Tag Archives: non-partisan elections

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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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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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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“Good Government” Comes to Flatbush

Posted on July 15, 2010 | Leave a comment

The Citizens Union, NYC’s oldest “good government” group and “public partner” of the 2010 NYC Charter Revision Commission, will get a chance to present its recommendations to the commission and the public on Monday, July 19, at 6:00 PM at Gershwin Theater at Brooklyn College. The session will be webcast.

The Citizens Union already has conveyed its 49 charter recommendations in a 114-page report entitled “Increasing Avenues for Participation in Governing and Elections in New York City,” released on June 30. Monday’s session will set aside time for discussion of these recommendations by Citizens Union Executive Director Dick Dadey and CU senior staff members Alex Camarda and Rachael Fauss, and questions by commission members. 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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Charter Commission Reveals Ballot Issues

Posted on July 12, 2010 | Leave a comment

Lorna B. Goodman

Mayor Michael Bloomberg will like what his charter revision commission plans to place on November’s ballot.

After a whirlwind round of 13 public hearings, meetings and panel discussions, and consideration of testimony from hundreds of individuals and groups, the 2010 NYC Charter Revision Commission has narrowed its ballot agenda to include term limits, which satisfies Bloomberg’s 2008 commitment to billionaire term limits advocate Ron Lauder, along with several other changes that could subtly shift power towards Bloomberg’s end of City Hall.

The selected issues are laid out in a July 9 staff report, which the commission will discuss at its 6:00 PM July 12 public meeting at the Surrogate’s Courthouse in Manhattan. Continue reading →

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Charter Revision: Speaking Truth to Power

Posted on June 3, 2010 | 5 comments

Father Richard Gorman

It took four hours until anyone — expert witnesses, charter commission members, or one of the evening’s 21 informal speakers — finally zeroed in on why voter participation has plummeted in NYC over the last two decades:

“Maybe the reason why people don’t vote is they don’t think it’s worth the trouble of going to vote for a government that increasingly shuts them out.”

The speaker was Father Richard Gorman, chairman of Community Board 12 in The Bronx. Unfortunately, by the time he spoke, at 10:05 PM, the panelists, half the commissioners, and almost all the main-stream press, had deserted the Lehman College auditorium. The few audience members who lingered were mayoral aides or one-issue advocates for non-partisan elections. Continue reading →

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Voter Participation Takes the Spotlight

Posted on June 1, 2010 | Leave a comment

John Banks and Matthew Goldstein

This week’s charter revision commission forum on Voter Participation will take place at Lehman College in The Bronx at 6:00 PM on Wednesday, June 2. With live webcasting in place, it’s a fair bet that relatively few residents of Brooklyn or Staten Island will make the journey to personally attend —- except for members of the Independence Party and its youth affiliate, the All Stars Project.

The Independence Party — now New York State’s third largest — perennially pushes for non-partisan elections: a voting change that in NYC would weaken the dominant Democratic Party and make it easier for well-funded media campaigns to trump grass-roots voter organizing at the polls. Continue reading →

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Charter Revision Focuses on Term Limits

Posted on May 26, 2010 | Leave a comment

John Keefe

To jaded journalists, Tuesday’s charter revision commission forum on term limits provided a stimulating, wonkishly entertaining, and ultimately inconsequential diversion. One observer sitting in the second row at Brooklyn’s Borough Hall chuckled throughout.

To John Keefe, who spoke for Brooklyn Assemblyman James Brennan, the forum — and the commission itself — were “part of a cynical and opportunistic deal” that Mike Bloomberg had made in October, 2008 with billionaire term limits advocate Ron Lauder as the price for Lauder’s non-opposition to Bloomberg’s run for a third term as mayor. Continue reading →

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Term Limits and Non-partisan Elections

Posted on May 24, 2010 | Leave a comment

The 2010 charter revision commission’s upcoming Tuesday evening “issues forum” on term limits is just a detour on Mike Bloomberg’s path towards increased political power for members of the Billionaires Club.

The real thrust will play out the following week, when Bloomberg’s commission discusses non-partisan elections. Why are those so important to billionaires?

Joseph J. Savino, the Bronx Republican chairman, answered this for Sam Roberts of the NY Times: Non-partisan elections eliminate the need for party primaries, thus robbing the parties of a major raison d’etre. To Savino, as well as to most Democratic Party leaders, political parties are the only way to counter great personal wealth. Roberts writes:

“Mr. Savino said the party organization was “what separates the ability of an everyday person who doesn’t have a billion dollars to get on the ballot.”

“’If you’re just Joe Citizen,’ he said, ‘you need an organization.’”

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