NYC NOW - January 1, 2024 : Midday News

Episode Date: January 1, 2024

In Albany, lawmakers are regrouping for the 2024 session to tackle the housing crisis, with WNYC's Sean Carlson previewing what’s to come with Albany reporter Jon Campbell. Plus, in Central Park, birdwatchers partake in the traditional Christmas Bird Count, a practice underscoring how climate change affects bird species, as reported by WNYC's Rosemary Misdary.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. I'm Sean Carlson. Happy New Year. Some of you may be getting a slow start to the day after that New Year's Eve party. And then some of you might be feasting on greens and black-eyed peas for good fortune. Either way, we are happy to have you with us to start the new year. 2023 was supposed to be the year Albany finally tackled the housing crisis in New York. However, Governor Hokel failed to reach a deal with Democrats in the state legislature. on an ambitious plan to create 800,000 new units over the next decade.

Now, New York's 213 state lawmakers will return to the Capitol this week for the start of the 2024 legislative session where they will try again. I caught up with W&C's Albany reporter John Campbell to preview what's to come. Let's start with the basics here. What are we talking about when we refer to the legislative session? We're talking about the period of time when lawmakers regularly head to the Capitol to take up bills. It runs about six months, January to June. They're not in Albany every single day. It's a couple days a week. There's a couple breaks in between the busier periods they're there for five days a week. And we're in this era in Albany where everything is controlled by Democrats, the governor's office, the state Senate, the State Assembly. That's the case again for 2024 for this upcoming legislative session, though it is an election year and every single one of the 213 state lawmakers will be on the best. ballot in November. Well, John, if everything is controlled by Democrats, what happened this past year

on housing? Where did the talks go wrong? Well, Governor Hockel, state lawmakers, they all agreed that something had to be done on housing. They just couldn't agree on what had to be done. And the governor, she wanted every single town, city, village, and the state to hit these certain housing targets, basically a mandate that they boost their housing stock by 1% to 3% over three years, depending on what part of the state. Some Democratic lawmakers, they were looking for what's called good cause eviction protections. And basically what that would do is limit how much landlords can raise rent in any given year and say that they can't evict tenants without a solid legal reason. And the lawmakers didn't like Hockel's mandate. Hockel didn't like the

eviction protections. The real estate industry didn't like the eviction protections either. And everything just kind of blew up. So then help me understand here, John. If they're going to try again in 2024, you know, if you try to do the same thing again and expect different results, you know? Oh, yeah, yeah. That's the definition of insanity, I think people say. And a lot of the players are the same here.

But there might be some reason to believe that there could be a difference this year. For one, the governor herself says she's going to be pursuing a, a different. different strategy, though we don't really know exactly what that strategy is going to be. Here's what she said about that late last month. I'm not going to head down the same path that we did last year with the exact same plan and in a year that is an election year for the members where they have different focus and priorities, and I'm going to make sure we get there. Now, we should hear more about whatever her plan will be when she delivers her state

of the state address. That's coming on January 9th. The Senate and the Assembly, they were pretty close to striking a deal on their own last year, it would have basically re-uped this expiring tax credit known as 421A. That's for New York City projects that have a certain percentage of affordable housing. That's something that the real estate industry really wants. They want that tax credit back on the books. And it would have been tied to good cause eviction protections, which, again, the industry hates. It's definitely possible that we can see the legislature pursue that again. They were really close, but so

far the governor isn't on board. Now, we've been talking about the next legislative session, but we should say the governor still has a few bills to decide on from the last legislative session. What gives on that? Governor's always seem to leave some of the more controversial bills until the end of the year, so that's not exactly unusual. The main bill she still has to act on is one called the Grieving Families Act. It would make it easier for people to sue when a family member is killed by someone else's negligence in wrongful death cases. The trial lawyers, very powerful force in Albany, they want her to sign it. Hospitals and insurance companies, very powerful forces in Albany. They want her to veto it. And it's looking like the governor's going to use

this kind of constitutional maneuver to buy herself some more time. So she'd actually have until late January to decide on that. We should note she did the same exact thing with a very similar bill last year. And ultimately, she decided to veto it. That's WMIC's Albany reporter John Campbell with the latest on the upcoming 2024 legislative session as of December 29th. After we spoke, John got noticed late on Friday that the governor's office did indeed veto the grieving families act. For the latest updates, check Gothamus.com. Up next, we had to Central Park for some holiday bird watching. That's after the brain.

There is a centrial tradition in Central Park where birders flock for the Christmas bird count. The census tallies dozens of species. and serves as an annual reminder of how climate change is affecting bird behavior. WNYC's Rosemary Mystery has the story. More than 100 volunteers are gathered on a Sunday morning at the reservoir in Central Park, bundled up with binoculars strung around their necks. Count leaders are holding clipboards with a checklist of bird species. We can go around the north side, the east side, and you can come around the south side about this far,

and then you've got to turn back. David Ringer is the count leader for the northeast section of the park. This is his 24th Christmas bird count, and he's a little competitive about it. You want to beat your record from last year. You want to see if you can get a few more ring-billed gulls or a yellow warbler that shows up for the first time on the count. I think it's stuff like it. It flew over here, right?

Counters dispersed into one of seven sections of the park. What have we got? It's yellow on it. Oh. It's like if you look this way, you'll see it. Oh, yeah, I see the moon. I'm seeing it. It's a little bit yellowish, yellowish.

Oh, wow. What is it? Uh, it's a warbler. It's a warbler. That's a rare bird to spawn, and the only yellow warbler cited in the park this year. The brightly colored songbird usually winters as far as South America. The most exciting thing on a Christmas bird count

is when you see a bird that's not even on the list, so you have to write it down separately. It's called a write-in. Central Park's bird populations are changing. New species are moving in, lured by urban food sources like trash, and the lack of predators. Meanwhile, global warming is changing bird ranges by about 200 miles. Jeff LeBaron is the director of the Christmas bird count, which he calls the CBC. The CBC tells us how the birds are doing during this early winter period.

We can track where the birds are and how they have changed their range. during climate change over the last 60 to 70 years. While researchers are just beginning to understand more than a century's worth of bird counts and weather data, the numbers show which feathered creatures are moving in and which ones are moving out. It documents the northward march of many of the more southern species, things like cardinals and tufted tit mice,

Carolina wrens, red-bellied woodpeckers, these kinds of things which in the early years would have been just down south, down south, you know, south of New York City. The theory is backed up by the annual bird census. In 2012, volunteers counted 71 cardinals. There are fluctuations in year-to-year data, but 10 years later, the count recorded 90 cardinals.

American Robbins, thought of as the harbingers of spring, no longer leave the city because of warmer winters. Birders counted 550 of them this year, while in 2012, there were just 97. It's a really cool way of documenting that birds are shifting their ranges in the changing climate and how rapidly they're doing that. The Christmas bird count wasn't always a count. In the 19th century, it was a Christmas tradition to shoot as many birds as possible for sport. In 1900, ornithologist Frank Chapman organized a count instead of a hunt.

The tradition caught on. This year, Central Park had a record number of volunteer counters. We need to conserve things rather than harvest them. After four hours of counting, participants and organizers go to the Parks Department headquarters. We're going to get totals across all the different sections, and then we'll have an idea about what's happening across the whole park. So let's get started with Canada Goose. Dustin Partridge is the director of science and conservation at the NYC Audubon.

He calls out the bird species one by one. The teams of birders shout back their counts like people at an auction. All right. So the next one is Northern Shoeuvre. North East? Twelve. Northwest? Four.

Central Park's bird total for 2020 is 9,673, an increase over last year's number, which was just under 9,000. Using the bird count data, Audubon will develop models to help predict where birds might fly next as they adapt to climate change. These numbers help scientists create and assess conservation strategies, so birds remain, part of our habitat. That's WNYC's Rosemary Mystery. Thanks for listening to NYC now from WNYC. Catch us every weekday three times a day. I'm Sean Carlson.

We'll be back tomorrow.