News around the Web
Voters Asked to Choose NYC Charter Revision Commission Ballot Proposals in 2024 General Election
By Mary Alice Miller
Who wouldn’t want their city government to perform more efficiently? The devil is in the details.
Earlier this year, the City Council proposed increasing its powers to adopt “advice and consent” confirmation hearings of top mayoral appointments. Mayor Adams did not take the Council’s usurpation of his executive powers kindly. Passed in the Council by a 46-4 veto-proof majority, the change would have required approval from the voters in a city-wide election since it requires a change to the City Charter.
In response, Mayor Adams convened a Charter Revision Commission to displace the City Council’s proposed charter change and curtail some of the Council’s powers in the process. The mayor had already irked the Council when he established an Elected Officials Agency Engagement Request Form, an online portal facilitating communications between council members and agency commissioners.
The 2024 New York City Charter Revision Commission was fast-tracked to occur before the November General Election. Formed on May 21 and concluded in August, the Charter Revision Commission hosted 12 hearings across all five boroughs.
The ballot proposals were made after a review of the entire city charter.
The five approved city-wide ballot questions are:
Clean Streets: The proposal will expand and clarify the New York City Department of Sanitation’s (DSNY) authority to keep the city clean.
DSNY already has the authority to clean city-owned property, but the proposal would allow the cleaning of perimeters and medians between city-owned properties. The Sanitation Department’s authority would extend street and sidewalk vending enforcement to include areas like parks. The proposal would also clarify that DSNY has the authority to require garbage to be containerized.
Fiscal Responsibility: The proposal would change how the city assesses the fiscal impact of proposed local laws, giving the Adams administration more say on the cost of proposed legislation and addressing change budget deadlines.
The City Council would be required to publish an initial fiscal impact statement before a public hearing on a proposed local law, require an updated fiscal impact statement before a vote on a proposed local law by the full City Council, and require that fiscal impact statements for proposed laws contain an estimate by the City Council and require that the Council provide an opportunity for the Mayor’s Office of Management and Budget to submit fiscal impact statements at the same time. Certain budget deadlines would also change.
Currently, fiscal impact statements are published just before the City Council votes on a proposed piece of legislation. The ballot proposal would require the City Council to give the Mayor’s office eight days’ notice before holding a hearing or full vote on a proposed legislation, giving the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) time to produce its own fiscal estimate.
In years following a mayoral election, the preliminary budget deadline would change from January 16 to February 1, and the deadline for submission of the executive budget would be extended from April 26 to May 1 to ensure the executive budget reflects valuable information about tax collections and revenues obtained at the April 1 tax deadline.
The impetus for this proposal seems to have derived from contention between the City Council and the Mayor’s Office regarding the Council’s passage of expanding rental voucher access one day after publishing projected costs of the bill to be $10 billion, a cost the Mayor balked at.
Critics of this proposal within the City Council and elsewhere say that this proposal requiring OMB to submit fiscal estimates for every individual bill before the City Council can hold a hearing would grind city government to a halt.
Public Safety: The proposal would establish additional procedural requirements when the City Council considers proposed local laws affecting the public safety operations of three city agencies: the New York City Police Department, the New York City Department of Correction, and the Fire Department of the City of New York.
Specifically, when the full Council intends to vote on a covered public safety proposal, the Council would be required to give additional notice to the public, the mayor, and the commissioners of affected agencies at least 30 days in advance of such vote. During the period between the notice and the ultimate vote, the mayor and affected agencies could hold one or more additional public hearings on the proposal separate from the City Council in order to solicit additional public input, though they would not be required to hold such hearings. These hearings could include, where appropriate, public hearings in all boroughs to facilitate input from impacted communities.
A previous version of the proposal would have allowed the affected agencies to file an impact statement on the proposed public safety legislation and then require the City Council to include the statement in the public legislative record no less than five days before the Council vote. Under the current version, it is unclear what the Mayor’s office and affected public safety agencies would do with information garnered from any hearings they could have.
This proposal seems to be direct response to the City Council’s passage of legislation requiring more police reporting on low-level encounters with the public and the banning of solitary confinement. Both of these bills were strongly opposed by Mayor Adams, but the City Council overrode his vetoes.
Capital Planning: The proposal would promote transparency and ensure the city collects critical information – including current conditions of its facilities – to inform capital planning and update capital planning deadlines.
The proposal would ensure the NYC Dept. City Planning and OMB consider the current condition of its facilities in its annual statement of needs and more detailed information about the state of repair for facilities. It would also amend the date that the 10-Year Capital Strategy is due from November 1st to align with the date for the city’s preliminary budget and similarly change the date for the public hearing associated with the 10-Year Capital Strategy to accommodate the later date for the initial submission.
Minority—and Women-Owned Business Enterprises (M/WBEs) and Modernization of City Operations: This proposal would codify the position of chief business diversity officer (created by Mayor Adams by executive order), authorize the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment to issue film permits (currently under the authority of the Department of Small Business Services), and combine two city charter advisory boards that deal with municipal archives.
Voters are strongly encouraged to review all ballot proposals before voting.