City Council
Council demands an end to the M.T.A.'s subway-safety 'exploratory' phase
About 135 riders get hit by subway cars every year. Many of them die, some of them spectacularly, like in December, when Sunando Sen and Ki Suk Han were pushed to to their deaths. More
Council candidates call Quinn's holdup 'unconscionable,' without mentioning Quinn
Celeste Katz publishes an open letter signed by 25 City Council candidates in which they deem "unconscionable" the fact that Paid Sick Days legislation has not come up for a vote, despite having support from more than enough members to pass the 51-member City Council. More
Walmart gives a little less to youth jobs programs, and the mayor defends his 'garbage tax'
Walmart has once again given money to New York City's summer jobs programs, as the retail giant quietly continues its push to open a store in New York City. Unrelated, the mayor defended his inclusion of revenue from non-profit garbage pick-ups in this year's budget, allegedly without telling the Council. More
Quinn's Council passes a $68.5 billion budget, with discretionary money and overrides
Amid what Council Speaker Christine Quinn called “a bit of a hat trick of overrides,” the City Council last night approved a $68.5 billion budget and easily passed three bills that were vetoed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg. More
Bloomberg on the press as NYPD monitor, and women in 'sporty' wear
The City Council is considering a bill that would create an independent monitor for the NYPD, which has been under increasing scrutiny for its use of stop-and-frisk. Today, Mayor Michael Bloomberg argued that the NYPD is already subject to intensive scrutiny, and pointed to NYPD beat reporters by way of example. More
The Council's proposed bank requirement 'sets probably a new low for idiocy,' Bloomberg says
Mayor Michael Bloomberg this morning said the City's Council's Responsible Banking Act, which would impose new reporting requirements on banks, "sets probably a new low for idiocy." More
Meet Liz McDougall, the unlikely-seeming lawyer defending Village Voice Media in Backpage controversy
Somehow, Liz McDougall doesn't seem the type who defends big corporations from attacks by law enforcement agencies, clergy groups, and celebrity do-gooders who say they want to end the trafficking of minors and immigrants for sex.
A slender but athletic woman with pixie-cut short brown hair and a friendly face, the attorney has more than a decade of experience in cybercrime law; more than two decades of pro-bono work defending exploited women and children. She looks younger than the depth of her career, and her 1993 degree from New York University's law school suggests she must be. More
(1)Inside Walmart's slow, quiet campaign to crack New York City
A handsome out-of-work carpenter is the star of one advertisement Walmart has been distributing locally. In it, he hopes for the City Council to resist the urgings of "special interests" (revealed in another ad to be the grocery workers' union and city-based food retailers) because, as it reads, "I need a job;" the buildings workers unions have backed Walmart's expansion into New York City. More
Bloomberg uses the occasion of a veto to talk about wage mandates
This morning Mayor Michael Bloomberg took what he presented as a principled stand on two pieces of legislation, one already passed, the other about to be passed, that would require recipients of city subsidies to pay their employees a certain wage. More
The exceptions to the New York City 'living wage' rules
On Friday afternoon, the City Council released its living wage bill, which is designed to guarantee that the recipients of city economic development subsidies pay their employees at least $10 an hour.
Here is a complete list of the employers who will be exempted from the legislation. More
Explaining a break with Christine Quinn on living wage, Wylde says the speaker gave in to pressure from 'advocates'
The Partnership for New York City, the city’s main business lobby, withdrew its support for a "living wage" bill brokered by City Council Speaker Christine Quinn because it didn't give City Hall the right to exempt projects on a case-by-case basis. More
Council calls on Congress to reject an objectionable but already-dead transportation measure
The New York City Council has called on Congress to reject a Republican proposal that it has already rejected. More
At N.Y.U., faculty form a group to protest big 2031 expansion, and the Sexton administration stays mum about it
"Here's a project where just to service the debt would cost as much as the entire tuition revenue of the school," a professor in N.Y.U.'s Stern School of Business, who has joined the faculty group, told Capital. "And that seems completely absurd."
And at the other end of that debt repayment, some faculty see a bleak future.
"What we're looking at," professor Mark Crispin Miller said, "is turning the institution into a school for rich dummies." More
Quinn champions angry restaurateurs against the city's health inspections, and the city shrugs
A day after Mayor Michael Bloomberg credited his year-and-a-half-old restaurant grading system with a 14 percent drop in salmonella infections, Council Speaker Christine Quinn joined restaurateurs in heaping criticism on a grading rubric they described as inconsistent, punitive and financially onerous. More
City Council to weigh in on Village Voice Media's controversial adult-services classifieds
Backpage is both a boon and a headache for Village Voice Media, which acquired its flagship publication in 2006 under a previous corporate title, New Times Media. While the site serves as a revenue driver for a publisher trying to keep a national chain of cash-strapped alt-weeklies afloat, it's also cast a cloud of controversy over the company, which has been facing mounting pressure to stop running the seedy online classifieds. Activists say the site provides a forum by which minors can be sold into prostitution. More
