More bad journalism/writing....city engineer/inspector/code enforcement (whatever the local NY name is) marked the beam as “non-load bearing” so the contractor doing whatever work they were doing didn’t support the beam properly. (Not necessarily “demolition” work?)
Shouldn’t the contractor hire his own structural engineer? Is it normal practice for city inspectors to mark load-bearing and on-load-bearing members. All plans I’ve see for extensive remodeling have a structural engineer do the work and they stamp the drawings, not some city inspector.
It still doesn’t smell right.