| | | | |  | | By Jeff Coltin, Emily Ngo and Nick Reisman | Presented by AARP | With help from Irie Sentner
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New York City Council member Gale Brewer outside Zaza Waza Smoke Shop during a Jan. 5, 2023, raid by the New York City Sheriff's Office. | Courtesy of the Office of Gale A. Brewer | New York Minute: Gov. Kathy Hochul is set to attend an event today on Long Island announcing the completion of the nation’s first large-scale offshore wind project, South Fork Wind. The project, built by Ørsted and Eversource, will supply 130 megawatts of electricity to Long Island, enough to power 70,000 homes. It’s been years in the making: the Long Island Power Authority first signed a contract for the project in 2017. — Marie J. French UPPER WEED SIDE: Gale Brewer vs. Zaza Waza has been one of the great political battles of our time. But the New York City Council member finally snuffed out the illegal smoke shop a block from her district office: The city shut it down and padlocked the door Wednesday. Pop-up cannabis shops have been surprisingly hard to shutter, but Brewer found a workaround: the city Department of Consumer and Worker Protection got them for repeatedly selling untaxed tobacco products. It’s like getting Al Capone for tax fraud, but it works. “Every smoke shop I go to,” Brewer told Playbook, “they all have unlicensed cigarettes from North Carolina.” Of course, even that took a year, six inspections and 47 violations for illegal cigs and flavored vapes. Still, the Democrat is holding a press conference this morning outside Zaza Waza to gloat over the shop she’s been trying to close since 2022. Brewer even joined the sheriff's office last year when they seized 17 trash bags full of illegal marijuana, vapes and e-cigs. It was open again, two days later, selling the same stuff, Brewer said. Will it stay closed this time? “Who the hell knows,” Brewer said. “Let’s see if it works.” Brewer’s interns fanned out and mapped 53 stores selling weed without a license on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. That has doubled from 26 at the end of last year, when the first legal cannabis shops were opening. There are now just 12 licensed cannabis stores in all of Manhattan — and none of them are on the Upper West Side. But the illegal smoke shops remain. The state Office of Cannabis Management doesn’t have the resources to take them down, and trying it takes a lengthy administrative process. So Brewer is piping up, calling for a state law to let the city handle enforcement on its own. That’s been a top priority for Mayor Eric Adams too. Hochul’s on board too, Playbook reported last week, and the state Senate backed local enforcement of weed shops in its one-house budget as well. The Assembly has been more cautious, but a deal seems likely. So it’s good timing for the world-weary Brewer, who has used Zaza Waza and its earworm name (Zaza is slang for top-tier weed) to become one of the leading critics of the proliferation of illegal pot shops. “Like everybody else, I’d like the legal ones to do well,” Brewer said. So closing Zaza, “It’s a big win. A very big win.” — Jeff Coltin HAPPY THURSDAY: The end of the work week nears. Got news? Send it our way: Jeff Coltin, Emily Ngo and Nick Reisman.
| | | | A message from AARP: Too many New York seniors are being put on a wait list to receive vital services at home. They’re left waiting for months—and being forced into costly taxpayer-funded nursing homes because they can’t get the help they need to remain in their own homes. Governor Hochul and the state legislature must end the wait list so our seniors can access crucial services like meal delivery and transportation. | | | WHERE’S KATHY? Making a clean energy announcement on Long Island (see above). WHERE’S ERIC? Meeting with consuls general and consuls from European consulates, then making a human services-related announcement, then doing in a live interview on the “El Pacha Oficial” YouTube channel. QUOTE OF THE DAY: “... life a little easier and better, here in Long Island.” — Congressional candidate John Avlon at a NY-01 forum, called out on X by Republican Rep. Nick LaLota for saying “in” and not “on” Long Island, declaring the slip “shows you haven’t spent much time here.”
|  | ABOVE THE FOLD | | |  The number of migrants coming to the city — including those traveling via Texas-chartered buses — could rise next month. | Spencer Platt/Getty Images | SPRING SURGE?: Texas vows to keep busing migrants to New York City as both the Abbott and Adams administrations brace for an uptick in new arrivals with the onset of warmer weather. “More migrants will make illegal crossings in the spring,” a spokesperson for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, told Playbook. “Until President Biden steps up and does his job to secure the border, Texas will continue busing migrants to sanctuary cities to help our local partners respond to this Biden-made crisis.” If last spring is any indication, the number of migrants coming to the city — including those traveling via Texas-chartered buses — could begin to rise next month. Last year, an increase started in late April, the rate climbing until it peaked at about 4,000 newcomers in one week in mid-May, City Hall data shows. Adams and others in New York have slammed Abbott for using migrants in need of support as “political pawns.” The Abbott spokesperson did not say Wednesday whether Texas has experienced a spike in arrivals so far this year but noted that the state has sent more than 106,000 migrants overall to New York and other Democrat-run cities. The population of migrants in the city’s care has been shrinking. There were 69,000 in city shelters in early January, and the population had fallen to 64,600 last week. Adams administration officials attributed the downswing to the slower rate of newcomers in winter — last week brought about 1,300 — and the 30- and 60-day limits on shelter stays. And it’ll be those policies that make it possible for the city to handle the likely spring surge, City Hall chief of staff Camille Joseph Varlack told reporters recently. “We’ll continue to work with them through our extensive case management system to … figure out what their next steps are going to be,” she said. “But we are prepared.” — Emily Ngo
| | CITY HALL: THE LATEST | | | | 
Actor and director Benny Safdie is calling on the city to restore budget cuts to community composting. | Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP | UNCUT BUDGET: From best picture to budget presser. Benny Safdie, the actor and director who played an expert physicist in the Oscar-winning “Oppenheimer,” is calling on the city to restore budget cuts to community composting. The “Uncut Gems” co-director plans to join City Council Sanitation Chair Shaun Abreu at a 10:30 a.m. rally today at City Hall, ahead of a preliminary budget hearing. Safdie is an “Upper West Sider and huge composting enthusiast,” the council member’s office said — and as the new committee chair, Abreu said restoring $7 million could help save the jobs of workers collecting food scraps across the city. — Jeff Coltin GANG GREEN: Like seemingly every other interest group in the city, the New York League of Conservation Voters is calling on Adams to reverse budget cuts to favored programs. But not every group has the awe-inspiring power of extreme storms to point to. “The city can either choose the well-worn path of draconian budget cuts for environmental agencies and risk the city buckling under extreme heat waves and devastating floods,” NYLCV President Julie Tighe writes in the 2024 city policy agenda released today, “or they can recognize the long-term threat climate change poses and fully fund our front-line agencies and continue to pass laws to reduce carbon emissions and shore up coastal resilience.” The organization is hosting council members at its annual legislative breakfast this morning. — Jeff Coltin More from the city: — Council Speaker Adrienne Adams used her State of the City speech to emphasize the legislative body’s role as a check on the mayor. (POLITICO Pro) — Court records show a Brooklyn Supreme Court justice ruled against the elected officials seeking to block the mayor from housing migrants at Floyd Bennett Field. (Daily News) — Nobody calls New York “The Port-Au-Prince of America,” so Adams’ tweet claiming so got flagged with a “community note.” (New York Post)
| | | | A message from AARP:   | | | | | NEW FROM PLANET ALBANY | | | 
Gov. Kathy Hochul proposed to spend $2.4 billion to address the influx of thousands of people into New York, a $500 million increase from the previous year. | Hans Pennink/AP | MIGRANT FUNDING: Spending to aid migrants — from housing to health care and legal services — will likely be included in a final version of the state budget, due to pass by the end of this month. Democrats in the Legislature largely agree with Hochul’s proposal to spend $2.4 billion to address the influx of thousands of people into New York. The money is a $500 million increase from the previous 12 months. But at the same time, Hochul has continued to press Congress for action, including financial support for New York to handle the needs of migrants arriving in the state and city. “Money for states like New York, that would have helped us a lot,” Hochul said on “The View” Thursday when she decried the lack of progress in Congress. Assembly Democrats, meanwhile, want $2.5 million to help resettle migrants outside of the city, a politically fraught proposition, but one that would provide a relief valve for Adams. And Democrats are also pursuing a $150 million plan that would bolster immigration legal services in the state as well as a right-to-counsel in immigration court. "Every day, thousands of immigrants statewide face the possibility of deportation without due process of law and a meaningful opportunity to be heard,” Assemblymember Catalina Cruz, a Queens Democrat, said. Assembly Republican Minority Leader Will Barclay, however, told reporters he’s opposed to migrant-related spending. Instead, he wants Hochul to ratchet up pressure on the White House even more to reimburse the state. “We see this as a failure of the Biden administration, a failure of securing our border,” he said. “If I was the governor, I would be down in Washington every day fixing this problem.” Queens Democratic Sen. Jessica Ramos shrugged at the idea of Republicans opposing migrant aid. “Well, it’s a good thing they’re not in the majority,” she told Playbook. — Nick Reisman GOP WANTS THEIR SAY: Ramos is alluding to a broader issue facing Republicans in the Democratic-dominated state Capitol. They have virtually no say over how the state budget sausage gets made and aren’t included in the high-level closed-door meetings among the governor, Senate majority leader and Assembly speaker. “I think we ought to have a voice at that table and be at that table,” Barclay said. Still, Barclay said he’s been speaking with Hochul to discuss his GOP conference’s budget priorities. “It has been better than under prior administrations,” he said, adding she’s been willing to at least listen. But Hochul, a moderate Democrat, is also taking a more aggressive political posture with Republicans at the federal level as she seeks to help her fellow Democrats flip the chamber. Has that changed things between the governor and the GOP state lawmakers? “Not yet,” Barclay said, “but Election Day is coming up.” — Nick Reisman More from Albany: — The education aid fight is ramping up after the one-house budgets came out. (POLITICO Pro) — Hochul and the Senate want to repeal a Covid pandemic paid sick leave law. (Newsday) — Hochul’s account of how she found out she would become governor is being disputed by Team Cuomo. (Daily News)
| | NEW YORK STATE OF MIND | | — A priest in Park Slope evicted a food pantry from a struggling Catholic church. (THE CITY) — Despite child labor laws, migrant children are selling candy on subways — and the city isn’t stopping them. (New York Times) — A Westchester County rookie cop says he was fired for writing a ticket to a lawyer who tried to get out of it by giving him a police union courtesy card. (Daily News)
| | | | A message from AARP: New York seniors can't wait for vital services. Lawmakers must end the wait list.
Too many New York seniors are being put on a wait list to receive vital services at home. They’re left waiting for months—and being forced into costly taxpayer-funded nursing homes because they can’t get the help they need to remain in their own homes.
Governor Hochul and the state legislature must do more to help our seniors get care at home—where they want to be. Ending the wait list and expanding access to crucial services like meal delivery and transportation would not only help our seniors, but it would be invaluable to New York’s 2.2 million family caregivers who work tirelessly to keep their loved ones at home.
Lawmakers: End the wait list so our seniors can remain at home. | | | | | SOCIAL DATA | | Edited by Daniel Lippman MAKING MOVES — Minelly De Coo is now special assistant to the president for infrastructure implementation. She previously was deputy director of infrastructure for New York Gov. Kathy Hochul. SPOTTED at the premiere on Tuesday night of Amy Chozick and Julie Plec’s new Max show “Girls on the Bus” (trailer) at DGA Theater with an afterparty at Nobu: Julianna Margulies, Abby Phillip, Constance Wu, Joanna Coles, Chris Hays, Danny Strong, Michael Barbaro, Carolyn Ryan, Alex Levy, Shawn McCreesh, Jeremy Peters, Carla Gugino, Melissa Benoist and Griffin Dunne. HAPPY BIRTHDAY: Lily Adams … Andrea Bozek of Big Dog Strategies … Joshua Walker … Eric Shaeffer … Allen Gannett
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