ALBANY — It's the group that no one ever wants to be a member of — but on Tuesday, during the annual safe streets lobby day at the State Capitol, the newest member made a huge impact.
Darnell Sealy-McCrorey, whose 13-year-old daughter Niyell McCrorey died from injuries sustained in November after an SUV driver on the Upper West Side struck her as she made final preparations for her 14th birthday party, offered a unique gravitas as part of advocates' annual pilgrimage to beg our lawmakers to make streets safer.
“This epidemic is preventable,” Sealy-McCrorey had said before making his first trip to Albany as part of Families for Safe Streets. “It doesn't have to be this way.”
We spotted Sealy-McCrorey inside one lawmaker's office and also chatting with Queens Assembly Member Catalina Cruz (pictured above) in a hallway.
The New York State Safe Streets Coalition comprises nearly 150 advocacy organizations across the state to pass and implement life-saving priorities. This year, the coalition focused on its SAFE Streets Package — chiefly a bill to allow the so-called "Idaho stop" (which would allow cyclists to treat stop lights as stop signs and stop signs as yields) and the "Stop Super-Speeders" bill, which would require the installation of speed-restricting devices inside the cars of recidivist speeders.
Sealy-McCrorey told Streetsblog that he'd had good conversations about the Stop Super-Speeders bill with Assembly members Jordan Wright, Alex Bores, González-Rojas and Yudelka Tapia, as well as Sen. Jabari Brisport. But Wright and Brisport are not yet supporters.
Overall, the reception to Sen. Andrew Gounardes's effort to slow down repeat offenders is positive — unfortunately because of all the negative news resulting from the fatal crash that killed a family on Ocean Parkway, as well as the killing of Sealy-McCrorey's daughter, said Jackson Chabot, director of Advocacy & Organizing for Open Plans (Streetblog's parent company).
“A lot of people have understood the bill because of the tragic and fatal crashes recently," he said. "People have understood that the urgency is there.”
Chabot said he was encouraged because one Assembly member knew that the speed governor devices have worked to rein in reckless driving in Europe.
“The fact that she knew there was global precedent was fascinating,” he said. “We’re lagging behind global countries and our peers — and their societies are safer for it. If people say that they care about public safety, whether they're Democrats or Republicans, this helps achieve public safety.”
When lobbying lawmakers, advocates quickly see where the pressure points are. For instance, Long Island Republican Sen. Anthony Palumbo, said he opposes the super speeder bill because he's afraid of "Big Brother" (more on him tomorrow). Others, like Brooklyn Assembly Member Michael Novakhov, oppose it because they don't think six camera-issued speeding tickets in a single year is a lot.
And others oppose things because they apparently don't understand the issue at all.
For instance, when Streetsblog asked Sen. Leroy Comrie of Queens what he thought of the Idaho stop bill, he said, “That does not make sense" for his district, which has a lot of seniors. And older drivers, he said, were more afraid of cyclists than anything else.
And he didn't even disguise his contempt when reminded that 11 states have legalized the Idaho stop, sniffing that none of them has "the kind of density we have.”
When this reporter reminded him that Washington, D.C. has also legalized the Idaho stop, Comrie's aide said it was time to go.
One advocate had a new strategy.
“We need to start calling it the 'New York stop,'” joked Jon Orcutt of Bike New York.
Amy’s Albany Addenda
One anti-congestion pricing bill was defeated, but there are 16 left to go.
As we reported yesterday, Nassau County Sen. Jack Martins had used a procedural trick to force the Senate Transportation Committee to take up his bill, S533, to eliminate congestion pricing.
So there we were, in room 801 in the Legislative Office Building as the votes were tallied.
With some committee members ducking the vote, Sens. Peter Oberacker (R-Oneonta), Patrick Gallihan (R-Erie), Monica Martinez (D-Suffolk), and Mario Mattera (R-Suffolk) voted to support Martins's bid to rescind congestion pricing.
And two senators, Siela Bynoe (D-Nassau) and Joseph Griffo (R-Lewis) joined the "no" voters with the wishy-washy procedural move called "aye without recommendation," which counts as a "no" to congestion pricing.
But seven senators — Transportation Committee Chairman Jeremy Cooney (D-Rochester), John Liu (D-Queens), Jessica Ramos (D-Queens), Michelle Hinchey (D-Catskill), Pete Harckham (D-Peekskill), Roxanne Persaud (D-Canarsie), and Nathalia Fernandez (D-Bronx) — voted against Martins's bill.
“There are seven no votes out of 13 members,” said Cooney. “The bill is defeated here.”
After the vote, Cooney referred to the billions in funding that congestion pricing is raising for critical MTA repairs and how his Republican colleagues don't have a plan to replace it.
“We know that congestion pricing is working," he told Streetsblog. "You have to have a plan. If you don’t have a plan, what are [you] doing to get the $15 billion revenue?”
Martins later said he “was happy to see that my downstate colleagues supported the bill on both sides of the aisle.”
He meant Martinez and Bynoe.
Streetsblog has just set up alerts for their bills.
Correction
Remember last week when there was great drama about what play anti-congestion pricing Sen. Bill Weber's family saw? It turns out it was & Juliet, not Romeo and Juliet, as we reported. Streetsblog thinks we doth protest too much and we share our regrets.
An earlier version of this story suggested that Assembly Member Jordan Wright and Sen. Jabari Brisport supported the Stop Super Speeders bill. At present, they have not taken a position.
