NYC NOW - July 19, 2024: Morning Headlines

Episode Date: July 19, 2024

Get up and get informed! Here’s all the local news you need to start your day: A spokesperson for Mayor Adams says City Hall is aware of the global technical outage involving CrowdStrike, which disrupted flights, banks, media outlets, and companies around the world overnight. The city is "assessing the full impact it may have on city operations." Meanwhile, New York City Council members are gearing up to sue the Department of Correction to ensure the enactment of a ban on solitary confinement in city jails. A resolution passed Thursday gives Council Speaker Adrienne Adams the authority to bring legal action to "defend" the ban, which is set to go into effect on July 28. Finally, on this week’s segment of On The Way, WNYC transportation reporter Stephen Nessen and editor Clayton Guse discuss the MTA allegedly cutting bus service due to a lack of expected congestion pricing funds, Mayor Eric Adams’ push to add metal detectors to subway stations, Kris Kolluri stepping down as head of the Gateway Development Commission, and a listener question about the G train line shutdown.

Welcome to NYC Now. Your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. It's Friday, July 19th. Here's the morning headlines from Michael Hill. Local effects seem to be minimal so far after widespread Microsoft outage disrupted flights, banks, media outlets, and comedies around the world overnight. Spokesperson from Mayor Adams says City Hall is aware of the global technical outage involving crowd. strike and currently is assessing the full impact it may have on city operations. The mayor's office

says so far a critical infrastructure emergency operations, including the 911 call system, have not been affected. The technology company says it's fixing an issue affecting access to Microsoft 365 apps and services. It did not explain the cause of the outage. The MTA says some customer information systems are temporarily offline due to the outage, but train and bus service is affected. The website Down Detector, which tracks user-reported internet outages, recorded outages in services at Visa, ADT, Security, and Amazon, and airlines, including American and Delta. The website Flight Aware shows some cancellations and delays in and out of local airports, so if you've booked the flight, you might want to check with your airline. We'll continue to

follow this story for you this morning. New York City Council members are gearing up to sue the Department of Correction to ensure the enactment of a bank. on solitary confinement in city jails. Yesterday's resolution gives Council Speaker Adrian Adams the authority to bring legal action to quote, defend the ban which is set to go into effect on July 28th. Councilmember Sandy Nurse chairs the Council's Criminal Justice Committee. She says Mayor Adams' administration wants to weaken the law in court. After overriding the mayor's veto to enact this legislation, it's now clear that this

administration will seek to suspend most of the requirements of local law. 42 in court. In a letter to a judge last month, city lawyers said they intend to ask a court to suspend the requirements of the law. Spokesperson for the mayor did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 68 and sunny now, sunny and 86 for a high on this Friday, July 19th. It's Friday. That means it's time for a weekly segment of On the Way. Covering all things transportation, that's after the break. It's Friday, which means it's time for On the Way, our weekly segment breaking down the week's transit news.

Joining us is WNYC Transportation Reporter, Stephen Nesson, and editor Clayton Goosa. Stephen, you reported that the MTA allegedly cut bus service because it doesn't have the funding anymore that it was supposed to get from congestion pricing. How exactly does that work? So this came from a lawsuit that was filed by the Transport Workers Union, Local 100, and public advocate Jamani Williams. Basically, what they're claiming is congestion pricing was put on pause. Hockel and the MTA said it was only going to impact, you know, the big projects like we've

been talking about, signals, new train cars. But they were also asked to cut their operating budget, the lawsuit alleges. And by doing that, to do that, they wanted to institute a hiring freeze. So the union says they had to cut service or they're being forced to cut service by 5 to 10% in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx. They claim this is illegal. It's why they're filing a lawsuit. supposedly the MTA has to inform the mayor and the city council about any non-emergency cuts like this 30 days before it happens. That didn't occur. The MTA didn't exactly address these concerns directly, but they call the lawsuit part of, quote, silly season and say that the governor just saved the MTA last year with all this new funding to avoid the type of cuts they're complaining about. And this could be the first of many, many lawsuits over Hockel's pause of the congestion pricing told.

right controller city comptroller Brad Lander is working with lawyers using the resources of his office and organizing people who are concerned or upset or affected by the change kind of thinking that they're going to go to court to try and get Hockel to enforce the law remember congestion pricing approved through 2019 law they're trying to compel her nothing there yet but we're expecting something at some point in other news mayor Eric Adams says metal detectors that automatically look out for guns are coming to the subways? The mayor's pitched this technology for a while, hasn't it? It's a really big pet project of Adams, you know, looking to the tech world to try and crack down on guns in public spaces like the subway. There's one particular kind of this gun detector that he tested out at City Hall.

When you, in order to get in a City Hall, you normally pass through metal detectors. These ones, you might see them at sports venues in some cases. You don't have to empty your pockets out when you pass through them. They kind of, they quote themselves as using artificial intelligence technology to scan from metal objects that look like guns. And he's been talking about these basically since he got into office. So now he's saying, okay, we're going to put them in subway stations to try and track for guns. You know, the one thing he said this week when he was announcing it is he's going to put it in a few locations, but he wouldn't say exactly where. I should add, you know, Clayton was talking about evolve, but the NYPD said they are looking at other companies.

so maybe it's not just this one company that we've heard about, you know, but there was sort of some confusion as well this week because Adam says it's going to roll out in the next few days. But then his NYPD transit chief came in and said, well, it's coming soon. Not necessarily something we'll see next week. So there's some questions about when this is going to happen. But, you know, Adams is confident that when that does come out, the public will welcome these devices. people don't want to have people with firearms on a close confined areas such as our subway system. And we're going to do it that passengers know the rules and make the determination if they want to enter the system or not. Right.

So, I mean, as Nessman was rolling out there explaining, there was a lot of confusion over the rollout of these things. But at this press conference where he mentioned these, they were also celebrating a pretty substantial drop in subway crime. It's been a big priority of Adam since he came into office kind of after seeing an uptick and violence, perceived a reel on the subways after the pandemic. NYPD data shows subway crime is down 11% so far this year from before the pandemic, down about 8% from last year. And it all kind of comes after Hockel controversially deployed National Guard soldiers in the subway. The MTA was taken a little bit of a victory lap on her behalf over it. Now, another item that is just in. The head of the Gateway Development Commission is resigning.

That is the group that is overseeing the massive $16 billion project to build a new train tunnel underneath the Hudson River. Stephen, what's the deal? Why do you resign? So Chris Kaluri, he's been in charge of Gateway for the past two years, a crucial couple of years, really, in which he basically oversaw all of the funding for this project coming together. Calori's background, he worked on the ARC project, which you may remember Christy killed,

but would have essentially done the same thing to build a new tunnel between New Jersey and New York. But basically, Kalori came back to this project. He helped get the federal funding. he got 70% of the project funded by the federal government. It's $16 billion, as you mentioned, so it's a lot of money. So now that that's squared away, he says he's stepping down. It's the right time.

And he's going to presumably let someone with a construction background take it from here as they move into more of that phase. So that's all correct, but also the context here and timing is really relevant. It has everything to do with who Chris Gullery is and his background. He's a close ally of George Norcross. People might know, listeners might recognize Norcross as the powerful New Jersey, South Jersey political boss, who's now being indicted for allegedly running a years-long corruption scheme. Kaluri and Norcross's careers have been kind of tied at the hip. Kuluri worked at the nonprofit as the head of it, the nonprofit that's at the center of the indictment,

the corruption ring, and he's actually mentioned in the, indictment, not by name, but as individual dash one in the indictment. You know, he's not accused of any wrongdoing, but it all comes after this kind of bombshell happened in New Jersey last month when Norcross got indicted. There's going, you know, there's going to be a trial over this presumably way. What more comes out here? Who knows? But, you know, Kaluri's saying, oh, that has nothing to do with my decision to leave one of the

largest public work projects in the country. Right. Just two weeks ago, I met Clury at a Gateway event and asked him about the indictment. I asked if he's going to resign from Gateway because of it. And he told me, no. If there was something to be heard, I would have heard a long time ago. I'm standing here. I went to Camden to do a job.

And I did a job just like I'm doing job of GDC. And you're not worried about the indictment and perhaps dragging you into it? If there was something to be said, they would have said it a long time ago. So just to follow up, you know, gateway officials say his ties to Norcross have nothing to do with his resignation. And his last day is mid-August. Gateway hasn't named his replacement. Okay. Finally, every week in Gothamist On the Way newsletter, we answer a question from a curious commuter. This one from Benjamin and Brooklyn who asks, does anyone actually monitor the new email address to monitor the G-line shutdown? I've submitted an email complaint. Never received

an acknowledgement. Well, Benjamin is actually one of the very few writers who have sent a message to this email address. It's actually just one of many ways the MTA is trying to connect with riders during the shutdown, which goes through September 3rd. But, you know, they have a newsletter and they have this email address, which is cross-town line signal upgrades at gmail.com, where commuters can ask questions about the project. We don't know why they used a Gmail address. But basically, only 11 people have submitted questions. Benjamin is one of the very few who did not get a response. They responded to all but three. So the MTA says they're going to get back to Yeah, and the MTA, I mean, this is a big project. It's affecting a lot of people in Brooklyn and Queens. And the MTA catches a lot of flack a lot of the time for not enough communication. Here's an example where you can reach out to them directly. Nobody's using it. If you are on the G-line, you can always email the MTA.

That's WNYC editor, Clayton Gouza and transportation reporter Stephen Nesson. You can stay in the know on all things transit or ask a question of your own by signing up for our weekly newsletter at gotthmus.com slash on the way. Thanks for listening. This is NYC Now from WNYC. Be sure to catch us every weekday, three times a day, for your top news headlines and occasional deep dives, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. See you this afternoon.