NYC NOW - October 30, 2024: Evening Roundup

Episode Date: October 30, 2024

Nearly two dozen suburban towns in New Jersey are asking the courts to put the state’s affordable housing law on hold. Plus, lawmakers in New York are urging Gov. Hochul to sign a bill that would require more community input on hospital closures. Also, WNYC’s Sean Carlson talks with Republican strategist Bill O’Reilly about a statewide proposition that proposes adding anti-discrimination provisions to the state constitution. And finally, WNYC’s Catalina Gonella visits a retail store in SoHo where supposedly a haunted 200 year old well sits in the men’s department.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. I'm Jene Pierre. We begin in New Jersey, where 22 suburban towns are asking the courts to put the state's affordable housing law on hold. The coalition includes some of the state's wealthiest suburbs. It says rules exempting urban and lower-income communities from the same requirements to build affordable housing violate the state's constitution. Christine Serrano-Glassner is mayor of Minutes. She says suburban towns are being unfairly asked to build thousands of new affordable homes. And the bias of that, that the Constitution has to be applied to only certain towns, but not to other towns, makes absolutely no sense.

New Jersey housing advocates say cities contribute more than their fair share of affordable housing. The state is asking about 60 urban communities to rehabilitate more than 40,000 dilapidated low-priced apartments over the next 10 years. In New York, state lawmakers are urging Governor Kathy Hokel to sign a bill that would require more community input on hospital closures. The bill passed the state legislature in June. At a city council hearing Tuesday, state lawmakers weighed in. Senator Zellar Myrie says he was unimpressed with community outreach on a proposal to close SUNY downstate hospital in Brooklyn earlier this year. There were closed door invitation-only focus groups in a last-minute report thrown together, that summarized its preordained conclusions.

Hockel ultimately agreed to halt the closure plan and create a task force on the future of downstate after community pushback. The governor has until the end of the year to sign the measure. Aside from federal and local races, voters in New York will also have the opportunity to decide six ballot proposals. One of them is a statewide proposition that proposes adding anti-discrimination provisions to the state constitution. More on that after the break. You're listening to NYC now. Voters across the nation have got the power these days

and will fill it even more next week on Election Day. Aside from federal and local races, New York voters will also decide on several ballot initiatives. Proposition 1 is dubbed the Equal Rights Amendment, and the New York State Bar Association says the measure would prohibit government actions curtailing access to reproductive health care while banning discrimination based on a person's ethnicity, national origin, gender identity, and gender expression.

But arguments for and against the bill have split along partisan lines. My colleague Sean Carlson talked with Bill O'Reilly. He's a Republican strategist and partner at the political consultancy, the November Group, which has been running a campaign against the initiative. So when the Supreme Court handed down the Dobbs decision, proponents said it returned the issue of abortion to the states. New York State, though, does have a history of supporting reproductive rights. It passed its Reproductive Health Act, legalizing abortion three years. years before Roe v. Wade. So what is the issue with voters deciding to enshrine abortion

in the state constitution via the ERA? And what was also interesting is that is the state, when it passed in 1970, abortion, it was a Republican governor, Republican-led assembly, and a Republican-led Senate. So just kind of an interesting historical note. But the, I mean, if the, the, the, the, the, an Albany law professor was on yesterday, he did an analysis of it. This was, was ostensibly to be about. abortion, but it really doesn't affect it, according to this professor. What we're concerned about is that the ballot initiative was so clumsily written and carelessly written that it's going to open up a whole host of constitutional challenges in the state on things like girl sports, on things

like, you know, age restrictions, in a lot of different areas, religious freedoms. So our concern on the no side is that it was clumsily written. If they wanted to do, if the governor wanted to do an abortion amendment, she could have just done a straight abortion amendment and it would pass with 85% of the vote in New York. But they didn't. They got tricky. They got a little bit greedy and they threw a lot of stuff in. So it's turned out to be quite a fight.

So you mentioned the issue of the trans issue in sports. Now, the proposition doesn't actually say anything about that. So is it not a leap to go from a proposition that prohibits discrimination based on gender expression or national origin to talk about things like non-citizens? in voting or trans athletes in sports? Yeah, it's not. And in fact, Politifact, which is the independent, you know, nonpartisan fact checker in the state, agrees with us that this,

that this could mandate boys and biological males into girl sports in the state. So it's, it's what's, the language is kind of, you could, it's like Swiss cheese. You could, you could go through the language and you could find lawsuits in a million different areas. But that is one.

And it's not just, it's not just proper. one that's affecting girls sports, the New York Board of Regents has been working towards merging boys and girls sports in the state. They already allow boys who don't, who want to play on teams where there's no boys teams, field hockey, say, or volleyball to play on girls' teams. And what we're arguing is that we've been telling women for 50 years after Title IX, you could do anything you want. Don't step aside for anything. You don't have to, you don't have to appease anybody, do it yourself. And now we're saying, except not now. Now we're going to let non-biological women into the sport.

And that has a big effect. Moving on to other election-related topics, Democrats have seen some good polling in recent days in some of these suburban swing districts that will likely determine who controls Congress. Next year, a Sienna college poll out of New York's fourth district on Long Island, had Democratic challenger Laura Gillen up 12 points over Congressman Anthony D.S. Bezito. And next door, New York One, which has been solidly Republican for much of the past decade, is within the margin of error. So how are you feeling about the GOP's odds of holding on to these house seats at this stage of the race? Well, the Democratic turnout is going to be very, very high. And I think the Republican will as well. We hit in 2020, I think New York was like about eight and a half million votes. And I think we're going to break that. You see that, you know, the weekend, 700,000 early voters. I went to vote yesterday and I had to wait almost an hour to vote on a Tuesday at 2.30 or Monday at 2.30. So it's, the turnout's going to be high. I think it depends on the Republicans in Congress. It depends how much they've differentiated themselves from Trump. Like, like if. they're thought of as individuals, if they're thought of not just as ours out there. Because face it, it is a democratic state. The suburbs are heavily democratic. So, you know, you get a Mike Lawler out there

who's, who's, that's now a lean R, even though it's a Biden plus 10 district. It's that people know Mike Lawler. They don't think Trump when they see Mike Lawler. They think Mike Lawler and they think he's okay and moderate. And so that makes all the difference. So it's really how hard they've worked these last two years to get to this point. But some of them will go down. I think Gillen is a, she certainly has the lead there. I think Marcus Molinaro is in trouble, and he needs to pull that up in New York 19. So yeah, it's going to be tight,

but turnout's going to be very high on both sides. In our last 30 seconds here, everything that you're saying about the Trump of it all, do you think that that's the reason why you didn't see these candidates at the MSG rally that Trump had over the weekend? Oh, possibly. It could be.

I thought that was unnecessarily provocative and the comedian with the Puerto Rican thing. My God, Republicans and Metro, trying to get more vote in the Puerto Rican community for decades. And then some idiot comes out and says something like that. I'm sorry, not a fan of that whatsoever. That's Republican strategist Bill O'Reilly, talking with WNYC's Sean Carlson. Shoppers might get spooked at a retail store in Soho,

where supposedly a haunted 200-year-old well sits in the men's department. WMYC's Catalina Gonella has more. The cost store on Spring Street is a lot, like any other in the area. Sterell white walls, plain yet chic clothes, and instrumental music. Then there's the brick well jutting out of the left wall in the basement, where the men's department is. Most customers don't pay any mind as they shop, but history buffs and paranormal enthusiasts

know, the well is said to be haunted. Brooklyn resident Ben O'Keefe was browsing on a recent afternoon. For him, the ghost story came as no. big surprise. You know, I was in and out and I thought maybe I just didn't like the clothes, but maybe it was just an eerie feeling that I should get out of there. According to the historical society of the New York courts, the story goes like this. 22-year-old Alma Sands had been missing for over a week when her bruised body was found in the well on January 2, 1800. On the night before she disappeared, Sanz told her cousin she was on her way to marry a man named Levi Weeks.

Her family blamed Weeks for her murder, according to Lauren Willig, a novelist writing about the murder and the infamous trial that followed it. And they start circulating, Kenbills accusing him of seducing and murdering her. And one thing they do is they put her body in an open casket and invite anyone who wants to see it to inspect it. Weeks' murder trial became a media sensation. It was even mentioned in the musical Hamill. written this entry since Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr were part of Weeks' all-star defense team. Willick says the ghost stories began almost immediately. To the roots, these stories going around about the specter of Elma at the well demanding justice.

The public strongly disagreed with the verdict. Weeks was ostracized and left New York for Mississippi. And whether or not you believe the ghost stories, Willick says they serve as a powerful symbol. We really never will know, and there never will be justice to Alma. And so I think the ghost story in some ways catches on that sense of injustice and certainty, because where there can't be earthly justice, there's still the ghost crying out for some sort of restitution or just for attention. Over two centuries later, Sands' murder remains a cold case. That's WNYC's Catalina Gonella. Thanks for listening to NYC now from WMYC.

Catch us every weekday, three times a day. I'm Jenae Pierre. We'll be back tomorrow.