Will Bredderman

The bill, sponsored by Queens Councilman I. Daneek Miller and Manhattan Councilman Benjamin Kallos, would apply to any private sector employer of 10 employees or more. Kallos promised at the event that it would cost businesses nothing, though they would be responsible for making the deductions from their payroll and giving the set-aside funds to the city. 

The legislation would automatically dock 3% of an employee's income, although the individual could choose to subsequently adjust that figure or opt out of the program entirely. De Blasio estimated that the new retirement system would have a "small initial start-up cost" of $1.5 million to $3 million annually for the first three years, after which it would sustain itself off investment earnings.

Public Advocate Letitia James announced today she would introduce two bills that would expand the city’s power to penalize property owners with outstanding code violations—and expand the power of her own office and its annual “Worst Landlords List.”

Councilmen Corey Johnson and Benjamin Kallos, fellow Manhattan Democrats, demonstrated with tenant groups ahead of the first 2015 meeting of the Rent Guidelines Board—and the announcement of three new de Blasio appointees to the nine-member panel charged with setting the annual increase for the city’s roughly one million rent stabilized apartments.

The Democrats chanted “fight, fight, fight, housing is a right” and “What do we want? Rollback!” with members of the Metropolitan Council on Housing and the Flatbush Tenants Council. Mr. Johnson and Mr. Kallos insisted that increasing property values, atrophying tenant wages and declining fuel costs justified a first-ever decrease in rents at regulated units.