Ben Nadeff-Haffrey
speaker
1,009 appearances
5 recordings
1 series
first heard Jun 2026
last heard 6 Aug
Ben Nadeff-Haffrey’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 5 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 3.
Appearances
Citizens could weigh in on the important issues of the day as the borough presidents deliberated in real time.
It was the pinnacle of democracy.
What was it like in there?
The whole thing was kind of a sham.
Frank wasn't the borough president.
He was just the assistant press guy.
And yet he was sitting up there because early in the meeting, the borough presidents would all just disappear.
Meanwhile, even if the borough presidents were doing what they were supposed to be doing, there was still a big problem.
Because the boroughs they represented were not at all the same size.
At the time, Brooklyn had 2.2 million people.
Staten Island had 352,000.
And yet the borough presidents each had the same one vote on the board of estimate, which seemed pretty unfair because Staten Island had way more power than it should have given its size.
They'd weigh in on citywide issues and managed to use their power to say no to a lot of things.
They were the only county in New York City that didn't have a jail, for instance.
And don't ask them about homeless shelters.
All this worked fine enough until this particular arrangement came to the attention of the Supreme Court.
And all hell broke loose.
In the early 1980s, the New York Civil Liberties Union brought a lawsuit against the board that said that the fact that Staten Island got the same vote as Brooklyn violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, one person, one vote.
The case wound its way up to the Supreme Court.
The lawyer for New York City begged the court to leave it alone.
Showing 901–920 of 1,009 · page 46 of 51
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