Rush Transcript & Visuals: Speaker Julie Menin Delivers Remarks at ABNY Power Breakfast

Manhattan, NY - Today, New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin outlined top policy priorities at A Better New York's (ABNY) Power Breakfast. Below is a rush transcript of her remarks.

This event was livestreamed. Photos will be available here.

I want to thank Steven and ABNY for everything you do.

I have to tell you, I've been involved with ABNY for almost 25 years - at this point, I'm basically a fangirl of ABNY.

And 25 years is really dating myself.

When I came to my first ABNY power breakfast, I remember thinking, "Wow, is this what the political power players do every morning for breakfast? This is incredible." I think it may have been former FDNY Commissioner Thomas Von Essen who spoke, and let me say, it was quite the introduction to this industry.

But for me, I got into politics in a rather unusual way.

I was originally a regulatory attorney at a large law firm, before going in-house at Colgate Palmolive. At that company, lawyers were not the people anyone wanted to see, because we were the ones generally saying no.

One morning, I was in a meeting with some of the marketing people - great people, by the way - and they were excitedly telling me about these different ideas to sell toothpaste.

Unfortunately, I realized in that meeting that helping to sell toothpaste was not going to be my life's work. So I hope no one from Colgate is here.

Soon after, I ended up leaving my job as an attorney and opened up a small business in Lower Manhattan, Vine Restaurant, and some people here might even remember the vault it was inside of. I opened it in 1999, and it was located across the street from the New York Stock Exchange, very close to Ground Zero.

At the time, my husband and I were living down there as well. On the morning of September 11th, my husband, Bruce, had a 9 a.m. meeting at the World Trade Center. My mother, who lived with us, had gone out for a doctor's appointment.

Thankfully, my family was OK, but obviously, we know the lives that were lost and the devastation it brought on our country and our city. And that is what first got me involved in public service.

I founded a nonprofit called Wall Street Rising that was focused on rebuilding Downtown. We helped over 600 small businesses stay in Lower Manhattan and helped residents stay there and revitalize Lower Manhattan.

I was honored to serve on the 9/11 Memorial Board Jury and still serve on the 9/11 Memorial Board. And I served as Chair of Community Board 1 in Lower Manhattan for 7 years post-9/11, and then continued service as commissioner of several city agencies. So that's how I got involved in public service.

Now, it has been the honor of a lifetime to be in the City Council and to represent a district that gave my mother and grandmother a better life when they survived the Holocaust in Hungary and ended up settling in Little Hungary on the East Side of Manhattan.

As we head into 2026, it's going to be a pivotal year.

On July 4th, we will mark the 250th anniversary of our nation's founding.

In the summer, we will welcome millions of people from across the globe to the biggest sporting stage: the World Cup.

It's an event that showcases the very best of what the five boroughs endeavors to be: inclusive, competitive, and joyful.

It's an event that will host fans from an array of backgrounds almost as diverse as our gorgeous mosaic.

And it's an event that embodies the very best of ABNY: fostering our city's growth and diversity, advancing our city's quality of life, and fortifying our city's economic future.

And as the noise of the World Cup fades away, we will also commemorate 25 years since the attacks of 9/11.

We will remember the courage of the first responders and the selflessness of their sacrifice. And we will remember the lives that were lost and what our city was attacked for, which was the values of democracy that we strive to uphold and protect.

These are values that are currently under serious attack across our country and here in New York City.

A year as pivotal as the one ahead of us calls for moments of renewal.

A renewal of our goals.

A renewal of our vision.

A renewal of our resilience.

In the aftermath of 9/11, we showed what happens when the private sector works hand-in-hand with the City - and when the City says to the world that New York is open for business.

We were able to do it all not, because we flinched in the face of failure, but because we embraced the necessity of our renewal.

And now, we must embrace it again.

That renewal requires leadership.

And these next four years are about converting our proactive vision into concrete execution.

Today, I will outline a few ways we are excited to do so.

The question of affordability is one that is our responsibility as government officials to answer. Because the more affordable our city is, the better our city is.

The easier it is for our families to put down roots, the easier it will be for businesses to attract talent and move here, and the more fruitful it is for our artists in creative industries, and the more supportive our city can be for vulnerable communities in need.

As we face challenging fiscal times, it is vital that we look at every area where our city can save money.

One of those areas is the healthcare industry.

Currently, close to 10% of the New York City budget is spent on public sector healthcare. That's a total of $11 billion a year. Five years ago, it was $6 billion.

Our city is the second largest purchaser of healthcare in the state, and we must harness our purchasing power to drive down costs.

In a single year, we found that our city could have saved over $2 billion on employee health plans if it had leveraged that power.

Two years ago, we created the nation's first Office of Healthcare Accountability to demand transparency based on a bill that I passed.

That has led to a new health plan that can save New York City taxpayers up to $1 billion per year, while continuing the same level of care that city workers and retirees deserve.

Right now, I believe the insurance industry needs to operate at that same level of transparency.

Across the country, insurance prices have been surging - but in New York, the hikes are particularly significant.

Homeowners' insurance premiums in our state have been increasing on average by 26% annually.

And we are hearing reports that some buildings have had insurance surge over 300%, leaving a debilitating impact on renters and homeowners. This surge also adds a major hurdle to the prospect of building and preserving affordable housing.

The average cost of auto insurance for New Yorkers is around 52% higher than the national average.

And employer-sponsored health insurance premiums are 12% more expensive than the national average.

On top of these disparities, liability insurance is crushing small businesses in the five boroughs, costing four times the national average.

Both these rises and the regional disparities affect everyone, from the hospitals to the patients they serve, from small business owners to their employees and their customers.

It also makes New York less competitive on the national stage.

New Yorkers are overpaying for insurance of all kinds, and that money hurts our wages, our government, and our overall economic development.

To fight these rising costs, we need transparency.

Modeled after our Healthcare Accountability Office, this Council will advance legislation to create a new Office of Insurance Accountability to deliver just that.

To shine a light on pricing and drivers of costs, and bring insurers, regulators, and stakeholders to the table.

We will establish an Insurance Accountability Advocate to assist consumers with unfair claim denials or unreasonable delays. Even intervening directly with insurance companies on their behalf.

And it will provide educational resources to consumers, empowering them to make informed decisions when selecting between insurers.

Just as with health care, transparency is not about punishing providers. It is about making the system more equitable, more sustainable, and more affordable for the people who rely on it every day.

But the insurance industry is not the only sector where we can bring more transparency. Another sector is in the city's contracting process.

The city procures over $42 billion in goods and services annually.

During the pandemic, the City extended emergency procurement powers over 100 times, spending nearly $7 billion on emergency no-bid contracts.

When the Adams Administration came in, they extended emergency procurement powers for asylum seeker services for over 18 months, and that is what ballooned the cost to over $4 billion a year!

At a certain point, it's not an emergency anymore.

When I was a small business owner, I never looked at only one price option for goods.

Do people in this room? No. So why should our government?

The overabundance of no-bid contracts represents a system that has abandoned basic principles of fiscal responsibility. And that's why we are putting an end to this practice.

As a Council, we are considering legislation that limits emergency contracts to 30-day terms and requires a hard 15-day deadline for submission to the Comptroller.

And we are ensuring that any future emergency is treated for what it is: a temporary state of action, and not a blank check.

We can save billions through these reforms and put a final end to the chapter of long-term use of no bid contracts.

Because that is what it means for our government to be transparent and accountable to the people it serves.

That level of accountability applies to our vision for housing, too.

Because it means taking a proactive, not a reactive, approach to housing development.

Instead of responding to private land use applications, or ULURPs, instead of hoping that they net us an amount of housing that addresses the current shortage, we are going to survey neighborhoods ourselves across the five boroughs. We are going to initiate our own community planning to be a true partner in tackling the lack of affordable housing.

This will help us come up with a plan to create tens of thousands of new housing units.

Our land use team is studying city-owned sites, community rezonings, and public libraries too.

We currently have over 215 public library branches in the five boroughs - and so many of them are suitable to build affordable housing on, and at the same time, make capital improvements too.

The Queens Central Library in Deputy Speaker Williams' district is a perfect example of where we could build 400 units on top of the library.

A housing shortage that affects so many of our residents means we will need innovative ideas like these to address it.

But it also means creating more jobs - including good-paying union jobs - for the city.

A key part of the affordability crisis is rooted in how much it costs to live here.

But let's not be shy: another part of that crisis, a part which may even be a crisis of its own, is how hard it is to find a stable job to make that money in the first place.

Last year, our city added a meager 27,000 jobs, which pales in comparison to the average of 187,000 jobs added annually in the four years after the pandemic.

Couple that figure with the fact that New York City lost nearly 5,000 businesses in 2025, and we are now at risk of losing entire sectors to cities in Texas and Florida.

Employers are leaving, carrying with them billions of dollars of income, and stripping the city of the help that comes with it.

Consider 30 years ago, when New York had nearly double the number of financial jobs than Texas.

In 2024, Texas surpassed us. Look, we are New York, we can't let Texas beat us in job creation!

What will 30 more years look like? What will 10, or five?

Cities like Austin and Miami are marketing themselves as hubs for tech and finance, so we must continue to build out those commercial sectors to create pipelines for the future.

If competing states are catching up, we have to be ahead of the curve and reverse that trend.

Because there is no reason New York City can't be the leader of every single industry!

And we must focus on workforce development, which is one way we can create new jobs for underserved communities.

By elevating workforce development from a collection of programs to a central economic strategy, we are treating it as a core priority.

Because it is essential to advancing economic mobility and shared prosperity across the five boroughs.

This priority is not new for me.

I served as the commissioner that morphed the City's Consumer Affairs agency into one that truly concentrated on consumer and worker protection - one that uplifted workers and lowered fines on small businesses.

Our Council is committed to having the strongest worker protections as much as we are committed to attracting and keeping new businesses.

These two ideas are not mutually exclusive.

And we must do more to support small businesses!

When I served as DCWP Commissioner, we announced 30 reforms to lower fines on small businesses.

And now, I want us to provide the same relief package for small businesses for all fine-assessing agencies.

We will also build on our legislation to create a one-stop-shop portal for all city licenses and permits - automating city interactions so that small business owners do not need to take a day off from work to engage with city government.

And lastly, and this is a big one, we will finally fix the City's outdoor dining program to make it year-round and reduce the regulatory burdens for restaurants.

These measures will help small businesses survive and adapt by clearing up policies of the past that can lead to closures and job loss.

And preventing job loss is vital to maintaining New York as the economic capital of the world.

It is how we keep jobs in our city, and that is how we keep it affordable to live here.

But affordability also means creating opportunities for the next generation.

While Commissioner of Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, I created NYC Kids RISE with the Gray Foundation, a program that has seeded college savings accounts for every New York City public school kindergartener, which is invested in the state's 529.

Now, I want to re-envision that initiative by launching NYC Future Funds, which would be a new program to provide $1,000 for every public school kindergartener and $3,000 for children with the highest need.

Individuals holding a bachelor's degree earn nearly double the income of those without upper secondary education.

Expanding this work is about giving our youth a real shot at long-term economic mobility.

Ten years ago, in many neighborhoods, you'd have to walk into five classrooms to find a single child with a 529 account. Now, over 340,000 kids in our public schools have one.

That's the racial wealth gap in action. Through NYC Kids Rise, we've helped close it by investing in the future of our children as much as the future of our city.

We must continue to embed that spirit of investment within our cultural fabric.

New York is the world's cultural capital -- and our cultural vibrancy is what makes us such an attractive place to live, visit, and yes, do business.

This vibrancy isn't a luxury; it's what makes New York globally competitive and attracts tens of millions of tourists every year-visitors who add their own cultural capital to the Big Apple.

As a former commissioner of the Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment, the value of that capital will never be lost on me.

I was proud to expand film, TV, and music production to record highs, and to negotiate the return of the Grammy Awards back to New York City.

What can I say, I wanted to see Childish Gambino.

But in all seriousness, that was an event that brought significant economic impact to our city, over $200 million in revenue.

New York needs to host these large-scale events consistently.

Events that highlight the rich history, diversity, and vitality of the five boroughs;

Events as memorable as the World Cup and as momentous as the 250th anniversary of our independence.

Because when our government invests in our culture, we all benefit from that investment.

And it's a culture ABNY has invested in ever since it was founded in 1971.

They are the reason the world knows our city as the Big Apple, and they are the reason that the world literally 'loves' New York.

When we reflect on ABNY's birth, we remember that it was created at a moment of renewal for our city.

A renewal of our goals.

A renewal of our vision.

A renewal of our resilience.

The founders of ABNY believed that even in the wake of a crisis, there were better days ahead of us.

And this spirit of belief is as central to the spirit of New York as it is to the spirit of America.

Our country believed it when we declared independence.

Our city believed it when we woke up on the morning of September 12th.

As we embark on the next four years, we in the Council believe that our best days are ahead of us, too.

Thank you.

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