The New York Clean Air Collective has established a City Council Scorecard for 2026
We STRONGLY SUPPORT Intro. 0048-2026.
This bill would require the Department of Environmental Protection to translate the Citizen’s Air Complaint portal into the languages other than English that are most commonly spoken by residents of the City with limited English proficiency.
We OPPOSE Intro. 0561-A 2026.
Memo in Opposition
This bill would weaken and undermine the most successful citizen environmental program in the world, at a time when New York’s air pollution is already a public health crisis, linked to an estimated 3,200 premature deaths each year. Council Member Gennaro’s idling bill Int. 561-A would only make this crisis worse.
Intro. 561-A would only benefit polluters, especially operators of diesel truck and bus engines, would would effectively be exempted from the anti-idling laws by just claiming they idled for the dirty process of "diesel regeneration." Incredibly, Intro. 561-A makes this highly-polluting practice a complete exemption to the idling laws.
Intro. 561-A will also deter New Yorkers—particularly residents of disadvantaged communities—from participating in the Citizens Air Complaint Program. It imposes complicated exceptions from the law and forces ordinary citizens to individually prosecute idling complaints, which ordinary New Yorkers are often too busy or ill-equipped to do.
Perhaps most dangerously, Intro. 561-A prohibits DEP from issuing violations based on citizen complaints after just 60 days, handcuffing New York's environmental protection agency from doing its job. As a result, DEP will be legally prevented from acting on all pending citizen complaints. which gifts polluters hundreds of millions of dollars in free idling.
When it was introduced in the previous Council session as Intro. 941, this bill faced opposition from leading environmental and civil rights organizations, including the New York League of Conservation Voters, WE ACT for Environmental Justice, the New York Civil Liberties Union, New York Lawyers for the Public Interest, Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal, and many members of the public.
Today, CM Gennaro’s idling bill functions as a poison pill, threatening to dismantle the citizen air complaint program at the very moment the City Council is considering expanding participation to immigrant communities.