The Epoch Times

Since last May, people have had the choice of hailing a cab by extending their hand or through their smartphones, and the traditional street hail overwhelmingly remains the preferred method.

But with competition from black car services through tech companies like Uber and Lyft, Council member Ben Kallos said it’s time the city created its own app for yellow cabs.

“New Yorkers should be able to get where they need to go in a New York minute in their most trusted transportation source,” Kallos said. This week, Kallos proposed a bill that would require the Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) to create or contract out the making of a city-branded e-hail app.

A group of city and state elected officials urged the state’s Public Service Commission, in a letter, to require that Comcast commit to universal broadband in New York City before it approves the cable giant’s $45 billion merger with Time Warner Cable (TWC). 

The merger is currently undergoing review by federal agencies, but the state commission is also authorized to block changes in the ownership of cable companies if they don’t meet public interest standards. 

The letter demands that Comcast provide free broadband Internet access in the city’s public housing complexes, community centers, and homeless and domestic violence shelters as well as free Wi-Fi in public parks. 

“The single unemployed mother spending money she doesn’t have on broadband just so she can apply for jobs, the elderly who must sit outside, in a library, or in a park in the cold of winter just to communicate with loved ones,” said City Council member Ben Kallos, a signatory of the letter. “Every New Yorker must have the opportunity to access the world-knowledge on the Internet.” 

As this year’s historically low rent increase goes into effect Oct. 1, tenants, elected officials, and advocates are starting the campaign for rent reform, calling for a rent freeze for 2015.

Council member Ben Kallos said the increases set by the RGB years before have been higher than necessary, as the Price Index of Operating Costs—the metrics that determine inflation for building owners— often exceeds the inflation of consumer goods as shown on the consumer price index. 

Though construction for the 91st St. Upper East Side garbage station is already underway and slated for completion by March 2016, city and state elected officials opposed to its existence are not letting up.

On Sunday, they gathered with local residents and anti-garbage-station groups in front of the construction site, calling for a public hearing to review the permits the city obtained from the state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC). 

The permits, issued back in 2009, are due for renewal this October. U.S. representative Carolyn Maloney, state assemblywoman Deborah Glick, city councilman Ben Kallos, and others argue that since the permits were first issued, new federal standards have been established to improve resiliency post-Superstorm Sandy, which will now place the garbage station within a flood zone.

A City Council committee voted unanimously on Tuesday to pass bills that would require the city to publish its laws and its official newspaper online.

Currently, the city contracts the New York City Legal Publishing Corporation to publish the City Charter, the Administrative Code, and Rules online. But the contractor is not required to update the laws regularly. The new bill would require the city’s law department to publish the laws online, internally or through a contractor, and update them at least once every four weeks.

“In this age of complex legal requirements in so many areas of our life it is more important than ever for the law to be accessible to everybody. In the age of Hammurabi that meant putting it in cuneiform. Today it means putting it online,” Ben Kallos, the chair of the Council committee on government operations, said.

New York City spends $20 million a year on responding to Freedom of Information Law requests from the public, but it can save up to $13 million by centralizing all of the requests on a single website, according to a report released on June 6 by Reinvent Albany, a non-profit promoting government openness and transparency. The report was released in advance of a City Council hearing on a bill that would create a centralized FOIL website for New York City...

Kaehny was involved in drafting the bill, which is sponsored and by Council members Ben Kallos and James Vacca, and supported by Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer. 

A bill that would centralize all of the city’s Freedom of Information Law requests on one website was lauded by several City Council members and good government groups on Monday, but received surprise opposition, in its current form, from the mayor’s office. Two members of the media also testified expressing concern that such a website could compromise their competitive advantages.

The council heard public testimony Monday on a bill that would mandate the creation of a website which would list all Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) requests filed with the city, display the status of each request, and make the government’s responses public, among other features. New York State’s FOI law states that all government records are the property of the public and should be provided in a timely manner upon request...

Council member Ben Kallos, one of the bill’s sponsors, defended the government’s right to publish all FOIL requests. He pointed out that if such requests aren’t published in a timely manner, it would be impossible for the public and the media to tell if requests are being filled on time or filled at all.