Name of Council Member: Margaret S. Chin Name and Title of Person Completing Questionnaire: Council Member Margaret S.

Chin Campaign Website: www.MargaretChin.com

2013 CITY COUNCIL HUMAN RIGHTS QUESTIONNAIRE

1. Many in the United States think of international affairs when they think of human rights. Our work emphasizes the applicability of the human rights framework here in the United States. Please share your thoughts on the domestic applicability of human rights, and discuss why human rights are important to you in the context of New York City and the City Council. At the city, human rights inform the standards we fight for clean, safe, and affordable housing conditions, paid sick leave, employment opportunities, access to high quality public school and childcare programs, and transparency and fairness in government. I led the fight for justice for Private Danny Chen, who died amidst intense racially-motivated bullying while serving in the U.S. Army. I met with the Pentagon, attended trials, and sponsored a resolution calling for increased diversity sensitivity in the U.S. military. Congresswoman Velazquez introduced and passed this legislation in Congress. Fighting for human rights at the local level also means advocating for the creation and preservation of affordable housing. In my first term, I negotiated for the creation and preservation of significant numbers of affordable housing units. Human rights can also include fighting for expanded access to affordable healthcare and spreading awareness about locally prevalent health issues. I have advocated strongly on Hepatitis B, which disproportionately affects the Asian community. It is essential Council Members are able to communicate with their non-English speaking constituents. My office regularly provides assistance to constituents in Spanish, Mandarin, Cantonese, Fujianese, and Toisanese, and I can understand and speak 3 of the dialects. 2. Please share briefly how you have used your role in Council to advance human rights. I have firmly supported progressive legislation including Paid Sick Leave and the Community Safety Act. I authored a resolution calling for increased diversity sensitivity training in the military a resolution since made into legislation by Congresswoman Velazquez and passed into law. I sponsored legislation to require the city to recognize multiracial individuals when collecting any ethnic information.

I have fought to preserve affordable housing and extracted agreements from the city to build hundreds of permanent units in her district so that people can stay in their community and live in a clean, safe, comfortable, affordable place. I have raised awareness and fought hard for funding for Hepatitis B screenings and treatment in cooperation with a local health clinic. I support womens rights to choose, and cosponsored legislation regarding deceptive advertising practices at reproductive centers in the city. I was a leader in pushing for justice for Private Danny Chen, who suffered racially motivated hazing and was found dead in Afghanistan. Many of his superior officers have now been discharged. I have supported rights to livable wages, supported walk-outs by workers at fast food restaurants, and more importantly, escorting workers who walked back in to ensure they dont suffer retaliation. 3. Legislative priorities: Please list your top 3 legislative priorities for 2013. In addition to supporting progressive bills by my colleagues including the paid sick leave bill, community safety act, and prevailing wage law: 1. Increasing the rights of tenants residential and commercial to stay in their homes or storefronts (primary sponsor of the Small Business Survival Bill), to have a safe environment (sponsor of legislation to require landlords to cover costs of building vacates), and have community input in their development (sponsor of resolutions to halt the NYCHA infill process) 2. Increasing public information and so members of the public can make choices to increase their safety (introduced legislation to make accessible safety records of passenger carriers, legislation requiring display of consumer van information and a resolution calling on the state to require intercity buses to do the same, legislation to create guidelines for buildings to increase their preparedness and provide residents with emergency information, and legislation to stop the sale and purchase of counterfeit goods) 3. Address school overcrowding and class sizes (introduced resolution calling on the state legislature to create a school impact tax so that developers who add residential capacity to the population of an area must offset the impact they have on an areas services) What will be your top 3 legislative priorities as a Council Member in the upcoming legislative session? 1. Cultural competency and language access in government including continuing to push legislation on demographic information collection and legislation on multiracial identification but also advocacy efforts to increase government compliance with language accessibility laws 2. School overcrowding and class sizes including how land use processes allow for overdevelopment (see resolution on school impact tax) without adequate school and infrastructure development and funding formulas that encourage large class sizes and penalize principals for keeping class sizes low 3. Improving how the city addresses building vacates, major fires, and other disasters that displace a large number of tenants at the same time

4. Budget priorities: Please list your top three budget priorities of 2013. 1. Protecting childcare and after school seats in my district and ensuring schools have adequate facilities 2. Preventing cuts to senior programs 3. Preservation of IOI and Adult Literacy Initiative What will your top 3 budget priorities be as a Council member in the upcoming legislative session? 1. Addressing school overcrowding in my district and ensuring schools have adequate facilities and infrastructure. My office just conducted a survey, for example, of school indoor air temperature conditions and found that schools in my district can reach temperatures of nearly 100 degrees during the school year. I have made it a priority to fight for more resources for my local schools and to push for changes to inadequate school environments including gyms located next to tobacco shops, inappropriate flooring, and even repairing school bathrooms. 2. Fighting for more resources to develop parks and open spaces in the city. Some parts of my district have a real dearth of properly developed parks and recreational space I believe we can and should direct public dollars to developing these spaces not just to improve quality of life but also address real environmental and disaster resiliency issues. 3. Preserving services for seniors by fighting for expanded baselining of services that are not just centerbased but also bring services into the homes of home-bound seniors and seniors who have limited mobility. 5. Have you used participatory budgeting to allocate your discretionary funds? Why or why not? Participatory budgeting generally costs a significant amount of money from a Council Members discretionary funding. As a junior council member I dont get as much of as others. I am also not convinced yet that it is more democratic since there is no one person accountable for the results and because participation requires residents to have time to invest in the process not all have the time to do so. Finally, a good portion of the current capital budget process (what participatory budgeting addresses) includes guiding local organizations, schools and park groups through the process of developing capitally-eligible projects and applying for funds. Participatory budgeting may not offer the same amount of guidance and multi-year development that the current process allows. Throughout the budget process I take input of Community Boards, Friends of Park groups, the Community Education Council, local PTA groups, and anyone else who is interested in giving input. We look very closely in particular at the Community Boards budget priorities which are crafted through public hearings. That being said, I am interested to see how participatory budgeting works in other districts, and perhaps when I have more resources to do it, I will join the experiment. 6. Please provide examples of recent legislation in Council that you believe promotes human rights. In no particular order:

Paid sick leave for all Community Safety Act end to racial profiling and creation of an Inspector General Prevailing wage legislation Tenants bill of rights Lew Fidlers coop bill to create greater transparency in the coop application process My resolution to promote diversity-sensitivity in the military My legislation to ensure that all government forms allow individuals to identify as multiple races (many are still very limited in this regard, allowing individuals to identify as one only) Small Business Survival Act, of which I am the primary sponsor Consumer education rights including my bus safety information accessibility bill and my van route and owner information posting bills An end to using condoms as evidence of prostitution, a practice that discourages condom use and tends to unfairly Ending the inhumane practice of solitary confinement particularly for individuals with mental health issues (I have cosponsored this legislation) Legislation to cut back on class sizes and address school overcrowding (including my school impact tax resolution) Legislation to increase open data and government transparency including my Intro 698 to modernize notice requirements for public hearings for city rules changes Public health programs for 9/11 survivors (I have sponsored resolutions on this)

7. Legislation is only one of many ways in which Council Members can work to advance human rights. What ways other than through legislation will you advance the human rights of New Yorkers as a City Council Member? I work very hard to ensure all in my community are able to access government services no matter what their language capabilities, citizenship status, sexual orientation, religion, mental health status etc. In particular, I have pushed city agencies from Parks to Department of Finance to the NYPD to provide a wider range of access in multiple languages as they are legally supposed to (but dont). I also have prioritized having an office capable of speaking four dialects of Chinese and Spanish a quality that has attracted individuals from across the city to my district office. We dont turn people away because they are out of district but try to work with other Council Members to serve these constituents with the help of my offices language abilities. I myself speak multiple dialects of Chinese and I am also called upon to translate at public meetings something I think agencies should be mandated to provide (technically they are supposed to but generally they do not). But I pride myself that my office has expanded my communitys access to government through language access advocacy. My office also works closely with our Senators on helping residents through the path to citizenship. 8. Some advocates contend that the position of the Council Speaker has too much power over the progression of legislation. Please use this space to respond to that critique. I agree that this reform would be a good one. There are many bills, including some of mine, that have enough cosponsors to merit votes but have not moved. A bill with the majority or supermajority of sponsors deserves at the least a hearing. I also think the Mayor has an astonishing ability to affect what topics the Council can and cannot have a hearing on. This is something that has troubled me. They can simply refuse to show up to a hearing or provide only a lower public official to testify when they do not like the topic. I do think that sometimes discipline measures are necessary in order to organize the Council and keep the Council strong enough to be a check on the mayor, but there are many ways to do this. Ideally, we would increase the power

of the Council so that disorganization within the Council does not prevent it from being an adequate check on mayoral power in New York City. For more information, please visit www.urbanjustice.org.