CM Hanks questions panel on trusts and privacy invasion concerns

Council Member Hanks?

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Chair Brewer, Chair Lee, for holding this important hearing.

And I just really want to reiterate for the record my earlier statement from before that we really aren't here to dispute the peditaire tax.

This hearing is about everyday New Yorkers that who, you know, have just been treated in a manner in which

is completely unacceptable.

And if the administration would have shown the care it took to provide the written testimony, as it did with this botched rollout, we may not be here today answering and asking these questions.

The one thing I've learned in my short time having the privilege of representing District 49 in the North Shore of Staten Island,

is that how you provide information to your constituents really reflects how you feel about them.

It reflects respect, because if you respect the people that you represent and you take great care in how that information is provided and absolutely how it's perceived,

So how the administration published more than 900,000 names and addresses showed me that this is how the administration feels about homeowners in this great city.

That this is something that we need to be ashamed of.

A hit list of the haves and the have-nots.

A scarlet letter.

Letting everyone

know, as you had so poignantly said, we know who you are and we see you.

And more importantly, the absence and the written testimony is an amplification of that message.

So my question is,

Many of my constituents have asked, they found themselves on this larger hit list, but their home is in trust.

And, you know, many people will do estate planning without letting their partners know, their families know.

So this is also like an invasion of privacy on things that are very intimate and how you're going to handle your parents, you know, situations as they get older.

People put housing in trust.

Can anybody kind of talk to me today about...

How that's interpreted when it comes to this kind of list, because that's really the question.

I should be asking the administration, but this is the question that I would say that 10 or more of my constituents have asked, that they are living in their primary home, but it's in a trust.

So I don't know if you have any.

Thank you.

The Department of Finance rules outline how a beneficiary of a trust can go about proving primary residency, where you provide,

I don't remember the exact details, but if you look at the Department of Finance rules, it tells you what information the trust would have to provide.

Unfortunately, the trust is automatically

assumed not to be a primary residence, although, you know, perhaps the tax returns of the primary beneficiary could be used to show that that's their address.

I really appreciate you answering my question, but it is not the obligation of this panel to answer these questions, so I hope I didn't put anybody on the spot.

It was kind of rhetorical, but thank you all so much and everybody here that is here in this hearing.

Thank you.

Thank you, and good luck if his in-laws in there, because they're not on the list, just in case you didn't know.

They're not.

Council Member Jay Sanchez.