New York City to Formally Start Its Municipal ID Card Program

For generations, the label has been at once exclusive and widely misapplied, available to millions in earnest, but vulnerable to line-blurring by suburban peers who claimed New York City residency without an address to match.

Could a New Yorker be identified by a harried gait? A brash retort? The knowledge that L trains are to be avoided on weekends?

Perhaps. But beginning this week, the evidence will, for the first time, be wallet-size.

On Monday, New York is expected to introduce the country’s largest municipal-identification program, issuing cards intended as a boon for undocumented immigrants, the homeless and others who strain to navigate the bureaucracy of city services and institutions without government-issued ID. The card will confer discounts for prescription drugs, access to city buildings and free memberships to zoos and museums. It will be accepted as a library card across the city’s three public library systems and recognized as identification to open an account at several banks and credit unions.

A sample version of the city’s new municipal identification card.

“For New Yorkers who couldn’t have an official ID, this card is the key to a fuller life,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a statement, adding that it was “fraud-proof, secure and appealing to anyone.”

The card’s layout seems befitting of its most high-profile booster, a longtime Park Slope, Brooklyn, resident who has sought to govern with an eye toward the boroughs outside Manhattan.

The map on the front of the card might startle New Yorkers with its accuracy: Unlike the subway map, with its oversize Manhattan, this version is to scale, with Brooklyn and Queens sprawled across the center. The spot for the main head shot obscures much of Staten Island and the Financial District. On the back, one landmark is shown: the Brooklyn Bridge.

Officials have cast the program as among the mayor’s most significant initiatives, based partly on those in cities like New Haven and San Francisco. (NYTimes.com).