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Press Coverage
09/08/2014
Council members Laurie Cumbo and Ben Kallos are asking their counterparts in Utah and Oklahoma to pass resolutions in support of the creation of a National Women’s History Museum on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
09/02/2014
New York City recently took exciting steps to free our laws and public information. Two bills, Open Law (prime sponsored by Council Member Brad Lander) and City Record Online, which I sponsored, were recently signed by Mayor Bill de Blasio into law. Now, the City’s law, the best versions of which have been inaccessible on for-fee sites, and New York’s City Record, a complete version of which has only been in print and distributed to a set group, will be open to the public and easily accessible.
“Open Law” requires the city to post a continuously updated version of the charter, administrative code and rules of the city of New York, while “City Record Online” will put the paper City Record on a public website. New York City plans to go even further than the law requires, and will unlock past City Records in a machine-readable format. To do this, New York City will leverage public-private partnership with civic technologists BetaNYC, Civic Technologists, Dev Bootcamp, Ontodia, Socrata and the Sunlight Foundation.
08/26/2014
Reached for a comment, Council Member Ben Kallos told JP, “I am appalled by the attack that took place on the East Side. Violence, particularly if rooted in bias, is abhorrent and does not belong in our city. I am confident that the incident is receiving a swift and thorough investigation."
08/25/2014
New Yorkers and silence: they're not exactly BFFs. And as it turns out, when it comes to violence against women, that's a good thing.
Recent national and local attention to the epidemic of sexual assault on campuses--including headlines about incidents at Columbia--has shined a new light on the role men can and must play in stopping such violence. A recent NPR story showed how positive peer pressure from men has a significant impact on preventing rape.
And on Tuesday, August 26, they're collaborating for a cause. Comics from MTV, Comedy Central, SNL, and HBO will take to the stage at the Gotham Comedy Club for "Dudes Against Violence Against Women: Because DUH." Nationally-known comedian Dean Obeidallah conceived the project and sought the partnership of Breakthrough, a global human rights organization working to make violence and discrimination against women unacceptable. The event is designed to celebrate and inspire men leading culture change to challenge violence against women.
The group of of volunteers he rallied to help produce the show is also almost entirely male. Local leaders including City Council members Ben Kallos and Brad Lander, along with Kings County District Attorney Kenneth P. Thompson, have lent their support as well.
It's a sign of New York men leading the way. So come on, New Yorkers...follow.
08/22/2014
Yesterday, New York City councilmember Ben Kallos introduced legislation that would prohibit fast-food restaurants from including toys in unhealthy kids’ meals — with “unhealthy” defined here as meals with more than 500 calories and 600 milligrams of sodium. It’s an echo of similar plans enacted recently in California, and a recent Robert Wood Johnson–funded report suggests this could be a pretty effective way of making healthier foods appear more alluring to kids.
There isn’t yet a ton of research into this area, but the ones that do exist seem to back this idea. Anna McAlister, a marketing professor at Michigan State University, is the author of one of those studies, which was published in 2012, and she explained her findings in an email to Science of Us:
Kids will choose the healthier meal instead of the fast food when the healthier meal comes with a toy and the fast food has no toy. If both meals have a toy, then the meals are equally chosen. In other words, you need a restriction like the NYC one in order to get kids to shift their behavior.
“So that definitely is progress,” said Jennifer Harris, director of marketing initiatives at the Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity. “We’d always like them to do more. But at least they seem to be trying to address these issues.”
08/22/2014
New York City Councilman Ben Kallos (D) has introduced a “Health Happy Meals” measure that would ban toys in kids’ meals that fall short of strict dietary guidelines. In order for restaurants to give away free toys with kids’ food, they’ll have to offer meals that don’t contain more than 500 calories and 600 milligrams of sodium.
Although several food industry giants promised to stop marketing junk food to kids back in 2009, outside studies have found they didn’t exactly follow through. Fast food companies continue to target their products to children using games, toys, and cartoon characters, and kids are now more likely to recognize unhealthy food brands over healthy ones. The World Health Organization warns that the push to market fast food to children has been “disastrously effective” and has ultimately contributed to the global obesity epidemic.
The rates of obesity among children have more than doubled over the past 30 years, and medical services stemming from childhood obesity cost the United States an estimated $14 billion each year. Nonetheless, policies hoping to encourage kids to eat more healthy meals have faced an uphill battle; a recent effort to make school lunches healthier has been met with controversy, and House Republicans recently threatened to vote to weaken those new nutrition standards.
08/22/2014
If McDonald's didn't hand out toys, kids would eat better — at least that's the theory of one New York City council member who wants to ban the restaurant from giving out the goodies in its Happy Meal boxes.
And it's not just McDonald's. It's all restaurants that offer toys in meals.
"I remember, as a kid, pestering my mother because I wanted that toy," said City Councilman Ben Kallos, CBS New York reported.
With that in mind, Mr. Kallos introduced a bill to ban toys in kids' meals — at McDonald's and at other establishments — that have too many calories, CBS New York reported. The bill's called the "Healthy Happy Meals" and it comes with a calorie limit of 500 calories.
"We're trying to make sure that any happy meal is a healthy happy meal and making sure that any incentives, be they toys or anything else, are tied to healthy meal choices and healthy eating," Mr. Kallos said, CBS News reported.
The bill would also mandate the meals serve a piece of fruit or vegetable, or a serving of whole grain.
"An estimated one-fourth of a child's meals come from restaurants or fast food places. These could be healthy calories," Mr. Kallos said, CBS News reported. "It is difficult enough for parents to give their children healthy food without the fast-food industry spending hundreds of million dollars per year advertising to children and nearly half of that on toys."
Mr. Kallos isn't alone in his view.
Fellow Councilman Corey Johnson, also a Democrat, said this: "Children's meals at fast-food restaurants are often unhealthy, yet they come with a toy. We should not be incentivizing unhealthy food when kids are not ready to make healthy choices," CBS News reported.
08/22/2014
The McDonald's (MCD) kids meals, as well as those from Burger King (BKW) and Wendy's, are in the cross hairs of the New York City Council, which is considering restrictions on any fast food meals that includes a toy.
Councilman Benjamin Kallos introduced a "Healthy Happy Meals" bill Thursday that requires them to have no more than 500 calories and 600 milligrams of sodium.
08/21/2014
Parents with small children know all too well how alluring that toy with the toy with the kids’ meal can be at a fast foodrestaurant.
But as CBS 2’s Alice Gainer reported, new legislation being introduced in the New York City Council would take the toy out of meals with too many calories.
Happy Meals have come with all sorts of different toys over the years, from Hot Wheels cars to Barbie items and Kung Fu Panda gear.
But some lawmakers feel the toys are giving kids an incentive to order an unhealthy meal.
“I remember, as a kid, pestering my mother because I wanted that toy,” said City Councilman Ben Kallos (D-5th). The councilman said he begged for Happy Meals for the toys even though he was brought up in a kosher household and could not eat the food, WCBS 880’s Rich Lamb reported.
Parents who spoke to CBS 2 were happier with their healthier options, and would like to see it taken a step further with the legislation.
“I’m glad that they put fruit now,” one woman said.
“A lot of kids aren’t conscious of what they’re putting into their body, and then they become heavy and then slow, and then when they go to school, they’re not eating the right thing,” said parent Pernell Vassell.
According to a 2012 Federal Trade Commission report, the fast food industry spent over $714 million in 2009 on advertising to children, with nearly half on toys.
08/21/2014
Happy Meals might soon need to get healthier. A New York City councilman is introducing legislation that would set stricter nutritional standards for meals served with toys.
The bill would prohibit fast food eateries from offering free toys or coupons if the kids' serving, like a McDonald's Happy Meal, contained more than 500 calories or 600 mg of sodium.
Councilman Ben Kallos, a Democrat from Manhattan, will introduce the bill on Thursday.
The measure is designed to help fight childhood obesity. If the bill eventually passes, restaurants that violate the measure will have to pay fines. A call to a McDonald's spokesman was not immediately returned.
08/21/2014
08/20/2014
Before he was appointed to Community Board 4, Austin Ochoa said more of his peers would be applying to serve if they knew they had a shot at getting on the board.
Ochoa, age 19, was appointed by Borough President Gale Brewer in April. She’s been working for the past four years to pass a bill allowing 16 and 17 year olds to serve on the board, and last week that work paid off with the passage of a state bill allowing it.
“These 16- and 17-year-olds are so intelligent, so grown up, and I don’t know if it’s because they’re in New York, but they can really keep up with the adults,” said Brewer. “Not all, but many. And anybody that says otherwise just doesn’t know this group of 16- and 17-year-olds.”
The bill was sponsored and passed at the state level by Senator Andrew Lanza and Assembly member Nily Rozic. City Council member Ben Kallos joined forces with Brewer to introduce a resolution calling for the measure at the city level, and Brewer credited council member Mark Levine with pushing for teens to be allowed to serve on community board when he was still a district leader.
“We’ve been working on this for about four years,” said Brewer.
08/20/2014
Second Avenue has long been a cause of strife for New Yorkers on the East side. From restaurant owners losing profits due to subway construction to pedestrians being forced onto the street thanks to closed sidewalks, the avenue has been the source of no shortage of headaches.
Now, a new problem has come into focus: taxi accidents.
Over the course of the past three years, from January 2012 to May 2014, accidents involving taxicabs on Second Avenue between 59th Street and 96th Street have risen by approximately 45 percent, according to an Our Town analysis. While accidents totaled 96 for the five-month period from January to May in 2012, they rose to a startling 139 during the same period in 2014.
Councilman Ben Kallos, who represents the Upper East Side, said, “Every New Yorker should feel safe walking down the street, which is why traffic and safety issues are so important in our community,” he said. “Any trends that show collisions on the rise, from commercial or personal vehicles, must be closely watched by city government.”
Councilman Kallos urged residents to contact him via his web site if they are concerned about an unsafe intersection or a street issue they felt needed fixing.
08/20/2014
Happy Meals will need to become healthier meals if one city councilman gets his way.
Manhattan Councilman Ben Kallos plans to introduce a bill requiring strict new health standards on fast food kids meals that offer free items like toys.
The legislation would ban fast food restaurants from including the freebies if the meals exceed 500 calories and more than 600 milligrams of sodium.
Restaurants would also be forced to include at least half a cup of fruit or vegetables, or a serving of whole-grain products in kids meals.
First-time offenders would face a fine of $200 to $500.
A third offense could cost as much as $2,500.
08/20/2014
08/20/2014
City officials want kids’ fast-food meals to be not just happy — but also healthy.
Councilman Ben Kallos is set to introduce a bill Thursday that would set stricter nutrition standards for kids’ meals that come with toys.
The proposed legislation would bar fast-food joints from offering free toys, coupons and other incentives with a kids’ meal if the food served contains more than 500 calories and more than 600 mg of sodium.
They want to require the meal to also contain at least half a cup of fruit, vegetables or a serving of whole-grain products.
“Throughout the fast food industry, you’re seeing that toys are being linked to meals,” said Kallos (D-Manhattan). “And as a result, we have a very high obesity rate.”
08/19/2014
A New York City councilman is trying to save the city's taxi industry with an app for yellow cabs that would compete with Uber.
City Council member Ben Kallos admits that traditional taxis "have been successfully disrupted by Uber and other car services." So he's introducing legislation to create a Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) app "to level playing field so people can compete."
Kallos, meanwhile, said he worries about the proliferation of Uber and its competitors. "I think my nightmare would be hopping into a yellow cab in the future where they’ve got a phone for Uber a phone for Lyft a phone for Hailo ... and they’ve literally got a dashboard covered in phones because they want to make sure they’re signed up for every single e-hail app," he said. "My preference would people to have one phone, one interface."
08/19/2014
"The Board of Elections has taken the positive step of implementing CityTime to prevent possible fraud, waste and abuse. Executive Director Mike Ryan is showing himself to be the kind of leader we need to clean up the Board of Elections,” Kallos told the News.
“On February 28, Council Member [Vincent] Gentile and I held a hearing to investigate the disturbing Department of Investigations findings on the [Board]," Kallos added.
"This is the first major step we’ve seen resulting from the hearing, and I look forward to many more — including the adoption of an anti-nepotism policy and public postings for jobs.”
08/14/2014
With the past decade of food issues at the forefront of public discourse, new organizations to improve the food network have sprung up that don’t operate under the same assumptions that older food organizations use. As Councilman Ben Kallos (D) of New York City wrote to me last week in support of his proposal to create a government-based FPC, there are “hundreds of food active groups, from the organizations with annual budgets of millions of dollars to the tiny neighborhood advocates…. A Food Policy Council would help level the playing field for the grassroots advocates…”
08/12/2014
The city is partnering with several organizations, including the nonprofit Sunlight Foundation and open-data solutions firm Ontodia, to “unlock and analyze municipal decision-making information stored in the City Record — going back more than 15 years,” the city announced. That will include more than 4,000 daily publications of the City Record, which includes data on government procurement, public hearings and meetings as well as hiring.
The law will go into effect in August 2015, but the Department of Citywide Administrative Services is expected to make the necessary changes before then to ensure its timely implementation.
“Hard copies and PDFs of the City Record are distributed daily, but putting the information online in a format that can be analyzed will help us understand the stories behind them,” Council Member Ben Kallos told StateTech.
08/11/2014
The legislation was co-sponsored by New York City Council members Brad Lander, who chairs the Rules, Privileges and Elections Committee, and Ben Kallos, who chairs the Governmental Affairs Committee.
Kallos, is also a member of the Free Law Founders, a coalition of local government officials and open-government advocates around the country who have recently joined forces to push for open-data reform on the city and state level and are working on common data standards and open-source tools for local governments.
“The agility of code is pushing government to be more responsive,”Kallos told GovExec State & Local earlier this summer.
08/08/2014
On Thursday, August 7th, Mayor Bill de Blasio signed new legislation that will start the process of creating a new, data-friendly online portal for the City Record. The bill, introduced by Council Member Ben Kallos, requires the City Record be published in a machine-readable format and be fully searchable. In addition, the administration will, for the first time, formally partner with the civic tech community to ensure the backlog of City Records are in the same format.
08/08/2014
Keeping tabs on municipal business and city laws just got a lot easier in the Big Apple.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has signed two bills that improve government transparency. The first, Introductory 363-A, requires online posting of the City Record – NYC’s daily list of procurement notices, bid solicitations and awards – within 24 hours of the print edition publishing. The second, Introductory 149-A, mandates that New York City laws and its Charter be published on the Web. Any changes to the rules must be updated online within 30 days.
Int. 149 has a number of benefits for both residents and city staff. While the city’s laws are currently online, they are hard to locate and are only updated twice a year, according to Int. 149 co-sponsor Council Member Ben Kallos.
08/08/2014
Want to know who is getting a city contract to reconstruct the pavement around Brooklyn Borough Hall, what new rules the Taxi and Limousine Commission is considering or what Request for Proposals the city has issued in Brooklyn?
The City Record has published that sort of information -- procurement, public hearings, disposition of public property and hiring -- every day in print since 1873 and online for the last couple of years. But the data is in a format that can’t be easily searched or analyzed, stumping those who need historical information or a big-picture understanding of the city’s operations.
On Thursday, Mayor Bill de Blasio signed a bill that will bring the city’s municipal data archives into the 21st century.
Councilmembers Brad Lander (Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, Park Slope, Kensington) and Ben Kallos (Upper East Side) sponsored the bills.
08/07/2014
But beyond the legislation to make future editions of the City Records, which goes into effect in one year, the city has also reached out to a group of civic technology and advocacy organizations to undertake an effort over the next year to make around 4,000 previous editions of the City Record from 1998 to the present, currently in PDF format, accessible in a comparable way.
Coordinating that effort are Noel Hidalgo and Chris Whong, executive director and co-captain, respectively, of New York City's Code for America brigade BetaNYC, which has pushed for the legislation along with sponsor City Council member Ben Kallos, Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, City Council member James Vacca and City Council member Brad Lander.
