Con Ed Feels the Heat + Cuomo Proposes Primary Day Shift

LOCAL NEWS

• The State Legislature and City Council held dueling hearings that grilled Con Edison leadership for their power failures this summer, and legislators pondered proposals for government intervention that would threaten Con Ed’s monopoly and/or carry out a public takeover of the electric utility.
• Crime continued to fall, as did arrests for low-level misdemeanors, during the recent NYPD slowdown.
• Union density in New York City dropped to 21.8% this year, the City’s lowest rate of unionization since 2012.
• Andrew Cuomo has hired the former assistant counsel to the New York State Senate Republicans to oversee the budget process.
• Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will propose a version of State Senator Julia Salazar’s good cause eviction bill to the US Congress, in addition to other tenant protection bills.
• Following a pressure campaign from local healthcare activists, Brooklyn Representative and potential future House Speaker Hakeem Jeffries has announced his support for Medicare for All.
• In a brazen attempt to sidestep new state rent laws, the landlord of Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village, has kept some of its regulated units vacant rather than renting to tenants who would benefit from rent protections. This revelation has prompted the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development to review its $220 million subsidy agreement with Blackstone. The backlash caused ownership to publicly commit to renting out all of its regulated units on Friday.
• The City Council conducted hearings on Thursday regarding proposals to build four new jails to replace the Rikers Island jail complex. Opposition is coming from criminal justice reform groups that are opposed to all new jail construction, as well as elected officials opposing new jails in their districts.

ELECTIONS

• After entertaining pushing the New York Presidential Primary up to February, Cuomo announced his intent to combine the presidential, congressional, and state primaries to one date on April 28. While the move has an egalitarian veneer, the move is largely seen as a means of speeding up the state primary calendar to make grassroots primary challenges to incumbents more difficult. Cuomo needs support from the Legislature to move the state and congressional primaries but can unilaterally move the presidential primary, which the national DNC has warned him against.
• Josue Pierre, a Democratic District Leader from Flatbush, has publicly announced a progressive primary challenge to State Senator Kevin Parker (District 21, Brooklyn).
• Janos Marton, who managed the #CLOSErikers campaign in 2016-17, wrote an editorial opposing Mayor De Blasio’s plan to close the jail at Rikers, saying it doesn’t go far enough to reduce the incarcerated population. Marton is running for Manhattan District Attorney in 2021.
• Melinda Katz has tried to campaign as a “progressive prosecutor” since being declared the winner in the Queens DA Democratic primary last month, but she faces obvious skepticism.