Speak With the Speaker: AI Accountability, Synagogue Protests, and 9/11 Air Quality Records

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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. We begin today with the September edition of our monthly series Speak With the Speaker. It's my questions and yours for New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin. You can start calling or texting your questions now at 212-433-WNYC. Call or text 212-433-9692. We'll do our latest Ask the Mayor with Mayor Mamdani later in the month. Today it's Speak With the Speaker.

Today the speaker comes with news that relates to the special edition we did of this show yesterday, coincidentally, on the issue of AI. The speaker has just announced that she will convene all 51 members of the City Council on Monday, October 5th for what they call a Committee of the Whole hearing. If it's your first time hearing that phrase, Committee of the Whole, that's W-H-O-L-E. Consider this a New York City civics lesson. It's a format essentially reserved for matters the Council considers existential. The subject, yes, artificial intelligence, how many times did we use that word "existential" in yesterday's special hour?

Menin has sent letters now to Dario Amodei of Anthropic, who we played clips of and talked about centrally yesterday, and Sam Altman of OpenAI, saying she expects them to appear and answer questions about what safeguards, if any, stand between their products and the public. Her press release cites that Anthropic researcher who recently resigned, saying the technology could kill us all, how's that for existential, by the end of the decade, and a reported incident in July that we've talked about here a couple of times, which OpenAI's own test agents went rogue and hacked another company, something its human programmers did not ask it to do, in pursuit of a goal the humans didn't even set.

A city legislature with no jurisdiction, officially, over a technology being built in California and regulated, or not regulated, in Washington, is summoning two CEOs to City Hall. We will ask Speaker Menin what she thinks she and City Council can do about that. We'll talk about other things too as we talk between anniversaries 25 years since September 11th, 15 years in a few weeks since Occupy Wall Street. Menin has a personal connection to both. Again, it's my questions and yours for Speaker Menin at 212-433-WNYC. Call or text 212-433-9692. Speaker Menin, we always appreciate that you do this. Welcome back to WNYC.

Speaker Julie Menin: Thank you, Brian. So great to be with you again.

Brian Lehrer: All right. AI, October 5th, a Committee of the Whole, which almost never happens, what made artificial intelligence a thing that warrants it?

Speaker Julie Menin: We're obviously all aware of the recent reports of the warnings that-- whether it's Jacob Coxon, the engineer from Anthropic, who sounded really a clarion call warning, or whether it's other safety experts who have, for quite some time, warned about some significant risks that are posed by AI. We really want to get into what those risks are and what type of responsible guardrails we can do as a major legislative body.

No one is arguing that there are not important uses of AI. We know that AI has done some incredible work in terms of health care and scientific breakthroughs in terms of helping businesses, but at the same time, there is a responsibility that we have as government to ensure that we are addressing some significant safety risks and certainly that we are addressing the potential of a catastrophic scenario.

We saw what happened with rogue AI agents, as you mentioned, which I want to point out was actually done during a safety test. It's not as if the agents went rogue at another time. They were actually conducting a safety test when the AI agents decided to act in that nefarious way and go outside of these controlled lab experiments. I think we as government have a real responsibility to act.

The point of this Committee of the Whole legislative hearing, we're going to hear from AI experts all around the country, we're going to hear from these major AI companies. We want to hear from the general public, and we're going to utilize information to enact responsible legislative guardrails. I think we have a lot of interesting, novel legislative ideas that we are looking at currently.

Brian Lehrer: Can you give me some examples? Because as I asked in the intro, what can a city council do about a technology built in California, a whole country away, and regulated or not regulated in Washington?

Speaker Julie Menin: Brian, I will say this. I've been a regulatory attorney for many, many years. It's how I started my career in Washington D.C. working as a regulatory attorney at a large firm and then at a large Fortune 500 company in New York. That and I formerly served as Commissioner of the Department of Consumer Affairs. There are many ways the city of New York can legislate on this public safety issue.

We have a responsibility to play a significant role in the public safety, health and welfare of over 8.5 million residents of the city. I formally taught a class as an adjunct professor at Columbia called When Cities Take the Lead, and the whole premise of the class was that when the federal government is deregulating or not acting, as is the case right now, it really is up to cities to take a major legislative role.

There are many different ways that we can get to this issue. We have to remember that a lot of the safety issues that are being raised actually affect numerous city agencies, which we have both legislative power over and an oversight role over. I don't want to make an announcement here on what we're going to do legislatively. I want to tell you that we are actively working on it, and we have a lot of, I think, very creative and novel ways that we can responsibly regulate this industry and really put in significant guardrails.

Brian Lehrer: One more thing on this from me before we go on to other things. We'll see if listeners call or text with questions about this topic, too. I believe that last year the Council had already created an Office of Algorithmic Accountability to police the city's own use of AI. How's that going?

Speaker Julie Menin: That's exactly right. Both myself and Council Member Jen Gutiérrez passed a number of different bills to regulate AI. Specifically what those bills did is to create an Office of Algorithmic Accountability to review city agency use of AI and algorithmic systems, to conduct risk assessments, to investigate potential harms, and to require corrective action when appropriate.

One of the things that the office did is it's supposed to establish standards and safeguards. There are certain reports that the city was supposed to have made under those bills. They have not been done yet, so that is an issue of real concern we have, that we did legislate in this area, but some of those reports have not been done in the way that they were supposed to. Those laws are not being fully complied with right now, and that is an issue we are concerned about.

Brian Lehrer: All right. Here's our first listener question for you in the Speak With the Speaker segment, and it is a hot button one that just came in in a text. Listener writes, "My question for Menin is her using her influence to cancel the Met Gala's Galliano night. Does she think it's right for powerful people to silence people in the art world?" I'm thinking Trump and most recently Robert Kraft. "Galliano was remorseful about his racism and antisemitism," the listener writes. "Does Menin not think people can grow and learn? What does it do in society when powerful people use their influence to silence art and artists? Did she do the same about Lagerfeld, who is a virulent anti-Black racist?"

There's a number of questions baked in there. Where would you start to answer?

Speaker Julie Menin: Sure, I'm happy to answer that because in the letter that I wrote to the Met, which I publicly released, the letter that I wrote to both the Met and Anna Wintour, I made a real distinction. I said, "It is perfectly acceptable to exhibit Galliano's work. If the Met had decided to do an exhibition that had Galliano's work, I have no issue with that. Museums all the time exhibit controversial artists, and there is nothing wrong with that." My issue with Galliano was the Met's decision and Anna Wintour's decision to laud, elevate, and celebrate Galliano at the Met Gala. That is where I really had a problem with it.

Galliano was convicted in France of not only antisemitic incidents, but anti-Asian incidents and racism, and that is what a court of law in France found. Galliano apologized, and while, of course, we should always believe in second chances and contrition, he also was involved in a 2019 incident. After he apologized, there was an incident that happened in 2019 with very similar type of language. It was deeply troubling.

For me, the distinction is that, yes, the Met could make the decision to exhibit Galliano's work, and there I did not have an issue with it, but the decision to bestow upon Galliano an honor that the Met has only bestowed three times before in its history to Galliano, to me, was extremely troubling. I'm glad that they made the decision not to honor him at the gala. What they will decide to do if they're going to do a Galliano exhibition or not, that again, and I made this point very strongly in the letter, there is no issue with exhibiting his work or exhibiting controversial artists' work. That happens all the time.

Brian Lehrer: Another antisemitism related question, I think, from Jody in Brooklyn on line 1. Jody, you're on WNYC with Speaker Menin.

Jody: Hello, Speaker. Thanks for everything you're doing. I'm a 3G and I have two college kids. I think a lot about how prepared this generation is as they head into college and what they are lacking in 9/11, Holocaust education. I'm wondering, as you enter the second year of your education Holocaust Education Tours Initiative, what you are experiencing as the most pressing hurdles and maybe also if you want to talk about what you're most hopeful about as you expand the program this year.

Speaker Julie Menin: Thank you so much, Jody, for that question. As someone who also has college-age kids, I completely understand the concern. Look, this is one of the reasons why as Speaker, we passed this five-point plan to combat antisemitism because antisemitic incidents are soaring in the city. Over half of all hate crimes are against the Jewish community, yet the Jewish community comprises about 10% of the population in New York.

As you noted, we have expanded a program that, several years ago, I launched to provide a universal field trip for all eighth grade public school students to go to the Museum of Jewish Heritage to the permanent Holocaust exhibition. I thought that this program was very important because some studies were showing that approximately 34% of young people believe the Holocaust is a myth or is exaggerated. As a daughter and granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, I just find that statistic so deeply troubling.

We expanded upon that initiative by getting giving $1.25 million to the Museum of Jewish Heritage so that all eighth grade students can come to the Holocaust exhibition and learn about it, because one of the best antidotes to hate is education. You also, interestingly, mentioned 9/11.

Just the other week the City Council announced that we are giving $1 million to the 9/11 Memorial and Museum to do a similar type of field trip to the 9/11 Memorial and Museum, so that basically US public school students in New York can learn about the lessons of 9/11, can learn about what happened on that day, can learn about the heroic acts of our first responders and really the kindness of strangers. There's so many compassionate moments that happen on 9/11 in the weeks and months after. We are actually doing that field trip as well.

Brian Lehrer: In my local park uptown here in Inwood on 9/11, there was a display of more than 100 nations' flags representing that people from more than 100 nations were killed in the 9/11 attacks, which doesn't get a lot of press, but it's, of course, so New York, right?

Speaker Julie Menin: I think that's a really important point, Brian, that we have to remember that this wasn't-- What happened on 9/11 when the terrorists murdered 2,977 people, this was an issue that didn't just affect New York or the United States, but from countries all across the world. It was interesting because I served on the jury that picked the 9/11 Memorial. In that process, over, I believe it was, 63 nations submitted a design for how New York should best memorialize that day. We as a jury were looking at designs from all around the world to best figure out how to memorialize it, and we ended up obviously selecting Michael Arad's Reflecting Absence.

Brian Lehrer: Following up on the listener's antisemitism question, "You're the first Jewish speaker of City Council. We're here in the middle of the High Holy Days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. You said recently that new protections are keeping Jewish New Yorkers safer. Also, the mayor has promised a comprehensive plan to combat antisemitism. A, have you seen that? What do you want in the mayor's plan? What were you referring to that you think are already keeping Jewish New Yorkers safer?"

Speaker Julie Menin: In our five-point plan to combat antisemitism, one of the things that we did is we passed the bill to protect houses of worship, really all houses of worship, the Safe Access Act, to make sure that when congregants go to their respective house of worship, that they can safely enter and exit the house of worship, because obviously the right to freedom of worship is something that is sacrosanct. I was very pleased that that bill overwhelmingly passed the City Council.

In terms of the High Holy Days. we are seeing armed guards outside of synagogues all around the city, my own synagogue included. I know my daughter recently asked me when we were going for Rosh Hashanah services. She said, "Mommy, why are there these armed guards outside?" It's really heartbreaking to try to explain to a young child why is it that when we are trying to worship, there have to be armed guards outside of our synagogue. This is unfortunately happening all over the city. This is something that we are very focused on and we obviously want to make sure that Jewish New Yorkers and all New Yorkers are feeling safe as they go to their respective house of worship.

Brian Lehrer: Listener writes, "Is the speaker conflating protests against genocide in Israel with antisemitism?"

Speaker Julie Menin: Look, obviously people have the right to peacefully protest. The right to peacefully protest is sacrosanct and always must be protected. I think about when I was in law school and the seminal First Amendment free speech case, the Skokie case, where Nazis were allowed to march in the town of Skokie. While that is morally repugnant and obviously very upsetting, it's absolutely protected by the First Amendment. It's actually a case that sometimes in my class at Columbia I would refer to.

We have to make sure that that right to protest peacefully is always protected. What our bill did in the City Council to protect houses of worship is it said that the NYPD had to create a buffer zone when there was injury or intimidation or harassment. In those instances, as someone's trying to go to their synagogue or their mosque or their church or any house of worship, they should be able to freely enter and exit. If it is a peaceful protest, the buffer zone does not apply.

Brian Lehrer: One follow-up to that listener's question. There are protests scheduled against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he comes to speak at the UN General Assembly next Thursday. It's reported today that Mayor Mamdani will not be personally attending those protests. There are many people, including many Jews, who say a big reason for the spike in antisemitism is Netanyahu's actions in Gaza, the West Bank, et cetera, which are almost universally considered murderously terrible.

That, of course, doesn't make it okay to attack random synagogues or Jewish individuals here. That is antisemitism, of course. Their argument is Netanyahu's awful actions in the name of the Jewish people will help lead to those attacks, even though they're wrong. Do you agree there is some cause and effect there?

Speaker Julie Menin: I have been very critical of Netanyahu. I was critical of him prior to October 7th. We have to remember, Brian, that prior to October 7th, tens and tens of thousands of Israelis were protesting in the streets about what Netanyahu was trying to do to the judicial system. You saw those protests happen prior to October 7th and then certainly after October 7th, his actions.

I really hope there is a leadership change in Israel upcoming in the fall. That is something that I think would be helpful to combat antisemitism. Look, it has been a very, very difficult time for the Jewish community right now.

Brian Lehrer: Jorge in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, you're on WNYC, with City Council Speaker Julie Menin in our monthly Speak With the Speaker segment. Hi, Jorge.

Jorge: Hey, good morning, Brian. Good morning, Speaker Menin. I want to first thank you for being on the segment. My question relates to something that you mentioned at the beginning of this year, which is the city's land use review procedure, which you said was broken.

I live in a neighborhood where we've had a lot of controversial rezonings. Many of them, people have felt have been harmful, including one that just got certified Watermark Capital's plan to destroy 100-year-old church, St. Rocco's Church in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. I want to know, Speaker, how are you going to help communities like mine where we're being flooded by these private rezonings that are-- instead of building affordable housing, we're actually going to be building more luxury housing that will hurt, not help us?

Could you elaborate on what you meant by the land use review procedure being broken and how you intend specifically to reform it to help communities like mine that aren't getting the kind of affordable housing that we need and instead, are getting a lot of private luxury market instead, which isn't helping us.

Speaker Julie Menin: Thank you, Jorge, so much for that question. I mentioned last time I was on this show that I believe the land use system is broken. What I mean by that is I chaired Community Board 1 for seven years in Lower Manhattan after 9/11, and at that time, we had a tremendous amount of development happening simultaneously.

The ULURP process, the cities land use process, I believe, is broken because there are very little standards around ULURP. Unlike other cities that truly have comprehensive planning, so when you're building a new project, you're looking at things such as, "How many new school seats do we need to build? How many two and three bedrooms are being created? What will this do to the local school? What will it do to local transit? What is the amount of affordable housing?" all of the different impacts, we don't really have that kind of comprehensive planning here in New York.

We have a piecemeal process where every single time there is a ULURP, there is a different negotiated settlement with a different outcome each and every time. That is not comprehensive planning. That is what I meant by I believe that the ULURP process is indeed broken and in drastic need of reform.

One of the things that we are doing in the City Council is when I became Speaker, I truly believe that we have an opportunity, as well as frankly, an attendant obligation to be more proactive in our land use decisions. By that I mean I want us to think outside of the box. What we're doing is we, for example, came up with a plan to build 100% affordable housing on top of public library branches. We surveyed and worked with the public library system to look at their 215 public library branches to see which ones were suitable to building public 100% affordable housing on top of. We've identified a number of different sites. We are actively working on that project.

In addition, we announced our small lots project where we basically looked at all of the vacant parcels of land, those little slivers between buildings and that are oftentimes overgrown with weeds and sometimes unfortunately rats. Those are small lots. We map them out. We mapped out 2,850 of them and we believe by amending the construction code, and we have a whole task force to do just that, we are going to amend the construction code to allow the development on these small lots. We believe we can unlock potentially 35,000 units of housing on these small lots.

Those are the ways that I believe we are creatively trying to build more affordable housing in New York. Long term, we absolutely need to reform our broken ULURP process.

Brian Lehrer: We took an antisemitism call. Here, I think, is an Islamophobia call. Samya in Bay Ridge, you're on WNYC with Speaker Menin. Hi, Samya, thank you for calling in.

Samya: Hi, Brian, thank you. My question was what actions are the speaker considering against Islamophobia coming from within the House, from people like Vickie Paladino? We've seen the comments she has made on Fox News and other media. Her tweets are atrocious. I'm wondering if there's anything that she can do to make Muslims around the city feel safer.

Speaker Julie Menin: Thank you so much for that question. I agree that those comments were completely inappropriate. I condemn them and I do believe that they are Islamophobic and very harmful to the Muslim community. This is something that I take very seriously. Council Member Paladino had made some other comments a couple of months ago and she was referred to the Ethics Committee. Council Member Paladino sued the Council and a settlement was reached with the council member about that.

I strongly condemn the comments that she has made. They are deeply troubling. This is something that I have worked on for a long time, certainly after 9/11 when I chaired Community Board 1. In the wake of 9/11, we saw a real rise in Islamophobia around the city and around the country. As Chair of Community Board 1, I stood up for the Islamic Cultural Center and mosque and actually wrote the resolution supporting that project and got that resolution through my community board.

I received death threats for almost a year after that because of the stance I took. I remember the pivotal meeting we had on that where I got up there and I said, "Look, I'm the daughter of a Holocaust survivor. My grandfather was murdered in the Holocaust simply because he was born Jewish. What we are seeing in terms of Islamophobia after 9/11 is not acceptable." That is why I took a very strong stance in favor of the Islamic Cultural Center and mosque as Chair of Community Board 1. This is something that I do take very seriously.

Brian Lehrer: Will continue in a minute with New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin, our monthly Speak With the Speaker segment, your calls and texts, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692 as it's my questions and yours. I'm going to be asking after the break about-- tomorrow is the 15th anniversary of the start of the Occupy Wall Street protest in what was then her neighborhood, Lower Manhattan, and what she thinks should be done about the inequality that remains in the city today, which is what the Occupy movement was protesting, and more of your calls and texts. Stay with us.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC as we continue with this month's edition of Speak With the Speaker, your calls and texts and my questions too for New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin. Speaker Menin, tomorrow- I think I somehow accidentally said next month earlier, but tomorrow, September 17th is the 15th anniversary of the beginning of Occupy Wall Street, that encampment in Lower Manhattan. You were chairing the community board down there there when Occupy Wall Street took over Zuccotti Park. Remind us what you thought of it at the time and tell us what you think of it today.

Speaker Julie Menin: Brian, it feels like it was yesterday. When those protests were happening, I was Chair of Community Board 1. I led the efforts to balance the First Amendment rights of the protesters and to, at the same time, address quality of life concerns of residents who lived in the neighborhood.

We passed a resolution at Community Board 1 at that time that supported the right of Occupy to peacefully protest and assemble, and at the same time, to ensure that residents and small businesses that were adjacent to Zuccotti Park had their issues addressed regarding noise and sanitation. We even got off-site bathroom facilities, I remember, and garbage removal and street cleanings in the occupied protest zone. That was something, I think that was really very, very important.

Look, the premise of Occupy, the issue around income inequality, I think we've worked really hard in the City Council and certainly in this year's budget to address income inequality. For example, the City Council successfully fought for an expansion of fair fares. We got the largest expansion of fair fares ever. Now 1.3 million New York are now eligible for reduced subway, bus and paratransit so that we're really helping those in need.

We also successfully fought for and got a $1,000 college savings account for every public school kindergartner. This builds on a program I launched a decade ago called NYC Kids RISE. The reason, Brian, I feel so strongly about it is that studies show that for someone who goes to vocational school or a two-year community college, or a four-year college, they are going to earn almost double the amount of wages as someone who does not go to vocational school or two-year community college or a four-year college.

By creating these universal college savings accounts for public school students, that is one of the single best ways that we can address income inequality, which is by lifting wages. That is why a decade ago I launched that project and why I felt very strongly that we should invest these city funds in expanding upon that project.

Brian Lehrer: We started the segment with your announcement that you're going to be holding a special committee hearing. In this case, the committee includes all of City Council, all 51 members, because you see it as such an existential issue. That Committee of the Whole, as you call it, almost is never convened, but you are convening it on Monday, October 5th, on AI in New York City.

Here's a text that follows up on that. Listener writes, "I suppose the question would be, who else is City Council consulting with around AI besides the leaders of OpenAI and Anthropic?" Who you say you're going to ask to come and testify. The listener continues, "Have they brought in any Indigenous researchers on machine learning as experts for this meeting of the whole?"

Speaker Julie Menin: Absolutely. That is the purpose of the hearing, is to bring in experts from around the country. We've already begun that outreach in the last couple days, reaching out to academics, reaching out to scientists, reaching out to researchers, so that we are bringing in the best and the brightest who really are experts in their respective fields. That is who we want to hear from.

Of course, we want to hear from Anthropic and OpenAI, obviously, but at the same time, we want to hear from experts from all around the country. We think this is really important. Our hearings, OpenAI and Anthropic, we want to hear from them. They will be under oath when they testify. This is something very important. We need to get a much better understanding of these real safety concerns that have been raised and how they plan on addressing it, and then, of course, how legislatively we, as a body, can put in place responsible guardrails and safeguards.

Brian Lehrer: Listener follows up, "It's wealth inequality-" meaning not just income inequality, "-that Occupy was about." Anything to address that in particular for that listener?

Speaker Julie Menin: Certainly. One of the things that the Council is always looking at is issues around how those in need are not really getting the same amount of services and protections. I think about worker protection in particular. I served as Commissioner of Consumer Affairs when we first decided to expand that agency to cover worker protection, because we saw for example, in the car wash industry. That was the first industry that we decided to basically go after in terms of what was happening to workers, in terms of a lack of worker protection. We passed the car wash workers bill. That was our first test case bill to determine how we, as a city, could expand upon worker protection.

I take that point seriously. That's something that we definitely need to address. I do want to say through the car wash workers bill, through paid sick leave, through the Freelance Isn't Free Act, through all of these different bills that we looked at the formerly called Department of Consumer Affairs, we proved that the city does have a space to regulate worker protection and to deal with some of those issues where those in need were not getting the same level of worker protections.

Brian Lehrer: On the AI, the city has already restricted phones in schools. There's also a new city policy to restrict the use of AI differently at different grade levels. I see that two of your members, Council Member Krishnan and Dinowitz, who respectively chair the Oversight and Investigations and Education committees, want YouTube banned in city schools, citing falling test scores and complaints from teachers and parents. Do you back them on that particular limit on use of screens?

Speaker Julie Menin: I do. I joined them for a press conference yesterday. We have to remember, Brian, that overall reading scores for students between third and eighth grade dropped six percentage points compared to last year. I mentioned this yesterday, both at the hearing and at the press conference, third grade proficiency alone sank by nearly 14%. That is a real issue. What we're seeing is for young people, this constant time spent in front of screens can be addictive. We really need to put, again- and that was a point of the hearing, to put guardrails in place about the screen time, about the use of a lot of these videos, about the constant proliferation of online testing. I think we had a really productive hearing yesterday, and these are something that we are very excited about tackling.

Brian Lehrer: Listener writes, "Can the speaker compel the AI execs to testify? Does New York City have any power in that respect?"

Speaker Julie Menin: Thank you for that question. I take this question very seriously as a regulatory attorney. We have subpoena power. First of all, the subpoena power, in my opinion, has not been used enough by the City Council. It's something when I ran for speaker, I said, "We would absolutely utilize our subpoena power." I think it's very important to use it. I hope it does not get to that point. We don't want to have to use the subpoena power. We have reached out to OpenAI and Anthropic and said that we expect them to be there and so we fully expect them to be there and we don't want to have to use subpoena in power but we will if we need to.

Brian Lehrer: I hear you. 9/11 anniversary related question, listener writes, "Last week Jerry Nadler said the boundaries of New York's 9/11 exposure zone was decided in order to limit liability not based on where the toxins were. Will there be efforts to expand the exposure zone now that we know toxins expanded into Greenwich Village-" according to the listener, "-for weeks after 9/11?"

Speaker Julie Menin: This is a real issue about what happened after 9/11. Look, I was down there at the time. I owned a small business called Vine. It was a restaurant and catering business located a couple blocks away from Ground Zero. I lived a couple blocks away from Ground Zero. My husband had a 9:00 AM meeting at the World Trade Center that morning. My mother who lived with us had gone out to a doctor's appointment. She didn't come home until the afternoon. We couldn't find her. When she came home she was covered in the white grayish ash. She subsequently died of a 9/11-related cancer.

This is something that I have worked on for years as chair of the community board. We fought very hard for the creation of the World Trade Center Health Registry and for full health care coverage for first responders, residents. I really believe in this issue. Myself and Councilmember Brewer pushed the administration to release the 9/11 files. We passed a bill in the City Council about this. We fought successfully for the funding for the Department of Investigation to do this 9/11 report.

We have to remember that the federal EPA told us as Downtown residents and as those that lived and worked Downtown to remain Downtown. They told us that the air was safe to breathe. That was a blatant and flagrant lie. That is why I personally have pushed so hard for this release of these 9/11 files. To answer the caller's question, a decision was made about what the geographic area should be, but we know that the toxins spread much further than Canal Street as the border. We know that the toxins spread.

This is something that is deeply upsetting. Certainly with the release of these files is absolutely something that can be looked at. We have to remember the reason that we fought so hard for the release of the 9/11 files is for the accountability and transparency to finally happen.

Brian Lehrer: Mayor Mamdani released those files last week. Why didn't Mayor de Blasio, who you work for, release the files?

Speaker Julie Menin: You'd have to ask him that directly. I don't know the answer to that. I just know that we've pushed for the release of these files for a long time. In light of the fact that it was the 25th anniversary, we felt that it would be unconscionable for the 25th anniversary to go by and the files not be released. They should have been released a long time ago, there is no doubt about that.

I'm very pleased that the Mamdani administration released these files. This was absolutely the right thing to do. There will be further release as well. When we did the confirmation hearing for Corporation Counsel, Steve Banks, and that counsel has advice and consent, one of the things I said to Steve Banks is, "We need your commitment now that you will release the 9/11-related files," and he committed to it.

We deeply appreciate that because that portal that the administration put up is great because now you can search for the files and you can see the data. They'll continue to release more documents as well, and also do the DOI report that the Council passed a bill on mandating that the DOI actually do a report about this.

Brian Lehrer: The Department of Investigation do an investigation. One more follow-up on that. A lot of the media speculation has been that the reason the city didn't release the files earlier was fear of liability, lawsuits against the city for having done things that actually endangered people's health. As somebody who has to pass the budget every year, are you now worried about liability?

Speaker Julie Menin: I am not worried about liability, Brian. I'm going to tell you why. I served in a senior role at the New York City Law Department, and I can tell you that when Health Watch, which was one of the main groups really, that had sued for the documents, specifically for the so-called Harding Memo, they sued for this. They were very, very clear that they're not suing because of this idea of increased litigation. The goal was more accountability and more transparency.

That, to me, is not the reason why all of us have been pushing so hard for it. It's about accountability and transparency so that this event could never happen again, that you could not have a situation where the government-- It's really the federal government that pushed this. The blame is really on the federal government, the federal EPA, who literally said in the days after 9/11, the air was safe to breathe and we should all remain Downtown, and we remained Downtown.

I do have to say, Brian, that I find it deeply offensive because I saw there were some who said, "Why did you all stay Downtown? The air smelled badly and you shouldn't have stayed." That is such a deeply offensive comment to suggest that those of us who lived and worked Downtown. To suggest that the first responders should not have done the work that they did to save lives, to do the recovery mission on the pile is just wrong. Now we finally have some degree of accountability and transparency with the release of the files. It is more than high time this happened.

Brian Lehrer: A couple of quick things before you go. Some people may remember that you led the city's 2020 census effort, widely considered a success at getting a pretty full count. I see you have already formed a 2030 census task force four years ahead of the count. Given the federal posture now that's so hostile to even counting various kinds of immigrants who currently get counted in the census, every resident's supposed to get counted, what are you specifically preparing for?

Speaker Julie Menin: Brian, we're preparing for a number of different things. First of all, we have to remember that we successfully sued the Trump administration. I say "We." Our great New York Attorney General Tish James led the charge along with the city of New York. I worked at the law department at the time when I ran the census, and we were a plaintiff on the suit. We successfully went to the Supreme Court and sued the Trump administration to get the citizenship question off the census.

House Republicans are now, once again, trying to put a citizenship question back onto the census that will have cataclysmic results for cities like New York, because for many who are undocumented and for many immigrant communities, they may not fill out the census. We have over 300 programs, SNAP, Head Start and others, funding for our public schools, that all depend on how we do on the census.

In 2020, when I was the city census director, yes, we finished number one of all major cities across the country because we did outreach to communities, because we ran a whole campaign, because we funded community groups on the ground who were the trusted messenger within their community. I'm deeply worried about the 2030 census, and that is why we are starting that work right now.

We have to remember with ICE raids, with what's happening, that there is going to be real fear within immigrant communities around filling out the census. That is why two years ago, the Council passed my bill to create a permanent office of the census in New York City government, which now exists. Now we're doing our City Council task force where we have a whole task force made up of community leaders, labor leaders, religious leaders, to start that work now because we can't start soon enough.

Also, Brian, I have to say it's estimated that we could lose two to three congressional seats, as well, in New York. In the 2020 census, it's the first time since 1950 that we didn't lose two seats. Every decade since 1950, New York State has lost a minimum of two congressional seats. In 1980, I believe we lost-- I think it was five seats. The first time in 2020, because of the work we did on the census, we only lost one seat. Yes, we came within 89 people of losing 0 seats. It's the best result we've ever had on the congressional seats since 1950. We cannot go backwards. We have to organize now.

Brian Lehrer: Right. The number of seats per state is based on the population. Last thing real quick, and maybe this is self-interested as somebody who works for a news organization, but I see you're moving a bill to change how the city hands out press credentials. There was a problem, I think you'd call it a problem, of credentials getting pulled by the NYPD, the same department they were covering. What's still broken? What does your bill fix?

Speaker Julie Menin: Basically, the press credentials, a number of years ago, were moved to the Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment, and I fully support that. I served as Commissioner of Media and Entertainment. The press credentials should not be with NYPD. They should stay with the Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment. We're not touching that.

What we're trying to fix, Brian, is that-- and we saw this with the Luigi Mangione trial where literally fan girls had been given New York City press credentials. That's really not right. The press has such an important job that they need to do. To have these fan girls having access to a New York City press credential, we believe that there needed to be reforms around that.

The reforms, it's very difficult to revoke the press credential once it's been given. There are all sorts of standard oath hearings that have to happen. Basically what we're looking to do is reform some of those revocation standards. The bill is being carried by Council Member Chris Banks. We are really trying to protect the sanctity of the job that the press does.

The job that the Fourth Estate, our incredible media in New York City, perform is a key and critical role, and we want to preserve that. We do believe we need to reform the press credential process to prevent against what happened in the Luigi Mangione fan girls situation, for example.

Brian Lehrer: That's this month's edition of Speak With the Speaker. Listeners, thank you for all your calls and texts. Speaker Menin, talk to you in October.

Speaker Julie Menin: Thanks so much, Brian. Great to be with you.

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