NYC NOW - March 7, 2024 : Evening Roundup

Episode Date: March 7, 2024

Cruises docking in New York City terminals will soon be required to plug into shore power when they can instead of burning diesel. Plus, data from the city's housing department shows disparities in the creation of affordable housing. Also, a new state report finds New Jersey school districts aren't doing enough to prevent teachers accused of abuse from finding their way back into the classroom. And finally, WNYC’s Michael Hill talks with advocates about their efforts to make it easier for people in jail to get registered and vote in upcoming elections.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City. From WNYC, I'm Jene Pierre. Soldiers from New York's National Guard are coming to a subway station near you. That's according to a plan Governor Kathy Hokel announced on Wednesday to check riders' bags as part of a new crackdown on transit crime. The governor defended the plan on MSNBC's Morning Joe early Thursday. She said it's about making people feel safe, But she didn't shy away from the political ramifications either.

I'm also going to demonstrate that Democrats fight crime as well. So this narrative that Republicans have said and hijacked the story that we're soft-done crime, that we defund the police. No. However, Hokel's plan is facing criticism from within her own party. Brooklyn Assembly member Latrice Walker says the backchacks will perpetuate racial discrimination and keep people from getting to work. I spoke with WNYC's Brittany Crickstein, who went out Thursday morning to speak to subway riders about the new plant? So I was at three stations in the Bronx, 161st Street and Yankee

Stadium. Then I was at 182nd, 183rd Street in Grand Concourse. And I was at Mount Eden Avenue. And those two of the three have had some pretty intense high profile violent incidents, fatal shootings. And there was no National Guard there today. What's the most interesting thing that you heard from folks? One, they were not surprised. no National Guard's members had been deployed to their specific subway stops, even though those stops have been the scenes of some of these most violent high-profile incidents. And some of them were skeptical that that would even help this issue. I spoke to two women actually who were on their way to college courses to classes downtown, and neither of them said that they felt particularly safe in the subway system. Like, I'm always, like, watching my back.

Since you hear about, like, all of people being pushed into, like, the tracks, I usually just, like, try to stay back and all that. Another older gentleman, he passes through the Yankee Stadium subway station pretty often on the way to visit his mom. He said that he just doesn't think that the National Guard is going to be the most effective way to cut down on these violent incidents. I'm 59 years old. I've been in New York all my life. And I've always, at times I find myself relaxing on the trains throughout the years where I can close my eyes and take a quick nap. But today I refuse to close my eyes because you never know who's up standing over you. Brittany Craigstein, WMYC Dayoff reporter. Thanks so much.

Thank you so much, today. We heard from subway riders, Ann Lee Mejia and Brian Best. New York City has added nearly 24,000 affordable apartments since the start of the Adams administration. But data from the city's housing department shows that, not all neighborhoods are contributing equally. WMYC's Jacqueline Jeffrey Walensky walks us through the numbers. The differences are stark. East New York and Cypress Hills in Brooklyn added more than 1900 new units since 2022. Compare that to the edge of Northeast Queens, which has about the same number of people, but added just four apartments. And you can see

those differences across the city. WNYC found 11 city council districts that had added 30 or fewer new apartments since 2022. Experts say that's because of zoning restrictions in certain neighborhoods. But city officials say the mayor's new housing plan will build a little more housing in every neighborhood. Want to see how your neighborhood stacks up? Check out the maps at our news website, Got the Mist. With major elections happening this year, we take a look into the struggles of voting in state

jails. Stick around for that conversation after the break. It's a big year. for both national and local elections, and voters across the state continue to deliberate who they favor. But advocates warn that people who are being held in New York State jails, a vast majority of whom have the legal right to vote, continue to struggle to register, let alone cast their ballots.

Hazelweiser is with the League of Women Voters, New York City. Victor Pate is a member of New York City's Vote in Jails Coalition. The two advocates talked with WMYC's Michael Hill about their efforts to help the jailed population register and cast their ballots. Haysel, let's start with you. Tell us about this survey. Who did researchers speak to and what are the key takeaways? We interviewed the sheriffs or their staffs in 57 of the 62 counties in New York State.

Five counties are comprised New York City, and we knew what was going on at Rikers. Only 12 sheriff's offices didn't respond to our request to fill out a very simple questionnaire. What we found, Michael, was that only 11 counties plus Rikers had any semblance of a voter registration program. This means that at any time, 12,000 people in New York State are being denied access to the ballot. You visit Rikers once a month or so to help people register to vote. You were there just a couple of weeks ago. Describe what that volunteer work entails. What's the process of getting someone registered to vote and then helping them cast their ballot?

So we go to Rackers Island once a month, and there's a group of us, as a diverse group of us, sometimes law school students, lawyers, social workers, general, public at large, and even formally incarcerated people. So what happens is that we have a coordinator that is an employee of the New York City Department of Corrections as our liaison. And we meet at a central place and we're transported to Rikers Island to what specific facility we're going to register the people in. Once we kind of sort of give them a crash course in their right to vote and inform them that they should be voting, we fill out a voter registration form.

And of course, as you know, because they are incarcerated and most of the time, they will still be incarcerated when the elections come up. We also have them fill out an absentee ballot. Then, after we completed, the ballots, at the end of the day, are collected by the Department of Corrections staff member, who then has the responsibility of taking those registrations to particular boroughs. Now, oftentimes, what happens is that, you know, there may be an error or something somewhere along the balance, and we may not know about it until maybe a month or so later that they were invalid.

Hazel, you referred to this, 1974, the U.S. Supreme Court mandating that New York amended's eligibility categories to apply for an absentee ballot to include those detained in county jails while serving a misdemeanor sentence, awaiting trial, or awaiting testimony before a grand jury. So what are the systemic and structural barriers to jail voting? There are registration barriers that Victor just talked about. You know, we've got changing registration deadlines, limited. access to registration materials, the lack of a permanent address, jail mail delays, and limited access to the internet and phones to verify the registration process. Then we've got ballot casting

barriers, compromised ballot privacy, and limited access to neutral help with the application and ballot questions. And finally, there's population churn in jails. You have this constant movement. So many times administratively, jails don't want to have to serve the needs. But when you are being detained by the state, the state is responsible for making sure that your rights are being preserved. Victor, what would make your job easier as you go back and forth into Rikers, for instance? So for me, it's always a proper education, a curriculum that will lay out or, set the opportunity for people to be fully educated on their rights to vote and how the ability to vote does help them in their reintegration process. Number two, having the

appropriate amount of staff to help facilitate the voting administrative process after the ballots have been registered, to have them delivered to the appropriate places, and to help in terms of the whole process of speeding up and expediting the process. Key also would be having a polling site on Rackas Island, which would definitely make the whole process and itself work a lot smoother. And Hazel kind of sort of laid it out in terms of things that are a barrier to effective access to the vote. There's also possible legislation. We have Senate Bill 6875, which was introduced by Senator Mirey,

and the bill would institutionalize and make explicit of the process across the state to formalize voting access for all eligible citizens detained in correctional facilities. And finally, all eligible citizens detained in larger correctional facilities, especially Rikers Island, would then have access to in-person early voting or absentee voting, the same way that it's provided for residents of nursing homes and certain aggregate housing facilities around the state. The Board of Elections told us any potential changes would have to be spearheaded by DOC. Hazel or Victor, who does this responsibility ultimately fall on? We want the Board of Elections to develop materials

for registering people, for helping people fill out their absentee ballots, and making sure that all of our... of the details have been respected and followed, and that there's an opportunity afterwards to correct some of the mistakes that might have appeared on the absentee ballot so that the vote is actually counted. We believe they need funding in order to do that.

And then there needs to be some accountability so that local sheriffs understand that cooperating with the board of elections, cooperating with local community groups, that together we can bring the ballot into jails. That's Hazel Weiser with the League of Women Voters, New York City, and Victor Pate, member of New York City's Vote in Jails Coalition, talking with WNYC's Michael Hill.

Thanks for listening to NYC now from WMYC. Catch us every weekday, three times a day. I'm Junae Pierre. We'll be back tomorrow.