Here’s overkill for you: City Council members last Thursday introduced 13 separate bills to prevent future baby-pulled-from-mom’s-arms-at-welfare-center incidents.
The trigger is last month’s altercation between Brooklyn mom Jazmine Headley and guards at a benefits office. Speaker Corey Johnson’s legislation would create a new Department of Social Services bureaucracy to review decisions to terminate benefits, hear disputes and communicate with the affected clients. Majority Leader Laurie Cumbo wants an online and telephone appointment-scheduling system.
Other bills mandate: more social workers at welfare and SNAP (food stamp) centers; new “client satisfaction surveys”; “de-escalation and trauma-informed” training for workers and guards — plus safe spaces for children at welfare offices.
One orders City Hall to report yearly on new training for private contractors, which covers many guards. Another requires DSS and the NYPD to submit quarterly “use of force” reports on welfare-office incidents.
Politico reports that DSS supports many of these ideas, so why set them in stone? Let Commissioner Steven Banks do an administrative cleanup. Too many micromanaging cooks are sure to spoil the soup.