It should never have gotten to this point. There is absolutely no reason why a person with a hand-held camera needs permission to shoot footage on the streets of New York City.

They can't keep them for the same reason they have to make them in the first place. Almost everything they're trying to change is a locked-in habit. The hardest thing to change is our habits.

Inflation has been very soft for a number of years, and there's absolutely no reason to believe that's going to change any time in the near future.

Instead of addressing the real problem, which is enforcement, the City Council has chosen to enact an overly broad bill that criminalizes a cultural activity. We live in a city that is the cultural capital of the world, yet it is a crime for a young adult to carry a magic marker. What's next -- watercolors or crayons?

This is a chronic problem that daily impacts all New Yorkers, especially communities of color. It disproportionately impacts the African American and Latino communities.

In many other cases materials are involved in the case under seal. But here it's classified. It's impossible for a defendant to have a fair trial when the courts are acting without input, and there's no way for a defense counsel to have input if he doesn't know what the other side is saying.