City Council Staff Considers Unionization + Bloomberg Apologizes for Stop and Frisk

Local News:

• Following an open letter signed by dozens of current and former City Council staffers that condemned abuse and harassment of Council staffers, District Council 37 has expressed interest in unionizing these workers. However, many think Council staffers will not opt to organize with a large union but a smaller one, due to concerns about the strong ties between these unions and City Council Members.

• The NYPD maintained an illegal database of juvenile fingerprints, violating a State law requiring them to be destroyed. The database was discovered by Legal Aid lawyers, and has now been shut down.

• The MTA has revealed it will cost the agency $249 million through 2023 to hire the 500 new subway police officers that Governor Cuomo has requested.

• The City Council passed several pieces of legislation Thursday, including a plan to protect Manhattan’s east side from floods by building parts (including East River Park) up to 10 feet higher and a bill that transfers control of Hart Island, an island in the Bronx that serves as the public burial site for more than 1 million people, from the Department of Corrections to the Parks Department.

• 2,440 tenants in a NYCHA development in the Bronx were without heat on Wednesday (the coldest day of the year so far) when a boiler broke.

• Congressmember Yvette Clarke has introduced a bill that would change how the Department of Housing and Urban Development calculates Area Median Income (AMI), which is used to determine “affordable” housing prices in a given area. Particularly relevant for New York, the bill would exclude wealthier suburbs, like Westchester and Rockland counties, from the city’s AMI equation.

• The state tax department has decided that condo buyers in New York City who make their purchases using limited liability companies will no longer be required to publicly disclose the members of the entities. The decision comes in apparent opposition to a 2019 law requiring the disclosure.

• As part of plans to double the number of Citi Bikes by 2023, the program opened its easternmost docking station in Brooklyn.

• Council Member Brad Lander joined Brooklyn residents demanding the return of the B71 bus, which connected Red Hook to Crown Heights before being shut down in 2010 due to MTA cuts.

• A detailed Newsday report has uncovered persistent housing discrimination on Long Island.

Elections:

• Former Mayor and potential presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg apologized for presiding over the “Stop and Frisk” era as mayor. Until recently, Bloomberg had been an ardent defender of the NYPD practice, which targeted black and Latino New Yorkers for arbitrary searches by the police.