TESTIMONY
Judge Sylvia Hinds-Radix on Fiscal Year 2025 Preliminary Budget for the New York City Law Department
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20 min
Judge Sylvia Hinds-Radix, Head of the New York City Law Department, discusses the department's fiscal year 2025 preliminary budget and highlights key initiatives and achievements.
- The Law Department represents the city in civil litigation, prosecutes criminal law violations, and provides legal counsel on a wide range of issues.
- Initiatives like the Risk Management Division and Ethics and Compliance Division have been created to mitigate risk and ensure legal ethics compliance.
- The department has recovered over $30,000,000 in fiscal year 2025 through affirmative litigation, including settlements for various violations.
- Efforts to compel insurance companies to defend and indemnify the city have resulted in cost savings of over $100,000,000.
- The Family Court Division focuses on juvenile justice and interstate child support, handling a rising number of firearm cases and juvenile referrals.
Judge Sylvia Hinds-Radix
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Thank you very much.
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Good afternoon, Terrence.
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I'm distinguished members of the government operations committee.
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I'm having a little cold, so my voice.
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It is a pleasure to come before you to discuss the law department fiscal year 2025 preliminary budget.
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This afternoon, I'm joined by 1st assistant corporation council, Muriel Gertruthan, Managing Attorney, Eric Eikin Hoess, and Director of Finance, Motaira.
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The law department represents the city, the mayor, the city council, other elected officials, and the city agencies in all affirmative and defensive civil litigation.
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As a prosecuting agency, the department brings proceedings in Family Court alleging violations of criminal law and represent the people of the state of New York in proceedings filed in criminal court to enforce the city's administrative call.
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Law departments attorneys draft and review law call and state legislation, real estate leases, procurement, contracts, and financial instruments for the sale of municipal bonds.
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The department also provides legal counsel to city officials on a wide range of issues such as civil rights, education, intellectual property, land use, and environmental policy.
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Did apartments work embraces all city entities and operations, our impact is tremendous.
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The department currently has on board approximately 765 assistant corporation councils and 665 support professionals.
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We are proud to be a diversity, equity, and inclusion leader in the legal profession with approximately 30% of our lawyers, ethnically diverse, and 58%.
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Women.
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The law department plays an important role in enhancing the city's fiscal strength.
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Providing internal support to agencies and elected officials to ensure legal and ethical compliance.
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And in advocating for the public good.
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To better carry out this mission during the past year, recreated the the new divisions that you council member just referred to, the risk management division, and the ethics uncompliance division.
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In prior years, I testified before this committee about the important work that was then the Torts division risk management unit working with all city agencies to mitigate or eliminate.
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Risk to city residents, both short term by identifying dangerous conditions, which can be remediated quickly and long term by identifying agency operations or practices that are often the subject of litigation to discuss possible changes.
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This past year, we expanded this unit into its own division in the law department, adding staff and resources to focus on this important task.
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The risk management division meets regularly with city agents sees to discuss matters that are frequently the subject of litigation, to strategize about possible changes to mitigate risk.
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As its own division, the risk management division has expanded its work beyond personal injury manners to risk issues across all legal disciplines.
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For example, risk management attorneys are working with our labor and employment and law division attorneys to create strategies and to prevent liability from wage and hour violations.
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The Risk Management Division is also embedding attorneys in our teams handling cases in which monitors have been appointed by the courts.
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Their work will ensure that these costly monitorships function no longer than is absolutely necessary and provide guidance and councils to agencies to ensure that the legal issue that lead to these large cases do not recur.
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Our ethics and compliance division has created in response to the overwhelming was created to the overwhelming demand for advice and counsel from Law Department's chief ethics officer from within the law department as well as throughout the city government on matters of legal ethics, representations and conflicts of interests, as well as demonstrated need for additional resources to be placed on compliance matters.
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In addition, the law department separately handles various federal compliance matters, including counseling and litigation of fraud screens acts matters concerning the city's compliance with the terms of federal grants.
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Additionally, the law department acquired new expertise and resources to meet new obligations in supporting the 5 district attorney's offices and a special narcotics prosecutor's office who have requested representation for their staff members in connection with proceeding before the newly formed commission and processorial conduct.
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The ethic and compliance division was created to better conduct this important work as well as to create new measures to ensure compliance by city agencies with local state and federal requirements, which require monitoring, advisors, and remember and reminders that they were not currently in place within city government prior to the creation of this division.
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The creation of this division also achieves for the city, cost savings.
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For instance, after shadowing outside counsel for approximately 9 months, the division is now capable of representing prosecutors and attorneys in grievance proceedings eliminating the need to hire outside counsel at significant additional cost.
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To provide the defense of these individuals.
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The law department plays a significant role in securing funds for the city and in protecting the public good.
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For example, still the work of our affirmative litigation division in the first half of this fiscal year, we recovered over $30,000,000 for the city and city entities.
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This includes monetary recoveries unpaid cigarette taxes, property damage, breach of contract, idyllin violations, tenant protection, full claim act cases, securities fraud, anti use vaping, and opioid settlement payments among other things.
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In addition, collection law firms, supervised by the law department, recovered over $10,000,000.
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In addition to these financial recoveries obtained to compensate for violations of the city's rights.
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Our affirmative litigations division continued in the fiscal year to pursue civil enforcement actions for the protection of public health and safety.
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We continue to litigate against cigarette traffickers sellers of vape of flavored electronic cigarettes are vapes and marketers of e cigarettes to use.
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They are approximately 50 matters either in court or under consideration to comply compliance by landlords and building owners with code requirements designed to protect tenants and the public.
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In December, reached our 1st $1,000,000 settlement with the owners of 8 with the owner of 8 properties in Manhattan.
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Who agreed to take corrective action at a corrective action plan.
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We continue to litigate against the manufacturer's Kia and Hyundai, who decided to omit from certain car models, the industry standards anti theft immobilization devices, forcing law enforcement to respond to surging levels of auto theft with thieves participating in a viral TikTok challenge.
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As you are aware, we just filed a suit on behalf of the city the New York City Department of Education, the New York City Health And Hospitals to hold social media platforms accountable.
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For their contribution to the youth mental health crisis facing our city.
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We also settled the first pattern of practice lawsuits under the city's freelance isn't free at enforcing compliance with the nation's first law protecting freelance workers and recovering double damages for the freelancers who were not paid.
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We also anticipate saving the city over $100,000,000 this fiscal year and payouts from the judgment and claims fund through our continuing activity to compel insurance companies to defend and indemnify the city.
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In these cases, we are enforcing coverage for lawsuits arising out of the work performed by private contractors and permit ease.
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Every case that the insurance company sets up to defend is a case that does not have be defended by city attorneys, thus saving enormous legal resources.
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Settlements and judgments paid by insurers in case is falling within the policy coverage also have the city's subs save the city substantial sums.
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This past year, The affirmative litigation division achieved a milestone passing more than a $500,000,000 save since the start of that program in 1990.
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A forever example is our commercial and real estate litigation division.
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Which depends the city in wide range of contractual disputes.
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These disputes include categories of agreement, contracts with private companies to build or repair the city's infrastructure.
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Leases of important properties and contract for all types of goods and services.
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These claims are largely based upon negotiated terms of pre existing agreements and typically involve significant exposure to the city.
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And as and fiscal year 23, the division saved the city $50,000,000 by resolving a $150 in claims for $1,000,000.
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Similarly, our tax and bankruptcy divisions, defense of real property tax assessments protected 91,000,000 in property tax receipts in fiscal year 23.
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And almost 30,000,000 during the fiscal year of 24.
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A large focus of our work this year was to ensure the city could adequately respond to the influx of asylum seekers arriving in our city, led by our executive team a multidisciplinary group of attorneys from across several law department divisions provided critical and timely legal advice.
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The work of this dedicated group of attorneys from divisions such as legal counsel, affirmative litigation, general litigation, contracts in real estate, administrative law, and regulatory litigation enabled the city to respond to this crisis lawfully and cognizant of applicable laws and rules.
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The team also litigated mild matters that arose in order to represent the city's interest in court, which was fast with litigated and continuing to litigate in upstate counties and towns to defend the city's ability to use available upstate hotel rooms for temporary housing assistance for asylum seekers ensuring the city was not limited in our ability to manage this crisis.
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As you are likely familiar, Our office also works side by side with council attorneys, crafting local laws, and then defendants those law.
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Us if and when they are challenged.
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All of this work is in addition to our efforts to defend the city and its employees in litigation in more than 70,000 cases annually.
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We've experienced an increase in pending cases, particularly and our largest division, the Tart division, where there are now more than 31,000 cases pending, included in the number of pending cases, our long standing cases, COVID 19 related cases, and newly filed Adult survivor act, and child victim act, cases.
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The Toric caseload remains steady this year due to our efforts to employ new strategies to efficiently address case back up despite budget constraints.
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For example, for years, tort cases involved in the Department of Transportation have been hampered by the need to at great personal course.
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Search my databases maintained by the agency to locate and provide relevant material for discovery.
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Working with the law department, DOT has implemented a system called universal legal search, u l s.
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DOT has implemented its u s l can search across DOT's database to extract and pull relevant material for discovery production in a far more efficient manner we anticipate that USL will allow the Tartan Vision to significantly recur reduce a backlog of discovery motions including motions to strike the city's answers in cases in which the city otherwise has a meritorious defense.
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We continue to pursue all other initiative strategies, innovative strategies with other agencies to manage to work across all of our divisions in the face of increased workload and emerging legal challenges.
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But fear that unpress identity levels of attrition of ACCs and support professionals may outpace our mitigation efforts.
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For example, we can continue to see an erosion of resources previously provided to the Tartan division that enabled us to improve case outcomes to increase in early settlements, engaging in better case preparation, and enhancing our stick court trial practice.
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At the city's as the city's fiscal condition improves, we look forward to working with office of managed and budget and the city council to restore resources to successful initiatives and identify new initiatives that would allow the law department to more effectively carry out this mission.
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The family court division is the 2nd largest and only prosecute serial division in the law department.
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All of the work in the division is geared towards strengthening youth, families, and communities.
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This mission is twofold through juvenile justice and interstate child support.
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We are the presentment agency for juvenile justice, adolescent of fam offenders, and inter state child support cases, refrigerated New Year City Family Court.
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And the disrehab dilutive mandate of the Family Court Act.
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The Family Court Division must work to achieve outcomes that serve the needs of each individual youth brought before the court while at the same time protecting the interest of crime crime victims and ensuring the safety of the community at large.
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However, these matters require resources similar to those.
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Prossellorial agencies such as district attorneys.
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Our family court attorneys work in approximately 30 locations, 365 days and nights a year, including nights, weekends, and holiday operation.
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The amount of serious matters handled by this division continues to rise.
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New York City continues to experience a significant increase in violence around firearm cases.
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The number of firearm cases handled by this division is at an all time high.
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In 2017, the division handled 39 for armed cases citywide.
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In 2022, 384 firearm cases were referred to an invest negated by the family court division.
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And in 2023, that number reached 415.
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Thankfully, the numbers of homicide referrals have decreased from 8 in 2022 to 2 in 2023.
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However, the number of juvenile cases referrals increased by 51.8% at 38 3.
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3814 2002 to 5790 in 2023, 73% which involved felony charges despite the increased complexity of the cases.
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And the challenges regarding evolving technology and attrition with the exception of the 1st year of the pandemic 2020.
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This division has maintained a conviction rate of over 70% reaching 77 in 20 20 3.
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Our child support case referrals also increased by 9.68% from 18 70 to 2022 to 20 51 2023.
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But the goal for our youth in juvenile is to identify strengths and resources and opportunities to foster success in the community, to do so Our staff members are dedicated to outreach across the 5 boroughs, attending events in schools and in communities, in order for us to meet and support of those who may need our assistance.
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In juvenile justice proceeding, the law requires a determination that balances the needs of the youth and the community.
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The vast majority of cases in the division result in community based outcomes, including divergent restorative justice.
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So out of matters, we look forward towards matching youth and families and impacted community members with appropriate services and opportunities gauge toward preventing system involvement, providing rehabilitation, securing restorative justice, and promoting enhanced outcomes for the youth, for families and communities in New York City.
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Our staff is committed to a holistic approach.
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Of these issues.
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My testimony today provides a limited survey of the very broad and varied legal work performed by the lord of apartment.
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By keeping the interest of all New Yorkers at the center of our work, we can do what is right and reinforce trust in government, and that is our core commitment.
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I thank you for your support of the law department, and I look forward to our continued collaboration, I would be happy to answer any questions you may have.