Press Coverage

"Once again, the NYCCFB looks to bring the most innovative practices to campaigns and elections in New York City,” wrote NYC Council Member Ben Kallos, chair of the Council’s Governmental Operations Committee, via e-mail. “Text message contributions will allow residents to donate on their phones with a quick text, encouraging more grassroots candidates with small donor support to run and succeed,” commented Kallos in a response to the hearing.

New Yorkers may soon be able to identify themselves as more than one race under legislation introduced in the City Council on Tuesday. 

The measure would change dozens of official documents, including applications for public housing, registration with the Department of Small Business Services and complaint forms with the city's Commission on Human Rights. Documents required of more than 300,000 city employees would also need to be changed.

Currently, city forms that ask for ethnicity or race have five options: "black, not of Hispanic origin," ''white, not of Hispanic origin," ''Hispanic," ''Asian or Pacific Islander," and "American Indian or Alaskan native."

Advocates of the bill believe the measure would provide a clearer picture of demographics and allow New Yorkers to better recognize their heritage.

"I am 50% Irish, 25% Korean and 25% unknown," said Corey Johnson, a Democratic city councilman from Manhattan, who drew upon his own heritage to champion the bill during a rally on the City Council steps. Mr. Johnson was one of the co-sponsors of the bill, along with Councilman Ben Kallos, another Manhattan Democrat.

New York City residents would be able to identify themselves as belonging to more than one race on city documents under legislation that was to be introduced in the City Council on Tuesday.

“We just wanted to bring New York City into the 21st century,” explained Councilwoman Margaret Chin, a Manhattan Democrat who is the measure’s lead sponsor. “This will allow New Yorkers to identify their heritage and be proud of it. They shouldn’t have to only check one box.”

The city has the highest population of multiracial residents in the United States, with 325,901 individuals identifying as more than one race on the 2010 U.S. Census.

The bill, which is co-sponsored by Democratic Councilmen Ben Kallos and Corey Johnson, would require city agencies to ensure they have the capacity to maintain the new demographic information within three years of the bill’s enactment as law.

Walking, driving or biking in the neighborhood, you may have noticed an increase in the number of safety vests worn by delivery bikers. This is in large part a result of my BikeSafe program, designed to empower residents through partnership to play a role in making their own neighborhood safer.

The steps of the BikeSafe program are as follows:

1. Educational Forum: We delivered free Safety Vests, bells and lights for the 80 stores that RSVPed and attended.

2. More Safety Vests: If you see or receive a bike delivery from a person with NO safety vest displaying business name and ID number, report it to the business, 311 and my office.

3. Report Unsafe Biking: If you see wrong way or unsafe biking, remember the business name and identification number from the safety vest then report it to the store, 311 and my office. Tell the store that you can wait longer for deliveries so bikes can be slower and safer for everyone.

4. Enforcement: When you call 311, DOT and NYPD will be notified and will take the appropriate steps to resolve the issue.

* The Public Service Commission should only approve the Time Warner Cable/Comcast merger if it benefits all New Yorkers by taking meaningful steps to achieve universal broadband in order to bridge our city's digital divide, New York City Councilman Benjamin Kallos writes in the Huffington Post: http://goo.gl/e7J2OQ

The digital divide grows wider every moment and, with it, income inequality -- but we have a chance to significantly decrease it by requiring free and affordable universal broadband and consumer protections from the merger of Comcast and Time Warner Cable. New York State's Public Service Commission is voting on whether such a merger is in the "public interest." The approval of New York State, home of the nation's top media market, New York City, is essential to the current merger.

Voters would be able to register to vote and apply for an absentee ballot at the same time under a bill to be introduced in the City Council this week.

Councilman Ben Kallos (D-Manhattan) will sponsor the measure, meant to streamline what is now a slow process.

“Voters don’t actually plan their lives around election day,” Kallos said. “This is a transient city where people are moving to where affordable housing is. And this would help a huge group of voters to be able to register and get an absentee ballot.”

Roosevelt Island's NYC Council Member Ben Kallos adds:

Rebuilding and resiliency for HHC hospitals are essential investments for a City prepared to take on the next Sandy. Senator Schumer and Mayor de Blasio merit recognition for their leadership in securing FEMA federal funding and investing it in our public hospitals. 

The city's independent budget office says the waste transfer station being built on the Upper East Side will now cost nearly $79 million more than it's initial $554 million price tag. Ida Siegal reports.

The proposed Upper East Side waste-transfer station would cost triple what the city currently pays to transport garbage through the borough, according to a study from the Independent Budget Office.

Moving garbage to New Jersey and Yonkers for incineration would cost $278 per ton through the controversial station, rather than $93 per ton, as it does now. Over the next 20 years, the city would pay $632 million to dispose of Manhattan’s trash with the new station at East 91st Street. The price tag now is $253 million.

“The per-ton export cost is higher under the MTS option due to the more costly multimodal method of transporting the waste from the transfer station to its final destination via barge and rail,” a spokesperson for the Independent Budget Office told the New York Post.

City Council member Ben Kallos of the Upper East Side requested the study in April.

A waster transfer station on the Upper East Side has been a controversial topic for the past 10 years, even since Mayor Bloomberg proposed to put a new trash facility on East 91st Street and the East River. Even though it's under construction, the Independent Budget Office says it'd actually be much less expensive if we just kept shipping trash to New Jersey and Yonkers!

In a letter (PDF) to Councilman Ben Kallos, who represents the Upper East Side and Roosevelt Island, the IBO wrote, "The present value of the twenty-year cost of exporting under interim contracts to transfer station is $253.2 million compared with $632.5 million for construction and operating the East 91st Street MTS. We estimate that in 2016, the first year of operations at the new facility, the cost per ton_including capital costs—would be $278 for the East 91st MTS and $93 for the interim plan."

Transporting Manhattan’s garbage through a controversial ­Upper East Side waste-transfer station would cost triple what the city is now paying, according to a new study.

The findings of the Independent Budget Office provided new ammunition to opponents who have been fighting the waterfront transfer station since it was first proposed in 2006 by the Bloomberg administration. [...]

City Councilman Ben Kallos, who represents the neighborhood, requested the study in April and said he hoped the findings would be an eye-opener for the de Blasio administration, which has expressed support for the project.

“It’s a huge boondoggle,” said Kallos. “I’m hoping the administration will choose not to continue a bad plan begun under the previous administration.”