Inside the life of City Council Speaker Julie Menin

Welcome to You Design. I'm your host, Errol Lewis. NYC Kids Rise was founded by City Council Speaker Julie Menon back in 2015. Since its launch, the program has helped more than 380,000 New York City public school students. began saving for higher education through children's savings accounts. Recently, the New York City Council secured $53 million to significantly expand the program, increasing the initial deposit for every New York City public school kindergartener from $100 to $1,000, benefiting approximately 62,000 students every year. Joining me today is Speaker Julie Menon. She's going to tell us about the origins and the expansion of NYC Kids rise as well as her vision for the program and her career in New York. New York City politics, a lot that some of my viewers and listeners may not know about. So good to see you. Thanks for coming in. Thanks, Cheryl, for having me. Great to see you. Absolutely. I want to get into this because I just noticed it in the budget, and I think I blurted out something online. And then you sent me a message and saying, you know, that's my program. I was like, ah, okay. So I want to get into that. And then we'll talk about all of the other stuff. You did because you said it was your favorite part of the budget. If I recall correctly, I was so excited to hear that. I mean, it, you, the program asks, how. married parents to do what they never have time to do, which is make concrete financial plans for a somewhat distant future, right? What got you involved in all of that? So I was a commissioner of the Department of Consumer Affairs back in 2014, and I happened to read an article in the paper that the city of San Francisco was doing a college savings program where they were contributing $50 per kindergartner. And I called up the controller, Jose Cisneros, of San Francisco, and met with him. And I went out to San Francisco. is actually to see it in action. I thought about it, brought it back to New York, and really want to do it in a New York type of way, which is we do everything bigger and better, right? We are the banking capital. We do. So the idea I had was, well, what about if we seated every kindergarten with $100 and we invested in the States 529? So it grows over time, compounds because the San Francisco money was municipal money that wasn't really growing over time. I brought the idea to Mayor de Blasio. At the time, he did not want to fund it in the budget. So then I went out and raised the funding for it from the Gray Foundation. which contributed over $10 million to get us started. I was the founding board chair of NYC Kids Rise, and basically we piloted the program in Queens and School District 30 with 10,000 kids at the time. Wow. We did a three-year pilot. And it took us a while to get it off the ground, because first of all, I was adamant that we covered undocumented children. That was very important to me that we do that. And so there were some legal issues with the 529, and so to get it set up, that took a little bit of time. We have one account and then we had an omnibus account and then we have sub accounts for every single kindergartner, which is how we are able to do that. We also got the state. I got controller Danapley, who's terrific on this issue, to lower the contribution levels because we wanted to create an error as a program where parents can contribute into this account so they can contribute $5, $10, $15. Local businesses can adopt a classroom. So for example,

Queensbridge houses, some of those kids' starting account is $3,000 because we've got local businesses to adopt those classes. So it's really exciting. This is the largest municipal college savings program in the country. And now, as you said, in the budget, we allocated $1,000 for every kindergarten. Now, I don't know if... My listeners and probably the public at large really appreciate the extraordinary power of compound interest. I mean, you know, you can expect whatever amount you start with to basically double every seven years. I mean, that's kind of a median. With good luck, it might even go faster. What that means then is that if you start with 1,000, seven years later, it'll be 2,000. But if you start making regular contributions, it really starts to gallop. And even if it's not on their 18th birthday, maybe they're a little bit older. A lot of students in New York start college a little bit later, but you can have 20 years of compounded interests or development of the account, and it can be a sizable amount of money. Well, that's exactly right. And that's what's so exciting about it, Errol, is, so first of all, that $1,000 per kindergartner could be on graduation around $10,000, depending on contributions, what it's invested in, all of that. But what's also exciting is... that funding can be used for vocational school. It can be used for a two-year community college. It can be used for a four-year college. And the reason why I was so excited and the reason why I've spent about a decade of my career on this program in particular is because studies show that a low-income child who has a college savings account is three times more likely to go to college than a young person that doesn't have such an account and four times more likely to graduate once they're in college. In addition, studies show that... that those who go to ongoing education earn more than 60% more in wages in their lifetime. This makes this program one of the single best ways to address income inequality in our city. Well, let's talk about the first part of that. Is it the parents, whose mind is being changed by the mere existence of this account, which, frankly, in the grand scheme of things, does not start out with a lot of money. But the fact that it's there, you're saying, triggers some kind of change in perspective, either on the part of the parents or the child. Well, that's exactly right. So the research shows, for example, of no one in the family went to college, and then suddenly this child has a college savings account starting in kindergarten each and every year. They're saying, we believe in you. We believe you're going to go to college. make this happen for you, and that aspiration becomes a reality. It's incredible. And so the program also teaches about financial empowerment, financial literacy, wealth building. There's so many benefits to this program and really utilizing the Kids Rise platform in the school around financial literacy. You know, there's a famous example. that I only heard about when I was in my 40s, so maybe it's not so famous, but that Ben Franklin started a fund for young men in Philadelphia who might want to try and make it as small-scale entrepreneurs or artisans like he did. And he put the money aside.

And he ordered it to accrue for 100 years and then start a scholarship fund. And to this day, this year, next year, the year after, they're still providing scholarships to young men in the Philadelphia area based on what old man Franklin put together. I love that. This stuff is real. It's real and it's transformative. And what we're doing with NYC Kids Rise is just going to change these young people's lives. Our first cohort of kids, Errol, from our first pilot, are now in eighth grade. And when you talk to those kids, And when you talk to those parents, they are just ecstatic about what this program has done for them. And we're really going to be able to see it when those kids start to go to college, which will be, you know, in four years, then they're going to go on to their ongoing school. And that's what's so exciting about this program. So I'm thrilled that we expanded it in the budget and gave $1,000 for each kindergartner and more to come on that. It's in the same vein. By the way, for the council funding that made it into the budget this year, was it just you because it's like, this is your baby, this is your program, you're the speaker, you have a certain amount of discretion here, or are there other members who are kind of on board? Oh, there are definitely other members on board with this. I mean, I've talked to so many council members who've been thrilled about kids' rise in their neighborhood because we're in every single school. There's no school that we're not in. And the other thing that I didn't mention, and this is so important, is the program is basically an opt-out program, meaning it's automatically set up for that kindergartner. You really need to go to work to not do it. You have to fill out paperwork to opt out. And the reason we did that and it took us some time to figure that part out, but we thought it was very important is we did not want to create. barriers to entry. There's distrust in government. There's, well, wait a minute, what is this account? Should we sign up? There can be language barriers. There are all sorts of reasons why families might not sign up and we didn't want it. And so really, the only people that are opting out might be someone who has an existing 529 or some other reason why they don't, why they want to leave that on the table and not take it. What happens if a family moves out of the city? So if they move out of the city, it's really only on graduation. They need to have graduated be in New York City upon graduation. If they move back to the city, we can reactivate their account. Uh-huh. But yes. This is in the same vein as Senator Cory Booker had what we're called baby bonds. The Trump accounts that the White House recently announced over time, you know, the compound interest, again, is sort of doing the work of other kinds of. programs, there were even proposals to use accounts of this type started for infants as a way to fund their social security many years later. Do you think that's where we should, should we be trying to make this into a broader? general model? I think Kids Rise is a national model that can be used around this work. I would say that some of the examples you mentioned, the Trump accounts are very, very different. The Trump accounts, in my opinion, the way they're set up is incredibly problematic, putting aside the name. I don't think they should be naming it after really anyone. That'll change after 2029. Putting that issue aside just fundamentally, you have to opt in. And that's why you're seeing such a low uptake for the Trump accounts.

Because, again, you're having families have to opt in. And people, again, they have a distrust of, well, what is this and why are we signing up and this and that? And I don't support Trump, so why should I? Right. And they don't support Trump. Right. That is, again, I mean, obviously one of a big reason. And there's a lot of research on that that people are not signing up for it. And that's why, you know, I think the way that we set it up, which is, again, you really need to opt out is a far better model. Interesting. Yeah. I also found I like the universal nature of yours in part because I was thinking, If you're financially sophisticated, you get immediately what a tax-protected account can do for you and for your balance sheet for your family and maybe less sophisticated families who have never encountered this before might not know. So just put everybody in and let them figure it out. Right, right, right. Let's talk a little bit about your background. Tell us where you're from, what you've done, how you got into public service. Well, I think I got into public service in probably an atypical way because I know for many people get into public service, perhaps they worked for an elected official or they had some other interaction. with government that got them inspired about it for me. I grew up in Washington, D.C. I went to school at Columbia. I went to law school. I worked at a large firm in Washington, D.C., and then I worked at Kogi Pamoliv here in New York as our senior regulatory council. So I did regulatory law. That was a type of law that I practiced and did that for almost seven years before leaving to open up a restaurant. in catering business called Vine, which I opened in 1999. So some time ago in Lower Manhattan, where I was living with my husband. We were living in the financial district. And at the time, there were no markets, very few restaurants. And so I opened up my business, which was a market, a catering business, and a restaurant. And we were packed. We were absolutely packed. We were in the third largest commercial business district in the country, the financial district. And I opened my business in 1999. And then on the morning of September 11th, my husband had a meeting at the World Trade Center at 9 a.m. and he went off to his meeting. My mother, who lived with us, went to a doctor's appointment. When I was frantically trying to find both of them, thankfully my husband, I found very quickly, he was okay. My mother, we didn't find until late that afternoon when she came back, covered in the white, grayish ash. My business was totally decimated when the second tower fell. All of the windows blew out and that white, grayish ash was in every inch of my business. And then in the weeks after 9-11, I started a not-for-profit organization focused on rebuilding downtown. At the time, our insurance carrier, St. Paul's head, which was taking out, of course, full-page ads, were here for you, Lower Manhattan and your time of need, as was every other insurance company, refused to give us more than five days of business interruption insurance. And that's what made me start my not-for-profit organization because I felt as a lawyer maybe I could help other small businesses navigate. the business interruption insurance coverage, grants. And my organization, Wall Street Rising, grew to over 30,000 members. And we were one of the earliest organizations on the ground focused on rebuilding downtown. I got appointed to Community Board One by Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields. I'd never been to a community board meeting. I knew nothing about community boards. And I went to that first meeting. And after a couple years, some of the board members said, oh, you should run to chair the board.

I said, me, like, why me? And they convinced me to do it. And I ran to chair, Community Board 1, and I was a chair for over seven years. Well, that's where I first encountered you, because the aftermath of 9-11 was a huge planning task. And the community board... Unlike most community boards that are mostly dealing with whether or not to have a corner cafe or, you know, put up a new recreation center, you were dealing with very fundamental problems under an international spotlight, billions of dollars at stake, really complicated issues, environmental pollution and so forth. Let me, just as a little side detour, how did your mom come through that health-wise? So she passed away from a 9-11 related cancer. I'm so sorry to hear that. And, you know, as the chair of Community Board won, we fought really, really hard for the World Trade Center Health Registry, the Zedoga Act, all the type of coverage. Because I'll never forget it. I remember when Christy Todd Whitman was head of the EPA, and she said the air was safe to breathe. And we all stayed downtown, Arrow. We stayed downtown during those. Well, my husband and I were actually evacuated from our home for about five days because the building was swaying, and so they emptied the building. And after that, we came back to our apartment and we stayed downtown, as did thousands of other downtown residents, many of whom became sick and died of cancer, my mother included. And that's, I guess, one of the reasons why I fought very hard for the release of the 9-11 files because the city has sat on those files for almost 25 years. We're heading into the 25th anniversary of 9-11. I served on the jury that picked the 9-11 Memorial and served on the 9-11 Memorial Board since its founding. And, you know, this is just not right. It is not right that the government told people. And what they did to the first responders, so many of the first responders were on that pile in those beginning days without... any protective equipment whatsoever. And so many of them have died of cancer or sick right now. Far more than actually died on that day. Correct. It's unconscionable and shameful. And so the least that could happen is a release of these files. to learn what the city knew and to prevent something like this from ever happening again and the accountability and transparency that the people should expect around city government. Your husband, who is a college classmate of mine, it turns out. We met at a reunion. I didn't know when we were in college, but did he come through okay as far as his help? He came through okay. He said he was right there. Well, I mean, I, Kevin probably do talk about that. He was diagnosed with esophageal cancer this year, but nothing that the doctor didn't say it was nothing. 9-11 related and so we well i'm sure it's on the long list of i mean it is but we we don't have that for my mother it was very different they felt very strongly i you know i don't know about my husband's cancer we haven't um you know that kind of analysis esophageal cancer is on the list and i you know it's it's one of these things it's just terrible like we all did stay downtown and um

You know, we're just not given accurate information. We're basically given, it's not just as it was accurate. It was patently false. Well, they're going to have. Monstribly false. They are going to have to give it up now. I mean, they got the wrong speaker here, right? Like, you're not going to lose focus on this particular issue. I'm really not. We got funding in the budget for the Department of investigations to finally do the analysis that they have to do when Steve Banks was appointed as Corporation Counsel. And look, I used to work at the law department. I mean, one of the main questions I asked him is, are you? going to commit to releasing these files, he indicated he would. And I think that's really important. It is more than high time that these files be released. So we're still waiting, to be clear, they haven't been released yet. So we're still going to be pushing very hard for this. We're going to take a short break. We'll be back with more you decide in just a minute. At Spectrum News, we're committed to strengthening the fabric of local communities with stories that matter and on-demand weather forecasts streaming live 24-7. Now available on your phone, smart TV and connected devices. Spectrum News, your community connection. It feels good to be in control. No matter what. Keep your business connected with Invincible Wi-Fi from Spectrum Business. The fully integrated Wi-Fi 7, 5G, and 8-hour battery backup solution. Keep connected, keep working, and keep security systems running reliably. Be in control. Be Invincible. Invincible from Spectrum business. Visit Spectrum.com slash be invincible to learn more. Restrictions apply. Services not available in all areas.

You know, I've talked with all of the speakers in the history of New York City, starting with Peter Belong. Take us through a day in the life of the speaker. I've never asked anybody this, but any of your predecessors this, but... You're like, when do you get up? What's your morning routine like? How do you organize your day? I mean, I'm a morning person. I always have been. I get up very early, generally 5 or 5.30 in the morning. Believe me, I wish I could sleep late. I would love to sleep late. It would be heavenly. Maybe it's a mom within me. I'm used to getting up early with the kids. And so I'm up early, and then I like to read the news because I feel like in this fast-paced environment we're in where within an hour, everything can change and things that you never expect could happen. happen. And so I try to get up to speed as soon as I can as the day starts. Every day is very different in this job. But look, I served as commissioner of a number of different city agencies. So I'm used to dealing with myriad issues and obviously a citywide perspective in terms of making sure you're focused on every single borough and what's happening in neighborhoods all across the city. But this job is very different. It is managing the legislative body, making decisions on are we having hearings, which legislatures? Are we moving forward? Are members having issues with certain city agencies? How do we cut through that? How do we help on that? Negotiating the budget? The oversight function, I think, is really, really important. It's not about who the speaker or the mayor is. It's about trying to get city agencies function at the highest level. When I was commissioner, I can't tell you how many dozens of hearings I testified at as commissioner. do think those oversight hearings are incredibly important. Like we're having one on Legionnaires in a couple weeks because I've had seven people die on the Upper East Side from Legionnaires. And we know that there are gaps in the system that we need to correct through new legislation. You know from your days as a commissioner that the mere fact that you have to prepare for the hearing. keeps everybody on their toes back at the agency, even if the hearing itself is non-controversial or not particularly exciting, the fact that you know you're going to have to answer for something means everybody's going to kind of do their work a little differently, I guess. Well, I think that's exactly right. And that's what I think checks and balances are all about. I think it's important to have oversight. I think it fulfills an important function. And it also is an important function for the public because it gives a public an ability to come out and testify. And now that you can testify in Zoom, I think that... that's made things so much easier because we get more people who are able to participate. So, for example, in our Legionnaires hearing, which is coming up in a couple weeks, well, I know we're going to get a lot of people on Zoom. We've got a lot of seniors in the community and who want to participate, and then they'll be able to participate in that. And I think that's great. Why didn't we, as far as you're concerned, this is in your district. So that's in your capacity, really, as a council member in a lot of ways. But why didn't the city? identify each and every building. Why did we treat this differently than we would SARS or Ebola or anything else where we let everybody know exactly where the problem is and what they should do to keep themselves safe? Well, I think this is exactly one of the issues that's going to come up at the hearing. I think the frustration that I heard from members of the community and the local community board.

was people, first of all, weren't sure what precautions to take. I mean, that is like really one of the number one issues because, for example, we had, as I mentioned, a lot of seniors, but also a lot of people who are immunocompromise. One of the women who died was... 32 years old, a 32-year-old doctor who was immunocompromised, and I spoke to her family, and her family said, if we had just known sooner, she would have taken the precautions. Sure. And as a doctor, she knew what precautions to take, because basically you contracted, you know, walking on the sidewalk through the mist and all of that. The health department, and I know they got this question a lot, should you wear a mask? The health department said, no, don't wear a mask. In talking to this doctor's family, it wasn't saying that she wore a mask, but they said she would actually. not have been outside as much on the street if she had known it was present. We could take vacation or something, right? Yeah. Well, she would have just, I think, stayed inside. Her family feels she would have taken some different steps, and they're very upset about it. So, I mean, I think one of the things we want to get to in the hearing is what preventative steps? How do we get the health department to give guidance to New Yorkers on what steps can you take? Because we think that's really important. The other issue that's going to come out at the hearing is the city council passed a bill. Last year, Councilmember Schulman's bill, which required the towers to test every 30 days in the summer months. That bill went into effect in May 8th, but about 25% of the buildings simply did not comply. And there were a lot of health department inspector lines open at the health department that hadn't been filled. So again, this comes to enforcement. You know, there weren't violations that were issued in June against those buildings. So how do we change that? Those are the things we want to really examine. make sure this never happens again. Let me answer you something about your job. This is just true for me and my what I've seen over the years that political leaders end up handling incredibly mundane personal requests, meaning you've got 50 council members who have extended families and relatives who need jobs and people who have legal problems or, you know, an uncle who's getting jammed up because they can't get their passport in time, all of that kinds of stuff. You have to work through a lot of stuff that never reaches my newsroom or the headlines, right? Well, we're in the constituent services business. one of our fundamental jobs as council members. And what I always tell my team in our district office is like when I owned a restaurant, if someone ordered a burger and the burger was two hours late, you're never going back to that restaurant. It's the same with constituent services. We always need to endeavor to try to respond as quickly as we can. It doesn't mean we're going to solve every constituent matter the same day, but at least try to get back to people as quickly as you can to let them know you're looking into it. Look, we're going to try to solve it. Because a lot of people, they just want to know that government is there and trying to help them figure out their problems. But then as speaker, you're also hearing from 50 other council members. And they are your constituents on a certain level, right? Right. And you've got to get back to them pretty quickly too, right? Well, exactly. And really, I mean, what we're trying to do is move legislation as quickly as we can. We have...

pass more bills at this point than any other time. Like, really, we're moving a lot, a lot of bills. We're trying to move a lot of legislative packages. We're trying to have a lot of hearings, oversight hearings. Again, I think all of these things are really important to do. The other thing we're also trying to do is make sure when there are situations in members districts, whether it be fatal fires or a lot of fires in the Bronx right now. It's just terrible. We fought really hard, by the way, to get a fifth firefighter because we thought that was. important in the budget. I've been had a different review on that. I think we're going to try again next year because that's going to be a big priority to try to deal with some of those fires in the Bronx. But we try to offer rapid response so that our team, you know, if the member wants, can be on the ground to assist in terms of helping coordinate with agencies and any of the things that the member needs. So we try to offer that as well. One of the things you're working on is a ban on horse-drawn carriages to eliminate them from the streets of New York City. It's been tried. It's been discussed over and over and over. And I think we're – Yeah, I was going to say we were at least a decade and a half into this. I remember Bill de Blasio said he was going to do this in his first week. Right. And, you know, we're three – well, two mares later, and it still hasn't been done. What's the thinking here? And what about – the, I don't know, the estimated 200 odd jobs that would be lost if you do get the ban in place. So I think for me, what change is when Romance, the young man from India who came with his family to New York and his mother was thrown from the carriage when the horse got spooked. And then Romance tried to reach to save her, and then he fell out of the carriage, hit his head, and sadly and tragically passed away. To me, that was a tipping point. You have about 42 million people, Ariel, who come to Central Park each and every year. The Central Park Conservancy last year came out against having the horse carriages in the park citing safety reasons. They felt that too many horses were breaking free and that it was creating a safety issue within the park and a rather narrow, very congested area. So for me, when Romance... passed away, that to me was a tipping point, and as I think it was for many other council members. So where we are right now, obviously we need to ensure that we protect the workers. That is without question. And so we need to strengthen the bill to have stronger worker protection language in the bill. And so that is something that I'm deeply committed to and that we are absolutely working on. And we had about, I think, a 10 out, 10 and a half hour hearing, we heard from a lot of different stakeholders. We're continuing to hear from them. But there is support in the council for this bill. There was one feature that I was curious about. If I heard this right, apparently at least one of the people who testified is a driver who said, under the legislation being proposed, I wouldn't be able to take my horse and, you know, go to Philadelphia or some other jurisdiction and ply my trade there. Is that true? Well, that is one of the parts of the bill that needs to change because basically, as I mentioned, we have to add in more language around worker protection. But similarly, we need to add in language about the horses because his testimony was very, very powerful. And we do need to edit the bill to make that possible, you know, in terms of where the horses will go.

That's the other language that we are working on as well to address a concern that he made. And to also make sure that we've got a safe place for the horses to go. I was under the impression from the past that one reason the earlier attempts did not succeed was that in the end, this is a legal business. So you have to find a... a legal basis on which to end it. You're an attorney. You're talking with attorneys. They all work for you. What's the status of that question? Can the city council say this is legal in, you know, whatever, 49 states, but here in New York City, we're not going to let you do this anymore. Well, first of all, we believe there are public safety reasons why this bill needs to be done. And I think, you know, the hearing really brought that to bear. There was incredibly powerful moving testimony from Romance's family. We believe we are on firm legal ground on that. Right now, though, what I'm very focused on is the worker protection part and making sure that we find jobs for these workers. Under the bill, it's basically a two-year sunset, so they would be able to operate for another two years. So we are meeting with TWA, we're meeting with medallion owners, we're meeting with all the stakeholders that want to meet to try to chart some of these issues forward in the bill. of safety issues came up. The 17 bills that have been introduced to address so-called micro-mobility issues, the mopeds, the scooters, the Vespas, all of the different kinds of vehicles that are buzzing around. There are lots of different issues, including insurance, regulation, who should have liability in the case of a crash, which seems to be happening on a fairly regular basis. And you're also... kind of talking about outlawing certain classes of vehicles. This seems like a very big, complicated set of issues you're going to try and work through fairly quickly. So we've been spending months on this. Honestly, when I became speaker, it was one of the first things I said to our legislative team is let's pull every single bill that council members have put in. And let's also look at what other jurisdictions are doing. So I'm a big believer and look at other jurisdictions as well, see what works, what hasn't worked. So we did that. And as a result of it, we now have. 17 bills in the package and potentially more if there are other good ideas that come forward. But right now, 17 bills in the package. We're having the hearing on September 30th. And not only looking to outlaw some of these e-bikes that are going at very high speeds and that have caused a lot of these injuries and some deaths and absolutely need to be outlawed, but we're also looking at regulating the third-party apps because let's be real. You know, as someone who was commissioner of the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, licensing is such an important regulatory tool. So we need to license these third-party apps and put in some restrictions there to make sure that we are focused on public safety. And I just want to be clear we don't want to penalize the workers at all. So that's why, again, we want to license the apps because that's where we think needs to happen. So we've got a lot of bills in the package. But the other important thing we're doing at the hearing is it's also hearing around enforcement. or really more accurately, the lack thereof. So basically, we would have all three agencies there. We'd have DOT, NYPD, and the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection. So we can finally get some answers on what enforcement or...

Lack of enforcement, have they done? Where do we need to take this moving forward? Because there are some laws on the books that aren't really being enforced. So we want to look at that as well. Licensing is a powerful tool. So is insurance. Have they done? I mean, if you establish who has liability, who are some laws on books that aren't really being enforced. So we want to look at that as well. licensing is a powerful tool. So is insurance, right? I mean, if you establish who has liability, who's going to have to buy insurance, the insurance companies will assess risk in a very granular way, and they can make it impossible for a certain... categories of activity to be insured at all, right? The insurance piece is mission critical and absolutely will be part of our hearing because that's exactly right. We have to mandate some of these standards around insurance. And I will say also on insurance, we are... next week passing my bill to create the nation's first insurance accountability office, which basically is modeled after our health care accountability office that we created under a bill I had a couple years ago. And this insurance accountability office is going to help to lower the cost of insurance for small businesses who are paying on average four to five times the insurance costs of other businesses outside of New York or health insurance or auto insurance. housing insurance. But back to the insurance piece on the e-bikes, right now, there is really a lack of insurance. And so that's what's creating the problem. And that's why we're having some of these incidents. So it's absolutely something that we're going to regulate. Yeah. Rabbi Michael Miller, who I know is a mutual friend of ours who had devastating injuries. I think it was the day before his 75th birthday or something. He gets a collision. He's got real serious health consequences. And, you know, accountability is just hard to establish. Who do you sue? Who do you connect with? Who do you call to try and chase this down for you? And it's just kind of the Wild West out there. Well, exactly. And that is, again, why the licensing of the third-party apps becomes very, very important. Because licensing, and when I served as commissioner of the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, we utilize licensing as a tool to ensure proper conduct by the business owner. And so my firm belief is that that license is... plan has to have real standards around liability and around insurance. Because one of the things we're seeing, and I saw this, for example, my own district with the company GoPuff, which several years ago was making a claim on its website, guaranteeing delivery in 15 minutes. We guarantee 15 minute delivery. So I sent them a cease and desist letter because I said, well, you're violating the consumer protection law. I also believe legally you're violating the state's nuisance law because you're actually creating a public nuisance. Why? Because by insisting on a 15, guaranteeing a 15 minute delivery time, you're endangering the deliverista and pedestrians. And so I got them to take that claim off. But I just mentioned that because that is the kind of analysis we need to do around the third-party apps. Because when speed is being rewarded, that's a problem. Because if delivery workers feel they have to do that delivery in a certain amount of time, that's totally unfair to the delivery worker and it's unfair to pedestrians. And so we need to.

to really change that. Okay. And finally, and speaking of unfair, please give a big raspberry on my behalf to whoever in the council pushed for this return to the practice of having the Department of Sanitation vandalize people's cars if they're parked in the wrong place. Ah. Huge mistake. really bad, really bad stuff. I don't know what that's about. I don't even know if it happened on your watch, but it's a terrible idea. It's a terrible idea. I know people who have cars that are safely garaged have their lives. Those of us who are like out on the streets trying to make the thing work, trying to stay out of the way of the street sweepers who often never show up anyway. There's no penalty for that. Why vandalize people's car? I mean, I will tell the council, I know you're talking about. I will not. I will tell that council member your views on that. You take this stuff seriously. You take your hearings are serious. Your fact finding is serious. Your look at data and at other jurisdictions is serious. And none of that happened here. They just said, you know what? It's not enough to give people a $65 ticket under their windshield. Yes. Let's. let's damage their car, you know? And to me, it's almost like they said, well, the sanitation worker should take a hammer and smash their car in or put a dent in their car or something. It's almost the same thing. Yeah, you are the second journalist today who has given me that point of view. And so I will pass it back to the council member who is pushing for this. Gail Brewer is one of my favorites. And she, you know, I just, I just, I just can't see it. I can't see it. I can't see it being a good use. Look, it harms people's view of government. It harms people's view of government. Because, you know, I mean, when I first got to the city after college, this is the mid-80s, this is the crack era. Literally dead bodies in the street, hundreds and hundreds of murders a year. I mean, just everything was out of control. And I remember being like I thought my head was going to explode because I'm like, the city can't keep the street safe. The city can't. pick up the garbage, anything resembling on time. But they have time to, you know, they have time to put this disgusting sticker on my car. Like, what's going on here? Where am I living? What's going on here? Anyhow, I just need to get that off my chest. I'm glad you did. I will tell since you out at her, I will tell counsel member Brewer. One of my favorites. Fine public servant. Got this one wrong. You got it right before. Got it wrong now. Maybe we'll see a change. Listen, thanks so much for coming by. I always enjoy talking with you. Best of luck with all of these. hearings. You've got a lot of work ahead of you. Most people are taking vacation now. You seem to have missed out on all of that. But we should talk again soon. I really do want to follow up on a lot of these. Thanks, Sarah. Thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate it. All right.

That's going to do it for this episode of You Decide. As always, I thank you for listening. The episode was produced by me and by Anthony Roman and Maria Abadi. Our executive producer is Bob Hart. It was edited by James Ashuto, and our theme music was composed and performed by Terrence Holloman Lewis and Noah Lewis. I'd love to hear your thoughts about this episode or any of the others. You can find me on social media at Errol Lewis or leave a message for me at 21279-3440. And you can also say, Send us email at Your Story NY1 at charter.com. And if you're looking for more analysis of New York politics, subscribe to and check out my colleagues podcast. It's called Off Topic on Politics. Those episodes come out every Friday. I'll be back next week. We'll see you there.