“As warm weather returns and the summer approaches, we are reminded that the streets, sidewalks, parks, and plazas of New York City are our civic commons. New Yorkers should be able to dance in the streets, sidewalks, and curbs if they want to.”

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Block parties are an iconic New York City experience. They bring communities together, give kids space to run and play—they even birthed hip hop! Yet, New York City has made it so difficult to get a permit that it is now nearly impossible to plan one. You need to apply at least two months in advance with no option for a rain date, all just to close one block for half a day. This is just one of the many types of simple public space activations where bureaucratic red tape makes it unbearably challenging for community groups when they want to utilize a street or a public plaza.

As warm weather returns and the summer approaches, we are reminded that the streets, sidewalks, parks, and plazas of New York City are our civic commons. New Yorkers should be able to dance in the streets, sidewalks, and curbs if they want to. Yet for most New Yorkers, these communal spaces outside our doors remain frustratingly unavailable and inaccessible, hidden deep inside a maze of paperwork. New York City needs to reform its permitting process so that it works for, not against, community members who want to organize activities in public spaces.  

Many of the permitting rules for public spaces have not been updated in decades and no longer reflect how New Yorkers want to use them today. The same time-antiquated, onerous process also applies to the liability requirements for public events. A simple meetup to play the board game Jenga requires 34th Avenue Open Street in Queens to have the same million-dollar insurance coverage as a large one-off dance performance with a stage and speakers. Even if the Jenga meetup is happening regularly, organizers must submit individual applications for each event, making planning routine events like that astoundingly time-consuming. Sometimes, Open Street organizers don’t even know if their events are approved by the city until the day before.

There are reforms that would improve this street permitting process. The city should create a single portal that provides access to all street activity permit types. There should be a permit type that covers a series of regularly scheduled events to reflect the new reality of Open Streets, and integrated activations that are popping up in neighborhoods all over the city. The city should work to develop a sliding scale of liability based on the intensity of activation.

Reforming street permits is not just a simple matter of access, but also of social equity. In neighborhoods where there are no Business Improvement Districts (BIDs), seasoned legacy organizations, or parks conservancies, the burden of applying for these permits falls on volunteer community members. These are the people who are already providing the critical work of raising funds, arranging activities, and providing maintenance services necessary for a successful event. Many communities simply do not have the time or resources necessary to also cut through the bureaucratic jungle laid in front of them.

Mayor Eric Adams campaigned on public realm improvements and his administration often champion major capital projects, like the Kimlau Plaza redesign, aimed at transforming commercial and tourism hubs, and the new people-centered amenities in the Flatiron District as part of the Broadway Vision Plan. These marquee projects have shown, on a grand scale, what’s possible for our public realm, and New Yorkers love them.

It is time to give New Yorkers, in all boroughs and all neighborhoods, more control over their public spaces. Permit reform is the next step in creating more equitable, accessible, and activated public spaces. It’s time to cut the red tape and let the block parties flourish.

Burdensome permitting policies are just one aspect of the public realm status quo that has many New Yorkers burnt out. Let’s make this year one of excitement for both the participants and stewards of our precious public realm by making it easier to make fun events happen!  

Jackson Chabot is director of advocacy and organizing at Open Plans. Elana Ehrenberg is director of strategic partnerships at Design Trust for Public Space. Rebecca Macklis is senior manager of strategic initiatives at the Municipal Art Society of New York. They are members of The Alliance for Public Space Leadership, a partnership committed to improving the state of the public realm for all New Yorkers. 

By RALPH D. RUSSO (AP College Football Writer)

The NCAA and the nation’s five biggest conferences have agreed to pay nearly $2.8 billion to settle a host of antitrust claims,a monumental decision that sets the stage for a groundbreaking revenue-sharing model that could start directing millions of dollars directly to athletes as soon as the 2025 fall semester.

The Pac-12 became the final conference to sign off on the proposal Thursday when its university leaders voted to approve, according to a person with direct knowledge of the results.

The Southeastern Conference presidents and chancellors unanimously approved the deal earlier Thursday, another person with knowledge of that decision told The Associated Press. Both spoke spoke on condition of anonymity because an official announcement between the Pac-12, SEC, Big Ten, Big 12, Atlantic Coast Conference and NCAA was still being prepared.

The other organizations voted to approve earlier in the week ahead of a Thursday deadline given by the plaintiffs’ attorneys.

The deal still must be approved by the federal judge overseeing the case and challenges could arise, but if the agreement stands it will mark the beginning of a new era in college sports where athletes are compensated more like professionals and schools can compete for talent using direct payments.

The details in the plan signal the end of the NCAA’s bedrock amateurism model that dates to its founding in 1906. Indeed, the days of NCAA punishments for athletes driving booster-provided cars started vanishing three years ago when the organization lifted restrictions on endorsement deals backed by so-called name, image and likeness money.

Now it is not far-fetched to look ahead to seasons where a star quarterback or top prospect on a college basketball team are not only cashing in big-money NIL deals but have a $100,000 school payment in the bank to play.

There are a host of details still to be determined, but the agreement calls for the NCAA and the conferences to pay $2.77 billion over 10 years to more than 14,000 former and current college athletes who say now-defunct rules prevented them from earning money from endorsement and sponsorship deals dating to 2016.

Some of that money will come from NCAA reserve funds and insurance but even though the lawsuit specifically targeted five conferences that are comprised of 69 schools (including Notre Dame), dozens of other NCAA member schools will see smaller distributions from the NCAA to cover the mammoth payout.

Schools in the Big Ten, Big 12, Atlantic Coast and Southeastern conferences will end up bearing the brunt of the settlement at a cost of about $300 million each over 10 years, the majority of which will be paid to athletes going forward.

The Pac-12 is also part of the settlement, with all 12 sharing responsibility even though Washington State and Oregon State will be the only league members left by this fall after the other 10 schools leave.

PAYING ATHLETES

In the new compensation model, each school will be permitted but not required to set aside up to $21 million in revenue to share with athletes per year, though as revenues rise so could the cap.

Athletes in all sports would be eligible for payments and schools would be given the freedom to decide how that money is divvied up among sports programs. Scholarship limits by sport will be replaced by roster restrictions.

Whether the new compensation model is subject to the Title IX gender equity law is unknown along with whether schools will be able to bring NIL activities in-house as they hope and squeeze out the booster-run collectives that have sprouted up in the last few years to pay athletes. Both topics could lead to more lawsuits.

THE CASE

The class-action federal lawsuit at the center of the settlement, House v. the NCAA, was set to go to trial in January. The complaint, brought by former Arizona State swimmer Grant House and Sedona Prince, a former Oregon and current TCU basketball player, said the NCAA, along with the five wealthiest conferences, improperly barred athletes from earning endorsement money.

The suit also made the case that athletes were entitled to a piece of the billions of dollars the NCAA and those conferences earn from media rights agreements with television networks.

Amid political and public pressure, and facing the prospect of another court loss that some in college sports claimed could reach $20 billion in damages, NCAA and conference officials conceded on what has long been a core principal of the enterprise: That schools don’t directly pay the athletes to play beyond a scholarship.

That principle had already been dented numerous times over the last decade.

Notably, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled against the NCAA in 2021 in a case related to education-related benefits. The narrow focus of the Alston case didn’t collapse the collegiate sports system, but the strong rebuke of the NCAA’s model of amateurism flung the door open to more lawsuits. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a former Yale athlete, put it bluntly: “The bottom line is that the NCAA and its member colleges are suppressing the pay of student athletes who collectively generate billions of dollars in revenues for colleges every year.”

THE OTHER CASES

The settlement is expected to cover two other antitrust cases facing the NCAA and major conferences that challenge athlete compensation rules. Hubbard vs. the NCAA and Carter vs. the NCAA are also currently in front of judges in the Northern District of California.

A fourth case, Fontenot vs, NCAA, creates a potential complication as it remains in a Colorado court after a judge denied a request to combine it with Carter. Whether Fontenot becomes part of the settlement is unknown and it matters because the NCAA and its conferences don’t want to be on the hook for more damages should they lose in court.

“We’re going to continue to litigate our case in Colorado and look forward to hearing about the terms of a settlement proposal once they’re actually released and put in front of a court,” said George Zelcs, a plaintiffs’ attorney in Fontenot.

COLLEGE ATHLETICS OVERHAUL

The solution agreed to in the settlement is landmark, but not surprising. College sports has been trending in this direction for years, with athletes receiving more and more monetary benefits and rights they say were long overdue.

In December, NCAA President Charlie Baker, the former Massachusetts governor who has been on the job for 14 months, proposed creating a new tier of Division I athletics where the schools with the most resources would be required to pay at least half their athletes $30,000 per year. That suggestion, along with many other possibilities, remain under discussion.

The settlement does not make every issue facing college sports go away. There is still a question of whether athletes should be deemed employees of their schools, something Baker and other college sports leaders are fighting against.

Some type of federal legislation or antitrust exemption is likely still needed to codify the terms of the settlement, protect the NCAA from future litigation and pre-empt state laws that attempt to neuter the organization’s authority. As it is, the NCAA is still facing lawsuits that challenge its ability to govern itself, including setting rules limiting multiple-time transfers.

Federal lawmakers have indicated they would like to get something done, but while several bills have been introduced none have gone anywhere.

Despite the unanswered questions, one thing is clear: Major college athletics is about to become more like professional sports than ever before.

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Follow Ralph D. Russo at https://twitter.com/ralphDrussoAP and listen at http://www.appodcasts.com

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AP college football: https://apnews.com/hub/college-football

Anthony Edwards manhandled Mavericks guard Jaden Hardy near halfcourt during a moment of Game 1 of the NBA Western Conference Finals on Wednesday night.

The Timberwolves star guard walled Hardy up multiple times before finally stripping the ball way. The loose ball went to Dallas big man Daniel Gafford. Edwards raced over to him and tried to poke the ball free again as Gafford made his way to the rim. At the bucket, Gafford was heavily contested by Rudy Gobert. His out-of-control shot attempt wasn’t close, and the Timberwolves gained possession of the ball and took off in the other direction.

That play closely mirrored the defense Minnesota was heavily touted for playing in the first two rounds of the playoffs against Phoenix and Denver. But such occurrences were rare in the Wolves’ Game 1 defeat.

The Mavericks scored 62 points in the paint. Kyrie Irving and Luka Doncic took turns penetrating the defense, either to score themselves or drop passes off to teammates for easy finishes.

It was the easiest offense has looked against the Wolves all postseason.

Even when someone like Edwards did try to stand up Irving or Doncic, it was ineffective. Irving would slither by or Doncic would simply muscle his way to the rim. The defensive approach of being more physical than the opponent wasn’t nearly as effective as it was against Denver’s Jamal Murray or Phoenix’s Devin Booker.

“Their ball skills, you’re not going to unsettle them like maybe some of the other pressure we’ve been able to apply,” Timberwolves coach Chris Finch said. “But you still got to pick them up, wear them out.”

And execute your schemes. Minnesota didn’t feel it did that whatsoever on Wednesday. Just look at the pick-and-roll coverage, which point guard Mike Conley said was supposed to feature the guy defending the screener up in coverage. Instead, the Timberwolves often got caught in far too deep of drop coverage, which gave Irving and Doncic room to operate in the mid-range, where they could either finish or facilitate.

“We were trying to take away those guards first and rely on the back side (defenders) who can muddy up the roller and make it tougher for them to get those lobs,” Conley said. “There was points we did it right, but there was points we gave up both. We just have to be better at both of those things.”

Frankly, at everything. That, Timberwolves coach Chris Finch told reporters on the day before Game 2 at Target Center, was the essence of Thursday’s fiery film session.

“It was a rough film session. I told the guys, ‘It’s been a long time since I’ve been this disappointed in your effort. Your performance, your attitude, your application and attention to detail just wasn’t there,’ ” Finch said. “The Western Conference Finals started. Not sure if they got the memo. But they got it (Thursday) afternoon.”

Finch noted his team didn’t hustle. Players didn’t execute the game plan, and they made a number of poor decisions.

The Mavericks got out in transition when the opportunities presented themselves and attacked the rim ad nauseam whenever big center Rudy Gobert wasn’t in the game. The Timberwolves did little to stop them.

That’s not going to cut it against a team like the Mavericks. The Timberwolves can’t just be bigger, faster and stronger than the Mavericks. Dallas is too skilled for that.

The Wolves have to play good, technically-sound basketball to win games in this series. Jaden McDaniels did his best to guard Doncic on Wednesday. But he was too often left on an island. Minnesota’s team defense wasn’t up to snuff.

“I think it’s a whole team effort when you’re playing against two skillfully offensive guys like that,” Wolves forward Kyle Anderson told reporters of Doncic and Irving. “So, guys got to be in gaps. It’s going to take five of us to guard them. We just got to be a little more attentive.”

Anthony Edwards said Minnesota was simply “flat” and “a step behind” on Wednesday. That cannot be the case on Friday – not if the Timberwolves want to prove themselves to be a legitimate factor in this series.

“Yeah, I’m sure we’ll come out and play better. It’s hard to imagine that we’re going to play much worse,” Finch said. “But there’s lots of things that I’m sure Dallas is going to look to adjust to as well, so every one of these games has a personality of its own.”

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A judge has denied a defense motion to dismiss a case against a former Bethel football player accused of sexually assaulting a fellow student in 2018, ruling this week an error by the prosecution that led to a mistrial in January “does not demonstrate any bad faith or intentional misconduct.”

Wednesday’s decision by Ramsey County District Judge Joy Bartscher means Gideon Osamwonyi Erhabor, now 26, of McKinney, Texas, will face a retrial on a third-degree criminal sexual conduct charge. A hearing to schedule the retrial is set for June 11.

Gideon Osamwonyi Erhabor (Courtesy of the Collin County Sheriff’s Office)

Erhabor’s attorney, Daniel Gonnerman, did not respond to a request for comment Thursday on the judge’s decision.

The prosecution’s mistake came on the first day of testimony and involved an audio recording played in court that referenced two other sexual assault cases involving Erhabor. A judge had denied the prosecution’s motion to introduce evidence from the two other cases, known in court as Spreigl evidence. Despite the similarities in the three cases, Judge David Brown wrote, there were what he called “significant differences.”

Ramsey County prosecutors filed the cases against Erhabor on Dec. 3, 2019, after three then-Bethel women reported to law enforcement on separate days in June 2019 that Erhabor had assaulted them in the fall and winter of 2018.

A jury in October 2022 found Erhabor not guilty of third-degree criminal sexual conduct relating to one incident. The other case, alleging an assault in October 2018, remains pending in court under the same charge.

Deputies with the Ramsey County sheriff’s office interviewed Erhabor about the incidents in his Texas hometown in September 2019. While he acknowledged having sex with the three women, he said all the interactions were consensual, according to the criminal complaints.

Erhabor was a student at the Arden Hills Christian college from the fall of 2017 to fall 2018. He was a running back on the football team in 2018.

He was arrested in his Texas hometown a day after the charges were filed and released from the Ramsey County jail after posting a $30,000 bond nearly a month later.

‘Another woman’ referenced

Prior to testimony in the second trial, both attorneys agreed to redact parts of the woman’s interview with a sheriff’s office investigator in 2019. The redactions were to comply with Brown’s ruling relating to Spriegl evidence.

The woman testified Jan. 23 that Erhabor picked her up Sept. 11, 2018, and put on “Black Panther” in his dorm room. Eventually, they began kissing while lying down on a futon. She said Erhabor removed her pants, then grabbed her hips. After he grabbed a condom, “I said no, and started scooting away,” she testified. She said her head was in a pillow during the assault, and that she cried during it.

Later, Assistant Ramsey County Attorney Andrew Johnson gave jurors a redacted transcript of the woman’s interview with the investigator. He then played an audio recording of the interview, which included the investigator saying she “was the third woman.”

The unredacted recording kept playing, with the investigator making a reference to “another woman.” Johnson stopped it.

Bartscher asked for jurors to be taken out of the courtroom.

Johnson apologized that the references to the other women were not redacted from the audio. Gonnerman moved for a mistrial and Bartscher assented, acknowledging there was not another viable option.

‘Error was unintentional’

A hearing was held Feb. 23 on the defense’s motion to dismiss the charge. Bartscher heard arguments from Johnson and Gonnerman, and received written arguments.

Gonnerman raised three arguments for why the case should be dismissed: further prosecution is barred by the double jeopardy clause, which prohibits someone from being prosecuted twice for the same crime; that Erhabor’s rights to speedy trial were violated; and in the interest of justice.

Johnson, meanwhile, maintained it was not deliberate, that he accidentally copied onto his laptop an older audio file “that lacked needed redactions.” He said the newer audio file was made last minute “to be completely fair to the defense by fixing erroneous omissions and inclusions that both parties had overlooked.”

Bartscher, in her ruling filed in court Thursday, wrote that Minnesota case law is clear: Retrial of a criminal case after a mistrial is permitted unless the court finds bad faith, intentional misconduct or when the mistrial was “purposefully designed to goad the defendant into requesting a mistrial.”

Johnson played the audio recording believing it to be an exact copy of the submitted exhibit, Bartscher concluded. “The prosecutor’s error was unintentional; the prosecutor swiftly acknowledged their mistake and concurred with the Defense that a mistrial was the appropriate remedy as no other remedy seemed curative and appropriate.”

Bartscher acknowledged how Gonnerman had highlighted the prosecution allowed the audio to go beyond the first prohibited allegation, thereby exposing the jury to another reference.

“However, the first prohibited allegation was a mere four seconds on the recording and went unnoticed and unopposed, even by the Defense,” Bartscher wrote. “This incident does not demonstrate any bad faith or intentional misconduct.”

On the defense’s argument that a second trial violates Erhabor’s rights to a speedy trial, Bartscher noted that Gonnerman did not file a formal demand for a speedy trial. The judge also pointed out the defense consented to continuances, which she said were due to scheduling conflicts involving both the court and the attorneys.

On the issue of dismissing the case in the interest of justice, Gonnerman noted how Erhabor is Black and that the seated jury was made up of multiple people who are Black and said it was “unprecedented for Ramsey County.” He said the racial makeup of the jury was a “substantial advantage to (Erhabor) that cannot be replicated.”

Although racial makeup of a jury is important in all cases, Bartscher wrote, it is “impossible to determine what, if any impact the jury make up would have had on the outcome of the trial.”

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