LET THEM EAT LEAD DUST
Council Guts City’s Lead-Paint Law
by Steven WishniaWHO PUT YOU UP TO THIS?”
City Council Speaker Peter Vallone fumed at a knot of about 35 demonstrators outside his Astoria district office June 8, protesting his plans to replace the city's 1982 lead-paint law with one favoring landlords. "There's no bill," the speaker insisted.
Vallone, of course, was lying. His staff had already drawn up a measure doing just that. And along with Mayor Giuliani and Housing Committee chair Archie Spigner, he rammed it through the Council, which passed it by a 36-15 vote on June 30.
Councilmember Stanley Michels, whose own lead-poisoning-prevention bill was blocked by Vallone, called the bill, Intro 582, a "sham." "The sad truth is that it is nothing more than a landlords' protection bill," he told the Council.
“It’s the worst public-health bill the Council has passed in recent memory,” says Chris Meyer of the New York Public Interest Research Group. “Children are the victims of this law,” adds Megan Charlop, who runs a “safe house” for lead-poisoned children in the Bronx. “It was not based on children’s health, it was not based on children’s safety.”
About 30,000 children in the city have at least moderate lead poisoning, with over 1,000 a year newly diagnosed as severely poisoned. About 80% of lead-poisoned children are black or Latino.
Intro 582 repeals 1982’s Local Law 1, which presumed that all apartments built before 1960 had lead paint and required landlords to remove it in apartments where there was a child under 7. The city government never fully enforced Local Law 1, despite years of litigation. Landlords complained that it would cost too much, and most of its supporters eventually conceded that the “lead-free” standard was unworkable. However, Vallone blocked a Michels bill that would have switched the city to a “lead-safe” standard. The Giuliani administration -- which had pushed for an even more pro-landlord measure -- co-opted the “lead-safe” term, and hailed Intro 582 as a landmark “reform” law.
The Vallone-Spigner bill does not define lead-paint dust in an apartment -- the prime source of lead poisoning --- as a health hazard, only peeling or flaking lead paint. It requires landlords to make a visual inspection for peeling or flaking paint on walls or ceilings once a year, if the tenant informs them that they have a child under 6. If tenants complain of lead paint, it gives the landlord more than three months to remove it, and allows them to “self-certify” that the work was done properly. If the city Department of Housing Preservation and Development reinspects and finds that the landlord did not remove the paint, HPD’s Emergency Repair Program is supposed to do the job within 60 days, and the landlord can be fined up to $25,000 for false self-certification if caught.
Under the old law, HPD did some emergency repairs, but was only required to do them if the Department of Health reported a lead-poisoned child in the home, according to Michels aide Steve Simons. The new law eliminates that requirement for one and two-family homes. Landlords are also allowed to use cheaper and less safe procedures if they do the work within 21 days after receiving a violation; the Giuliani administration calls this an “incentive-based” approach.
To determine whether lead has been removed from windows doors, and wood trim, landlords are required to do one “dust wipe clearance test” on a spot adjacent to the work area. Landlords are not required to test the walls and ceilings, hire an independent company to do the test, or report the test results to the city or the tenant. There are no threshold levels for passing or failing.
“It’s totally meaningless. There’s no numbers in here,” says Matthew Chachere, lawyer for the New York City Coalition to End Lead Poisoning in the lawsuit to get the city to enforce Local Law 1. Current Department of Health regulations require four tests, require the results to be given to both the tenant and HPD, and set specific maximums for allowable lead on doors, window sills and elsewhere, he adds.
The new law also strictly limits the ability of lead-poisoned children and their parents to sue for damages. Under the old law, it was the landlord’s responsibility to remove any lead paint from an apartment. Under the new law, in order to prove that the landlord was negligent, tenants have to prove that they have notified the landlord of a lead hazard. The law also bars tenants from collecting monetary damages from the city for failing to perform inspections or do emergency-repair work; they can only sue to force HPD to do the work.
In the Council on June 30, there was virtually no back-and-forth debate on the bill, with most of the discussion consisting of opponents slamming it. The few supporters who spoke up -- Queens Republicans Thomas Ognibene and Al Stabile -- argued primarily that the main people against the bill were rich suburban trial lawyers upset because they’d be losing large fees from suing the city, that anyone who pointed out that the children suffering lead poisoning are overwhelmingly black and Latino was unfairly raising a racial issue, and that parents should take more responsibility for protecting their children, by mopping floors and watching them more closely. “Responsibility starts in the home,” Stabile sputtered. “You see your kid eating paint off the windowsill, you’re gonna say it’s OK?”
Manhattan Democrat Christine Quinn responded that she found that argument offensive, like telling a rape victim she should have worn a longer skirt, and unscientific. Lead-paint dust particles are invisible, and too small to be removed effectively by common household methods.
Marie Dixon of the Bronx, whose 2-year-old daughter tested positive for moderate lead poisoning last year, calls the bill “insane.” “They’re playing too much ping-pong with the kids,” she told Tenant/Inquilino. “We’re talking about innocent children’s lives and a preventable disease.” When Dixon and two other mothers tried to tell their stories at a Housing Committee hearing June 24, Spigner cut them short. “I don’t want to sound callous,” he said, “but we’ve heard these testimonies before.”
Spigner told Dixon that landlords would be required to tell tenants if there was lead paint in their apartment. “Who is going to know if he does not do it?” she asked. Spigner refused to answer. “No comment?” Dixon inquired scornfully as she left the stand.
The next two witnesses at the hearing were landlord lobbyists, Marilyn Davenport of the Real Estate Board of New York and Frank Ricci of the Rent Stabilization Association. They both claimed that it was wrong to penalize landlords if lead dust was found in apartments they owned, because it could have been tracked in from outside.
The Council received letters protesting the bill from a score of doctors in the field, including Drs. Bailus Walker of Howard University Medical Center; Sergio Piomelli, director of the lead-poisoning program at Babies and Children’s Hospital, and Rhode Island Director of Health Patricia Nolan. “Were I to hospitalize and medically treat a poisoned child, then send this child home under the provisions of this bill, it would be medical malpractice,” wrote Dr. John Rosen of Montefiore Medical Center.
Four amendments proposed by Michels -- to expand the bill’s definition of lead paint, to restore the presumption that pre-1960 buildings have lead paint, and to require more intensive testing after repairs and notification of parents -- were all defeated, opposed by the Council leadership.
At the last minute, Vallone and the Giuliani administration said they would add $3 million to the city health budget to fund 10 new safe houses in the Brooklyn-Queens “lead belt,” hire 30 to 50 outreach workers, and send out six mobile testing vans. “They’re going to need them,” says Megan Charlop. Lead-poisoning activists say they may take legal action to challenge the bill, and will certainly take political action.
In the end, “who put you up to this?” might be a better question to ask of Peter Vallone. In December 1998, he received $56,000 from two landlord political-action committees, the Rent Stabilization Association PAC and the Neighborhood Preservation PAC, to pay off debts from his failed gubernatorial campaign. He is raising money to run for mayor in 2001, when his Council term expires, and his campaign headquarters worked out of space in the RSA office suite earlier this year.
How The City Council Voted On The Lead Bill
YES—36
Democrats—-29
Herbert Berman
Adolfo Carrion*
Lucy Cruz
Noach Dear
Martin Malave-Dilan*
June Eisland*
Kenneth Fisher*
Pedro Espada*
Julia Harrison
Lloyd Henry*
Karen Koslowitz*
Howard Lasher
Helen Marshall*
Walter McCaffrey*
Michael Nelson
Gifford Miller
Jerome O'Donovan
Morton Povman*
Madeleine Provenzano
Annette Robinson*
Victor Robles*
Angel Rodriguez
John Sabini*
Archie Spigner*
Peter Vallone*
Lawrence Warden
Juanita Watkins*
Thomas White*
Priscilla Wooten*Republicans—7
Michael Abel
Andrew Eristoff
Stephen Fiala
Martin Golden
James Oddo
Thomas Ognibene*
Al Stabile*NO—15
Democrats—15
Tracy Boyland*
Una Clarke*
Stephen DiBrienza
Ronnie Eldridge
Wendell Foster*
Kathryn Freed
Sheldon Leffler*
Guillermo Linares*
Margarita Lopez
Stanley Michels*
Bill Perkins
Mary Pinkett*
Christine Quinn
Phillip Reed
Jose Rivera** These Councilmembers represent districts whith high numbers of new lead-poisoning cases.