The charter revision commission convened by Mayor Bloomberg earlier this year has produced only two ballot questions. On the first — whether to restore two-term limits — a “No” vote will retain the existing three-term limit, and a “Yes” vote will reimpose the two-term limit, but not for today’s incumbents. Only newcomers who first get elected in 2013 or afterward will be subject to the two-term restriction.

The second ballot question, which is receiving scant press attention, would implement a hodgepodge of unrelated charter changes presumed to be wanted by Mayor Bloomberg. Individually, these have drawn mixed reviews at best; collectively, they are being widely criticized for not allowing voters a choice among them.

Bill de Blasio

But for the 13 Council members first elected in 2009, and for Public Advocate Bill de Blasio and Comptroller John Liu, who were elected with them, either outcome on ballot Question One will allow them to run for reelection to serve through the end of 2021.

The prospects are even better for Council member David Greenfield (Borough Park/Bensonhurst./Midwood), who was elected to fill a vacancy in March, 2010, and faces no contest to complete the balance of the term.  Either outcome on the term limits question means Greenfield will be able to run for three full terms, and serve through 2025.

David Greenfield

Greenfield, who is actively reaching out to his constituents despite no opposition in November (he is working with the local Pakistani community to sponsor a flood relief effort) is a good bet to be reelected and rise to a leadership role in the Council.

Sheldon Silver

In a Saturday editorial stating its endorsements for the September 14 primary, the New York Times dismisses the New York State Assembly altogether:

“In the Assembly, there are not enough real contests. And in New York, that means one thing: the Democratic Party has given some of Albany’s worst legislators a free ride. Here’s the only solution: vote against the incumbents.”

Some people disagree. Here’s a letter submitted to the Times by our colleague, Carol Ann Rinzler:

“To the editor:

“At a time when the Republicans in Washington are planning to shut down the government if they achieve a majority in the November elections and three Democrats in Albany were able to wreak chaos in the legislature, it is at best irresponsible and at worst dangerous to fail to distinguish the competent and intelligent from the mob and to say, as you did of the Assembly, ‘Here’s the only solution: vote against the incumbents.’”

“As the author of more than 20 books on health, I am both professionally and personally grateful to the Assembly Health Committee chaired by Richard Gottfried for its work this last session in protecting the medical rights of New Yorkers, beginning with the passage of the Family Health Care Decisions Act which makes it possible for a patient’s family member to make health care decisions when the patient is does not have capacity to do so and has not signed a health care proxy.  This bill, passed in the State Senate thanks to Tom Duane and signed by the governor, will in the future spare parents the agony my late husband and I endured when our adult son was hospitalized without having signed a health care proxy.”

“I am appending a partial list of the health care bills passed by both the Assembly and Senate and signed into law by the governor, as well as those awaiting the governor’s signature, and those vetoed by the governor.”

“Despite the dreadful behavior of some miscreants in Albany, the men and women who did this work deserve your praise, not your sneering dismissal.”

Carol Ann Rinzler

Why does the Times dismiss the Assembly? With the 1989 charter having given the mayor all the cards in NYC, the State Assembly is the only effective brake on Mike Bloomberg’s excesses. Examples: Dan Doctoroff’s Hudson Yards West Side Stadium debacle and Joel Klein’s drive to get Albany to raise the charter schools cap without any restrictions.

Next time you see the Times, the News, or the Post calling Albany “dysfunctional,” keep in mind that they, like Mike Bloomberg, would like to see NYC autonomous and free of Albany’s restraints. How better to build public support for that but to tear Albany down?

It’s worth saying again that the commission’s first ballot question for November will deny voters any chance to restore two-term limits immediately or eliminate term limits entirely. And the second question will lump together so many independent changes that voters will be forced to chew a lot of inedible chaff to get the few grains of wheat that the commission is sprinkling at our feet. To us, it’s an unacceptable diet.

I had nothing to do with it! Photo:QueensCrap

Calling the term limits decision “misbegotten,” the Daily News totally exempted Bloomberg from complicity. Instead, the News chose to indict chairman Matthew Goldstein and commissioners Stephen Fiala, John Banks, David Chen, Betty Chen, Carlo Scissura, and Angela Freyre.

To believe that version of what happened, we’d have to forget that Mike Bloomberg hand-picked Goldstein and the rest of the charter commission members and had to know their loyalties. We’d also have to forget that Bloomberg controlled who got on the commission’s legal staff. They’re the ones, along with the mayor’s own Law Department, who advised commission members on the legal implications of their options.

The Post did the Daily News one better: It didn’t mention Mike Bloomberg at all. It was as if his charter revision commission had descended miraculously out of the political firmament, freed itself of all allegiances, and ignored the advice of its legal staff. We don’t buy it.

Even NYC goo-goo-in-chief Henry Stern gave Bloomberg a pass. Stern, writing in his blog, quoted extensively from the News and the Post, focused on term limits, and lambasted the commission without implicating the man who appointed it. Sites such as the NY Sun and the Westchester Herald re-printed his screed.

Would Henry give a similar pass to former President George W. Bush for having appointed Supreme Court Justices John G. Roberts and Samuel Alito, Jr., if he found one of their decisions unacceptable?

How did the editorial writers at the News and the Post end up in the same strange bed as Henry Stern? All apparently believe in a strong-mayor City Hall, all find it useful to support billionaire Mike Bloomberg, and all want to shield him from public resentment towards his commission’s controversial decisions. Finally, all want New Yorkers to focus on term limits so that legitimate concerns about ballot Question 2 — which would further empower the mayor — will escape voter scrutiny for as long as possible.

Only Clyde Haberman of the Times saw through the nonsense.

City Question 1. Term Limits: The proposal would amend the City Charter to:

• Reduce from three to two the maximum number of consecutive full terms that can be served by elected city officials; and
• Make this change in term limits applicable only to those city officials who were first elected at or after the 2010 general election; and
• Prohibit the City Council from altering the term limits of elected city officials then serving in office.

Shall this proposal be adopted?

If it’s adopted, all of today’s first- and second-term incumbents will be entitled to run for a third term, while third-termers will be able to finish their terms. The two-term limit won’t take full effect until 2021. If the proposal is rejected, the current three-term limit enacted by the Council and the mayor in 2008 stays in effect.

A lot can happen between now and 2021. We don’t think Question 1 deserves your vote.

City Question 2.  Elections and Government Administration: The proposal would amend the City Charter to:

• Disclosure of Independent Campaign Spending: Require public disclosure of expenditures made by entities and individuals independent from candidates to influence the outcome of a city election or referendum;

Sounds like motherhood and apple pie, but it doesn’t affect candidates who are wealthy enough to fund their own campaigns.

• Ballot Access: Generally reduce the number of petition signatures needed by candidates for city elective office to appear on a ballot;

This would make it easier for newcomers to challenge party regulars, and for third-party candidates to unseat Democrats and Republicans. Several critics, including Jim Brennan, who heads up the State Assembly committee that oversees municipal charter revisions, have cautioned against it. Yes, he’s a Democrat.

• Voter Assistance and Campaign Finance Board: Merge voter assistance functions, including a reconstituted Voter Assistance Advisory Committee, into the Campaign Finance Board, and change when Campaign Finance Board  member terms begin;

This makes sense, but ultimately it won’t affect who gets elected.

• Conflicts of Interest Law: Require all public servants to receive conflicts of interest training, raise the maximum fine for a public servant who violates the City’s conflicts of interest law, and  allow the City to recover any benefits obtained from such violations;

This proposal is intended to get voters to vote “yes” for the two proposals that follow it, which voters might not do without a “good-government” sweetener. Mandatory Conflicts of Interest training and increased fines would have minimal effect on how well our government works. The third provision — recovery of benefits —  never was discussed by the charter commission members; we don’t know how it would work.

• City Administrative Tribunals: Authorize the Mayor to direct the merger of administrative tribunals and adjudications into the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings and permit the Department of Consumer Affairs to adjudicate all violations issued by that department;

This is about more centralization of mayoral control, and about applying a “one size fits all” approach to diverse agencies through the unified selection and training of Administrative Law Judges. It may violate collective bargaining agreements. It also could make it easier for future mayors to use their political influence to control ALJ selection or assignment. Not a good idea.

• City Reporting Requirements and Advisory Bodies: Create a commission to review requirements for reports and advisory bodies and waive the requirements, subject to City Council review, where the commission finds they are not of continuing value;

The devil is in the details. The way the rules are written, the City Council could enhance or expand reports required of the mayor only if such enhancement or expansion was first approved by a commission controlled by the mayor. Not a good idea.

• Map for Facility Siting: Include in the City’s facilities siting map those transportation and waste management facilities operated by or for governmental entities, or by private entities that provide comparable services.

Sounds good, but this information already is publicly available. Doesn’t get at the real Fair Share problems, especially City Hall’s ability to withhold siting information from the public until the last minute, thereby squelching effective public opposition.

Shall this proposal be adopted?

Lumped together like this, absolutely not.

We welcome your comments.

The commission’s August 23 decisions prove we were right.

The charter commission will place only two questions on the November 2 ballot: The first will ask voters whether to restore term limits to two 4-year terms from the current three, keep the Council from undoing this (does everyone forget that it was Mike Bloomberg, not the Council, who spurred the 2008 move to undo the original term limits laws?), and delay full implementation of the restoration until 2021.

Voter rejection of this ballot question would cause the current three-term limit to remain in effect, and could be used by a mayor and Council to justify a complete relaxation of term limits down the road.

A second, omnibus, ballot question will ask each voter to cast a single vote to approve an array of “good government” initiatives lumped together with unrelated “efficiency improvements.” Some of these could subtly shift power from the Council to the mayor.

Term limits would seek to bring voters to the polls. The proposed “good government” initiatives — public disclosure of independent campaign expenditures, ethics enhancements, and reduction of the signature requirement for nominating petitions — are intended to elicit a “Yes” vote that also would authorize the mayor to consolidate independent administrative tribunals, control the elimination of advisory bodies, and preclude future Council efforts to increase or enhance the mayor’s public reporting requirements.

Matthew Goldstein shows 2010 ballot space

Although speaker after speaker implored the charter revision commission to avoid combining any unrelated ballot proposals, commission chair Matthew Goldstein justified his group’s decision by blaming the city’s new computerized voting machines, which, Goldstein asserted, provide insufficient space on their paper ballot forms for individual charter proposals.

Voters, of course, still have the option to register their disagreement in November, either by refusing to vote or by rejecting “Question 2.”

We can expect editorials from the Times, the News, and the Post to apologize for Goldstein’s decision, but to urge voters to vote “Yes” on Question 2 nonetheless. History suggests that media owners want the mayoralty to be as strong as possible.

photo by killingdenouement.wordpress.com

Expect some fireworks tonight at the August 23 meeting of the NYC Charter Revision Commission. It seems that the commission didn’t finish its homework before it published its Draft Proposed Amendments to the New York City Charter on August 17.

Attorney Laurence D. Laufer, writing the next day in the Corporate Political Activity Blog, cited several proposals that could produce donnybrooks tonight:

• When the City Council extended term limits from two to three in 2008, it specifically said any subsequent charter revision to repeal this would simply restore the old two-term limit.  It did not provide for current third-term office-holders to be exempted from this provision. The charter revision commission’s August 17 draft would afford this exemption.
• The draft charter proposal could be interpreted to mean that the Council subsequently can pass a local law to enable current third-term Council members to serve an additional two terms, for a total of five. Does anyone — other than Council incumbents — want this?
• The proposal requiring independent City election expenditures to be subject to public disclosure needs clarification as to which expenditures would be covered. And, as Laufer notes, “there’s no news media exception, so just what is intended in the case of newspaper endorsements, or internet exception: bloggers beware!”

• The extension of City law reporting requirements to all political committees could yield interpretative conflicts between the Charter and existing State law.

We’ll let you know how this plays out.

Every one of the commission’s key decisions will ask voters to expand the mayor’s powers, or will try to draw voters to the polls to achieve this end.

Michael R. Bloomberg

How would a term limits question — the commission’s primary objective— help the mayoralty? The mayor’s office already is stronger than its legislative counterweight, the City Council. Two-term limits would distract the Council with more frequent leadership battles and freshman ramp-ups, and would hasten the day when members start preparing for post-Council employment, possibly as members of mayoral administrations. Result: A Council with less time and energy to counter a mayor when it needs to.

Isn’t the mayor subject to comparable distractions? No. Term-limited mayors don’t generally seek higher office. Mayors also tend to hit the ground running, bringing their agenda and leadership team with them. And, unlike Council neophytes, they tend to be experienced leaders themselves.

With mayoral dominance in the background, it took less than a half-hour for the Goldstein charter revision commission to settle on amending the city charter to impose two-term limits for all NYC elected officials and to prohibit the City Council from passing a local law to undo the term limits provision. It is unclear whether the commission ever considered whether the procedural restriction would survive legal challenge.

On a thornier question — how TLs should apply to today’s Council members — commission members went back and forth with vigor, ultimately voting 9 to 6 in favor of “Option 2,” which would allow all of today’s Council incumbents to complete three full terms in office. The mayor — who appointed the Goldstein panel’s members — never got mentioned in their debate.

Apart from satisfying Mike Bloomberg’s 2008 commitment to fellow-billionaire term limits advocate Ron Lauder, several of the commission’s other ballot proposals would make small, but meaningful, gains for the mayoralty, if approved by the voters on November 2.

One charter amendment would halve the number of signatures required on future nominating petitions. This would dull the edge currently enjoyed by the dominant political parties in NYC. With fewer signatures needed, independent insurgents would have an easier path to office, and political club membership could lose value, along with the clout of local and county party leadership. The charter commission may have found a way to compensate for its controversial non-starter, non-partisan elections, which, as we predicted, did not get advanced to the ballot.

What about consolidating administrative tribunals? How would this increase mayoral power? Right now, these quasi-judicial entities, e.g., the Environmental Control Board, are set forth in the city charter. Changing them would require action by voters or by the Council. The charter commission’s proposal would give the mayor the power to transfer such administrative tribunals by executive order. Not only would this diminish the Council’s ability to affect how administrative tribunals are structured, it could deprive the Council of a bargaining chip in other negotiations with the mayor’s office.

Christine Quinn

Of course, the current Council Speaker, Christine Quinn, who has mayoral ambitions of her own, may already have played this chip in a deal with Mike Bloomberg to preserve Council prerogatives such as lulus and member items.

Consolidation of administrative tribunals would achieve another key Bloomberg objective: further centralization of mayoral control.

How about the charter commission’s other ballot decisions? Some, such as a proposal to require disclosure of independent contributions to electoral campaigns, one to merge the Voter Assistance Commission into the Campaign Finance Board, and others to increase penalties for ethics violations and require mandatory ethics training, are essentially power-neutral. So is one to require graphic display of State, federal, and private environmental site information as part of the “Fair Share” process.

If the guiding principle for the 2010 charter revision commission is to preserve or enhance mayoral power, why is it bothering with these proposals?

The answer rests in the need of commission members to demonstrate that they are doing something more than carrying Mike Bloomberg’s term limits water. The commission’s advancement of such proposals also addresses its need to attract good-government supporters and other readers of the New York Times editorial pages to the polls in November.

The commission’s main work is done. On August 23^rd, it will convene to approve its final full report, including the precise language of the ballot proposals it approved Wednesday.

But for voters, faced on November 2 with a restricted choice between a two-term limit proposal or the default three-term limit — but not with an option to eliminate Council term limits altogether (which would strengthen the Council and challenge the mayor’s power) — the big decision will be whether to bother coming out for the charter proposals at all.

Commission members Taylor and Scissura

We respect Adam Lisberg, but we think he’s making too big a deal about non-partisan elections. His DN piece suggests that pressure from Mike Bloomberg could force the 2010 NYC Charter Revision Commission to place “top two” or another form of non-partisan elections on November’s ballot. We disagree.

What’s more, we think Lisberg’s employer is using this piece to confect a chance for commission chair Matthew Goldstein and his colleagues to prove their independence from Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

That aura of independence will boost the public’s confidence in the commission — which Bloomberg appointed — and bolster the mayor’s claim that he’s not controlling it.

And it will improve the chances that a Bloomberg-wary electorate will not shy away from the commission’s ballot proposals just because voters perceive the panel as his instrument.

Matthew Goldstein and his colleagues strike us as honorable people and intelligent, independent thinkers.

We’re not as confident as some are that Mayor Bloomberg will exert pressure on the commission members, or that if he does, they’ll roll over.

But it doesn’t hurt to have a group of influential minority political leaders help them make their decision.

Our thanks to reader Pat Dolan for alerting us to this story.

Matthew Goldstein

Chairman Matthew Goldstein once again showed he’s a masterful chairman. After introductions and thanks, he delivered his usual paean to the commission’s use of the Internet, and laid out the rest of the commission’s meeting schedule: a public-but-internal meeting on August 11 to vote on November’s ballot proposals, and a follow-up meeting on August 23 to approve the commission’s final report.

Then Goldstein moved on to satisfy outstanding public commitments: a 10-minute discussion of Government Structure for Brooklyn commission member Carlo Scissura, 10 minutes for a late-in-the-game Fair Share commitment to Eddie Bautista of the NY Environmental Justice Alliance, and finally, the commission’s biggest obligation: top two, the version of non-partisan elections proposed by the commission’s designated public partner, the Citizens Union. CU executive director Dick Dadey was present.

Reading from a 2003 charter document (about here’s where we lost our feed), Goldstein parsed top two’s advantages and disadvantages, expressed concern that placing top two on November’s ballot could “have a toxic effect” on the commission’s primary target (term limits), and asked his colleagues “Is the notion of voter fall-off as precipitously as we have seen the reason that we should at this particular point in time go for a very different approach than we have seen in New York City?” He called top two a “blunt instrument.” He cited a lack of agreement concerning the effect of non-partisan elections on minority voting.

To us, Goldstein’s extended soliloquy (which we subsequently viewed on the archived webcast) was his way of telling his colleagues and the audience that he thinks top two or another form of non-partisan elections is not right for this year’s ballot. After handling a couple of questions, Goldstein ended the top two discussion and opened public testimony at about 7:00 PM.

That his commission colleagues did not prolong the discussion was telling: It spoke of their acceptance that the books on government structure, Fair Share, and top two elections are closed — at least for this year.

Dick Dadey of Citizens Union

Fifteen speakers, including several who had appeared at previous hearings, delivered testimony to satisfy their own agendas.  Dadey and Staten Island Independence Party chair Sarah Lyons continued to promote non-partisan elections, elections expert John Mollenkopf and City Council member Gale Brewer cautioned against them, and effusive hearing regular Frank Morrano offered the commissioners Italian ices as a welcoming gesture to New York’s southern-most county.

Deanna Bitteti of Common Cause

The witness who drew the most Q&A from commission members was Deanna Bitteti of Common Cause, who, when pressed by Anthony Crowell to identify a single commission position that Common Cause supported, couldn’t.

Goldstein graciously let Bitteti off the hook, but not before Crowell’s point was made.

Monday’s session did nothing to disabuse us of our cynical view of the public hearing process. Like every charter revision commission in memory, Goldstein’s 2010 panel came in with a core agenda — here, term limits — and then fished for public support for additional mayoral priorities: non-partisan elections and “efficiency improvements” such as a “reporting commission.” It also held its public hearings to appease its audience: the public, the media, good-government groups, and a few unspoiled commission members, and to provide cover for decisions already understood by its chair and staff.

Goldstein, who strikes us as a man who combines great integrity and intellect with respect for the strong-mayor form of government Michael Bloomberg exemplifies, had to understand this agenda from the outset.

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