This week’s biggest Winners & Losers

The mass shootings in Buffalo and Texas inspired a package of new gun restrictions which have led the nation in its response to both tragedies. Fischer, executive director of New Yorkers Against Gun Violence, told Politico the package was “very comprehensive, holistic in its approach to addressing this public health crisis.” She added that the legislation could help states like Connecticut, New Jersey and California get “up to speed, right away.” We can only hope, speed is of the essence. 

State Sen. Liz Krueger and Assembly Member Charles Lavine were behind a bill passed this week that bans New York law enforcement from participating in legal proceedings launched in states with abortion prohibitions against New York abortion providers who service out-of-state individuals. A second approved bill, sponsored by state Sen. Alessandra Biaggi and Assembly Member Chris Burdick, will enshrine the rights of people who travel here seeking abortions under the state’s civil rights law. 

Member deference is still holding strong. The city’s housing boosters thought they could get 900 or so homes on the corner of 145th and Lenox in Harlem, but the local council member held firm for months – NO housing was better than a bunch of MARKET RATE housing that could go to the wealthy. KRJ made an enemy of the YIMBYs, but proved to her radical base she’s a fighter by getting the developer to pull the ULURP.  

The close of the state legislative session is wrapping up with a few disappointments for New York City Mayor Eric Adams, including only a two-year extension of mayoral control of schools and the expiration of the 421a affordable housing tax break. But “professional naysayers” in the state legislature who aren’t on “Team New York,” are to blame, Adams said, not his own lackluster showing in Albany this year. If Adams wants a team that will get stuff done, he might have to start the recruiting process a bit earlier next year. 

It’s not a great look when the guy previously in charge of the New York City Board of Elections’ legal side is accused of behavior that is both “shameful” and “criminal.” Steven Richman pleaded guilty to two counts of official misconduct after city investigators found that he promised interns security jobs if they performed a creepy “physical fitness assessment.” The agency’s general counsel’s unusual ritual involved measuring the interns’ body parts, placing them in wrestling holds and taking photos of them – while never actually getting them jobs. 

Fare beaters have been a boogeyman for the MTA for years. But the transit authority recently expressed ire for a specific flavor of fare beater, the type that buys “$7 lattes” and wears “designer clothes.” To prove that such inconsiderate caffeinated straphangers are out there, the MTA’s communications director Tim Minton unearthed a 2018 video of a coffee-cup carrying woman ducking under the turnstile. But the longer clip obtained by the New York Post indicates the MTA edited out the part of the video where the woman did actually attempt to swipe in. Turns out that real boogeyman is the MTA’s faulty turnstiles, not bourgeois coffee drinkers.