A Sham Process: New Yorkers Deserve Better Than How Charter Changes Got on the Ballot
First of all, let’s be sure you are planning to vote in this year’s critical election. Voting is always a right and a privilege, one we should never fail to exercise, and this year voting is more important than ever because there are challenges to our democratic structure.
Then, in New York you have to remember to flip your ballot. There are key items on the back side, whether you vote in person or by mail.
At the top you’ll find a proposition designed to enshrine an Equal Rights Amendment in the New York State Constitution. In New York City, that’s followed by Questions 2-6, all concerning the structure of City government, each in some way or other changing the power and authority of the mayor and/or the City Council as set out in New York’s foundational governing document, the City Charter.
I certainly have views about the merits of these proposed charter changes. But far more fundamentally, I have strong misgivings about the deeply flawed process that produced them. Because just as voting is essential to the health of our democracy so is the manner in which we decide how to govern ourselves.
Where have these proposed charter changes come from? From a commission hastily appointed by Mayor Eric Adams in late May, just two months before the deadline for putting questions on the ballot for this fall’s elections. Why the hurry? Apparently to head off and supersede a possible City Council effort to put a different proposed Charter change before the voters– one that would strengthen its role in the current arrangement of checks and balances at City Hall.
The mayor then packed the commission with his allies, showing scant attention to incorporating a broader range of views, and staffed the commission exclusively with current City employees. The commissioners proceeded to hold hearings that were shambolic, rushed, and barely publicized. Observers found the commissioners themselves (rather than members of the public) at times testifying to nearly empty rooms. To no one’s surprise, the commission In June voted to approve only items sought by the mayor which would enhance his authority, and then closed up shop.
What a dispiriting exercise. And how different this was from the Charter Revision Commission put together by Mayor Ed Koch in 1987 to revise the structure of City government. Change was necessary then because of a lawsuit that ultimately led to a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court ruling that a status quo giving each borough equal weight on a powerful City body known as the Board of Estimate irredeemably violated the Constitutional principle of “one person, one vote.”
That commission, appointed with the acknowledged input of other elected officials and staffed from outside city government, did not imagine that it had all the answers. It made an exhaustive, well-researched review of how the city’s people might be represented more fairly and how functions overseen by the Board of Estimate might be carried out under a different governing arrangement. It held months of well-publicized and well-attended meetings and hearings throughout the city where those questions were openly and vigorously debated by the public and among the commissioners.
Then there was an active coalition of elected officials, labor leaders, and good government groups which, as a member of the City Council, I helped assemble. We developed some original ideas, lobbied the commission, and had our ideas taken seriously. In short, we took part in an historic, small “d” democratic, process. Our work made what I think was a largely positive difference in shaping City government going forward. And I have no doubt that the transparency and inclusiveness of the process improved the final product.
For me, it also created a new nexus of relationships; I got to know union leaders and members of the city “establishment” better than I might ever have otherwise. They learned that some of my colleagues and I were, yes, “pols,” but also had a deep interest in how the city ran. Those new and respectful relationships carried over to work I did in the years that followed.
Certainly, there have been subsequent charter commissions whose structure and work didn’t approach the standard I just described. But that’s no reason not to aim higher than the Adams administration has this year.
What we now instead have is a process that’s been controlled by a mayor beset by serious, indeed unprecedented, legal problems. Many of his administration’s principal officials have also had their phones and computers taken as part of investigations into possible wrong-doing at City Hall. A whirlwind of top-level resignations has left New Yorkers justifiably wondering who’s in charge.
Against that backdrop, I can’t help feeling that it would be a better, wiser course to call a charter change timeout. City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams last week introduced legislation to establish an alternative, more broadly representative charter revision commission designed to do its work in a more transparent and seriously deliberative manner next year or the year after.
That seems a good idea to me. By all means, let’s have a discussion about who exercises powers affecting the lives of all New Yorkers every day, and how that’s accomplished. But let’s do it in a manner more befitting the greatest city in the nation.
Ruth W. Messinger, a board member of the Interfaith Center of New York, is global ambassador for American Jewish World Service. A former member of the New York City Council, she served two terms as Manhattan Borough President and was the Democratic Party candidate for mayor in 1997.
Photo by: NYC Council - GS Institute
