Category Archives: 2010 NYC Charter Revision

Charter Revision Revisions?

Posted on August 23, 2010 | 1 comment

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. Continue reading →

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Mayor Takes All

Posted on August 12, 2010 | Leave a comment

Unless the details of the NYC Charter Revision Commission’s final ballot questions deviate sharply from what was in the commission’s July 9 staff report, the final tally from Wednesday’s voting session will be: mayor all, City Council and public, none.

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. Continue reading →

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Non-Partisan Elections? Nah!

Posted on August 5, 2010 | 1 comment

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. Continue reading →

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Technical Difficulties

Posted on August 3, 2010 | 1 comment

NYC Charter Revision: We missed portions of Monday’s webcast NYC charter revision commission hearing when our Internet access crashed. Here’s what we managed to see and hear: Continue reading →

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Short and Tweet

Posted on July 28, 2010 | 2 comments

Always looks the same, doesn't it?

NYC Charter Revision: @We want to go to sleep tonight, so we’re going to pretend we’re tweeting and be done with it:

Charter revision commission spent 1:15 on “independent budgets” with OMB’s Mark Page. He: smart, thorough, earnest, soporific, and ultimately a believer in the status quo, bashes independent budgets, even for Conflicts of Interest Board.

CRC Member Cassino wants to clean up City Council. But no recognition that eliminating Council member items must be matched by eliminating mayor’s discretionary items. Our bet: CRC won’t tackle this one.

Goldstein didn’t know “etymology” of Council extra compensation called “lulus.” Was told it means: “in lieu of.” Aahhh! Continue reading →

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Queens Civics Advance Charter Principles

Posted on July 28, 2010 | Leave a comment

Queens County Farm Museum

NYC Charter Revision: The Queens Civic Congress is the only borough-wide coalition of civic associations in New York City. Because we respect their efforts to protect the individuality and distinctiveness that make Queens great, we are posting the Statement of Charter Principles the congress recently prepared. We are grateful to the QCC president, Patricia Dolan, for sharing it with us. Here’s Pat’s letter after the break: Continue reading →

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Efficiency! is Theme of Charter Hearing

Posted on July 27, 2010 | 1 comment

NYC Charter Revision: If anything, Matthew Goldstein’s treatment of a group of protesters at Monday’s charter revision commission hearing was efficient. When the protesters interrupted the Harlem State Office Building session by chanting “Show me what democracy looks like. This is what democracy looks like,” Goldstein didn’t even blink.

Apparently well-schooled in street theatre, the CUNY Chancellor waited for the protesters to finish their call-and-response and deliver their statements demanding a more democratic process before he returned to the business at hand. He didn’t waste a Joule of energy.

Goldstein’s invited guests, who also waited while the middle-aged protesters did their thing, were 2005 charter commission chair Ester R. Fuchs, currently a fellow at the Partnership for New York City, her 2005 executive director, Terri Matthews, current Bloomberg deputy mayor for legal affairs Carol Robles-Roman, and David B. Goldin, the mayor’s Administrative Justice Coordinator.

Their task was to educate the 2010 commission about two “efficiency” initiatives contained in its preliminary staff report for possible ballot inclusion this November. Continue reading →

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Surprise: Charter Commission to Give More Power to the Mayor

Posted on July 21, 2010 | 3 comments

NYC Charter Revision: They didn’t say it in so many words, but the 2010 Charter Revision Commission members are heading in the direction of giving the mayor even more power than Mike Bloomberg has today — at the expense of the City Council and government transparency.

How: by creating a new “reporting commission,” putatively to get rid of unnecessary advisory bodies and trim the number of reports the mayor has to submit each year. Some of those reports are not used. But the charter revision commission would give the new reporting commission the power to review (and reject?) any future City Council decision to “extend or enhance” a report the mayor already provides.

Because a majority of the members of the reporting commission would be appointed by — you guessed it — the mayor, he would be able to frustrate the Council if it wants to ask for additional information from his agencies: a loss for the Council and transparency, and a gain for him. Continue reading →

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Citizens Union: NYC Needs Top-Two Elections

Posted on July 20, 2010 | Leave a comment

Citizens Union Speakers

NYC Charter Revision: Non-partisan primary elections — or, as the Citizens Union has re-labeled them, “top-two elections” — dominated Monday’s charter revision commission session at Brooklyn College.

The CU team proposing top-two included chairman Peter Sherwin, Executive Director Dick Dadey, senior staff members Alex Camarda and a silent Rachael Fauss, and the disembodied voice of CU Foundation board member John P. Avlon, who was unable to appear in person.

So effectively counterbalanced was CU’s top-two advocacy by the opposition from floor speakers that the evening felt scripted, almost as if some political strategist had said “we’ll satisfy CU that we’re listening to them, but we’ll give enough opponents a chance to speak that CU will realize that putting non-partisan elections on the ballot this year would fail. And then the mayor won’t owe anything to them or to the Independence Party.” Continue reading →

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Scissura: Practice What You Preach

Posted on July 13, 2010 | 1 comment

2010 NYC Charter Revision Commission

The 2010 NYC Charter Revision Commission spent much of its July 12 meeting agonizing over ways to restore the public’s faith in government and increase voter participation. It did not acknowledge that voter apathy may stem from the public’s resignation that billionaires will continue to control the Mayor’s office, and that selection of City Council members may make little difference in shaping City Hall’s major decisions.

The webcast meeting had been convened to discuss the commission staff’s July 9 preliminary report. But as quickly as the staff’s proposal for instant run-off voting — IRV — appeared on the pages of that report, it got jettisoned when chairman Matthew Goldstein’s colleagues complained that they never had discussed it. Continue reading →

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