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2 CITY COUNCIL
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CITY OF NEW YORK
4 -------------------------------x
5 THE TRANSCRIPT OF THE MINUTES
6 of the
7 COMMITTEE ON HOUSING And BUILDINGS
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September 12, 2003
9 Start: 10:07 a.m.
Recess: 3:25 p.m.
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City Hall
11 Council Chambers
New York, New York
12
13 B E F O R E:
14 MADELINE PROVENZANO
Chairperson,
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16 COUNCIL MEMBERS: Joel Rivera
Tony Avella
17 Gale Brewer
Leroy Comrie
18 Simcha Fidler
Robert Jackson
19 Melinda Katz
Kendall Stewart
20 James Oddo
Charles Barron
21 Bill Perkins
Christine Quinn
22 David Weprin
Speaker Miller
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24 LEGAL-EASE COURT REPORTING SERVICES, INC.
17 Battery Place - Suite 1308
25 New York, New York 10004
(800) 756-3410
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1
2 A P P E A R A N C E S
3
Mary Jean Brown, ScD, RN
4 Chief, Lead Poisoning Prevention Branch
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
5
Bruce P. Lanphea, M.D., M.P.H.
6 Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center
7 Susan Klitzman, DrPH
Associate Professor, Environmental and Occupational
8 Health Sciences
Hunter College, City University of New York
9
Martin Benitez
10
Janet Sanchez
11
Enrique Modesta
12
Adrian Rodriguez
13
John McCarthy
14 Community Preservation Corporation
15 Michael McGuire
Mason Tenders' District Council
16
Michael McKee
17 NYS Tenants And Neighbors Coalition
18 Darryl Ramsey
President
19 Local 768
20 Joel Shufro, Ph.D
Executive Director
21 New York Committee for Occupational
Safety and Health
22
Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum
23
Helen Daniels
24 Black and Latino Property Owners
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2 A P P E A R A N C E S (CONTINUED)
3
Martin Benitez
4
Jeannette Sanchez
5
Enriques Modesto
6
Andrea Rodriguez
7 Northern Manhattan Improvement Corp
8 Frank Ricci
Rent Stabilization Association
9
Mitchell Pasilikin
10 General Counsel
Rent Stabilization Association
11
Manuel Castro
12 Make the Road By Walking
13 Jedidah Baptiste
14 Christina Brito
15 Michael McKee
NYS Tenants and Neighbors Coalition
16
Michelle Alvarez
17 Natural Resources Defense Council
18 Eddy Dixon
19 Camile Rivera
20 Chris Rembold
Sierra Club
21
Mark Caserta
22 New York League of Conservation Voters
23 Adriene Holder, Esq.
The Legal Aid Society
24
Matthew Chachere
25 NYCCELP
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2 A P P E A R A N C E S (CONTINUED)
3
Irene Shen
4 New York City Environmental Justice Alliance
5 Cordell Cleare
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1 COMMITTEE ON HOUSING AND BUILDINGS
2 CHAIRPERSON PROVENZANO: Good
3 morning. My name is Chairwoman Madeline Provenzano,
4 I chair the Committee on Housing and Buildings. I
5 would like to thank all of you for attending this
6 hearing. This is a continuation of the last recessed
7 hearing on proposed Intro. No. 101-A. The hearing
8 was held on June 23rd. There's a sound problem.
9 Is this one working? Okay, let's get
10 on with it.
11 Okay, as you know, we're continuing
12 our deliberations on proposed Intro. No. 101-A, in
13 relation to childhood lead poisoning prevention. We
14 are once again expecting that this hearing will draw
15 a large crowd of potential witnesses and observers.
16 Please be mindful of any time constraints that are
17 imposed and please be considerate of your fellow
18 colleagues and of one another in general.
19 In order to move things along quickly
20 and smoothly, all witnesses have been asked to be
21 concise and to stay focused on the bill. I also
22 reiterate my request that only one spokesperson
23 testify from each group or organization.
24 Again, this could be a very emotional
25 hearing, but I expect that it will be conducted in a
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1 COMMITTEE ON HOUSING AND BUILDINGS
2 dignified manner. You may not agree with all of the
3 comments made, but please allow everyone to testify
4 without boos or heckling. The first part of this
5 hearing on June 23rd went very well. It also went
6 seven hours. I commended all participants on their
7 patience and their courtesy, and, again, some of you
8 that were here were here at the first hearing, and I
9 again commend all of you and ask that you extend the
10 same courtesy to others that you expect.
11 Today the Committee expects to hear
12 from Dr. Mary Jean Brown from the Centers for
13 Disease Control and Prevention, and from Dr. Bruce
14 Lanphear from Children's Hospital Medical Center in
15 Ohio, as well as from representatives of
16 environmental interests, representatives of the real
17 estate industry, tenants organizations and other
18 interested persons.
19 Since this is a continuation of the
20 first hearing, anyone who has already testified at
21 the first hearing may not testify again.
22 We did contact all of those who had
23 signed in at the first hearing and did not get a
24 chance to testify, so they were given the
25 opportunity and most of them will be testifying
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1 COMMITTEE ON HOUSING AND BUILDINGS
2 today.
3 I am joined by the Speaker, and he
4 would like to make a few comments before we begin.
5 SPEAKER MILLER: Thank you, Madam
6 Chair, and let me thank you in advance for
7 conducting this hearing in a dignified and fair
8 manner, and to let everybody have their viewpoints
9 be heard.
10 I just wanted to say a few thoughts
11 before the hearing, and mostly I wanted to thank all
12 the advocates on all sides of the issue who I met
13 with over the summer and to look at this issue,
14 which is I think the most pressing issue that the
15 City Council is considering at this time. We need to
16 address the issue of childhood lead poisoning, the
17 terrible scourge upon this City and upon this
18 country, but we have a responsibility to deal with
19 this, not the least because the Court of Appeals has
20 laid that upon us, and because we ultimately have
21 the responsibility as human beings to our children
22 who are being poisoned at unacceptable levels.
23 And having spent a great deal of time
24 meeting with a lot of people this summer, you know,
25 some important principles that I think are contained
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1 COMMITTEE ON HOUSING AND BUILDINGS
2 in this legislation and should be contained in any
3 legislation that is passed by this Council, and I've
4 just spoken with some of you and I wanted to put it
5 on record and in public.
6 First, I believe that it is
7 absolutely necessary that any effective lead
8 poisoning bill regulates lead dust. It's the main
9 pathway to poisoning and we must treat it as the
10 hazard that it is and for the first time in the
11 City.
12 But you know, I just think we need to
13 carefully craft it so that with regard to the
14 responsibility of landlords for that lead dust, it
15 is related to conditions that are within their
16 control and in the apartments that are in their
17 responsibility or in the buildings that are their
18 responsibility.
19 It's also clear to me that Local Law
20 38 was inadequate with regard to the notice and
21 investigation requirements. I don't personally see
22 why it is that we can't treat this issue just the
23 same way that we treat the window guards
24 notification requirements.
25 In fact, I don't see why we can't
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2 just add the line. People are already having to do
3 this, whether it's burdensome or not, and I heard
4 different arguments about it, it's already being
5 done, there's really no reason why we can't add a
6 line and then it won't be burdensome at all, it will
7 just be the same requirement that is already there.
8 I am very concerned about the time
9 frames that were in Local Law 38, and I think we
10 should be reviewing them for determining how to
11 shorten them. I also think that there's a tremendous
12 opportunity to better focus our time frames if we
13 were to require all HPD inspectors to be equipped
14 and trained to use XRF machines, so that an
15 immediate determination can be made whether the
16 deteriorating paint is lead-based paint.
17 If, as HPD has testified on a number
18 of occasions, 75 percent of the cases in which there
19 is an alleged lead paint -- or a lead paint
20 violation that is issued, turn out in the end to not
21 actually be lead paint deterioration, it seems to me
22 that an enormous amount of time and energy is being
23 wasted on the wrong types of cases and not enough is
24 being focused on the right types of cases, and so it
25 would be more reasonable to require shorter time
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2 frames, if in three-quarters of the cases we're not
3 going to have a lead paint violation at all because
4 that's not lead paint, and this allows the City and
5 landlords and everyone to focus better on conditions
6 that are actually for certain endangering children.
7 I also believe that the workers who
8 conduct the clean-up should be properly trained so
9 that they don't exacerbate the problem and protect
10 themselves from harm.
11 Having spent a lot of time on this
12 issue, and I look forward to the hearing, I still
13 think there are some areas where 101-A could be
14 better focused in terms of dealing with primary
15 prevention.
16 One simple measure that would be
17 incredibly important would be for DOH, when it
18 identifies a child as being lead poisoned, to be
19 required to check the other apartments in the
20 building, wherever that child is, to see whether or
21 not there are conditions that are endangering other
22 children in that building.
23 You know, this is critically
24 important, it seems to me, since the likelihood is,
25 and certainly having spent time talking to
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2 pediatricians and health experts, it often actually
3 is the case that if there is one lead poisoning
4 building there are often going to be others, because
5 if the landlord has allowed the situation to
6 deteriorate in one apartment, there's a good chance
7 they've allowed it to deteriorate in others.
8 So, I think that it would make sense
9 in legislation to focus on sort of primary
10 prevention on making sure that when we find one
11 case, that we don't wait for the inadequate testing
12 that's going on elsewhere to identify other cases,
13 but that we go out and actually try to prevent them,
14 which also brings me to another point which is I
15 think that more needs to be done to increase testing
16 for elevated blood levels in this City. We do not do
17 a good enough job and some simple things, just
18 requiring the Department of Health to mail a yearly
19 reminder to pediatricians, notifying them of the
20 State law regarding children being blood tested, and
21 also looking at earmarking funds for education and
22 testing in the lead belt area.
23 So, I think there's a lot of
24 opportunity for this Council to work very
25 thoughtfully and seriously to try to enact