Press Coverage

Before the vote, the Rent Justice Coalition organized various tenant advocacy groups, including Make the Road New York and the Lower East Side-based GOLES to protest in front of Cooper Union and demand a rent rollback. Various elected officials were also present. City Council member Ben Kallos, who represents the 5th district, explained that 22 members of the council had written a letter to the RBG advocating for rent rollbacks, explaining that the drop of the PIOP should be taken into account when attempting to alleviate the pressure on rent-stabilized tenants, the majority of which are considered rent-burdened since over half of them pay about 36.4 percent of their income toward rent (affordable housing is classified as taking up less than 30 percent of a family’s income per month, Roberts had explained).

Since the presidential primaries, New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has opened an investigation into the BOE and New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer has launched an audit into the agency’s operations and management, callingthe BOE “consistently disorganized, chaotic, and ineffective.” City Council Member Ben Kallos, chair of the Council’s government operations committee, has promised to hold an oversight hearing on the BOE, though he also grilled BOE officials at the agency’s executive budget hearing May 13.

“Hope springs eternal,” Kallos replied dryly when asked if he believed the heightened scrutiny the BOE is currently facing would help to bring about any changes to the way the agency operates. “I hope that by bringing the commissioners to the City Council to be held personally accountable, we may get the change we are seeking,” Kallos said.

“This year, striking a fair balance for tenants and landlords means voting for a rent rollback,” they wrote in a letter authored by Councilmembers Ben Kallos and Helen Rosenthal (D-Manhattan). The rollback is justified because the costs borne by landlords, the measure the board uses to set its annual increases, have actually gone down, they said.

In May, City Council member Ben Kallos accused DDG of violating the spirit of zoning laws.

Amid complaints from community advocates, the city’s Department of Buildings launched an audit of the project and issued a temporary stop work order.

NYC Parks Commissioner Mitchell J. Silver, FAICP, joined Allyson Schlesinger, Market President, Citi and City Council Member Ben Kallos to welcome the annual event.

"Adventures NYC provides New Yorkers an opportunity to tap into the adventurous spirit that lives within all of us," said Commissioner Silver. 

"As we've interacted with people in the digital space, we kept finding that folks didn't want to send a tweet and a get a response saying to come to a hearing in person," says council member Ben Kallos, who chairs the city's governmental operations committee. "People want to be able to send a tweet saying they're in favor of a bill or opposed to a bill or think a bill needs to changed in a certain way and have that be in the official record."

It's unclear exactly what from the online commenting proposal exactly what format the online comments would take. It could mean a website designed specifically for public feedback on proposed legislation. Or it could even include entering tweets sent to city council members into the public record. The New York State Senate's recently redesigned website has incorporated similar features, allowing the general public to vote in favor or against bills, leave comments, and sign up for email updates on bills of interest.

“What happens when someone you represent as a lobbyist has business in our districts and wants something from us, and we need your vote in 2017 to get on the ballot?” said Councilman Ben Kallos (D-Manhattan).

Here's a breakdown of some of the other changes introduced by the Council. Members of the Land Use Committee who objected to the measures, including Councilman Ben Kallos, were against the deadlines, particularly for historic districts, and were concerned about the absence of extensions,according to YIMBY. The bill has also been opposed by the Historic Districts Council.

Historic Districts Council Board Member Jeffrey Kroessler, Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation Executive Director Andrew Berman, New York City Council Members Ben Kallos, Corey Johnson, and Rosie Mendez.

Bill 775 is supposed to streamline landmark designation. But advocates say putting a strict time limit on how long properties and historic districts can be considered would leave them vulnerable to demolition. 

One donor gobbled the Lower East Side nursing home where apparently clueless city administrators lifted a deed restriction based on the buyer’s pinky promise to keep it a health facility — then flipped it for condominiums.

Another blotted out the Upper East Side sky with a luxury tower many stories taller than zoning allows because the Department of Buildings got outfoxed by a wily developer who bent the rules.

Both of those fails came to light only because community boards and City Council members Margaret Chin and Ben Kallos sprang into action at the behest of constituents who had gotten the cold shoulder from the mayor’s side of City Hall.

“I’m actually working actively with colleagues,” Kallos said during a Friday press conference at City Hall to promote various ethics reforms. “We’re drafting legislation around disclosure and limits to what people can do with (c)4s and moving forward, and to the extent that anyone has (c)4s, making sure that they engage in voluntarily disclosure ahead of us engaging in our legislative advocacy and actually making it a legal requirement. Right now is a good time, if anyone has a (c)4, for it to cease and for folks to disclose. … We need to make sure that we lock down every single place that money and corruption can happen.”

Kallos said it would be inaccurate to describe the legislation as his, however. The councilman said he had discussed potential reform measures with others, but he would not name any potential sponsors. Still, he said he hoped legislation related to 501(c)4 nonprofits would come before the Government Operations Committee that he chairs.

“When you talk about previous wage salary, you establish a floor,” said James. “And as a result of that floor, which is discriminatory in nature, you start off with a discriminatory base. So we really want to prohibit city agencies from asking about previous salary information of job applicants.”

City Council Member Ben Kallos, the only man who serves on the Council’s Committee on Women’s Issues, also believes wage disclosure will be an important tool in working towards pay equity.

“You can look up every public employee’s salary and we know what their gender is,” Kallos told Gotham Gazette in a phone interview. “Why can’t we do an automatic and internal audit comparing folks to their collective bargaining and make sure people are getting paid what they’re supposed to? The entire point of the civil service is supposed to be equity and treating people based on what they know, not who they know or what their gender is.”