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New Yorkers are protected against consumer fraud committed by residential property owners or managers. A key part of the legislation I would seek to advance is the inclusion of an increase in the price of penalties to be executed against landlords who, within 5 business days, fail to correct lapses in the provision of essential health, hot water or gas services in occupied apartment units. 3. My third order legislative priority would be to reintroduce Intro 0433-2010 that requires all NYC taxis that conduct street hails to drive American Disability Act compliant vehicles. 4. What will your top 3 budget priorities be in your first term as Council Member? As a NY Democrat, I belief that New York Citys municipal government must protect the welfare of our metropolis most vulnerable groups; such as the elderly, the infirmed, and the youth. As such, I would strive to make some of the most popular and cost-effective programs for these cohorts of New Yorkers to be baselined in annual budget allocations by the NYC Office of Management and Budget. As Councilwoman, I would prioritize the baselining of the following two NYC programs. 1. Senior Citizen Rent Increase Exemption /Disabled Rent Increase Exemption programs. I would also work to generate enough funding to facilitate establishing parity between the income eligibility caps for both programs. That is, I would work to ensure income caps for both SCRIE and DRIE were set at $29,000 rather than $29,100 for SCRIE and $20,148 for DRIE. 2. Out-of-School-Time: The city-funded program that provides a mix of academic, recreational and cultural after-school activities during summer vacation for young people enrolled in grades K-12. Is a component of New York City governments expense that in recent years have been the target of annual budget cuts. I would advocate for the city council to ensure that the program is fully funded every fiscal year (unless inefficiencies are identified) so that agencies providing Out-of-School-Time services for New Yorkers may project long-term operation expenses and programs to truly harness the productive potential of our population. 3. I would work in conjunction with the NYC Mayor and the Commissioner of the Department of Homeless Services to explore the costs and benefits of referring increasing number of homeless individuals to NYCs Housing Authorities apartment buildings. Advocates for homeless New Yorkers; such as the Coalition for the Homeless, have asserted that referring homeless individuals to NYCHA is the most cost-effective and beneficial way to treat homelessness in our city. 5. Do you plan to use participatory budgeting to allocate your discretionary funds? Why or why not? Yes. I fully intend to use participatory budgeting in my district. I believe the use of participatory budgeting process allows for a districts residents to become involved in the high volume (roughly $1 million) budget allocating decisions, is both democratic and economically efficient. A government official on her own has a difficult time identifying all of the most important priority areas for the investment of collective tax funds. The collaboration with vetted leaders in the community, adds diversity of perspectives for an increasingly efficient allocation of capital. 6. Please provide examples of recent legislation in Council that you believe promotes human rights. The two pieces of legislation that bolstered both the social and economic rights of New Yorkers this past legislative session in the City Council is the Community Safety Act and the Paid Sick Leave bill. The first one ensured that civil rights protections for African American and Latino were relevant amidst policy changes within the NYPD which expanded the grounds and process by which New Yorkers could be stopped and questioned by NY police. The
number of unreasonable searches and seizures reached the highest numbers in New York history. The latter, expanded the protections for NYC workers regarding to requiring that all employers be acknowledgeable of the new law and willing to accommodate the health related needs of their employees over the course of their relationship with an employer. Both laws are excellent examples of how the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights can be reinforced through the codification of complementary local law. 7. Legislation is only one of many ways in which Council Members can work to advance human rights. What ways other than through legislation will you advance the human rights of New Yorkers as a City Council Member? A NY City Councilmember has power to launch initiatives or taskforces in conjunction with colleagues in NYCs mayoral agencies over quality of life issues that affect NYC residents, specifically in the Human Rights Commission and the Office of the NYC Public Advocate. For example, this past year the Public Advocate released its Stop-andFrisk and the Urgent Need for Meaningful Reforms report which shed light on the fact about the disproportionate number of stops and frisks made on African American New Yorkers and Latinos when compared those less frequent stops made on Whites. Findings from this report allowed advocates against the Stop and Frisk policy in the City Council to devise compelling legislative arguments for the passage of the Community Safety Act and the creation of an Inspector Generals Office within the NYPD. Therefore, it established a civil standing by which New Yorkers subject to discriminatory NYPD Stops and Frisks may sue NYPD for the receipt of monetary compensation for any civil damages found. As a City Councilwoman, in addition to access to timely advocacy reports produced by the NYC Public Advocates Office, I could also request certain investigative reports prepared in partnership with NYCs Commission on Human Rights to respond to any human rights challenges which may emerge in NYC throughout my time in elected office. 8. Some advocates contend that the position of the Council Speaker has too much power over the progression of legislation. Please use this space to respond to that critique. I believe that all legislators elected by the Citys voting population should have the same right in shaping the legislative process in NYs City Council. However, the City Council Speaker does have a disproportionate quantity of discretion over the timeline, and nature of bills that are introduced to NY City Council committees and to the full-floor for hearings and/or votes. Rather than having a system of first-come-first-serve in which each committee considers a bill according to the objective of bills to be introduced into committee and the floor for consideration, both Committee Chairs and the Speaker, can determine which bills are to be appraised and in which sequence they may be evaluated by the larger legislative bodies. Similarly, the Speaker has almost unilateral discretion over the timing of full-council votes for a bill that triumphantly makes it out of committee. Thus, at both the introductory, through final stage of a bills consideration by the deliberative procedure, the Speaker exerts an inordinate direct and indirect influence over the outcome of deliberative process.