NYC NOW - Midday News: Sen. Ramos Blasts DOJ for call to Dismiss Adams Case, Gov. Hochul Urges Delay on Special Election Bill, and NJ Towns Seek to Reduce Affordable Housing Mandates

Episode Date: February 11, 2025

Queens State Senator and Democratic mayoral candidate Jessica Ramos warns the Department of Justice’s call to dismiss the case against Mayor Eric Adams could undermine public trust in government. Meanwhile, Governor Kathy Hochul is urging lawmakers to delay a bill that would extend the timeline for calling special elections. Plus, towns across New Jersey are requesting a reduction of over 11,000 affordable housing units from their state-mandated requirements. WNYC’s Mike Hayes reports.

Welcome to NYC now. Your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. It's Tuesday, February 11th. Here's the midday news. I'm Junae Pierre. Queen State Senator and Democratic mayoral candidate Jessica Ramos says the Justice Department's memo, directing Manhattan prosecutors to drop the charges against Mayor Adams, stands to erode the public's faith in government and institutions.

We want to believe in the rule of law. We want to believe that no one, not even a mayor, is above the law. And now there's a feeling that justice is denied. Adams insists he's innocent of charges that he accepted bribes of free or discounted travel and illegal campaign contributions. New York Democrats are pumping the brakes on one of their own proposals that could have kept a Republican-held seat in Congress vacant until November. WMYC's Jimmy Vilkind reports.

Governor Kathy Hokel is urging legislators to hold off on passing legislation that would give her more say on when special elections are held. A bill introduced Friday would let Hokel align special elections with the general election in November. Officials familiar with the matter said Hokel wants to wait as she negotiates with President Donald Trump about infrastructure funding. Republicans say this is all about the upcoming special election in GOP representative Elise Stefanix's North Country. District. Assembly Minority Leader Will Barclay said delaying a vote could hurt Republicans in Congress. You wonder why the voters think the system's rigged, and you wonder why people don't trust politicians. Democrats say the bill would save money. It's 32 degrees, mostly cloudy today with highs in the mid-30s. There's a chance of snow

overnight into Wednesday. It'll be cold and cloudy tomorrow. Timps will hover around 33 degrees. Stay close. There's more after the break. Towns across New Jersey are asking the state to reduce their requirements for building affordable housing by a total of more than 11,000 homes. That's according to a WMYC analysis of challenges filed by the municipalities. It comes as New Jersey is planning to build 84,000 new affordable homes over the next 10 years under a new law passed last year. For more, I'm joined for. by WMYC's Mike Hayes. Mike, help us understand how this law works.

It sounds like each town in New Jersey has a certain number of affordable homes that they have to build. Is that right? Yes, that's right. The requirements were handed down by the state back in October. State officials sent every city and town in the state their requirement. And we did the math and we came up with about 150 on average is what the state is asking towns across the state to build. Some have to do much more than that, by the way. But what's happening now is that many of these towns, about a third so far, over 120,

are challenging those numbers that were calculated by the state. So, Mike, tell me about this process and what are they saying went wrong? To come up with these numbers, the state used different types of data. They looked at average income in towns, but they also looked at the amount of developable land in a town, which makes a lot sense if you want to build housing, you've got to have land that you can build on. And they use aerial images, tax data, et cetera, to come up with that developable land. And what many of the towns are saying now is that the state got these land calculations wrong.

Town planners that I've spoken to have said the state used outdated tax data that was a couple years old. And in some cases, the state included land that they said could be built on, that included flood zones and also land where affordable housing was already being built, in fact. One town, East Brunswick, one of the largest towns in Middlesex County, said the state overestimated its available land by three times what it actually has. So I've actually gone through and read all these town resolutions and I added up all the land disputes and it comes to a little more than 14,000 acres. And for even more contacts, that's bigger.

than the town of Mount Laurel, which is the town in South Jersey that actually found itself at the center of a state Supreme Court case 50 years ago that sparked this whole affordable housing mandate in New Jersey. It's actually known as the Mount Laurel Doctrine. Yeah. So what is the state saying about all of this? So the towns went back to the state, or they're going back to the state as we speak, and they're saying, look, you messed up these calculations. We actually want to lower the amount of affordable homes you're asking us to build. So I mentioned that the top towns are being asked to build about 150 affordable homes.

A lot of towns are saying, okay, we don't have as much developable land, as you said we had. So instead of 150 homes, we want to commit to building 100 homes. Or in some cases, they want the numbers significantly dropped. So the towns, town officials have filed official challenges, and those are supposed to be heard this month and next month. by a panel of retired judges that was set up under the law that was passed last year in New Jersey for affordable housing. So over the next two months, these challenges are going to be looked at by judges.

And if the judges side with the towns, we couldn't have a significant impact on the state's plan to build this affordable housing. The goal is 84,000 new affordable homes over the next 10 years. But taken all together, again, I went through all the resolutions. And so far, towns are asking combined for about 11,000 homes to be, you know, chopped off that 84,000 number. So that's about a 13% reduction. That's pretty significant. You know, the town planners that I've spoken to who are really on the front lines of this work,

they did all the land calculations on behalf of each municipality. They say that New Jersey lawmakers should have been a lot clearer when they wrote the law about how these land estimates were supposed to be made. Yeah. That's WMYC's Mike Hayes. Mike, thanks so much for your reporting. Sure. Thanks for having me on. Thanks for listening. This is NYC now from WMYC. Check us out for updates every weekday, three times a day for the latest news headlines and occasional deep dives and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. We'll be back this evening.