Council negligent

To the editor:

Within one year of passing a law banning solitary confinement in city jails, the NYC Council Dec. 9 filed a lawsuit in State Supreme Court to force Mayor Adams to carry it out.

In sharp contrast, no City Council has filed any lawsuit to force any NYC Mayor to obey Local Law 19, passed in 2001. Ignoring the law has resulted in ever-widening contract gaps over the decades that affect New Yorkers' health. FDNY emergency medical technicians and paramedics are earning tens of thousands of dollars less in pay than the uniformed services within corrections, sanitation, police and fire departments. As a consequence, there are high staff turnover and shortages, less experienced personnel and longer response times to 911 calls for emergency medical assistance thereby causing pain, suffering and some say death.   

The Dec. 9 NYC Fleet Daily Service Report noted that just 395 ambulances or 79 percent of the ambulance target of 498 were in service.  If more staff were available to fill more ambulances, would more patients in need of emergency medical assistance be reached faster?

There have been many mayors and many successive City Councils since Local Law 19 was passed. What or who has allowed them all to ignore enforcing the law? And who has taken them to task for that? Describing the previous FDNY EMS contract of 2021, the mayor’s office brazenly noted on its website that the contract conformed "to the pattern reached with other civilian unions," not to the pattern reached with the city's "uniformed services" as referred to in the law. 

According to published reports, in current contract talks, Mayor Eric Adams' administration, like previous administrations, is ignoring the law.  

Enforcement of Local Law 19 of 2001 is 23 years overdue. New Yorkers' lives are at stake.  Where is the City Council on this one?

Helen Northmore