| | | | | |  | | By Erin Durkin and Anna Gronewold with Jonathan Custodio | Joe Biden is president, Chuck Schumer is Senate majority leader, and for the first time in a long time, Gov. Andrew Cuomo is using words like "love" to describe the mood emanating from Washington. At Wednesday's inauguration ceremony, the Bronx's own Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor swore in Kamala Harris as the nation's first woman vice president (and the Bronx's own Jennifer Lopez delivered a twist on "This Land is Your Land"). Another big New York first: The state has its first Senate majority leader, as Schumer officially assumed the role after Harris swore in three new Democratic senators Wednesday, giving the body a 50-50 split with Harris as the tie-breaking vote. The mission? "Restoring the greatness and goodness of America," Schumer said in his first remarks in the new gig. Lofty as that may sound, Schumer is well-versed in the lesson that all politics is local. This is a man who followed the Democrats' Senate majority wins and the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol with appearances at a Queens community board meeting and an Upper West Side Democratic club. His home state is likely to reap significant benefits from his ascension. Schumer, also the first Jewish majority leader, nodded to his roots in his floor speech: "A kid from Brooklyn, the son of an exterminator and a housewife, a descendant of victims of the Holocaust." The city and state will be looking for many things from a Biden-Schumer-Pelosi-run Washington. High on the list will be a pandemic aid bailout to the tune of many billions of dollars and a solution to a vaccine supply crisis that forced the city to postpone tens of thousands of appointments scheduled for this week because of shortages. Cuomo said the entire state will run out of doses in the next two to three days. As for the ex-president, ex-New Yorker, and private citizen of the state of Florida, we'll wait and see what state Attorney General Tish James and Manhattan DA Cy Vance may have in store for him. | 
Doug Emhoff, Vice President Kamala Harris, Jill Biden, and President Joe Biden wave as they arrive at U.S. Capitol for the inauguration. | Getty image | IT'S THURSDAY. Got tips, suggestions or thoughts? Let us know ... By email: EDurkin@politico.com and agronewold@politico.com, or on Twitter: @erinmdurkin and @annagronewold WHERE'S ANDREW? In Albany with no public events scheduled. WHERE'S BILL? Appearing on Hot 97's Ebro in the Morning, holding a media availability, and speaking at a Peace Week panel. SEE IT: Spectrum's Morgan McKay captured a shot of the lone Inauguration protester outside of the Capitol in Albany. | | | | TRACK FIRST 100 DAYS OF THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION: Track the first 100 Days of the Biden administration. Written for political insiders, this scoop-filled newsletter breaks big news and analyzes the initiatives, people and emerging power centers of the new administration. Subscribe today. | | | | |
|  | WHAT CITY HALL'S READING | | "AS THE COUNTRY continues to face supply issues for the coronavirus vaccine, New York City officials announced Wednesday that it had to postpone the first dose appointments for the next three days for 23,000 people. Mayor Bill de Blasio and the New York City Health Department said they were informed by the distributor of the Moderna vaccine that a shipment of 103,400 doses that was supposed to be delivered Tuesday was delayed. As a result, first dose appointments at 15 city vaccination sites from Jan. 21 to Jan. 24 had to be postponed, according to city health officials. 'We already were feeling the stress of a shortage of vaccine. Now the situation has been made even worse,' the mayor said during his daily news conference." ABC News' Ivan Pereira — The NYPD stopped vaccinating police officers because of the shortage. THE PORT AUTHORITY of New York and New Jersey will build a new bus terminal atop the existing structure in Midtown Manhattan and incorporate on-site bus parking and infrastructure for electric buses, according to a New Jersey lawmaker who has been briefed on the plan. "They're not designing a bus terminal to accommodate what we see today, but what we anticipate in the future," state Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg told POLITICO Wednesday afternoon. Port Authority officials are expected to announce details of the plan on Thursday. A Port Authority spokesperson declined to comment. POLITICO's Samantha Maldonado "THE NUMBER OF New York City public elementary schools temporarily closing because of confirmed COVID-19 cases is steadily climbing across the system, even as random sampling shows positivity rates inside schools remain low. As of Wednesday, 373 buildings that have been offering in-person instruction were closed because of COVID-19 cases. Of those schools, 92 were slated for 24-hour closures, and 281 were slated for 10-day closures, a reduction from the 14-day closure originally required. Additionally, 803 individual classrooms were closed. Those totals don't include middle and high schools, which have been closed since mid-November. For families who chose in-person learning, the individual closures add another layer of stress to a chaotic year that has also seen the whole system shut down last fall." WNYC's Jessica Gould — Principals are frustrated over having to administer to the admissions test for specialized high schools in person despite the pandemic. "WHEN SHEILA Lewandowski moved to Long Island City in the late 1990s, she appreciated the 'sense of space and light' in the western Queens neighborhood, once defined by factories, warehouses, and a mix of blue collar workers and creative types like herself. Now, high-rise buildings erected over the last decade have cast shadows on everything beneath them — and the explosive growth of neighborhood residents is also remaking the political map. Her City Council district, where 20 candidates vie to succeed term-limited Jimmy Van Bramer, has seen voter registration soar, with 22% more Democrats and 18% more total voters eligible to vote in this June's primary than the last citywide Council election in 2017. Queens' 26th Council District is fast-growing but not unusual. Even as the city's overall population slipped, the active-voter rolls surged almost everywhere. The number of eligible voters citywide has risen by 630,000 since 2016 — an increase of 13%, Board of Elections records show." The City's Ann Choi and Josefa Velasquez "THE NEW YORK POLICE DEPARTMENT patrol guide is clear about chokeholds: They are prohibited and have been since 1993 because they can kill, as the 2014 death of Eric Garner iconically illustrated. Yet six years after a now-infamous video captured him pleading, 'I can't breathe,' NYPD cops are still being caught on camera performing the dangerous move with the tacit acceptance — and sometimes, explicit approval — of department leaders… The patrol guide provides no allowances for using the maneuver, defined as 'any pressure to the throat or windpipe which may prevent or hinder breathing or reduce intake of air,' but other department guidelines note that chokeholds will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis 'to determine whether, under the circumstance, the actions were reasonable and justified.' The department's ambivalence was evident late last spring, after the nation watched George Floyd die with his neck under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer, when NYPD First Deputy Commissioner Benjamin Tucker contradicted himself on whether chokeholds are permissible. "'The prohibition on chokeholds is firm; it shall not be used,' he said at an online City Council hearing. 'There are those times, and maybe other times, when you can use it, but it is prohibited.' The Civilian Complaint Review Board, which investigates police misconduct, has substantiated 40 instances since Garner's death of officers using prohibited chokeholds. The board can recommend discipline, and its lawyers serve as prosecutors in officers' administrative trials, but the final say on punishment is up to the NYPD. Not a single cop since the Garner case has been fired for a substantiated chokehold. Most lost vacation days or were not punished at all. It is within this context that videos keep emerging of men, mostly of color, with their necks in an NYPD officer's grip. The footage demonstrates the ease with which officers still use chokeholds, even in cases where they face no physical threat." ProPublica's Topher Sanders and The City's Yoan Goven | | WHAT ALBANY'S READING | | "GOV. ANDREW CUOMO's $192.9 billion budget plan paints a sober picture of New York's current and post-pandemic economy, as it forecasts a bleak job market for much of this decade. 'New York State employment is not expected to reach its pre-pandemic peak until 2025,' the analysis from the governor's budget division said. Cuomo's 206-page "Economic Revenue and Outlook" describes a long winter of discontent with job growth stalling amid a second surge of the pandemic. 'With the onset of colder autumn weather, and virus-safe practices such as outdoor dining no longer feasible in many areas of the State, the labor market recovery has since slowed to a trickle, as the State added only 29,500 total jobs and 36,300 private sector jobs in November,' the report said. 'With COVID-19 transmission intensifying across both the State and the nation, job growth is expected to slow even further over the winter months until vaccines become widely available.'" New York Post's Carl Campanile "NEW YORK state's budget director says his office did not force the court system to cut the judiciary budget by nearly $300 million, a figure court officials have pointed to in their decision to force dozens of older judges off the bench. 'The judiciary was asked to look at their budget and do what they think is the right thing to do with regard to controlling spending in light of the reductions in programs that we're doing across the board. But there was no directive [at] the judiciary on what they had or were required to do,' Robert Mujica said. A state financial plan assumed the judiciary would initiate a 10% cut in their budget during the current fiscal year due to the coronavirus pandemic." New York Law Journal's Ryan Tarinelli "PAY RAISES for an estimated 80,000 state executive branch employees may be deferred for more than two years , until April 2023, according to the briefing book for Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo's proposed state budget. The annual 2 percent pay increases that had been scheduled for unionized state workers, which were negotiated through collective bargaining with the Cuomo administration, would be expected to then be paid back to workers in 2023. 'The financial plan assumes that the state will continue to withhold planned general salary increases through [fiscal year] 2022, with repayment budgeted in [fiscal year] 2023,' the briefing book states. Mark Kotzin, a spokesman for the Civil Service Employees Association, said the union's understanding is that the deferment until 2023 is the worst-case scenario, and that the Cuomo administration would not take the step if it receives significant help from the federal government in closing New York's multi-billion-dollar budget gap." Times Union's Chris Bragg ON THAT FILM TAX CREDIT: "Amid the economic and fiscal fallout of the pandemic, in a proposed FY 2022 budget that would postpone $400 million in scheduled middle-class tax cuts while imposing $1.5 billion in tax-surcharges on millionaire earners, Governor Cuomo is also seeking to extend New York's generous Film Production Credit and Post-Production Credit. The credit allocates up to $420 million per year for eligible productions, although the amount probably dropped temporarily during the pandemic's interruption of normal production activities in 2020. New York dispenses that money in the form of cash payouts, technically classified as fully refundable tax credits, to cover 25 percent of 'below the line' costs on eligible production and post-production expenses — a category of labor, supplies, and materials that excludes money spent on directors, writers, and featured actors. For expenses incurred in upstate counties, the refundable credit can be bumped up by 10 percent." Empire Center's E.J. McMahon "VACCINE distribution in New York and in many parts of the country has lagged behind initial goals while the number of people eligible for the vaccine — health care workers, essential government workers, first responders and people over age 65 and those with immune compromised systems — has also expanded. There are now more than 7 million people in New York eligible to schedule a vaccination. The problem now, however, is a dwindling supply of vaccines in hand before more is shipped to New York via the federal government. 'You will see a constant pattern of running out, waiting for the next week's allocation and then running out again,' Cuomo said." Spectrum's Nick Reisman #UpstateAmerica: Don't be a dick. "Knucklehead" snowmobilers riding off trails are ruining it for everyone else. We must preserve the joy of Upstate exploration if we're going to survive this winter. | | | | JOIN TODAY TO HEAR FROM SELECT MAYORS ACROSS THE U.S.: Today, The Fifty: America's Mayors will virtually convene select mayors from across the U.S. for back-to-back interviews during inauguration week to discuss bold ideas and policy proposals for their cities to move forward post-COVID-19. The mayors will also discuss their cities' needs from state and federal government to recover from the economic and public health crises and how they'd like to work with President Biden as he begins in the White House. This virtual program will feature an executive conversation between POLITICO CEO Patrick Steel and Microsoft's President of U.S. Regulated Industries Toni Townes-Whitley. REGISTER HERE. | | | | |
| | TRUMP'S NEW YORK | | "PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP, in one of his final actions as president, pardoned attorney Albert J. Pirro, Jr. , the former husband of Fox News commentator Jeanine Pirro, and a mighty powerbroker in Westchester County in the 1990s. Pirro, who was convicted in 2000 on conspiracy and tax evasion charges, was sentenced to 29 months in federal prison. Trump and the Pirros were social friends, and Trump often was a guest at the Pirros' lavish parties at their Harrison home." Journal News' David McKay Wilson — Trump pardoned Ken Kurson, the former editor of the New York Observer when it was owned by Jared Kushner. — He also pardoned one of New York's best-known art dealers, Hillel Nahmad, who served five months in federal prison in 2014 after pleading guilty to a charge that he had led a sports gambling ring. — And former New York businessman Sholam Weiss, who was set to serve an 835-year sentence. | | FROM THE DELEGATION | | "ELECTED OFFICIALS, including Bronx/Queens Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, are now backing the workers' strike at the Hunts Point Produce Market, where employees have entered day four of a strike over wages. Some 1,400 employees represented by the Teamsters Local 202 union, comprised of warehouse workers and drivers at the gargantuan industrial site in the Bronx, help move around 300,000 pounds of fruits and vegetables daily. The Hunts Point Produce Market is a cooperative of 30 merchants who purchase produce from farms and importers and distributes the goods to grocers, restaurants, and more. All told, they handle 60% of the city's produce. On January 17th, members negotiating for a $1 hourly increase went on strike following a stalemate during negotiations with market owners. And with every day that passes, the effects of reduced output from the market will be felt by supermarkets and restaurants that depend on them." Gothamist's David Cruz | | AROUND NEW YORK | | — Three National Guard members died in a helicopter crash south of Rochester. — Restaurants restricted to outdoor dining through the winter are serving up hearty comfort food. — The Legislature's joint budget hearings are starting next week. — A former employee in the state comptroller's office faces federal criminal charges for allegedly conspiring to steer state business to a company that paid him kickbacks. — Citigroup Inc. will reduce bonuses for dozens of its top executives after the bank was reprimanded by regulators last year. — City Council Member Bob Holden wants to create a committee on animal welfare. | | SOCIAL DATA BY DANIEL LIPPMAN | | HAPPY BIRTHDAY: Eric Holder is 71 ... Gary Locke, former Commerce secretary and U.S. ambassador to China, is 72 ... Caite Irvine … Alex Plitsas is 37 … Becca Glover of the Brunswick Group … Sam Feist, CNN Washington bureau chief and SVP ... Matt Hoye ... Getty photographer Win McNamee ... Tyler Cowen, GMU economist and Marginal Revolution blogger, is 6-0 ... Matt Cooper (h/t Tim Burger) … Chris Donovan is 47 ... Josh Isay, CEO at SKDKnickerbocker ... Sean Neary ... Lyla Shaibi … Jack Weiss MAKING MOVES: Sylvana Dussan has joined Scott Stringer's mayoral campaign as digital director. She comes from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, where she was digital press secretary. | | REAL ESTATE | | "SINCE 2003, Governors Island, the 172-acre island in New York Harbor, has been transformed from a former military base into a summertime recreational oasis. However, the next phase of the island's development and rezoning is facing resistance . The Trust for Governors Island—a city-controlled nonprofit that runs the island—is working with the mayor's office on a new plan for the area's long-debated next phase: a climate-research center within 4.5 million square feet of new development on the southern part of the island, which currently is mostly open green space … The plan for redevelopment, which is part of a rezoning proposal that allows for hotels, offices and buildings more than 300 feet high, faces community opposition from some New York City residents concerned it would forever alter what the trust has already achieved: beloved and needed green space in a unique, bucolic setting, with man-made hills and historic buildings." Wall Street Journal's Irene Plagianos "AFTER TEN MONTHS of breathless panic over the state of Manhattan's luxury real-estate market, the industry is sighing with relief as a surge in leases and rental prices suggests that the wealthy New Yorkers who left town at the onset of the pandemic are beginning to return … According to Douglas Elliman's December rental report, rents for the biggest and most expensive apartments in Manhattan rose by double-digit percentages compared to the previous month. Rents on smaller apartments and in lower price tiers remained flat or declined slightly, remaining about 20 percent lower than a year ago. This pattern appears to be driven by demand, which is stronger at the high end and weaker below, with discounts of 20 percent compared to a year ago." Curbed's Jeff Andrews
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