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Good Government

As founder of WikiLaw.org, I believe that the Government and its body of law should be transparent for the people it governs. As founder of VoterSearch.org, I believe that protecting your right to vote is essential to an accountable government. As former Co-Chair of Community Board 8's Communication Committee, I worked to open the community board by announcingcommunity board membership applications and ensuring they were widely available at meetings. I have continued my work with Community Board 8's Communication Committee and we have made its television show "Community Board 8 Speaks" available online.

As your City Council member I will continue the work of making City Hall transparent by making its business available online through the web, PDF, podcast, and YouTube like videos. I will openCity Hall by creating NYC.OpenLegislation.org, a local version of OpenCongress.org, where anyone will be able to share their views on all business, in support of the mission of theParticipatory Politics Foundation. City Hall will become accountable to you the people as NYC.OpenLegislation.org, will let you track business before City Hall and how your representative voted on issues of importance to you.

City to Save $430 Million on Lawsuits Following Pressure from Governmental Operations Chair Kallos

New York, NY – Taxpayers will save $430 million in settlements and judgments that the city had planned to pay for lawsuits over the next five years following pressure from Council Member Ben Kallos.

The Law Department plans to expand a “Vertical Case Handling” pilot that assigns individual attorneys to cases from beginning to conclusion with an investment of $18 million. For the previous two years of questioning Governmental Operations Committee’s Chair Kallos challenged the Law Department’s assertion that despite a 2014 policy and funding decision to more aggressively fight frivolous lawsuits, the City expected to pay out ever-increasing amounts of money to settle lawsuits.

 

Quality of Life Enforcement Legislation Passes City Council $1.6 billion in outstanding debt could be recovered

$1.6 billion in outstanding debt could be recovered

New York, NY – Today, the City Council passed three bills co-authored by Council Members Ben Kallos and Julissa Ferreras-Copeland to improve quality of life enforcement by including specific information to identify who is responsible for violations and requiring agencies to consider prior offenses when issuing or renewing permits, licenses and registrations. These reforms will not only improve the City’s collection efforts, but will more importantly change the behaviors that harm quality of life and jeopardize public health and safety. 
The bills passed are:

  • Int. 810-A by Kallos, requires agencies to consider prior offenses and outstanding debts to the city prior to issuing or renewing permits, licenses and registrations with reporting on when they are denied.
  • Int. 807-A by Ferreras-Copeland, requires agencies issuing summonses to "owner of" to make reasonable efforts to learn the actual name and amen. Currently, violations issued to “owner of” are difficult for the Department of Finance (DOF) to collect on.
  • Int. 812-A by Kallos, requires agencies to include the borough, block, and lot number (BBL) and building identification number (BIN) on summonses. A major difficulty in DOF’s collection efforts is that summonses do not contain sufficient information to identify the responsible party.