Speaker Menin confronts lack of pre-outbreak violations in cluster area
Menin highlights zero violations in the cluster zip codes in January, March, May, and June, then 180 in July. She questions why there wasn't more proactive enforcement heading into summer. Martin and Schiff defend the multi-layered compliance approach.
Okay, but it doesn't, I guess I have a very specific question, which is,
It appears from the data that the department didn't issue any violations in this affected cluster area in January, March, May, and June of this year.
As I mentioned, 20 summons to six buildings in February, five summons to one building in April, and then suddenly in July, 180 summons to 78 buildings.
So look, we obviously want to see the increased enforcement, but what we're trying to get to here is why there wasn't enforcement when we knew the summer months were coming, and then why is there no data about the number of inspections?
From 2026.
Normally that data is made public in June and July.
We, our team is telling us we cannot access any data.
So if that has changed, we would want to know that.
But as of when the committee report was written, our team was telling us there was no data made public about the number of inspections from 2026.
Let me share just a few words and then we'll see if Deputy Commissioner has anything else to add.
Madam Speaker, we have been consistently issuing summonses, violations.
This last year, in 2025, this amounted to over 1,300.
violations in total totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars six hundred eighty thousand dollars in fines within the cluster region that you you described
we also issued summonses and violations over 110 as part of this cluster 15 of those were public health hazards 50 were critical violations 40 were general violations
so the enforcement apparatus right we have two jobs as part of what we do in our regulatory system.
The first is to reduce the risk of Legionnaires disease clusters.
The second is when they happen to respond aggressively, transparently, and quickly.
And the violations that you see here are us doing that part of helping to reduce the risk.
Right, but those violations occurred.
After the outbreak had occurred.
That's really our point.
Our point that we're trying to make is we want to understand why when Legionella bacteria is no surprise and
happening in the summer months, which is why the council originally passed Council Member Shulman's law over a year ago that went into effect on May 8th, why there was not more violations.