Full Episode: Making New York More Accessible for People With Disabilities, NY& Abortion

FULL TRANSCRIPT: Making New York More Accessible for People With Disabilities, NY& Abortion

Dan Clark: More extreme heat overwhelmed parts of New York this week, and while next week looks better, it's still going to be pretty hot. But this weather has some New Yorkers asking, has summer always been like this or is this climate change? While summer is always hot, experts in climate science agree that our weather patterns are changing, causing more extreme storms and some of the hottest days on record. 

In response, advocates made a fresh push this week for the NYC Heat Act. It's a bill that would cap utility bills for low and middle-income consumers at 6% of their income. It would also add a rule that requires utility companies to build new gas hookups for new customers at no charge. That cost is instead spread across all ratepayers, driving costs up. 
Both parts of the bill are intended to lower energy costs for consumers who see those bills spike in times of extreme weather like the heat we're seeing now. State Senator Liz Krueger sponsors the bill, which is passed in the Senate but not the Assembly.

Liz Krueger: Some of the impacts we're seeing because we're still dominantly dependent on oil and gas and we have to get off it as fast as possible. So, when people say there's not a rush. Look out your window, read the weather reports coming in from around the world.

DC: Some utility companies are against the bill, saying it would drive up costs for them. Lawmakers say they'll consider the bill again in next year's legislative session.

Dan Clark: You might not know this, but July is Disability Pride Month. That's to mark the Americans with Disabilities Act, which passed in 1990. It's a law that many Americans and New Yorkers don't always have at top of mind, but it's really important.

The ADA banned discrimination against people with disabilities, and that means everywhere, from housing to employment and a lot more. Because of that law, accessibility for people with disabilities has improved. But there's still a long way to go. That includes here in New York, where about one out of every four adults has a disability, according to the CDC.
Until last year, New York's work on accessibility was scattered across multiple agencies and had a complicated history. But last February, that changed when a new law created the office of the Chief Disability Officer.

To learn all about it and how they're working to make New York more accessible. We spoke with Kim Hill, the first person ever to take on that role.
Kim, thank you so much for being here. I appreciate it.

Kim Hill: Thanks for having me.

DC: Of course, any time. 

I want to talk about this position because it's a new position. Your work is relatively new, you were chosen for it last year. Tell me about the office of the Chief Disability Officer does.

KH: So, there's a couple of different ways I can answer this question. We are required by legislation to do certain things. But I think what is most important for all New Yorkers to know is that we are the open door for people with all different types of disabilities. Our two main goals are to be breaking down the silos that exist among all of the agencies so that all of the agencies are talking and knowing what each other is doing, and also making sure that New York is as accessible, inclusive and integrated as possible.

DC: What do you think that looks like from your perspective? Is it just compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, or is it so much more than that?

KH: It's so much more. I mean, the ADA was groundbreaking, right in its time. And 33 years later, there's still a lot of work to be done. And out of the ADA have come other things like the U.S. Supreme Court, Olmstead ruling, which is a large component of what our office does as chair of New York's most integrated set and coordinating council, which is the Olmstead entity in New York State.

We are required to ensure that New Yorkers live in the most integrated setting appropriate to their needs, and that New York has a plan to make sure that that happens. So, if you think about all the different ways that someone lives their daily life, it affects housing and affects home care and health care, transportation, jobs, employment, and recreation.
So, we can kind of touch into every state agency we work with all of the portfolios that exist with the governor's administration. It's really pretty much everywhere.

DC: Yeah, it's a really big job. You cover a lot of ground and you’ll get a lot of people. You've been doing this for about a year and a couple of months. How has it gone so far?

KH: It's been amazing. Honestly, it's been a dream come true for me. I've been doing disability policy for almost 25 years, and to be able to do it at the state level with Governor Hochul, the first female governor in New York State, being a part of her historical administration, that in and of itself has been a whirlwind. It's been a dream.
To be working under a governor that truly cares about people with disabilities and wants to see them integrated into normal life makes my job so much easier to do because she's so committed to it. So it's been amazing.

DC: This office, I mentioned it was new, but it kind of has a history in different iterations. Can you talk a little bit about for people that don't know, why is this role so important?

KH: So I can speak from where I came from when I first started in state government in 1994. There used to be an office called the Office of the Advocate for Persons with Disabilities, and they were kind of absorbed into the Commission on Quality of Care and Advocacy for People with Disabilities, and slowly over time, as people retired, that office just kind of disappeared.
In that time, advocates realized that there was really no entity overseeing all different types of disabilities. I mean, we have several agencies in New York State, and the portfolio that I work under covers all of our “O” agencies, that’s what we call them. The Office for People with Developmental Disabilities (OPWDD), Office for Mental Health (OMH), that type of thing. But there's no one and has been no one to truly pay attention to the needs of people with just physical disabilities, people with hearing disabilities, people with physical disabilities.
So that's what makes our office unique, is that we were really the only ones purely focusing on those issues while also working with OPWDD, OMH, and other agencies.

DC: I was going to ask you about kind of like the greater area outside of your office like OPWDD, which you work with. Do you also get into people maybe with mental health conditions, things like that?

KH: So within our work with Olmstead, I mean, that covers all people with disabilities. Since that's such a big part of our job, I consider our population all people with disabilities. So, we're dealing with mental health issues, we're dealing with IDD issues, but it's more focused on by our human services and mental hygiene portfolio. So we work together. 
Our team falls within their team. We're constantly talking and working together. But because the physical and sensory disabilities aren't covered by anyone else, we kind of take the lead on those issues.

DC: You're looking at this topic every day you have since you started this job. What do you see as the top issues for people with physical and sensory disabilities?

KH: There's a lot and it's a hard question to answer because depending on your disability, the answer might be different. The Governor has identified employment as a massive goal across all disability types, so that is something that we focus on very much. We also are constantly focusing on how to improve home care, the workforce crisis in New York, because people need home care and then you move on to housing. There's nowhere near enough accessible and affordable housing.
So once we cover those three things, you know that people have the care they need,  housing that they can live in, and hopefully a job that they want to go to. Then do we have the transportation to get them there? Then are the recreational activities that they want to participate in available and accessible and integrated, so it doesn't end.

DC: I can imagine. 

To be honest with you, when your position was created last year and announced, it made me think about this whole issue area very differently in terms of my experience is my own life. I was visiting friends down in New York City who lived in Brooklyn, and we were getting on the train to go to Manhattan and it wasn't an accessible stop and I thought at the time that that was kind of a rarity that there would be a stop that's inaccessible.
I found out through my friends that there are actually many, many stops that are inaccessible. I mean, we're thinking of transportation. That's a huge issue area.

KH: It is.

DC: With all of these things being such big parts of people's lives, how do you move forward and try to find solutions? How do you strategize that in your office?

KH: Well, we try to prioritize, try to have like five priorities at a time because we can't do it all at once. We are a small but mighty office. So, we do try to take a breath and take things one at a time. We also listen to the advocates that we work with and invite them into our office as much as possible, and by listening to their priorities, they generally align with ours. That helps us figure out what we're working on and what we're moving to next. 
Also because we're in charge of developing this Olmstead plan and it we're having to put it into like a structure and looking at things from how, you know, what is the defined problem, what are the proposed suggestions. So it kind of helps us keep organized while also making sure that we're not letting certain things fall off the table.

DC: Another part of your job is to ensure compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. I will say I was a little embarrassed not to know that it passed in 1990. It felt more recent than I thought it was, to be honest with you. When I think of the ADA in my head, that was something that we passed in the seventies, not in 1990.
So when you look at that, knowing that we have 33 years since then, there's been a lot of work towards it. How do you approach that part of the job? And I guess can you give us a sense of how out of compliance we may be?

KH: I think the big things people solved, right? I mean, anything that's been built since 1990 is supposed to be accessible. Supposed to be they aren't always, but for the most part, in buildings, for places of public accommodation, you can get in the door, there's elevators, but the devil's in the details. When you start to talk about measurements and doorways and is a bathroom entirely accessible the way that it should be? You know, there's always going to be room for growth. 
Just like you mentioned, New York City, I mean, they are in the process. A huge investment has been made to make the subway stations accessible. And it's clearly going to take some time. When you look around New York City, there's constant construction, same upstate, every time something new is built, you know, something's taken down.
We have to make sure that things are staying accessible, and I think it's going to be ever growing. And, you know, every day we get more and more into compliance. But there's always going to be smaller places, places that aren't familiar and have never been exposed to a disability population that aren't as familiar. So we take them one step at a time.

DC: You know, if I'm a New Yorker and I think about this all time in terms of the subway stops and I'm thinking about this as I'm entering businesses and things like that, if somewhere is out of compliance or could use a more accessible structure or, you know, the doorways aren't wide enough, things like that. If I'm somebody who wants to maybe let you know or the state know about that, what would I do?

KH: You could email us, accessibility@exec.dot gov. That's the best way to get a hold of us.
We want people to reach out to us through this email. We've heard from a lot of people, some on access issues. We actually just got on a couple of days ago and we're working with the town and the independent living center that is in that town to make these changes, and with the state agency that's involved. 
Because we are housed in the governor's office, it gives us access to all of the state agencies. We can pretty quickly get to the right people that need to make the changes. 
So far, people have been very open, happy and actually eager to help. I think a lot of it is people just still don't know, even 33 years later.

DC: That’s what I think too, and that was why I brought up the subway stops. The thing is this is an area that a lot of people just don't think about in their daily life, but in reality, if I'm going to the grocery store and that door is not accessible for somebody who needs food, that's a problem.

KH: Right.

DC: Given that you cover such a wide area of issues, you'll be going into your second full year soon. Do you have enough resources in that office to do all of this because it is such a wide response?

KH: A fun question. 

So my team right now is made up of a gentleman named Ben, he is our senior policy adviser. My executive assistant Kim Buchan keeps us all together and we have two interns as well. One is a fellow from Harvard, and we have an intern from the University of Denver. So, like I said, small but mighty. We do have three jobs that are posted right now, so we are growing. I’m very excited about that. I encourage anyone who's watching to look at LinkedIn, on the governor's the Executive Chamber website to seek out those jobs. 
What is really important about our office is that we are looking for people with disabilities to hire. So, I hope that we can continue to grow. I mean I know we're growing by three jobs in the next few months, so that's exciting. I don't know that anyone in the executive chamber would ever say we have enough people to do our job. 
It's a big state and there's a lot of different priorities. So, I'm really proud of what we've built so far and looking forward to what's coming in the future.

DC: Yes, you have quite a bit to do. Kim Hill, New York's Chief Disability Officer, thank you so much.

KH: Thanks for having me.

Dan Clark: Turning now to a new edition of On the Bill, where we tell you about a bill out of Albany that you might not hear about otherwise. This week we're doing a follow up on A75b also called the 911 Notice Act.

In the years after 911, people who were close to the attack, like first responders and workers were getting sick and developing long term health problems. So, Congress approved new funding in 2010 to help people pay for treatment. That set up the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, but to this day, a lot of people who worked in the area and might have gotten sick have not filed a claim.

That brings us to the 911 Notice Act. It's a bill that would require businesses with 50 or more employees to tell past and present workers they could qualify for the fund. And after we told you about the bill, it passed the state legislature unanimously this year. That means it's now up to Governor Kathy Hochul to either sign the bill or veto it.
Michael Barasch is an attorney who's represented 9/11 victims and their families for the past two decades.

Michael Barasch: While over 85% of the first responders have enrolled in the World Trade Center Health Program, less than 10% of the downtown office workers, students, teachers and residents are enrolled. They simply don't know that they are entitled to the benefits, and this bill goes a long way to educating people. That's all we're asking.

DC: We’ll let you know when the governor makes a decision.

Dan Clark: When the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, it caused a lot of confusion about access to abortion. A lot of people didn't know if abortion was still legal in their state. And in the past year, some states have passed some really strict limits on abortion. That’s because it's been the first time in five decades that that was even an option for those states. But in New York, that hasn't happened. It's not expected to at least any time soon. 
And that got us thinking about how confusing all of this is for everyone. So in this new installment of our civic series New York &, we explore the topic of abortion and how different levels of government play a role.

Alexis Young: Welcome to "New York &: Abortion Law." I'm Alexis Young. 

For decades, reproductive healthcare has been a contentious political issue in the US, particularly when it comes to abortion. And when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, the issue gained national attention. But what does the overturning of Roe v. Wade mean, and what do abortion laws look like at the state level in New York?
Let's take a look. Roe v. Wade was a 1973 federal Supreme Court decision, which guaranteed the right to an abortion with certain stipulations. States were limited in the restrictions they could put on abortion because the procedures were constitutionally protected at the federal level. In the decades after Roe was enshrined, there was a constant struggle between settled federal law and states who wanted the ability to self-regulate. 

In 1992, the Supreme Court heard Planned Parenthood versus Casey in which they again upheld the right to an abortion but also gave states more room to regulate it. In 2022, the Supreme Court heard Dobbs versus Jackson Women's Health Organization in which they examined a Mississippi law that placed certain time restrictions on abortion procedures. The court decided the Mississippi law is legal while also overturning Roe v. Wade. The result of this is not a federal abortion ban but rather a removal of the constitutional right to an abortion. 
With Roe officially overturned, states now have more room to apply the law as they see fit, which has resulted in greater restrictions and bans across the country. But what does this mean for New York? What do abortion laws look like in our state? 

The right to an abortion was legalized in New York in 1970 and then reinforced by the Reproductive Health Act, which passed in 2019. As it currently stands, people in New York have the right to an abortion within the first 24 weeks of pregnancy. Abortion procedures are allowed outside the 24-week window if the fetus is no longer viable or if the patient's health is at risk. This law applies to both New York residents and visitors. 

So, the protections are pretty straightforward. We have laws on the books that allow people to get abortion procedures with certain restrictions in place, but there's a growing movement to further advance these protections, which would be done by enshrining the Equal Rights Amendment into the state constitution. 
The Equal Rights Amendment, or ERA, would expand a variety of anti-discriminatory safeguards and constitutionally protect the right to an abortion in New York. But what's the difference between a right that is codified by law versus a right that is protected by the state constitution? We asked Katharine Bodde and Jenna Lauter, two legal experts from the New York Civil Liberties Union.

Jenna Lauter: When we say that the right to abortion is codified in state law, what we mean is that New York State's own statutes provide an alternative source of the right to an abortion. So, New York law, through state statute, provides that abortion is legal here in New York State, and not only legal but protected as well. 
In order to amend the New York State Constitution, you have to go through essentially a threefold process. So, the legislature has to pass the amendment in two consecutive legislative sessions, and then the amendment goes on the actual ballot before the people for a referendum vote.

Katharine Bodde: The Constitution is more difficult to change. It is less subject to political winds. And certainly, we have seen strong winds over the past decade or so.

AY: Supporters want abortion rights enshrined in the state constitution because it would then become more difficult to remove them, but opponents don't want that for the same reason. Where does the ERA currently stand in the legal process?

JL: With respect to the ERA, that has now passed the legislature in two consecutive sessions, and the next step is for it to go before the people for a vote.

AY: If you are a New Yorker, you will be able to vote for or against the Equal Rights Amendment in the November, 2024 election. So keep that in mind. So we know what the abortion situation is at the state level, and we know where the Supreme Court stands on the issue. But is it possible for abortion to become illegal in New York even though there are state laws saying otherwise? We ask Katharine Bodde from NYCLU.

KB: If Congress passed and the President signed a law that made abortion illegal across the country, then our rule of federalism where federal law is supreme to state law would govern.

AY: Federalism is when a territory is presided over by multiple levels of government. For example, Rochester, New York has its own city government, which is subject to the laws of New York State's government, which is subject to the laws of the US government. And the top of the food chain has final say with certain exceptions given by the US Constitution. This is all to say a federal abortion ban or restriction would supersede state law. So at the risk of being too speculative, what would happen in that case?

JL: I think, you know, it's probably relatively safe to assume that whatever federal administration passes a nationwide abortion ban is also going to be fairly invested in enforcing that at the federal level. That said, there may be avenues for New York state to limit the extent to which it contributes to and supports prosecution under federal law.
So for instance, New York might, under the scenario, explore ways that it could prohibit law enforcement, prosecutors from facilitating federal government efforts to arrest or investigate people who are involved in abortion care in New York and could direct state level prosecutors not to seek prosecution under federal anti-abortion charges.

AY: There is also another asterisk to consider when looking at New York's abortion laws, the laws of other states. One state's laws do not supersede another's. If Delaware decided that nobody could leave their house unless they were wearing a sparkly fanny pack, we in New York wouldn't have to worry about it, unless we wanted to visit Delaware in which case you'd need to strap up.
So if someone was visiting New York to get abortion pills and were from a state where abortion is banned, they would need to go through the entire process and handle any aftercare or complications in New York before returning to their home state in order to minimize the risk of litigation or prosecution. 
There's a lot to take away from all this. The establishment of federal and state laws and the way they are enforced is in a frequent state of flux. The legal battle around the right to an abortion shows no sign of slowing down. Through the fog, there is one constant. The majority of American people have supported the right to an abortion in some capacity for decades. 
Thanks for tapping in, and until next time, be well, be good, and stay informed.

Check out more episodes in the NY& series.
 

Catch this week's show on your local PBS member station, or watch on YouTube, Facebook, or using the free PBS app anytime after Friday. A podcast version is available wherever you normally get podcasts. 

On This Week's Edition of New York NOW:

• July is Disability Pride Month, marking the passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act in 1990. We speak with New York's Chief Disability Officer, Kimberly Hill, about how the state can become more accessible for people with disabilities.
• Ever since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling last year, there's been a lot of confusion and misinformation about how laws on abortion work, and who can change them. We break it all down in a new installment of NY&, our civics series.
• An update on the 9/11 Notice Act in a new On The Bill segment.