New York City voters approved at least four out of five ballot measures designed to change the way the City Council approves legislation and give the Department of Sanitation more power over how it cleans city streets, according to The Associated Press.
The measures’ passage came in spite of efforts by opponents to cast them as an unwarranted power grab by Mayor Eric Adams as he faces a federal corruption indictment.
The five measures were proposed by a Charter Revision Commission that Mr. Adams hastily convened in May. Many saw the commission as a ploy to block a ballot measure that would have forced the mayor to seek Council approval on 21 of his commissioner-level appointments.
By forming a commission to come up with its own ballot proposals, Mr. Adams effectively knocked the Council’s proposal, which required voter approval, off the ballot.
More than 60 civil rights and community groups and 50 elected officials formed a coalition called No Power Grab NYC to oppose the five proposals. Their pitch: Given his current federal corruption indictment and the likelihood of additional charges, Mr. Adams — and future mayors — should not be given more power.
Eric Lane, a professor of law at Hofstra University and the executive director of the 1989 charter review commission that reorganized New York City’s government, said that Mr. Adams’s commission “wasn’t intended as a robust study of the charter, but rather as an obstacle to passing the Council’s laws.”
Among the five proposals, three raised the most concerns.
One measure that was passed will require 30 days’ notice before the Council votes on public safety legislation. Opponents felt it was payback for the Council’s decision to override the mayor’s vetoes on a bill that would end solitary confinement in city jails and another that would require police to report more information about people they stop.
Another ballot measure that was passed will require the Council to release fiscal impact statements for legislation earlier and extend the deadline for the mayor to introduce executive budgets.
The third measure will give the Department of Sanitation more jurisdiction over public spaces such as parks and highway medians. The Adams administration said the proposal, which was approved by voters, according to The A.P., was designed to allow for those areas to be cleaned, but opponents said the measure would give the city the power to sweep vendors and homeless people off the street.
The only measure that may be headed for defeat would have created a chief business diversity officer to support minority and women-owned businesses.
Mr. Adams pushed for the passage of the measures, arguing in an opinion piece in The Daily News that they would make life better for New Yorkers.
The passage of the four ballot measures may signal that the mayor can still exert influence over city policy, even as he faces trial in April on five federal corruption charges that accuse him of taking illegal campaign contributions and luxury gifts, such as travel upgrades and hotels, in exchange for performing favors.
In a statement, Mr. Adams said, “Working-class New Yorkers spoke, and the Charter Revision Commission listened.”
“This is a great day for everyone who desires a safer city, cleaner streets, greater fiscal responsibility, transparency in the city’s capital planning process, and, of course, access to abortion care,” the mayor said, referring to Proposition 1, a statewide ballot measure that enshrines the protection of reproductive rights in the State Constitution.
Mark Winston Griffith, a spokesman for No Power Grab NYC, blamed the results on the haste with which the questions were put on the ballot for their passage, which left many voters — their numbers inflated during a presidential election year — uninformed. He said the changes move the city in the “wrong direction.”
Jumaane Williams, the city’s public advocate, praised the passage of Proposition 1 but said the mayor’s ballot measures were “self-serving” and that “misinformation” played a role in the changes gaining voter approval.
“This was a power grab by a mayor in whom trust has been shaken, to say the least,” Mr. Williams said in a statement.
Adrienne Adams, the Council speaker, called the mayor’s proposals “anti-democratic” and “inaccurately worded” measures that “misled” New Yorkers. She has introduced legislation to form a new Charter Revision Commission.
State lawmakers may also consider legislation next year that could alter the Charter Revision Commission process to prevent Mr. Adams and future mayors from repeating his sidestep maneuver. The proposed bill would eliminate the ability of the mayor to push a question off the ballot by forming a commission to create new ballot questions; it would also increase to six months the amount of time a charter commission is formed before it could place a question on the ballot.
“There is serious work needed to protect our local democracy from a mayor willing to disregard norms in the pursuit of power that removes checks and balances,” Ms. Adams said in a statement.
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