Not GSD

 

NY Post

It’s the late show, from City Hall!

A portal offering proactive public access to NYC government records has been inundated with late notices scolding agencies for failing to file reports on crime stats, infectious disease updates, and notifications about multi-million-dollar project cost jumps, the Post has learned.

The 762 late notices filed so far in 2022 are more than double the late filings during the same period in 2021, a spike the Department of Records has attributed to a “system flaw.”  

The findings are “disturbing,” and pose a “tremendous disservice” that leaves the public “in the dark,” said Paul Wolf, president of the New York Coalition for Open Government.

Late notices make up a staggering 29% of the total 2022 Department of Records filings. In 2020, its 632 late notices made up 15% of total filings. The agency filed 374 late notices during the first half of 2021, representing just 12% of total filings for that period, and filed just two additional late notices in the second half of 2021.

Donnie Richards proposes command center for an endemic virus

 QNS

Queens Borough President Donovan Richards on Thursday, Jan. 13 called for the establishment of an NYC Office of COVID Recovery to create a more streamlined and centralized approach toward fighting the COVID-19 pandemic.

The NYC Office of COVID Recovery would strengthen and expand the city’s COVID-19 testing apparatus, improve language access for city residents, foster communication between city agencies and elected officials, and partner with community-based organizations to distribute vaccine incentives and more, according to Richards. The agency would also oversee the Test & Trace Corps, which is currently operated by NYC Health+Hospitals. 

“As Omicron surges and COVID-19 cases continue to rise nearly two years after the start of this unprecedented pandemic, which has killed more than 10,000 of our Queens residents and devastated our borough’s economy, we understand that we need to take control of our response to COVID-19,” Richards said during a virtual media roundtable. “COVID-19 won’t be just a memory anytime soon, we need to brace ourselves and organize for our new normal going forward.” 

According to Richards, the NYC Office of COVID Recovery would alleviate unnecessary administrative burdens from both the NYC Department of Health and the NYC Health + Hospitals system. 

“Over the past two years, it has felt like the ‘Game of Thrones’ and ‘Squid Games’ when it comes to organizing our response, whether it’s inter-agency or working through elected officials,” Richards said. “If we are going to beat COVID-19 once and for all, we want the public to get shots in their arms, we want people to social distance and wear their mask, but we also need a government that would function at the highest level.”

Nurses and funeral home directors are pissed about the bureaucratic bullshit affecting their jobs from the state and city

 

NY Post

 New York State nurses and other hospital workers are being exposed to “dangerous working conditions” amid the coronavirus pandemic because of “critical shortages” of personal protective gear, and they want “urgent action” from Gov. Andrew Cuomo to provide them with the equipment they need.

 That’s the message in a blistering April 11 letter sent by the New York State Nurses Association’s director to Howard Zucker, the state health commissioner, obtained by The Post.

The letter contradicts comments made by Melissa de Rosa, secretary to Gov. Cuomo, at a press briefing last week, in which she said that hospitals were receiving stockpiled PPE equipment and that no health care facilities in the state would have to resort to “crisis conservation.”

That means the reusing of masks, hospital gowns and other equipment meant to guard against the spread of COVID-19.

“At this point most hospitals and nursing homes in the New York City metropolitan area, which is the national epicenter of the pandemic, continue to operate under ‘crisis conservation’ standards because they do not have enough PPE to distribute to our desperate staff,” wrote Patricia Kane, the executive director of the Nurses Association, the union which represents 42,000 frontline nurses in the state.

NY Post

Frazzled funeral home directors are complaining about the invasion of the municipal body snatchers.
At least two Queens funeral directors say the city’s red tape is making their grim backlog of bodies even worse, as remains are sent to Randall’s Island for storage with little or no notice — and retrieving them has become nearly impossible.

Omar Rodriguez was scheduled to pick up two bodies last week from Elmhurst Hospital, only to find out the night before they’d been packed into two mobile morgues and taken to Randall’s Island.
But once there, workers on the island told him the bodies needed to go back to the hospital before they could be released, he said.

“I spoke to everybody and their mothers about how to get the bodies but no one had an answer,” he told The Post. “I was going back-and-forth. I told them I’m here, release the bodies to me. Eight hours later they were released on Randall’s Island.”

Bill de Blasio's latest plan for homeless crisis will involve 18,000 city workers as monitors

NY Times

New York City will direct more than 18,000 of its municipal workers to use 311 to give social service workers real-time information to help them steer the almost 4,000 people who live on the streets into shelters.

The effort, known as Outreach NYC, is the latest attempt from Mayor Bill de Blasio to tackle perhaps the most intractable problem his administration has faced: street homelessness. The problem was highlighted in October when a homeless man, Randy Santos, allegedly bludgeoned four other homeless men to death in Chinatown.

Workers from the departments of parks, sanitation, buildings, fire and health and mental hygiene will be trained to use 311 apps to send detailed service requests to the new homeless services joint command center.

The information will help outreach workers identify the street homeless and begin the delicate and complicated work of convincing them to accept services and shelter.

The mayor has also committed $19 million to hire almost 200 new homeless outreach workers, bringing the total to close to 600.

City officials said Mr. de Blasio was committed to the strategy as a way to reduce the number of unsheltered people as he enters the last two years of his administration. Leading the effort will be Dr. Raul Perea-Henze, who will be announced on Thursday as the new deputy mayor to oversee health and human services.

“We cannot attempt to address this issue in a vacuum,” Mr. de Blasio said in a statement. “Outreach NYC is our all-hands-on-deck approach to bring even more people in off the streets.”

Mr. de Blasio has dealt with record homelessness during his six-year tenure. The approximately 4,000 street homeless represent 5 percent of the 79,000 total homeless people in the city, most of whom are in shelters. As of Tuesday, there were 60,479 people in the city’s primary shelter system, including almost 22,000 children. 

 Part of the issue is that many of the persistent street homeless may suffer from mental illness; Mr. de Blasio has faced regular criticism over the failure of ThriveNYC, the $1 billion plan to tackle mental health launched by his wife, Chirlane McCray, to help the most seriously mentally ill.

There are also new concerns about overpolicing of the poor, minorities and the homeless after Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced plans to hire 500 new police officers to help deal with homelessness and crime in the subways.

Ms. Routhier said the increase in police officers and the new outreach program would add “more points of contacts without solutions.”

“This looks like mass surveillance of homeless people,” she said.

That's because it is. The Outreach NYC program is basically de Blasio's Homeless Gestapo.