US - NorthEast

Bill de Blasio, right, with his wife and children, was sworn into office at City Hall on Wednesday by former President Bill Clinton.  Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

nytimes.com - by MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM - January 1, 2014

Bill de Blasio, whose fiery populism propelled his rise from obscure neighborhood official to the 109th mayor of New York, was sworn into office on Wednesday, pledging that his ambition for a more humane and equal metropolis would remain undimmed.

In his inaugural address, Mayor de Blasio described social inequality as a “quiet crisis” on a par with the other urban cataclysms of the city’s last half-century, from fiscal collapse to crime waves to terrorist attacks, and said income disparity was a struggle no less urgent to confront.

“We are called to put an end to economic and social inequalities that threaten to unravel the city we love,” he said to about 5,000 people at the ceremony, many beneath blankets on a numbingly cold day.

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Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio at a rally before his victory. (Photo: William Alatriste)

submitted by Megan Fliegelman

politicker.com - by Jill Colvin - November 20, 2013

Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio announced that 60 prominent backers will join his transition team to select the city’s next mayoral administration.

Among the names on the list are Sex an the City star Cynthia Nixon, former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Harold Ickes, and longtime de Blasio confidante Bertha Lewis, who once led the social justice group ACORN.

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Flooding in Red Hook, Brooklyn after Sandy (Flickr/gunnicool)

The agency ignored state and city officials' appeals to update the maps with better data until it was too late.

wnyc.org - December 6, 2013
by Al Shaw : ProPublica / Theodoric Meyer : ProPublica / Christie Thompson : ProPublica

When Patrice and Philip Morgan bought a house near the ocean in Brooklyn, they were not particularly worried about the threat of flooding.

Federal maps showed their home was outside the area at a high risk of flood damage. . .

. . . But the maps drawn up by the Federal Emergency Management Agency were wrong. And government officials knew it.

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The new map could put twice as many homes in the flood zone and raise premiums for many homeowners.

propublica.org - by Al Shaw - June 12, 2013

. . . while Sandy’s water has long receded and the bulldozers have left, a residual effect for homeowners along the city’s coastline still lurks quietly beneath the surface. It comes in the form of a July 2012 law called the Biggert-Waters Act, which will end subsidized rates for property owners who are remapped into more severe flood zones, increasing their flood insurance premiums 20 percent a year until they reach market rates, and will apply those higher rates for newly purchased property.

The potential increases, which proponents say are necessary to sustain the National Flood Insurance Program, are not widely understood by residents, and may be catching them unprepared.

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Biggert-Waters Act - Flood Insurance Reform Act of 2012