NYC NOW - Morning Headlines: NYC Council Pushes Back on Rikers Immigration Plan, City Council Moves to Close Local Law 97 Loophile, Last Chance to Join a Community Board, and OMNY Fraud Concerns

Episode Date: February 14, 2025

Some City Council members are criticizing Mayor Eric Adams’ proposal to allow federal immigration officers into Rikers Island, arguing it could endanger pre-trial detainees. Meanwhile, two council members are introducing legislation to prevent landlords from buying their way out of complying with the city’s landmark climate law, Local Law 97, which requires buildings to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Also, Friday is the last day to apply for a seat on a community board in Brooklyn and the Bronx. Plus, this week’s On the Way transit segment covers flagged OMNY student cards, a baby born on the subway, and what’s behind the wrapped J/M/Z train structures.

Welcome to NYC Now. Your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. It's Friday, February 14th. Here's the morning headlines from Michael Hill. Some city council members are criticizing Mayor Adams for allowing federal immigration officers into Rikers Island. Manhattan Councilmember Gail Brewer serves on the Immigration Committee. She says most inmates are being held at Rikers are pretrial. Nobody there who is not convicted should be subject to ice.

And I think having ice there would put them in a situation of compromise where they would, in fact, could end up at Guantanamo Bay. So I'm totally opposed to that. The mayor's statement comes after meeting with President Trump's border czar, Tom Holman, yesterday. Adam says ICE agents would be focusing on violent criminals and gangs at Rikers. The city's sanctuary policies have longed. largely prevented cooperation between local law enforcement and federal immigration agents. Today is your last chance to apply for a spot on a community board in Brooklyn.

WNMIC's Veronica Del Valle has more. Why not spend Valentine's Day applying to join Brooklyn's most local level of government? Mike Raciobo has served on or worked with the borough's community board six for the last 12 years. He says local bodies like community boards shape the building blocks of people's lives. My life day to day and for this community is different because of this decision, for better or worse. People 16 and older have until 1159 tonight to submit their applications. The Borough President's office says anyone who lives, works, or has a significant interest in a community can apply. The borough president then decides who gets appointed to the board.

Two New York City Council members are introducing legislation to prevent landlords from buying their way out of complying with the city's landmark climate law. Owners of the city's largest buildings are supposed to slash their greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and be completely carbon neutral by 2050 under what's known as Local Law 97. But the current rules allow them to buy credits that subsidize clean energy projects instead, and the credits are cheaper than making some of the required upgrades. Councilmember Carmen De La Rosa says that goes against the spirit of the climate law. If we water Local 97 down to the point where we're not meeting those objectives, then we won't see the benefit of Local 97.

We want to keep the law robust. The law would reduce the amount of greenhouse gas reductions landlords can offset by buying those credits. 31 and clear now, sunny and a steady 32 for a high, so a cold one today, feeling as cold at times as cold as 20, breezy and gusty, and then tomorrow afternoon rain, high near 35, feeling like the mid-20s, rain and snow at night.

Up next, our weekly segment of On the Way, covering all transportation news. That's after the break. I'm Sean Carlson for WNYC. 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 WNMIC's transportation reporter, Stephen Nesson, and editor Clayton Goosa. Okay, this week we're talking kids. We're talking babies on trains. We're going to start with the kids. First, Stephen, you reported today that a New York City public school student had their Omnic card flag for fraud. How is that even possible?

What happened? Why is it notable? Let's start with Omni for students. That's new this school year. In the fall, all students who live more than half a mile from their school got a brat green Omni card. That's what we're going to now. It's the color. It's that greenish, you know, trendy green.

And it's different than previous metro cards for students because it's good for four rides a day, every day of the week, even weekends, and during the summer. Pretty nice capabilities. And of course, you know, something this good has some restrictions. The card is only for the student. that was issued the card. And immediately, you may recall after these came out, we saw them pop up online for sale,

which is, of course, not allowed. Those cards were deactivated. Yeah, and the city has a big interest in preventing people or students or anyone from abusing these cards. The money for the program comes right out of the city coffers. That's our tax dollars. But there's a really good reason for this.

There's a million plus public school students in the city. The MTA wants, and the city want them to pay the fare like everyone else to get to school. if some of the other programs when you lose your card, what a kid's going to do to get home or get to school, they're going to evade the fare. So there's a balance that they're trying to strike here. TheMTA is also right, trying to crack down on that culture of fare evasion that we've talked about so many times. But the question is, how do they track fraud with us? And we got an inside look this week when we got our hands on an email that was sent from the Department of Education to a parent whose kids card had been flagged for fraud.

Yeah, I really want to hear what happened here. How does an Omnic cards get flagged and who's monitoring it? So there are really two parts to this. First, the MTA is monitoring the cards, but they insist they just have card numbers. They don't know the individual's name or any personal info attached to that. But if their computers detect, for example, the card isn't being used near the school it was assigned, it gets flagged for fraud. Also, if it's not being used at all, it's also flagged. And now the MTA insists that that's all it does from its end, the Department of Education, then contacts any student whose cards are flagged for fraud.

So this email that I mentioned that we got sent from an administrator at the DOE to a parent. In this instant, the parent claims that their student took their Omnic card to school, so the parent used the student's card to get to work, and it was flagged for fraud. But the email to the parent revealed more than what the MTA had claimed. The email said, quote, the MTA expects the first use of the Omni card to be near the home address, the second stop to be near the school, and the final stop of the day to be near the home address. There's also part of this program is they can take extra stops. Like we said, there's four a day so they can go to after school appointment or an activity.

But all of this has raised concerns with privacy watchdogs. Here's Albert Foxcon, the executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project. And so easy to imagine really vulnerable kids who are going to be falsely flagged by the system. You know, someone who is evicted from their apartment and changes where they're commuting to and from. Or is couch surfing with family. they might be falsely flagged. You know, so often these mass surveillance systems aren't just invasive and creepy and prone to abuse,

they're prone to get it wrong. The MTA insists it's not tracking people, it's just identifying abuse in the system. And in this case, it worked. A parent used the student's card. That's not supposed to happen. The DOE didn't dispute the info in the email, but did say it doesn't track students' immigration status

or country of origin, hoping to put to rest, you know, any concerns about, say, ICE, for example, using the system to track students. Right, and there's a way that this is a rogue email just kind of explaining it, but the very least, what Foxcon and, you know, the overall thing here is that there's at least some location data used in monitoring fraud with these student omni cards. Yeah. All right, we're going to move on now to one of the most dramatic subway stories of the year. You might have seen this on social media is all over yesterday. So yesterday, a woman gave birth to a baby on a W train.

Clayton, break it down for us. What do we know about the mother? Yes, well, yesterday morning on a, you know, downtown W train, it was halted at Harold Square for really, really unusual reason, right? Passengers flagged down the crew saying a woman gave birth in one of the cars. Other passengers chipped in and kind of helped this situation. And it was kind of a very New York moment of people helping people in need, especially like this mass transit system that acts as our, you know, main public comments. The woman and her baby girl were taken to Bellevue Hospital, right, and are said to be doing well and in good condition. Our reporter Julia Hayward actually spoke with a woman that was on that train. Her name's Brianna Brown.

And she said it really was a team effort, like Clayton said. She said there were two women helping deliver the baby. Another man was sort of blocking the view for a little privacy. And at one point, someone was asking, Zaynone have a knife or scissors to cut the umbilical cord. And another woman came over with like a Swiss Army knife. And that was used to cut the cord. This woman, Brianna Brown, is, I should say, active on TikTok.

and as far as I've seen posted maybe the only video of the baby being born, here she is talking about the experience. Like, wow, like New York really isn't a real place. Like, that's one of the jokes that, like, as a New Yorker, like, you had because so many things just happen out of the ordinary that you wouldn't expect. Like, you would never expect to get on the train and head to work or you're just commuting and somebody would have a baby on the train. I mean, yeah.

And we also learned a little bit more about the circumstances, that led to this woman, you know, giving birth in a train, which is really unimaginable. Our newsroom confirmed that the mother is a 25-year-old woman from Florida back in the fall when she was, you know, early on her midway through her pregnancy. Her family reported her missing. A detective on the case down in Florida said she was found a few days later. But at some point since then, she made her way to New York. She's been estranged from her family.

Reporters at the New York Times published a story that said, you know, they got in touch with her family or siblings and her mother, who were elated to see the news. that their family has a new member. You know, it is kind of a miracle that this all happened and no one's heard, everyone's fine. But the center of the story is really kind of this woman who came to New York under dire circumstances. Yeah, yeah. Now, I have no surprise at all that you guys went deep on this today. This is not New York City's first subway baby, right?

No, we found two at least recent examples, right? In 2012, a woman also gave birth on J-Train at Chamber Street. Back in 1993, a woman gave birth on a three train at Wall Street. This happens from time to time once in a generation. A lot of people in the joke that I've been making, a lot of people in town like to compete over who's a real New Yorker. If you're born on the subway, that qualifies. That's birthright. You're the realest of real New Yorkers.

I mean, fair enough. Yeah. Okay. So every week in our On the Way newsletter, we answer a question from a curious commuter. This one is from Rebecca in Queens who asks, what is going on with this wild wrapping of parts of the JMZ. It's a huge job, frankly, a little creepy to drive under. How long is the work going to take? It's not a work of the artist, Christo. But Rebecca's talking about these hazmat style white covers around much of the elevated structures in Brooklyn and Queens. It's part of the MTA's painting of the structure. And the new style involves sandblasting to clean the steel before applying a special paint formula. and supposedly the plastic she's looking at is the shielding platforms,

and it's a work surface and a safety barrier for people underneath it. Trans officials say it is more cost-effective. It's going to last 30 years as opposed to 10 years, which the current paint technique does. And this work is expected to last on the J-line until spring of 26 and the M-line until summer of 26. Well, thanks to Rebecca for the question, and thanks to W&MISD transportation reporter Stephen Nesson and editor Clayton Guse. can stay in the know on all things transit or ask a question of your own by signing up for our

weekly newsletter. That's at gothamist.com slash on the way wild week on the transit system. Thanks so much, my friends. Thank you. Thanks for listening. This is NYC now from WMYC. Catch us every weekday three times a day for your top news headlines and occasional deep dives and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. More soon.