NYC NOW - October 25, 2023: Midday News

Episode Date: October 25, 2023

New York City marshals are cashing in big on removing tenants who aren't paying rent. Plus, a Manhattan man awaits a court appearance after police arrested and charged him with hate crime, assault and harassment for hitting a 29-year-old woman in a passageway of the 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue subway station. Yesterday the city held its final public hearing on the enforcement plan for Local Law 97 requiring that buildings bigger than 25-thousand square feet drastically reduce their carbon emissions. Raya Salter, the Executive Director of the Energy Justice Law and Policy Center joins WNYC's Michael Hill to talk about the hearing.

Welcome to NYC now. Your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. It's Wednesday, October 25th. Here's the midday news from Michael Hill. New York City marshals are responsible for removing tenants who aren't paying rent, and as WNIC's David Brand reports these days, they're cashing in big. One Queens-based Marshall made almost $2 million last year, Two others in Manhattan took home over a million bucks each.

Combined, New York City's 31 Marshals earn nearly $12 million in take-home pay in 2022. City records show that's nearly triple what they made during the previous two years, but still short of the pre-pandemic pre-eviction freeze figures. Many marshals also earn big bucks booting cars and collecting debts. Critics say the city is incentivizing aggressive debt collection. A spokesperson for the Marshalls Trade Group says they play an important. court-enroll enforcing court orders and collecting cash from parking scoff laws. A Manhattan man awaits a court appearance after police arrested and charged him with hate crime

assault and harassment. Police say Christopher Daguilar hit a 29-year woman in a passageway of the 42nd Street in Lexington Avenue subway station. Police say when she asked him why he punched her, he said, because you were Jewish and then ran off. Daguilar, as attorney's information was not immediately available. Police are in heightened alert for hate crimes after Hamas's October 7th attack on Israel. Police say there has been a significant uptick in hate crimes since then, especially against Jewish New Yorkers. 65 with sunshine now in the big city, mostly sunny today and 70, even warmer tomorrow, mostly sunny and 74, and on Friday, and then on Saturday we could hit 80 degrees.

Hundreds of New Yorkers have been in New Yorkers have been in 70. weighing in this week on an Adams administration plan to soften its enforcement of a major climate law in New York City. Yesterday, the city held its final public hearing on the enforcement plan for local law 97. The law goes into effect in January, and it requires that buildings bigger than 25,000 square feet reduce their carbon emissions drastically. Raya Salter is the executive director of the Energy Justice Law and Policy Center and a member of the state's climate Action Council and an environmental lawyer and professor. She joins us now to talk about yesterday's hearing. Raya, for our listeners who haven't necessarily been following, would you briefly explain

the major points of Local Law 97? Yes, sure. So about 70% of New York City's emissions come from buildings, and that means about 30% of the entire state's emissions come from buildings. These are also a public health and environmental justice issue contributing to poor air quality. So passed in 2019, Local law 97 seeks to address this by, as you stated, requiring buildings larger than 25,000 square feet to begin to limit their emissions by 2024, driving towards 40% reductions by 2030, and net zero by 2050, which also meets the state's climate net zero goal. Now, last month, the Adams administration released its Getting 97-done proposal, which laid out the enforcement measures.

What did the administration propose? So the city's plan would allow buildings to evade these penalties in 2024 if they instead agree to make best efforts towards compliance. Now, best efforts include making substantive plans to decarbonize and they will face fines if they fail to do so. So the city feels this approach will enable more buildings to ultimately be on the road to this compliance pathway with its tougher 2030 standards. Critics, however, say that this is a two-year delay that just relaxes the law at the behest of specials. interest, including the real estate lobby. They point out that this could mean that cities could, the city could allow building owners to delay compliance, even if they haven't made any effort, or essentially that delay will beget delay. I want to talk more about that. But first,

let me ask you this. What's your biggest takeaway from yesterday's hearing about this enforcement plan? You know, I think that a lot of people are angry because they're seeing this delay on climate action and also on action towards environmental justice. And they see, whoopoles for who they've received to be wealthy interests. Some stakeholders, you know, I think also are confused. They're confused about what this is going to mean for them and if their bills are going to be able to afford, you know, compliance. And I think there's a big need for more outreach and information and technical assistance on this issue. You know, one of the Adams administration's biggest talking points when it comes to local law 97 is what you pointed out is that property owners need to,

quote, reasonable pathway to reducing climate emissions. Officials say letting owners delay energy changes does that. As someone who has argued that we need to start moving towards environmental targets very quickly, what do you think of that argument? You know, I think that we need to get serious about enforcing local law at 97 now, and we need to bring the available resources to bear to make that happen. And I think we need these sticks, and we also need carrots, and increasingly there are state and federal funds that are.

targeted to do exactly this. Hope the hardest to decarbonize buildings, and we need to utilize them. So I think we need to take concrete action on decarbonization. It'll create jobs, improve public health, and we are delay begets delay, and we are running out of time. Right. When the Department of Buildings comes out after drafting this enforcement plan for Local Law 97, what would you like to see in these rules? I'd like to see, as I mentioned before, I think we do need to get really serious about enforcing local law 97. We should avoid delay. We should avoid offsets and renewable energy credit to make sure that we have limits on them because this is urgent. It's about climate action, but again, it's also about public health and environmental justice. We have folks who

are dying and sickened by asthma and other ailments being because they are subject to this pollution. And we need to take concrete steps to make it this action happen. Ryeis Salter is Executive Director of the Energy Justice Law and Policy Center, member of the States Climate Action Council, and an environmental lawyer and professor. Ryan, thank you so much. Thank you. 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. We'll be back this evening.