City Council Progressive Caucus Co-Chairs Hanif & Restler (photo: John McCarten/NYC Council)
The New York City Council’s Progressive Caucus is announcing its legislative agenda for 2023 on Thursday, pursuing 20 bills in seven categories on criminal justice reform, police transparency, housing affordability, public banking, waste and emissions reduction, and gig worker benefits.
The Progressive Caucus’ membership, all Democrats, is the largest it has ever been in the 51-member City Council, with 35 members in its ranks, including Speaker Adrienne Adams as an ex-officio member, up from 12 members when it was first created in 2010.
The Caucus’ influence in the Council has grown over the years. In 2014, it was instrumental in selecting Melissa Mark-Viverito, one of its founding members, as the Council Speaker, an immensely powerful position in forging the city’s legislative and budget agendas. Though its power has ebbed and flowed in the years since, seeing some high-profile defections at times, it now boasts a majority that, if cohesive, could even override a mayoral veto.
But the new agenda is ambitious and just because the caucus has such numbers does not mean that the full package of legislation is by any means a slam-dunk. There is a fair share of political diversity in the Progressive Caucus, and not all members are as far left-leaning as others. And Mayor Eric Adams, a moderate Democrat who has already clashed with the Council and its Progressive Caucus on several fronts, may be especially unwelcoming of several pieces of the agenda, having already expressed opposition to the top priority, a ban on solitary confinement in city jails.
“Working-class New Yorkers, immigrant New Yorkers, and Black and brown New Yorkers are buckling under the weight of multiple intersecting crises in our City,” said Council Member Shahana Hanif, who co-chairs the Progressive Caucus with fellow Brooklyn Council Member Lincoln Restler, in a statement. “They are demanding a real comprehensive response for their City government, and where the Mayor is failing to act, the Council will step in.”
“The time is ripe for a bold progressive agenda to take hold in this Council that addresses economic justice, racial justice, criminal justice, environmental justice, housing justice, and more,” Restler said in a phone interview.
“With an unprecedented number of Progressive Caucus members together representing a veto-proof majority in the Council, we have the power to advance and enact the policies that New Yorkers are clamoring for and that we were elected to implement,” he added.
The 20 pieces of legislation in the Caucus’ 2023 agenda have all already been introduced before the Council, and several set up clear battles with the mayor.
At the top of the agenda is the proposal to ban solitary confinement in city jails, introduced by Public Advocate and former Council Member Jumaane Williams and Council Member Carlina Rivera, who chairs the Committee on Criminal Justice. Though former Mayor Bill de Blasio, under pressure from the Council and criminal justice advocates, took steps towards reforming the practice, Mayor Adams came into office pledging to retain the use of what he calls “punitive segregation.”
While the mayor has called such tactics essential for protecting both detainees and correction officers, his administration is facing widespread criticism and calls for a federal takeover of the jails given that 17 detainees have died this year, some of whom have been in solitary confinement.
“We are laser focused on ending this torturous policy in our own city jails,” Restler said.
The second proposal on the agenda, introduced by introduced by Council Member Keith Powers of Manhattan, is the Fair Chance for Housing Act, which would prohibit housing discrimination on the basis of arrest record or criminal history. According to a release from Powers’ office, citing a study by John Jay College’s…