With six days left to cast a ballot in New York (early voting today through Sunday + election day), voters across the city will be faced with six ballot initiatives, all but one of which are the product of a power struggle playing out between mayor Eric Adams and the City Council. Earlier this year, the city’s legislative body sought to curtail the latitude the mayor currently enjoys in deciding commissioner-level appointments across over 20 city departments – such as Buildings, Sanitation, and Transportation – by requiring the council’s approval. As of now, the number of positions appointed by the mayor that go through such a process is limited to much fewer offices, such as the city’s corporate counsel and Department of Investigations.
The powers sought by the City Council in this instance would have to go through a voter referendum, as they would involve a change to the city’s charter (essentially, a city-level constitution). New York City law governing these mechanisms is such that the mayor can stop their efforts by forming his own Charter Revision Commission, which would immediately nullify the council’s efforts to get their measure on the ballot in this fall. Indeed, late last spring Adams announced the formation of such a commission, staffed with loyalists, who drew up ballot proposals being put before voters in the city right now. That has triggered a great deal of pushback across the rest of city government, with the city comptroller, public advocate, scores of advocacy groups, and (expectedly) the City Council, telling voters to reject the proposals coming out of the mayor’s charter commission. Here’s the rundown on what these proposals actually do.
Proposal 1: This measure will be on the ballot statewide, seeking to prohibit discrimination based on race, gender identity, sex, disability, national origin, pregnancy, and abortion rights. This last is considered key to the measure, as the New York City council website explains that it would protect abortion access “regardless of any changes at the federal level.” This is fairly straightforward – if one wants to protect the right to abortion access, vote yes, and vice versa. The most recent polling on this ballot proposal finds 69% of New Yorkers are in favor of it.
Proposal 2: Now we get to the citywide proposals that are the result of the power struggle between the mayor and the City Council detailed above. Proposal 2 would increase the jurisdiction of the department of Sanitation, which answers to the mayor, adding public parks and highway medians to the streets and sidewalks already under its purview. This would aid the mayor’s office in enforcing its new push to store trash in containers on sidewalks before collections. Advocates say that it would increase enforcement against street vendors, who have already been vocal about abusive enforcement actions against them, including excessive fines, and having their carts destroyed rather than impounded by authorities.
Proposal 3: This measure would require that the City Council to provide a fiscal impact statement earlier in the legislation process than it does currently, before they have hearings on a bill. It would also require that the mayor be informed 8 days prior to hearings so that the Office of Management and Budget can draft its own assessments of the projected fiscal impact of the bill. The Charter Revision Commission said that this was necessary to avoid cost overruns due to underestimated price tags for initiatives by the City Council. Critics say that this move is not related to fiscal responsibility, but rather the mayor’s intent to stymie the City Council’s ability to put forth legislation.
Proposal 4: In the same vein as proposal 3, this measure would require that the City Council provide 30 days’ notice to the mayor’s office for any proposed changes in public safety procedures carried out by the Police, the Fire Department, or the Department of Corrections, and would allow for them and the mayor’s office to hold their own hearings on measures proposed by the City Council. These departments are the proposed rule’s main backers, saying they encourage public engagement. Meanwhile, opponents see the same issues as with Proposal 3, framing it as a bureaucratic hurdle meant to lessen the City Council’s ability to keep these departments in check. Reinvent Albany, an advocacy group whose stated mission is to push for “transparent and accountable New York government,” has not taken a position on the Charter Revision Commission’s other ballot proposals, but has called Proposal 4 “arbitrary and illogical,” as “one type of issue does not deserve more consideration than another by the City Council.”
Proposal 5: This would require the city to provide more information than it does currently for annual reports regarding the condition of city-owned facilities. These reports are used to decide if the city should expand, build more, or shutter facilities. The city’s comptroller Brad Lander said in a statement that while the system is in dire need of reform and the Commission did indeed seek his counsel, the proposal “fails to improve the City’s capital planning process in any way,” leaving out crucial assessments of infrastructure assets (e.g. drinking water pipes) and needs for repair. The City Council is similarly scathing in its criticism, stating that the Prop 5 “introduces meaningless changes to a process that affects less than 1% of the City’s infrastructure, while falsely claiming to address a serious issue and misleading the public.”
Proposal 6: This measure would formalize a role created by Adams – the city’s Chief Business Diversity Officer – into the city charter. It would also give the mayor more say in which city office approves or denies permits for film and television production. Lastly, it merges two city boards responsible for managing the city’s archives. Prop 6’s supporters say there will be increased accountability and efficiency in the proposed merger, while opponents are concerned that it is a combination of disparate measures that make changes which are difficult to discern in terms of their scope and consequences. The City Council states that these measures can and should have gone through the standard and more public legislative process. The website nycvotes.com says that the city received 6 public comments from advocacy groups opposing the measure, and one in favor from an individual.
