Council Member Morano on compliance jump and public pressure as enforcement tool
Council Member Morano questions why it took a deadly outbreak and public exposure to get 97% compliance, asking why non-compliant buildings weren't publicly identified before people got sick. Martin says the law was only eight weeks old and transparency is now a core strategy.
Thank you, Councilmember.
We're going to ask Councilmember Murano, who's on virtually, to ask questions because in order for somebody to ask questions virtually, we have to have quorum, so we have quorum now.
So, Councilmember Murano.
Thank you very much, Chair, and I want to thank the Commissioner and his whole team, but also all the families that spoke out about a situation that I'm sure was very difficult.
Commissioner, in your testimony, I want to touch upon a few of the areas that you
that you brought up.
Namely, your testimony says that before the Upper East Side cluster, that citywide compliance with the new monthly Legionella testing requirement was only
74% thereabout.
And then there was this jump to 97%, according to your testimony, two weeks later.
And you specifically call public pressure and transparency.
One of your most effective enforcement tools.
Why did it take a deadly outbreak and public exposure to get owners to comply at that level?
If publicly identifying non-compliant buildings works, why weren't you doing
that before people got sick?
Thank you for the question, Councilmember.
This law was eight weeks old.
The ink was barely dry on it when we first started this cluster.
That citywide compliance rate was 77%, and 74% was the compliance rate
in that region.
What we learned from this experience is with this brand new law, right, having transparency be a core piece of this, a way that we promulgate the law,
needs to be front and center to get to the compliance rates that we want, that New Yorkers deserve.
And so you better believe for every single one of those cooling tower operators that were not compliant, we held them accountable.
That also is reflected in the new measure that we announced yesterday, leveraging what we learned in this cluster with compliance to make it easier for New Yorkers
to check their cooling tower on their building to see how compliance is going and to map that information for them.