A Conversation with City Council Candidate Sarah Batchu

Much of today’s news coverage focuses on the federal government. While those stories are undoubtedly important, local issues—which often have a more immediate impact on people’s daily lives—get overlooked. This June, New York City residents will vote in the City Council primary elections, and my friend Sarah Batchu is running for a seat in District 2. Sarah has dedicated her career to public service, beginning in the nonprofit sector and later serving in Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration. Many people don’t fully understand what the City Council does, the powers it holds, or the issues it tackles. To help shed some light, I asked Sarah to join me for a conversation. We discussed recent City Council actions, including a bill to eliminate the NY Police Department’s controversial gang database and the Council’s lawsuit challenging Mayor Eric Adams’s executive order allowing ICE agents to establish an office at the notorious Rikers Island jail. What follows is the transcript of our conversation edited and condensed for brevity. 

Tamara Sepper: What is the City Council? What does it do?

Sarah Batchu: We know from our basic civics classes that we have three branches of government. In New York City, our city council is a 51-member legislative body, and they’re tasked with negotiating the budget with the Mayor, oversight over the mayor’s administration, and land use policy decisions. In performing their oversight functions, the Council holds hearings and produces reports that are mandated by legislation in order to ensure there is accountability for the mayor’s administration. They’re also the first point of contact for many community members who are facing a wide range of issues – whether a traffic summons or a garbage and recycling issue in their building.

So when it comes to elections, a City Council election doesn’t get a lot of excitement and coverage, but these are the folks who are really making a lot of the laws and regulations at the local level in New York City.

Tamara Sepper: The NYPD has this notorious gangs database that reportedly includes more than 5,000 people designated as members of criminal gangs. Last year, the City Council put forward a bill that would eliminate it. There have also been various efforts to legislate reforms. The Mayor and NYPD are pushing back, arguing that the database is crucial for public safety. What are the reasons behind the City Council’s bill, and do you support it?

Sarah Batchu: We know that the gang database has been used as a tool of racial profiling, not public safety. And we know that the folks who are most targeted and impacted by that are Black and Brown young people. That’s happening not because of what they did, but because of who they know and where they live and who they associate with. That’s not the real driver of crime. It’s lack of opportunity and lack of investment in our neighborhoods. It all comes back to the budget, my favorite thing. We’re using this technology which is meant to be, I guess, a panacea for figuring out crime before it happens by targeting young people based on factors that might not have any relevance on whether they will commit a crime.

The criteria for being included in the database is not 100% known to the public. They appear to be relying on social media, clothing, and personal affiliations as some of the criteria. So we know that people could have clothing or tattoos, things that might signify membership for a particular organization or gang in this case, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are part of that gang. And so that is really a huge concern. And I think the biggest concerns beyond the criteria are the fact that people are not notified when they’ve been added to this database and there’s no process for reviewing whether they can be removed from the database. And so, those are some of the questions I have. 

If we’re not going toward the path of fully removing this database, then we need to get serious about the reforms. There needs to be judicial oversight or some sort of independent review over who’s actually getting added to that database. And there should be some sort of sunsetting of the database because again if we’re making the right investments we shouldn’t need a database like this. It should be an issue that’s getting addressed in a holistic way.

Tamara Sepper: Mayor Eric Adams issued an executive order in April allowing ICE and other federal agencies to “maintain office space” at Rikers Island jail for purposes of “criminal enforcement and criminal investigations only.” City Council has sued, accusing the Mayor of a “corrupt quid pro quo bargain to end the federal criminal case against him” and arguing that the order violates NYC’s sanctuary policies. A judge has now temporarily blocked the Mayor’s order. What’s your stance on this controversy?

Sarah Batchu: Number one, Rikers is supposed to be closing. It’s supposed to be closed. We haven’t lived out that commitment to closing Rikers. But in terms of what’s happening, I think the City Council has made the right choice. We know that the decision to allow ICE at Rikers is putting immigrant New Yorkers at risk. I do believe this is violating the sanctuary city law. This is yet another example of how due process and basic rights that people have are violated.

It’s really not about public safety. And it’s clear to any New Yorker in the city right now that this is a political deal that is prioritizing personal protection for our mayor over the rights of immigrant New Yorkers and all of our communities. We know that if we allow this to happen for immigrant New Yorkers, there is a slippery slope in this country right now and anybody could be put in this position including citizens. I support ending all cooperation between the Department of Corrections and ICE. 

Tamara Sepper: Let’s shift to an initiative you worked on during Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration: universal pre-K. It’s widely loved. How did you get it done?

Sarah Batchu: It was an amazing success that’s already been repeated in cities and states across the country. So that is very exciting. I think the biggest stumbling block that the city was able to push through was the funding piece. That’s usually the challenge. Many City Council members pass these wonderful laws that don’t get funded and so then they don’t get implemented. The pre-K program stands out as an example because basically the city got New York State to agree to a multi-year commitment to fund pretty much all of the pre-K program, and we know that once the kids started actually attending that program it was pretty hard to pull back that funding.

I think the other piece was the war room style approach that the mayor took to implementing the program. There was an aggressive and very rapid timeline. It was two years. They were going to get a seat for every eligible four-year-old by the 2015-2016 school year, and they started with expanding to 30,000 more seats in the first year and to 75,000 more in the second year. And that’s a huge, very quick change for the government.