“Through cap and invest, we can both clean up our air and create consistent revenue that invests in our communities and puts money back into New Yorkers’ pockets.”

Gov. Kathy Hochul. (Don Pollard/Office of Governor Hochul)

The future of energy affordability in New York is being decided right now, and so far, we’re not impressed. Last year, days away from the expected rollout of proposed regulations for the state’s cap-and-invest program, Gov. Kathy Hochul decided to kick the climate can down the road.

Now, these life-saving regulations remain under bureaucratic lock and key while overburdened communities continue to pay for pollution, climate disasters, and skyrocketing costs with their wallets and health. This summer, as we discuss the first phase of the program, is a moment for bold leadership from the governor. The stakes couldn’t be higher for working-class New Yorkers, communities of color, and anyone who believes that clean air and economic justice go hand in hand.

The cap-and-invest program is simple: require corporate polluters to pay for their emissions and allow the state to invest that money in good-paying jobs that build out an infrastructure of energy efficiency, climate adaptation, public health, and energy affordability for New Yorkers. Currently, New York doesn’t have a tool that reduces our statewide emissions and raises ongoing funding for climate action. Through cap and invest, we can both clean up our air and create consistent revenue that invests in our communities and puts money back into New Yorkers’ pockets. 

This revenue can be used to make direct payments to help New Yorkers cut down on consumer costs. A report created in collaboration with Resources for the Future (RFF) and the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance (NYC-EJA) makes one thing clear: We don’t have to choose between climate action and economic justice. Our study shows that many New Yorkers could save money under a cap-trade-and-invest program, especially when payments to New Yorkers are targeted by region and income.

Furthermore, a high price for corporations to pay to pollute yields the greatest savings for many New Yorkers, particularly those in households making less than $200,000 per year. By requiring polluters to pay for the toxins they dump in our air, we can clean up our air and improve public health without increasing costs for everyday New Yorkers. The RFF and NYC-EJA report proves that we can make New York a safe and affordable place to live, but only if we make corporate polluters pay for their emissions and close the loopholes that let them off the hook. 

The truth is, we can’t afford to move any slower when it comes to reducing pollution and implementing climate solutions. The climate crisis is here, and New Yorkers are feeling the pain as we see extreme temperatures and weather events. Not to mention, we’ve been paying for the climate crisis while corporations and billionaires destroy our planet and environment for profit. 

The Climate Action Council (CAC) and New York State Energy Research and Development Authority estimate that we need a minimum of $10 billion annually to reduce our emissions and adapt to the impacts of a changing climate, with the potential of that number increasing every year.

The costs to address the climate crisis may seem overwhelming, but the savings and benefits of climate action are far greater. Research from the Climate Action Council showed that making immediate climate investments to meet the mandates of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (or the “Climate Act”) would result in net benefits to New York ranging from $80 to $150 billion over 30 years. This, coupled with a reduction in statewide emissions, will help reduce the damage of climate change, saving New York State an estimated $260 billion. 

Until Gov. Hochul implements the cap-and-invest program, New Yorkers will continue to pay for higher costs driven by food and water shortages, disease and sickness, climate disasters, deteriorating infrastructure, and fossil fuels. The math is clear despite the preference to hide behind the pretense that there isn’t enough information or available tools to act today.

We must design the program so that money, savings, and health benefits from its implementation go to disadvantaged communities. If the state fails to include measures like banning trading in or near these communities, then New York will be forced to repeat the same environmental injustices as seen in California and risk creating or worsening existing pollution hot spots.

New York policymakers must stand firm. Low-income New Yorkers already pay the price of pollution with their health and medical bills, as asthma rates soar in communities near power plants and highways. They shouldn’t have to pay twice—once with their lungs, and again with their wallets.

The Climate Act, which requires a statewide reduction of pollution, was meant to be a groundbreaking law for climate and justice, and it still can be if it’s actually funded and implemented. Gov. Hochul has a choice: Will she make corporate polluters pay and fight for our right to breathe clean air, or will she keep letting them poison and destroy our communities and charge us more while they’re at it?

She cannot delay any longer. She can reduce our emissions, cut consumer costs, and help with energy affordability today. In the meantime, we must demand that our leaders put people over big polluters and make the transition to a cleaner, healthier, more affordable future for all. 

Eddie Bautista is executive director of New York City Environmental Justice Alliance.

The post Opinion: It’s time to Cap Pollution, Lower Energy Bills, and Invest in NY’s Future appeared first on City Limits.

Ramsey County commissioners Tuesday unanimously approved a salary increase of 3% for board members.

With the approved increase, effective Jan. 1, board members’ salaries will increase from $104,077 to $107,199. The board chair’s salary will increase from $109,338 to $112,559.

County employees with settled bargaining agreements and unrepresented employees received a general wage increase of 3% in 2025. The seven-member board typically sets commissioner salary increases at a rate that matches general wage increases for county employees in the previous year, according to county officials.

Board members cited that precedence ahead of the vote.

“I just wanted to just mention again, that this is similar across our entire organization,” said District 6 commissioner Mai Chong Xiong at Tuesday’s meeting. “That this is just average of what we had bargained and negotiated last year through all of our contracts, so it is nothing above what our county staff are receiving. So just wanted to mention that, and that it’s because of our charter that we are required to just do this every single year.”

St. Paul city officials also often receive a cost of living increase, Xiong said, adding that the county’s process is likely one of the more transparent ones. Ramsey County is the only county in the state that’s required to vote on commissioner salaries prior to elections, said board chair and District 5 commissioner Rafael Ortega.

Commissioners are awarded $800 per month for everyday expenses they incur while working as elected officials, according to county officials. Commissioner aides receive $400 per month. These amounts were not increased by Tuesday’s vote.

In Ramsey County, salary increases also were approved last year, going from $101,280 to $104,077 for commissioners and from $104,477 to $109,338 for the chair.

The current annual salary for commissioners in Hennepin County is $128,337, according to Hennepin County officials. A July proposal by Hennepin County commissioners to increase their annual salaries to $182,141 was later withdrawn following pushback from county residents.

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By MARYCLAIRE DALE

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Striking city workers waved signs at traffic near Philadelphia City Hall and formed picket lines outside libraries, city offices and other workplaces as nearly 10,000 blue-collar workers walked off the job Tuesday

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Seeking better pay and benefits, District Council 33 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees announced the strike on its Facebook page early Tuesday.

Mayor Cherelle Parker said the city would suspend residential trash collection, close some city pools and shorten recreation center hours, but vowed to keep the city running. Police and firefighters are not on strike, but the DC33 membership includes 911 dispatchers, trash collectors, water department workers and many others.

By midday Tuesday, three librarians in town from Knoxville, Tennessee, for a convention arrived to tour the Free Library of Philadelphia on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, only to find the wrought iron gates closed as workers cheerfully protested outside. They stopped to chat with them and offer their support.

“We’re just out here trying to get fair wages, to try to get a better cost of living, because, as you know, everything in the world right now is going up,” said Dhafir Gerald, 48, a library security guard who said he loves the city because it gave him a second chance after a long-ago incarceration.

“The city has the money to pay us,” said Gerald, who makes about $46,000 a year after six years of service, the first few with the sanitation department. “We are the backbone of the city.”

Parker, a pro-labor Democrat, promised that Fourth of July celebrations in the nation’s birthplace would go on as usual.

“Keep your holiday plans. Don’t leave the city,” she said at a Monday afternoon news conference that followed hours of last-minute negotiations.

In a statement Tuesday, the mayor said the city had “put its best offer on the table.” The city offered raises that amount to 13% over her four-year term, including last year’s 5% bump, and added a fifth step to the pay scale to align with other city unions, she said.

FILE- Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker speaks during a campaign rally for Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris outside the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Nov. 4, 2024, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, file)

“The City of Philadelphia remains committed to reaching a fair and fiscally responsible contract with our municipal workers who are a part of DC 33,” Parker said. “We are ready, willing and able to resume negotiations with the union at their convenience.”

City officials urged residents to be patient and not hang up should they need to call either 911 or the city’s nonemergency helpline. They said they would open drop-off sites for residential trash.

District Council 33 is the largest of four major unions representing city workers. Union president Greg Boulware did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

Union leaders, in their initial contract proposal, asked for 8% annual raises each year of the three-year contract, along with cost-of-living hikes and bonuses of up to $5,000 for those who worked through the pandemic. The union also asked the city to pay the full cost of employee health care, or $1,700 per person per month.

In November, the city transit system averted a strike when the parties agreed to a one-year contract with 5% raises.

A DC33 trash strike in the summer of 1986 left the city without trash pickup for three weeks, leading trash to pile up on streets, alleyways and drop-off sites.

“Like any workers in this country, I think that they have a right to expect a livable wage, and it’s really nice to see our country’s ability to still have strikes and still have public dissent,” Nick Shuhan, a 34-year-old editor and property manager who lives in Center City, said Tuesday. “So I stand with them.”

At NYLAG, where the largest unit is the tenants’ rights division, a strike could hinder low-income people’s access to free representation when facing eviction, a service unique to the city’s Right to Counsel program which nonprofits are contracted to deliver.

Diana Rosen, a staff attorney in the immigration protection unit, speaking at Monday’s “practice picket.” (Photo by Tareq Saghie)

Housing, immigration, and labor attorneys, as well as the staff who support them, picketed in front of the Manhattan office of the New York Legal Assistance Group (NYLAG) Monday after voting to authorize a strike if they don’t receive certain demands ahead of Tuesday’s contract expiration.

In parallel with other legal service providers also unionized with the Association of Legal Advocates and Attorneys (ALAA), UAW Local 2325, NYLAG workers have bargained for months to demand pay increases, workload reductions, and free speech protections. But progress has been slow, and all are gearing up for a coordinated action.

“NYLAG, NYLAG it’s been ages. Pay your workers living wages,” the group chanted Monday.  

The threat of a strike looms that could significantly disrupt New York City’s courts. At NYLAG, where the largest unit is their tenants’ rights division, a strike could hinder low-income people’s access to free representation when facing eviction, a service unique to the city’s Right to Counsel program which nonprofits are contracted to deliver.

“If people can’t pursue the type of zealous representation that would get our clients meaningful outcomes in court because of strenuous workloads, for example, then we’re not doing right by our clients,” said Shelly Pires, paralegal at NYLAG and vice president of membership at her union shop.

“It’s hard to stay in this line of work with this degree of pay with rising costs of living in New York,” Pires added. “We’re doing what we’re doing to try to ensure that people like us who care about this work, who enjoy doing this work, can do it for a long time.”

According to NYLAG workers, rejecting their demands would lead to continued high turnover at the organization and inadequate representation for their clients, an issue that a recent report from Comptroller Brad Lander found is surging.

“Rigid contract requirements, inadequate funding, and insurmountable caseloads have made it extremely difficult for providers to meet increasing demand,” the comptroller’s report found, noting that only around 30 percent of tenants facing eviction in March of this year had an attorney.   

Their demands

Central to NYLAG and the other ALAA chapters’ demands are salaries, which they say need to be increased to a minimum of $70,000 per year. NYLAG most recently offered that amount after four years. 

NYLAG workers also want a 5.5 percent annual salary increase, a 10 percent retirement contribution, and a decrease in health insurance premiums. Additionally, as an organization that also serves immigrant communities, recently taking on the high-profile case of a Venezuelan public school student detained by ICE, staff from immigrant backgrounds often employ their language skills and cultural knowledge in their work. The union says that these workers deserve a pay differential.

Outside of pay, workers want NYLAG to codify free speech rights that they say were always standard at the organization, but were rolled back after staff began opposing Israel’s siege of Gaza. While displaying political posters and expressing personal views was permitted, the organization implemented a specific ban on displaying materials related to the conflict, and some have faced disciplinary action for it, which the union wants reversed.

NYLAG’s board chair, Jill L. Rosenberg, is a major donor to UJA-Federation of New York, a local pro-Israel nonprofit. Pressure has also come from within, as the bargaining unit was recently hit by a discrimination lawsuit from the Brandeis Center that argues workers displaying pro-Palestine posters creates a hostile workplace for Jewish union members. 

“There’s a coordinated effort in this country to suppress speech in support of Palestine, and it’s really disappointing to see NYLAG management falling on the same side of that debate as the Trump administration,” said Diana Rosen, a staff attorney in the immigration protection unit who received a written warning for taking a photo with a keffiyeh alongside her coworkers. “My job on its own is stressful enough. I don’t need to also be surveilled and intimidated and harassed by the general counsel.”

NYLAG workers’ other major demand is to reduce their caseloads, which they say are so high that they are constantly stressed, exhausted, and dealing with high turnover, leading to worse outcomes for clients.

Attorneys are often assigned more than four new cases a month, an amount NYLAG considers appropriate based on a 2023 New York State report. The union says that this number assumes attorneys spend all their time on casework, excluding the administrative work that often occupies up to a third of their time. Lawyers argue that the caseload should be dropped to 30 per year, or roughly two and half per month. 

“All of this just really limits a worker’s capacity to really immerse themselves in their cases and find those hidden gems that make or break a case,” said Jon Bash, senior staff attorney in NYLAG’s tenants’ rights division and vice president of communications at the union chapter.

Room 454 at Queens Housing Court, where eligible tenants can sign up for free legal representation in their eviction cases. (Photo by Emma Whitford)

Citywide impacts

When it passed its Right to Counsel laws in 2017, New York City became the first place in the United States to grant low-income tenants facing eviction free representation. The Department of Social Services (DSS), which is responsible for providing attorneys, does so by contracting with legal aid nonprofits like NYLAG. 

At a time when evictions are soaring, fewer than 50 percent of people facing eviction have representation in housing court, according to Lander’s report. Tenants are eligible for RTC if they earn less than 200 percent of the federal poverty level, or up to $53,300 a year for a family of three. 

“[Right to Counsel] needs to be fully funded, but the demand that we have been putting out there, is that the courts and the city can be doing more to ensure that every tenant who’s entitled to Right to Counsel gets an attorney by matching the pace of cases in the courts to lawyer capacity,” said Malika Conner, coalition coordinator at the Right to Counsel NYC Coalition, who helped pass the laws.

Elected officials, workers, and legal aid nonprofits have been calling for increased funding to Right to Counsel for years. While the budget has more than doubled since 2020, when the program expanded citywide, advocates say it’s still less than half of the $350 million per year needed to ensure NYLAG and other ALAA workers receive the wage increases and reduced caseloads they’re demanding.

The 2026 budget passed this week increased funding for Right to Counsel by $15.6 million, in line with what the City Council requested.

Neha Sharma, a spokesperson for DSS, said the city does not have direct oversight of things like staffing levels and pay equity at the nonprofits it contracts with, and that funding for RTC providers is based on amounts those organizations propose themselves. She pointed to the fact that the city will pay an unprecedented amount to nonprofits in advance of services in the 2026 fiscal year, an effort to ensure providers like NYLAG with having adequate funds to be properly staffed.

Strategy

Coinciding the dozen legal service providers’ contracts to expire on the same day took years of preparation, and was done to maximize the influence they would have if workers don’t receive their bargaining demands.

If all of the ALAA organizations with now-expired contracts—which include the Legal Aid Society, the Urban Justice Center, and the Center for Appellate Litigation—go on strike, it would severely impact housing courts, likely forcing cases to be adjourned and putting pressure on public officials to intervene and encourage the nonprofits to make concessions, as happened during a strike last year of attorneys at Mobilization for Justice.

This strategy of unifying different contracts to expire simultaneously is growing in the United Auto Workers, and was implemented on a large scale in 2023. At that time, workers at Ford, Stellantis, and GM coordinated a strike where they unpredictably walked out of different factories at different times, collectively disrupting the United States’ auto industry and garnering support from people as high up as former President Joe Biden. In the end, the union won historic demands, such as pay raises of over 25 percent per year.

While the particularities of the nonprofit legal industry create unique challenges that will prevent them from replicating this campaign, the UAW learned that unpredictability can give them an edge, and that they will receive more public support by expanding campaigns beyond one shop.

“Our goal has never been necessarily to strike. What we want out of these contract campaigns are strong and fair contracts, and management is able to avoid a strike at any point by giving proposals and counters that provide that baseline,” said Estefania Rodriguez, organizer at the ALAA. “Part of the strategy of sectoral bargaining is not just about putting pressure on our management, but also putting pressure on the city.”

To reach the reporter behind this story, contact Tareq@citylimits.org. To reach the editor, contact Jeanmarie@citylimits.org

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