claim that they are acting on behalf of Islam, there is an immediate knee-jerk reaction to put collective blame on all Muslims. As Muslim New Yorkers, we are horrified by these attacks, but not because of our faith; we are horrified because we are human. There is an expectation that we should apologize and denounce these attacks on behalf of our faith.

We denounce these despicable acts of terror because they defy humanity. As Muslims, we do not want to reinforce the fallacy that we are somehow connected to ISIS through the same basic ideology, when in fact we have absolutely nothing in common at all.

We should recognize that religious fanatics perpetuate violent acts for their own deranged reasons.

Immediately after the attacks in Paris, mosques across the country have received death threats resulting in at least one recent arrest in Seminole County, Florida. The Internet is plagued with vitriolic anticit yandstateny.com

Muslim, anti-Arab and anti-refugee rhetoric. American Muslims are not the enemy; we are your neighbors, students, local storeowners, doctors, cab drivers and fellow residents of this state. American Muslims should be treated as partners in the fight to counter terrorism, not suspects. We work, live and raise our children, and the safety of our families and our communities is a top priority. This is a universal principle that we know we share with our fellow Americans.

Every person in every corner of this world deserves to live, work, eat, pray and play without fear.

New York has already demonstrated leadership on the question of whether to continue to welcome Syrian refugees in our country. These individuals are escaping the very same terrorism that the world has witnessed in Paris and Beirut. Syrians have been killed by the thousands, millions more have been displaced, and their entire livelihoods have been destroyed by the likes of ISIS and the Assad regime.

I commend Gov. Andrew Cuomo on his passionate response to the refugee question: “The day America says, ‘Close the gates, build the wall,’

then I say take down the Statue of Liberty because you’ve gone to a different place.” That sentiment was echoed by New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, who responded to the growing number of governors calling for bans on refugees, “I think that what we’re seeing on behalf of the governors is appalling and that we are much better than that as a country.” I also couldn’t agree with Mayor Bill de Blasio more: “We are a strong country. We can protect our country with the appropriate and intensive screening and accept refugees seeking our protection at the same time. New York City is a proud immigrant city, and we will not turn our back on that history or the people being persecuted and fleeing war.”

The measured and thoughtful remarks by Cuomo, de Blasio and Mark-Viverito stand in stark contrast to the inflammatory and irresponsible rhetoric of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who said he would not even allow orphans under the age of 5 into the country. Even representatives from our own state, such as Rep. Peter King, went as far as denying that a prejudice against Muslims exists in our country: “That’s all nonsense

about Islamophobia, but there are people within the Muslim community who want to kill us … And I don’t know why the Muslim community doesn’t welcome the police in, doesn’t encourage police to come in.”

King’s rhetoric is not only divisive, but inaccurate. What he won’t tell you is that one-third of alleged terror plots have been foiled due to cooperation and tips from American Muslims. We should never forget Aliou Niasse, a street vendor selling framed photographs of New York who, in 2010, alerted police to a car bomb in Times Square. His quick thinking saved countless lives. The congressman should not confuse valid criticism of unwarranted surveillance

by NYPD of American Muslims solely based on faith with a lack of cooperation and a lack of regard for the safety of our communities and all New Yorkers. Law enforcement should continue to do their work and follow credible leads, not put an entire community under suspicion.

American Muslim leaders meet with NYPD periodically and we have very strong relationships with our local precincts and captains.

New York City is home to about 1 million Muslims. This year, for the first time, Muslim children did not have to choose between their faith and going to school, as New York City became the largest public school system to recognize Muslim high holy holidays. This would have never been a reality without the support of New Yorkers from a wide range of ethnic backgrounds. My 11-year-old daughter’s response was, “I love New York.” This is what New York City is all about: recognition, inclusion and respect for all people.

Linda Sarsour is a Muslim Palestinian-American racial justice and civil rights activist born and raised in Brooklyn.

39

city & state — November 25, 2015

WILLIAM ALATRISTE FOR THE NEW YORK CITY COUNCIL

By LINDA SARSOUR

OPINION

WITH LACK OF HISPANIC LEADERSHIP, DE BLASIO CREATED A TALE OF THREE CITIES

city & state — November 25, 2015

40

Mayor Bill de Blasio might as well hang an “Aquí No Se Habla Español” sign on City Hall’s front door.

This is supposed to be “our” time.

New York City’s population is one-third white, 29 percent Hispanic, 25 percent black and 19 percent Asian, according to the most recent U.S. census. Our numbers are growing so fast, Univision is the highest Nielsen-rated television network in the metropolitan region.

But Latinos are still denied a seat at the table, a fair share of resources and jobs despite the election of a supposedly progressive mayor who studied Latin-American politics at Columbia University, speaks Spanish and supported the Sandinista movement in Nicaragua.

Posted online this month, a 36-page report that the city Department of Citywide Administrative Services submitted to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on Sept. 25, paints a black-and-white picture of de Blasio’s hiring patterns since becoming mayor.

Unfortunately, this report only categorizes the data by general government function. Unlike his predecessor Michael Bloomberg, de Blasio has yet to publicly produce a workforce report that would provide a detailed demographic breakdown by

individual city agency.

Hispanic leaders have repeatedly raised concerns about the lack of representation in city government since de Blasio’s 2013 transition. (His transition team was led by a white man and an African-American woman.) The city’s report validates their concerns.

Actually, it shows the situation is far worse than they thought. Hispanic workers rank fourth, after whites, blacks and Asians, in de Blasio’s City Hall. Hispanics also rank a distant third in the number of jobs doled out by the de Blasio administration during the mayor’s first full fiscal year, which ended on June 31.

It is clear that the mayor is rewarding the voting bloc that put him in office, and one he needs to win a second term, with nearly half of all the new city jobs he gave out in his first fiscal year: 43 percent of de Blasio’s new hires were black, while 28 percent were white, 20 percent Hispanic, and 9 percent Asian, according to the Department of Citywide Administrative Services. That makes de Blasio’s overall hiring rate of blacks to Hispanics just over 2 to 1.

These jobs are important. Hispanics are the poorest of city residents, according to the Community Service Society’s analysis of census data. The most dispiriting of their recent reports

found that 8 in 10 children of Mexican descent live below 200 percent of the federal poverty line.

Well-paying, unionized publicsector jobs would go a long way toward lifting Hispanic individuals, families and communities out of poverty.

Additionally, these jobs increase an individual’s eligibility to get a mortgage and become a homeowner.

Yet Hispanics filled merely 14 percent of the new agency professional staff jobs that pay $70,000 or more a year.

Thirty-three percent went to whites and another 33 percent went to blacks.

Giving Latinos a seat at the table where policy is shaped, programs are implemented and resources are allocated is arguably even more critical than the jobs issue. But only 13 percent of senior agency officials in the de Blasio administration are Hispanic, according to the Department of Citywide Administrative Services. Sixty-one percent of de Blasio senior agency officials are white and 18 percent are black.

Hispanics have the least representation among the leaders of the city’s public welfare agencies tasked with uplifting Latino city residents in poverty.

Merely 15 percent of de Blasio’s commissioner-level appointees at the Human Resources Administration, Department of Homeless Services, and Department of Youth and Community Development, including assistant, associate and deputy commissioners, are Hispanic. Nearly half are AfricanAmerican. One-third are white.

This is a serious problem in a city that has long held the distinction of being home to the poorest congressional district in the U.S., the 15th Congressional District, which covers the vastly Latino South Bronx.

The Department of City Planning and Landmarks Preservation Commission have the fewest Hispanics in their leadership: 6 percent. Seventy percent are white and 10 percent are black. This is depressing. We are poised to become

the majority of the city’s population in this century, yet we have little say in how this city is being shaped.

Housing is another prime example of how the lack of representation of a community in an agency’s leadership impacts the delivery of services.

The city’s affordable housing program is de Blasio’s top priority.

Applications for affordable housing units do not have a Spanish-language Internet portal that residents with limited English proficiency can access.

Naturally, only 8 percent of the senior officials at the Department of Housing Preservation and Development and the Department of Buildings are Hispanic.

The city health agencies provide another example of how racial disparity in city government hurts New Yorkers.

The Bronx is the unhealthiest county in New York state, according to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

More than half the population of the Bronx is Hispanic. The percentage of senior officials at the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and the Department for the Aging who are Hispanic? A mere 11 percent.

De Blasio ran a campaign based on a “tale of two cities.” One rich, one poor.

Before the ink was dry on his election returns, he was jetting across the U.S. touting his vision of progressive politics to correct the economic disparities in this city and nation.

But a core value of American progressive politics since World War II has been community empowerment.

When de Blasio shafts the secondlargest and fastest-growing portion of New York City’s population so spectacularly on jobs and access, he is worsening racial disparities and creating a new narrative, a tale of three cities: one white, one black, and one brown.

Eddie Borges is directing a documentary about Mexican and Puerto Rican child poverty in New York City.

cit yandstateny.com

LEV RADIN / SHUTTERSTOCK.COM

By EDDIE BORGES

OPINION

EMPLOYMENT DISCRIMINATION IN NEW YORK CITY MUST END

By CARMELYN P. MALALIS

cit yandstateny.com

job applicant’s criminal history until after a conditional offer has been made. By requiring an employer to wait to run a criminal background check and to remove questions about criminal history from job applications, New Yorkers get an opportunity to be considered on their merits first, not their mistakes. Employers also gain access to a new host of qualified candidates.

There are, however, a few exempted employers, including the Police Department and Fire Department, as well as other city agencies that are required by law to conduct criminal background checks.

Earlier this month, President Barack Obama directed federal agencies to “ban the box,” prohibiting them from inquiring about criminal histories on job applications. New York City joins more than 100 cities and 19 states nationwide that have some sort of protections against employment discrimination based on criminal history.

The Stop Credit Discrimination in Employment Act was also recently added to the city’s Human Rights law, making it illegal for employers to run a job applicant’s credit report or use a person’s credit history to make employment decisions. The law

protects hardworking New Yorkers with bad credit scores and gives them an equal opportunity at employment.

The City Council overwhelmingly supported these bills, and Mayor Bill de Blasio signed them into law, for good reason.

Nearly five million New Yorkers statewide have a criminal history, disproportionately low-income residents and people of color. When people are denied employment opportunities, the risk of recidivism goes up, as does the chance that they will end up in poverty.

Removing these unnecessary barriers gives people with a criminal history an equal opportunity to enter the workforce, move forward with their lives and support themselves and their families. Folks who have paid their debt to society should get a fair shot at employment.

Likewise, an individual’s credit score should not disqualify them from employment. Studies show no correlation between a person’s credit and their ability to perform or be trusted in a job. Furthermore, credit reports were never designed to be indicators for employment purposes, but instead a predictor of consumers’ credit risks. Relying on credit scores in employment merely limits employers’

access to well-qualified applicants.

The New York City Commission on Human Rights is committed to ending discriminatory hiring practices through aggressive enforcement of these laws and broad public education campaigns to inform job seekers, employees and businesses about how to comply with the law.

The commission runs free, monthly trainings across the city and has launched public outreach campaigns including subway, radio and newspaper ads about the law. If you believe your rights have been violated, call 311 and ask for the Commission on Human Rights. Employers with questions about the law should also contact the commission or attend a free knowyour-obligations training.

New Yorkers are more than their criminal and credit histories. Everyone deserves a fair chance at employment.

Opportunity, after all, is what this city was built on.

Carmelyn P. Malalis is the commissioner and chairwoman of the New York City Commission on Human Rights, the agency charged with enforcing the New York City Human Rights Law.

41

city & state — November 25, 2015

New York City’s unemployment rate has reached its lowest point in over a year, down to 4.8 percent in September from 7.2 percent in February. The city has added nearly 70,000 jobs over the last year, but despite this economic uptick, these jobs are still out of reach for many qualified New Yorkers.

Discrimination continues to be one of the biggest barriers to employment for job seekers today. Far too often, applicants with poor credit history or a criminal record are excluded from consideration. Otherwise talented New Yorkers are being denied access to jobs they are qualified for, and with it, a chance at an economic future.

This practice is not only unfair and unnecessary, it is now illegal in New York City.

Two new laws were recently added to the New York City Human Rights Law making it illegal for city employers to discriminate against applicants and employees based on their credit scores and criminal histories. These laws, which the New York City Commission on Human Rights is actively enforcing, will open new doors for many wellqualified New Yorkers looking for work.

The Fair Chance Act now makes it illegal for private and public employers in New York City to inquire about a

BACK & FORTH

SLAMMING THE SYSTEM One of the “Central Park Five,”

city & state — November 25, 2015

42

complex and the penal system, the people who run the system, they want it to be punitive. It used to be that you were brought to jail and it was the correction that happened in that time that would allow you to return to society a better person. But that’s not happening anymore.

convicted of beating and raping a white female jogger in 1989, Yusef Salaam was exonerated in 2002 when a confession and DNA evidence proved the crime was committed solely by another man. Thus began a bitter civil case resulting in a more than $7 million settlement for Salaam with New York City, which Mayor Bill de Blasio called a “moral obligation to right this injustice.” Salaam was honored this month with the Andrew Goodman Foundation’s Social Justice Advocate Award for his work speaking against inequality in the justice system.

Salaam spoke with City & State’s Jeff Coltin about how police use confessions and whether Rikers Island is worth reforming.

The following is an edited transcript.

City & State: The documentary about your case, “The Central Park Five,” points to serious problems in the way that police get and use confessions from suspects. What was that experience like for you?

Do you have any sense of whether the NYPD or law enforcement in general has implemented a better or fairer approach?

Yusef Salaam: My case is the clearest example of why we need videotaping of interrogations. Whenever they have arrests and things of that nature, they need to videotape them from start to finish. When you look at the false confessions that were gathered in my case from four of five guys – and then 13 years later figuring out that none of the stuff matched – it’s like, whoa, how did we as a system drop the ball in this particular case?

Have things gotten any better? I don’t necessarily think so. I think the visibility is better, especially now that we have a greater ability to use technology for our own surveillance purposes. But once we get into the clutches of the system, we’re at their mercy. Some cops are good, some cops are bad. We hope that we get the ones that are decent enough to do the right

A Q&A WITH

YUSEF SALAAM thing as opposed to the ones who just want to win at all costs and don’t care who they hurt in the process.

C&S: Is the criminal justice system beyond saving? Or could we reform it?

YS: I am of the very staunch opinion that the system itself is criminal. And I say that because, when you look at my case, my case being a microcosm of the macrocosm of other cases that are not famous, that no one knows, but that happen all the time, my case shows very clearly that you could be 100 percent innocent but you have to prove yourself innocent because of the color of your skin. You’re brought in, and the color of your skin is an indictment against you. That shouldn’t be the case, but that is the case oftentimes.

C&S: A period of your imprisonment was on Rikers Island. You’ve said that you believe over half the population at Rikers is innocent of a crime of which they’re accused. What can be done to reform that institution? Or because it’s a systemwide issue, do you think that Rikers needs to be knocked down and something new built up?

YS: If we’re going to look at Rikers and Rikers alone, and use that as an example, then I would say yes, that system has to be knocked down, and something else has to be put in its place. You know it’s unfortunate, because when you look at Rikers itself, there’s too many loopholes. There’s too much of an ability for someone to still do you very grave harm. And when you look at the prison-industrial

C&S: You’ve been out of the criminal justice system for years, but you’ve also had a long fight in the civil justice system, suing New York City for compensation. What differences have you seen in the way you’re treated?

YS: Back in 1989 we were these “urban terrorists,” as Mayor Dinkins incorrectly labeled us, same way that they label anything that goes on today.

Unfortunately the president himself labeled the people when they were uprising in Baltimore as “thugs.”

When people get their humanity back and they’re called “Mr. Yusef Salaam” or “sir” or “how’s everything going” and when people hold open the door for you and they try to look out a little bit more, because they try and understand that you weren’t an urban terrorist, that you weren’t a thug, that you actually were trying to fight for your life and for your rights and for your humanity, it begins to be something very important. So that kind of duality in terms of being able to see the old and the new, the way that they treat us now and the way we were treated back then, is a very interesting kind of point to be made.

One of the worst things to happen to us was that there was a speedy way to convict us. And I submit that there should also be, when you find that people were put in prison for crimes that they did not commit, that there should be a speedy way to compensate us. The people who are wronged in those cases shouldn’t have to go through a long, drawn-out process just to receive some justice. They should be able to be compensated fairly quickly. And in a better way than many of us are. cit yandstateny.com

“ F**K YOU!

F**K REPUBLICANS! AND F**K RICHARD F**CKING NIXON! I WILL GO AFTER YOU!

”

SETTING THE AGENDA

Education / Health / Energy

November 24, 2014

P A R T N E R S I N P O W E R The unlikely alliance between Andrew Cuomo and Chris Christie

By ZACK FINK

CIT YANDSTATENY.COM

B e c o m e a n I N S I D E R - C i t y a n d S t a t e N Y. c o m / I N S I D E R

@CIT YANDSTATENY

Cover Story: Partners in Power Author: Zack Fink