Corey Johnson’s Transit Vision & Budget Trouble in Albany

Local News:

• Council Speaker and 2021 mayoral contender Corey Johnson unveiled a major transportation platform that calls for municipal control of subways and buses, along with other sweeping reforms to “break the [City’s] car culture.”

• Early signs out of Albany suggest the Legislature and Gov. Cuomo may not reach a budget deal by the April 1 deadline.

• State Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie said that his chamber does not have the votes to pass public campaign financing before the April 1 budget deadline; the Assembly had repeatedly passed such legislation while Republicans controlled the State Senate. Heastie also downplayed ethics reform, even though the Assembly has also passed versions of the same bill in previous sessions.

• Hundreds of activists rallied in Albany to urge Gov. Cuomo to include $40 million in census funding to the state budget, arguing that an insufficient budget will systematically undercount underrepresented communities, as well as potentially lead to the loss of two congressional representatives and significant losses in federal funding.

• City and State has an overview of the Good Cause Eviction bill introduced by Senator Julia Salazar last month.

• Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez has dropped the sexual assault charges against the two NYPD officers who admitted to having sex with then-18-year-old Anna Chambers while she was in their custody in 2017. (A law clarifying that people under arrest or otherwise in custody cannot consent to sex with police officers has been passed since.)

• Gothamist released a list of the most sued NYPD officers who are still on the job.

• The New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) has voted to authorize a strike at three of the City’s major hospital systems if their concerns about staffing shortages and overcrowding are not addressed.

• After years of pressure from activists, JP Morgan Chase announced they will stop financing CEO Group and CoreCivic — the largest operators of private prisons and immigrant detention centers in the US.

• An article in The Real Deal details how the Real Estate Board of New York (REBNY), an influential group of landlords, is scrambling to build a new coalition against rent law reforms as the political terrain has shifted.

• Council Member Carlos Menchaca (District 38 - Red Hook, Sunset Park) said he will kill the potential rezoning of the 16-building Industry City site if its developers move forward with initiating the ULURP process before allowing more time for the community to go through its own visioning process.

Elections:

• NYC-DSA endorsee for Queen’s District Attorney Tiffany Cabán has been backed by a number of local political organizations including New York Progressive Action Network, Queens United Independent Progressives, and One Queens Indivisible. AMNY ran a profile of Cabán, focusing on her career as a public defender. The June 25 Democratic primary features a crowded field, with six of the seven announced candidates positioning themselves as progressive reformers.

• As many as seven people are running for Jumaane Williams’ 45th City Council seat (Flatbush), which will hold a non-partisan special election in April or May, followed by a Democratic primary in June and another general election in November.

• The Working Families Party is pushing back on attempts by Democrats to eliminate fusion balloting in New York.

• Republican City Council Member Eric Ulrich (District 32 - Ozone Park), who finished second in the special election for New York Public Advocate in February, announced via Twitter that he will not be running for the position again this fall.