Happy Wednesday in NYC, where the latest outbreak of Legionnaires' Disease is spurring change.

As loyal readers of this newsletter will no doubt know, along with anyone tapped into the viral news of the summer, Manhattan was visited by yet another outbreak of the deadly Legionella bacteria through July and August, sickening 94 people and killing 11. The bacteria proliferate in cooling towers and can lead to a severe form of pneumonia.

Now, the Mamdani administration is pledging to strengthen the city’s response, after coming under hard scrutiny from the public on its lack of urgency and transparency this summer. The mayor announced yesterday that city officials will expedite penalties for cooling-tower violations, identify unregistered towers and strengthen testing protocols.

“Our response to the Upper East Side cluster was fast and aggressive, and we are building on what we learned to make our systems stronger, enforcement faster and public health response more transparent,” Mamdani said in a statement.

But Mamdani isn’t the only one trying to change the city’s approach. City Council Speaker Julie Menin, who has publicly criticized Mamdani’s response to the outbreak, is proposing her own slate of new laws with the backing of several other councilmembers. The Council plans to discuss a package of eight proposed bills at a hearing today.

Health officials say the source of this summer’s outbreak has been eliminated and the danger passed. But with the health threat contained, a new kind of flare-up is brewing in City Hall, as Mandani’s and Menin’s competing plans come head to head.

Both sides agree that the city needs stronger protections, but figure to have different plans for what those protections will look like. Whose strategy will win out?

In the June Democratic Primary, the Brooklyn Can’t Wait coalition, a reform movement aligned with Democratic District Leader Julio Peña III, AD-51, won 22 of the 42 district leader seats on the Kings County Democratic Party Executive Committee. Under the existing rules, that number gave reformers a majority, putting them in the position to elect Peña as the next county party chair in September.

However, Brooklyn Democratic Party Chair Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, who has served as chair since 2020, responded with a package of 10 bylaw changes that would substantially alter who gets to vote. The changes were announced at a closed-door meeting at the Thomas Jefferson Club on Aug. 25.

In an exclusive interview with the Brooklyn Eagle, Bichotte Hermelyn defended the bylaw changes, which have drawn criticism from elected officials and party reformers.

Read the exclusive interview here.

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