Politico

Mayor Bill de Blasio officially dropped his bid for the White House last week, but on Monday he rallied for legislation that could have been plucked from his campaign and discussed plans to continue crisscrossing the country to promote progressive causes.

The bill would create a system that automatically enrolls workers at companies with 10 or more employees into individual retirement accounts. A mayoral board would oversee the program and hire a private financial management firm to handle the pre-tax money withheld from workers' paychecks. Neither employers nor the city would have to chip into the fund, and firms that already offer a retirement program would be exempt. Employees who are put into the program can choose to opt out or change their contribution rate, which would automatically start at 3 percent.

During his tenure, the Manhattan lawmaker approached routine, sparsely attended land use hearings somewhat like courtroom dramas — grilling housing agency officials and other applicants for details on financing, affordability levels and benefits awarded to workers on a given site and chastising them when they couldn’t provide answers...

As City Councilman Ben Kallos greeted constituents during an Easter egg hunt in Sutton Place Park two years ago, a resident approached him to discuss a less benign matter: Word had spread that a developer intended to build a luxury skyscraper on nearby East 58th Street.

He handed Kallos a nine-page packet of marketing materials prepared by Cushman & Wakefield.

"The Sutton Place Development is an ultra-luxury, as of right, ground up opportunity which will reach over 900 feet tall," the brochure boasted. It predicted the tower would be "an obvious choice for local and foreign buyers."

The councilman immediately notified the neighborhood paper, attended co-op board meetings and informed the local community board, which passed a resolution raising concerns about the plan.

And so began an unusual land use dispute that has outlived the previous developer, spanned two city planning commissioners and pitted a well-funded community group, East River Fifties Alliance, against the new developer and Mayor Bill de Blasio's administration.

An online tool from tax preparation company Intuit that can easily determine whether an application is eligible for food stamps or other benefits is now freely available through a federal agency to states, local governments or nonprofit organizations.

Councilman Ben Kallos has been pushing for legislation that would require the city to use income tax filings to determine eligibility for public benefits.

Last year, Intuit made the Benefit Assist tool available to help users of TurboTax determine whether they were eligible for an array of programs, including SNAP, Medicaid, Medicare and many others.

But there is no protocol for communication between the attorney general’s office and the Council, and transparency records show that in December 2015, Hospital Audiences received additional funding from the Council.

The Council did not raise red flags until April 2016 when, in a letter obtained by POLITICO New York, Dyer contacted Councilman Ben Kallos to explain the situation.

Hospital Audiences had been awarded $123,100 in the 2016 fiscal year through several different grants from seven Council members: Kallos, Peter Koo, Daneek Miller, Karen Koslowitz, Jimmy Van Bramer, Inez Dickens and Mark Treyger.

A bill introduced in the City Council on Tuesday seeks to expand on and codify the practice of optimizing city websites based on the analytics of their visitors.

Councilman Ben Kallos, chair of the Committee on Government Operations, introduced the legislation. It would require the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications to ensure that all agencies use web analytics in maintaining and designing their websites.

Councilman Ben Kallos, chair of the Committee on Governmental Operations, and Councilman James Vacca, chair of the Committee on Technology, are introducing the bill that seeks to mirror a feature available on the website of the New York State Senate.

The city has begun publishing detailed budget data on its open data portal, not long after Councilman Ben Kallos introducedlegislation that would require making the budget information accessible in a format that is searchable and accessible to third-party applications.

According to the playbook site, the city took input from residents, as well as several civic and technology leaders, elected and city government officials and providers, along with examples from other governments and the private sector.

The playbook specifically credits City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer and Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, and Councilmembers Ben Kallos, James Vacca, Brad Lander, Vanessa Gibson and Helen Rosenthal. It also credits the organizations Bangladesh-American Community Council, the Brite Leadership Coalition, the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, the Central Family Life Center, Adhikaar, Make the Road NY and MASA.

BEN KALLOS: "Time Travel to Save City Quadrillion Dollars." "Investment of tax dollars into time travel, will provide an infinite return on investment as we are able to avoid calamity be altering our time line. So long as we do not create a portal to the alternate timelines we destroy, we should all be fine." SEE THE STATEMENT: http://benkallos.com/press-release/time-travel-study-legislation-drafting-and-passage-announced-council-member-ben-kallos