#What pandemic? New York City Council busies itself with renaming an agency

The Big Apple is in the midst of a pandemic that’s killed nearly 30,000 people, confronting its worst budget crisis since the 1970s financial collapse, all while shootings have more than doubled.

But the trio of crises facing New York was largely absent from the City Council’s agenda Tuesday, when members met to pass a slew of low-profile bills that — among other things — renames a city agency.

When pressed about the comparatively inconsequential agenda, Council Speaker Corey Johnson largely punted, saying the issues were “complex.”

“These are not things that can be solved through legislation,” Johnson told reporters. “These are things that we know are going to take a comprehensive, holistic approach of working with community leaders, working with city agencies.”

It’s a decidedly different tactic for Johnson, who spent much of the spring threatening legislation to jawbone Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration into coming up with plans to respond to the COVID-19 crisis.

Those efforts included high profile fights over pedestrianizing city streets to create more room for social distancing and allowing struggling bars and restaurants to set up cafe-style seating on sidewalks and in curbside parking spots to help them run.

“March, April, May and June, throughout all of those months, we had a very robust and busy schedule on not just the budget and the financial situation that the city was in — as the picture was getting worse and worse — but we were having hearings and talking about many of the issues,” Johnson said, referencing those fights and the fractious negotiations to close the city’s $9 billion deficit.

Still, when asked if the Council was developing a potential rent assistance program, Johnson said that lawmakers are in talks before again punting, saying that only Washington could deliver a program large enough.

“We will be in a worse position on so many of these issues if we do not get the money that we need to come out of this crisis,” he added.

Meanwhile, the Council on Tuesday is set to pass legislation that would:

• Change the name of the Department of Consumer Affairs to the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection and expand its powers to crack down on employers violating wage and benefit laws;
• Require the city Department of Health to publish guidelines to help cultural institutions prepare to reopen, even though indoor activities remained banned for the foreseeable future;
• Order city agencies produce and publish an annual plan to provide resources to keep New Yorkers without air conditioners cool during summer heatwaves.