NYC NOW - October 8, 2024: Midday News

Episode Date: October 8, 2024

Manhattan federal prosecutors have charged Mohamed Bahi, a former aide to Mayor Eric Adams, with destroying evidence and tampering with witnesses. Bahi is due in court Tuesday. Meanwhile, five people are facing charges related to protests in New York City on Monday, marking one year since the start of the Israel-Hamas war. Plus, New York City’s sanitation department is reforming the private garbage trucking industry, long criticized for unsafe practices and corruption. WNYC’s Liam Quigley explains how industry leaders are responding to the new rules.

Welcome to NYC Now. Your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. It's Tuesday, October 8th. Here's the midday news from Alec Hamilton. Manhattan federal prosecutors are charging an aid to New York City Mayor Eric Adams with destroying evidence and tampering with witnesses. Muhammad Bahi is accused of interfering in an investigation into straw donations to the mayor's 2021 campaign. He's doing court later today.

The Manhattan's U.S. Attorney's office says Baha'i urged a construction company executive and other witnesses to lie to investigators. They also say he deleted the encrypted messaging app signal from his phone when the FBI showed up at his home. According to the criminal complaint, Bahi had used the app to communicate with the mayor. Information for Bahi's attorney was not immediately available, and Bahi could not be immediately reached her comment. Baha he resigned from the mayor's community affairs office earlier this week. Five people are facing charges in connection to yesterday's mostly peaceful protests in New York City, marking one year since the start of the Israel-Hamas War. Police say the charges range from making graffiti to assault to resisting arrest.

Two other people were detained and given summonses. WNYC reporters observed thousands of people participating in the protests, many near universities like Columbia and NYU. Hi near 70 today. It's getting cloudy as the day goes on. And tonight, a chance of showers after 11, low around 54. Chance of rain tomorrow as well, but in the earlier half of the day, high near 67. And by Thursday, the sun should come back out high near 62. It's 60 degrees right now in sunny. Allie Camelton, WNYC News.

Stay close. There's more after the break. NYC, NYC, NYC, NYC, NYC, NYC. New York City's sanitation department is in the process of implementing new rules to reform the private carting industry. Not to be confused with the ones from the city's department of sanitation, these are privately owned garbage trucks that pick up trash from businesses. For years, the industry has been criticized for unsafe practices, corruption, and cutthroat competition. WNIC's Liam Quigley spoke with my colleague Michael Hill about how some major players in the industry

are responding to the city's reform. Liam, remind us, how does private carding work and why do the city implement this reform? The stuff that you and I throw out of our houses, that gets picked up for free by the Department of Sanitation. But every private business in the city has to choose from a private waste company to deal with their trash. So that over the years led to some pretty wild stuff in terms of unsafe driving, which led to pedestrians and bicyclists dying in crashes. these drivers were just racing around trying to hit a lot of stops across the city. That could bring them from, you know, upper Manhattan to parts of Brooklyn all in one night. One of these companies called Sanitation Salvage. They're out of business now, but they were kind of like

the distillation of all these problems with labor and rough driving and kind of like everything wrong with the industry. And they had cut-throat rates because they cut so many corners, according to reporting at the time, and its owners gave big donations to key political figures in the Bronx. And then in 2019, the city finally got in motion to reform the industry. That was the commercial waste zone reform law. And that's slowly being rolled out now. It basically breaks the city up into 20 commercial waste zones. In each one, no more than three companies are allowed to pick up trash from businesses. And the goal here is just to increase competition, get rid of some of these really bad actors and keep the trucks from going on these really long, dangerous routes.

So that brings us to your story, Liam. What's happening in the conning industry now that the reform is underway? Yeah, we're looking at two companies that are raising red flags here. There's royal was a queens-based company that was awarded five of these 20 zones. Remember, these zones are key for your survival in this industry. If you're a trash company, The company was also flagged in an audit for, you know, kind of potentially running a foul of campaign finance rules when they gave money to Eric Adams for his run for mayor in 2021. So that's Royal Waste. They just got bought out by a much bigger company called Waste Connections. Waste Connections already had 13 zones.

Remember, these zones are critical for these companies. That puts them at 18 zones. They're going to have to give up a few of those because the limit's 15. but that basically creates this big consortium that kind of bucks the spirit of the reforms but follows the letter of the law. So they're rolling these out and this group,

World Waste and Waste and Waste Connections, is now going to have sway over a big, big part of trash pickup for businesses in the city. And kind of at the center of this is Steven Squatari Jr., who comes from a family that ran sanitation salvage at the Bronx,

which was kind of the poster child for a lot of the problems in the industry. So in some ways, it's the same players under a new name. And it's just this interesting connection that was revealed in a lawsuit that came out a couple months ago. And why is Skritory's involvement with this new trash pickup consortium of cause for concern? Break down how he's going to businesses and telling them to switch their businesses. Yeah. So basically, this lawsuit that caught our attention accuses Squateri Jr. and another person of going around all these businesses in the Bronx and telling them, you know, we're switching over to Royal. According to the lawsuit, you know,

he's misrepresenting himself as a principle of royal waste or a principle of this other company. And it's kind of part of the same pattern which how these, how sanitation salvage where he used to work kind of got a lot of businesses by offering really low rates. And they're able to do that, at least sanitation salvage was, because they were mistreating their workers and underpaying them and keeping people off the books. So this guy, Stephen's, Secretary Jr. was going around the Bronx and getting businesses to switch their trash pickup to Royal Waste, isn't that just regular business competition? Yeah, I mean, he told me this is just good business, and Royal Waste is a good company.

But the lawsuit says that he and Waste Connections of Royal Waste went a step farther and were really misleading people into switching to Royal Waste. And this is interesting because a lot of the Bronx business owners said Sucreary was getting them to switch, just before the company was bought out by waste connections. So it basically puts a guy whose family company was at the center of this corruption and malpractice in the trash industry back in the center of a big outfit picking up private waste. Liam, I have to ask you this, because you mentioned political donations and so forth

and from some of the folks in the industry, the carting industry, to the Adams mayoral campaign a couple of years ago, what are industry watchdogs saying about all of this? The watchdogs are saying that this is something the city needs to keep an eye on. And they don't, you know, they don't want to see all these reforms that people fought for turning over into the system we had before, which was deadly and unfair to workers and bad for the environment and had all these negative aspects. They're just, you know, the eyebrows are raised, you know, saying like, let's be careful and then let's keep an eye on on how. how this reform rolls out. And we know you will be too. That's WNMIC's Liam Quigley. You can read more of Liam's coverage about the city's ongoing reforms to the commercial trash industry. It's at our

news site Gothamist. Liam, thank you. 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.