Speaker Adams, City Council pass ‘Advice and Consent’ bill
City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams and the majority of the city council voted to pass the ‘advice and consent’ bill last Thursday, which most have clocked a legislative dig at Mayor Eric Adams.
“Advice and consent is a safeguard of good government, ensuring the city’s agency leaders are qualified and their priority is the public interest,” said Adams in a statement. “When you cut through the noise, the truth is that advice and consent is a common feature of representative democracy in cities and states across this country, including New York, and New York City is an outlier.”
The bill, Introduction 908-A, requires the city council to be a part of the appointment process for city agency commissioners, and hold a subsequent approval by voters in a citywide election.
The commissioners of the following agencies are covered by the bill: Aging; Buildings; Children’s Services; Citywide Administrative Services; Consumer and Worker Protection; Cultural Affairs; Design and Construction; Environmental Protection; Finance; Health and Mental Hygiene; Homeless Services; Housing Preservation and Development; Information Technology and Telecommunications; Parks and Recreation; Sanitation; Small Business Services; Social Services; Transportation; Youth and Community Development; City Planning.
The vote was held to pass the bill at a city council stated meeting on June 6. During the meeting, Adams briefly addressed the controversy surrounding the legislation.
“There’s been a lot of public conversation about this legislation and I want to be clear that advice and consent is not a new concept,” said Adams. “Contrary to what some have claimed, this legislation does not usurp the Mayor’s power to appoint commissioners and top city officials. And at no point would the council be able to choose its own nominees to lead agencies.”
She added that the bill is not likely to slow down the appointment process since it has guardrails in place to ensure the council takes action within 30 days if there’s a commissioner vacancy.
However, a handful of council members, like Counilmember Kalman Yeger, noted that the Speaker’s bill was hastily introduced and passed. He said that the Speaker’s bill is “for show” and can be knocked off the ballot by the Mayor’s recently convened charter revision commission.
“This bill, we talk about being a deliberative body, was introduced 15 days ago. 15 days from introduction to passage. It’s not a secret why we’re seeing this now,” said Yeger. “There’s a lot of talk that it’s not about a personalities conflict between this side of the building and the other but it clearly is and I think we’ve seen that I think we’ve seen how that plays out in public.”
Mayor Adam’s aimless charter commission has held one sparsely attended public meeting so far. Most critics agree with Yeger that he quickly formed the commission in order to block Speaker Adam’s bill from being on the ballot in November.
The bill isn’t likely to make it to the ballot to be voted on by the general public, said Yeger.
Ariama C. Long is a Report for America corps member and writes about politics for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://bit.ly/amnews1.
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