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Download the Full Testimony (PDF)

September 27, 2018, Updated October 10, 2018

Our City’s Charter is in desperate need of an upgrade for the next generation.

The last telegram was sent in 2006, so I don’t think the Charter should require telegraph to be maintained by NYPD Commissioner. The minimum wage is about to be $15 an hour, and I don’t think the mayor’s fourth enumerated power should be to pay election workers $20 a day.

We are presented with an opportunity to examine the balance of powers, the infrastructure of our government, and ultimately who is empowered to make decisions on behalf of the 8.7 million people who call this city home. Since August, I have carried a copy of the Charter around with me, highlighting interesting sections, and soliciting input. I must admit that I haven’t made it all the way through to Section 3103 of the Charter. My testimony represents a best effort through a cursory review identifying challenges with proposed solutions as a starting point.

I joined hundreds of New Yorkers in participating in the Mayor’s Charter Revision Commission by testifying over several months in favor of items now on the ballot, including term limits and urban planners for community boards and a slate of Campaign Finance reforms to reduce large contributions and match more small dollars with more public dollars to finally get big money out of New York City politics.

First and foremost, I would ask that if these measures pass, this Commission not weaken them in any way and in fact strengthen them by adding a requirement that any part of the Charter adopted through a vote of the people only be subject to change by those same people at another vote.

Along those lines, certain reforms must be protected from future change by any means short of a vote of the people. These include ethics reforms instating a lifetime ban on lobbying and lifetime term limits for elected officials and enshrining in the Charter reforms that were made by the city council to make the job of council member full time, eliminate “lulus” for equal compensation and standardize budget allocations for each council member.

In the face of an attack on our rights from the federal government, New York City is in need of its own Bill of Rights guaranteeing residents a right to a free higher education and child care, affordable health and mental health care, access to parks, libraries, and public transit, affordable internet, freedom from hunger, clean air and water, just to name a few.

This Commission can create a pathway for all the residents with great ideas for laws at these hearings and in the future to submit bills to the city council for a guaranteed hearing and vote.

Ultimately the 1989 Charter Revision Commission gave many of the powers from the Board of Estimate to the mayor and boards appointed by the mayor. Regardless of the mayor, other elected officials and communities have often been without power to stop a wrong. My recommendations hope to democratize many of the city’s most powerful boards with appointments from the borough presidents and the council to achieve fair housing and affordable housing goals. Borough presidents and community boards must be empowered to veto bad rezonings, the city council empowered with a final vote on franchises that have left residents without reliable cable or Internet, and both empowered to initiate land use changes in their own right.

I would highlight for this commission three main themes:

1. Land Use: Empower communities in land use by changing the makeup of decision-making boards to have fewer mayoral appointments and include representation from the city council.
2. Budget: Create a budget that anyone can review with budgeted amounts, actual spending, and a plan for the future, and create the lockbox we need to protect congestion pricing from unscrupulous politicians.
3. Protect the Will of the People to Enshrine Campaign Finance and Ethics Reforms in the Charter: Reforms that are essential to the functioning of our democracy, established through previous referenda, local law, and city council rules, should be enshrined in the City Charter.

Summary of Recommendations to the

2019 Charter Revision Commission

Create New Rights for New Yorkers

1. Create a New York City Bill of Rights to recognize certain inalienable rights and guide and restrain our government as it makes decisions moving forward.

Support Mayoral Charter Commission Proposals

2. Empower small donors and get big money out of politics by eliminating the cap on publicly matched campaign funds.
3. Increase the matching funds ratio from 6:1 to 8:1, consider expanding to 10:1.
4. Lower the contribution limits to $2,000 for citywide, $1,500 for borough and $1,000 for city council.
5. Establish term limits for community boards of four terms of two years and consider term limits for leadership and lifetime term limits.
6. Provide urban planners and other technical resources for every community board.

Protect and Improve the Charter

7. Require amendment of anything original established in the Charter by a vote of the people to be amended or removed only by another vote of the people.
8. Require public engagement in government policymaking, including by creating a process through which residents can propose legislation to be heard and voted on by the city council and then signed or vetoed by the mayor.
9. Review the Charter to identify powers that are being ignored, and propose a system of checks and balances that allows for different parts of our government to act when those with the primary responsibility fail to do so.
10. Remove outdated references from the Charter like a duty to maintain telegraph.
11. Remove references to specific wages in the Charter that are now illegal poverty wages.

Improve Democracy

12. Stop matching big dollars (over $175 for city council and borough president or $250 citywide) with public dollars.
13. Provide Democracy Vouchers so that everyone can participate in the political system.
14. Eliminate “war chests” that allow candidates to raise vast amounts of money over multiple election cycles.
15. Kill all the zombie committees by terminating all campaign committees after each election.
16. Run student voter registration drives in the classroom with mock voting and civic engagement as part of every child’s education to teach a new generation of New Yorkers to take back their government.
17. Implement all changes now in time for 2021.
18. Eliminate draconian petition requirements in favor of ballot access triggered by qualification for public dollars.
19. Implement automatic voter registration.
20. Separate Voter Assistance and Campaign Finance so the administration of the public matching funds system is done impartially and separated from legislative advocacy, voter registration, and voter engagement.
21. Remove post-census half term because having an election in 2021 for a two-year term is wasteful and can be avoided with new technology.
22. Establish lifetime term limits for elected officials.

Ethics Reforms to End Patronage and Corruption

23. Limit the number of provisional employees allowed to replace civil servants.
24. Publicly post all jobs for at least 14 days prior to conducting interviews.
25. Instate lifetime ban on lobbying for elected officials and agency heads.
26. Eliminate salaries of elected officials from Charter and tie them to the Consumer Price Index.
27. Protect elected officials and independent agencies from retaliation with protections for their office’s budget and from termination other than for cause.

Permanently Reform City Council

28. Permanently make the city council a full time job and prohibit all outside income.
29. Permanently equalize compensation for all council members by banning “lulus.”
30. Expand prohibition against serving political party leadership to council members.
31. Budgets for council members must remain equal, with transparent formula to account for difference in geographical and land cost challenges.
32. Permanently standardize formula for council members’ discretionary budgets for their districts.
33. Limit Speaker’s discretionary budget to 50% of the allocation of all 50 other members of the city council in order to ensure fairness and an equitable distribution of funds.
34. Provide full 7 days public notice online of upcoming votes.
35. Legislation should include problem, solutions, evaluation, metrics, and sunset.
36.  Eliminate excessive reports, studies and taskforce laws by empowering city council to request information or adopt rules and regulations.
37. Mandate inclusion of experts from academia and private sector in the adoption of laws and regulations of government.

Empower Residents through the City Council and Borough Presidents

38. Adopt the New York City Council Report to the New York City Charter Revision Commission of 2010.
39. Expand city council’s power of advice and consent to all agency heads.
40. Allow city council to remove agency heads for cause and borough boards to begin a process against borough commissioners for cause.
41. Establish a right of visitation at all city facilities for all elected officials upon notice or reasonable cause.
42. Empower borough presidents to oversee capital projects.
43. Give binding power of approval or disapproval on all land use decisions where a community board, borough board, and borough president all vote in favor or in opposition.
44. Provide environmental studies for any community board, council member or borough president initiated zoning text amendment or rezoning.
45. End automatic reappointment and open community boards with standardized applications.
46. Automatic removal of community board members for non-attendance.
47. Prohibit political party officials or lobbyists from serving on community boards.
48. Mandatory training for all community board members on conflicts of interest, city budget, and land use, including landmarks, Board of Standards and Appeals, and ULURP.

Empower Communities in Land Use Decisions

49. Weaken mayoral control of land use boards and commissions by empowering borough presidents and city council.
50. Allow for meaningful public review with community notice and public hearings at initiation of land use applications with city agencies.
51. Protect potential landmarks from eternal limbo with 6 months to respond and another 6 months to vote on calendaring proposed landmarks with codification of protections for items under consideration.
52. Redefine “Major Concessions” to cover more city land that is being privatized.
53. Require wage and job standards following a city land use action.
54. Limit land use approvals by requiring groundbreaking within 3 years and project completion within a total of 5 years or lapse back for renewal, a new developer, or a new purpose.
55. Make 197-a plans binding and require the Department of City Planning and applicable city agencies to include them in any subsequent land use decisions.
56. Protect any land used as a park from real estate development.
57. Enforce fair share provisions of the Charter.
58. Achieve fair housing and affordable housing goals in every district.
59. Protect residents in rent regulated housing from displacement by new affordable housing development.

Bridge the Digital Divide with Universal Broadband and Improved Cable and Phone

60. Require franchise agreements to guarantee universal access to every New Yorker of every income without censorship.
61. Empower residents in franchise process by giving votes to public advocate, borough presidents, and city council.
62. Empower city council to participate in the selection of a franchise and to vote on final franchise agreements.

Save Money with Better Contracts

63. Any benefit legislated by government for the private sector must also automatically apply to public sector city employees as a minimum benefit.
64. Stop overpaying by adding borough president and city council appointments to procurement board and, when bids are more expensive, allow purchasing from retail market.
65. Create enforcement mechanism for Charter requirement to compare cost to in-sourcing any time out-sourcing is considered.
66. Notify affected borough presidents, community boards, and council members when the contracting process begins so that all may have a voice in key elements of requests for proposals, and encourage local residents to respond or to play a role in evaluations of any received proposal.

Empower Residents in the Budget Process

67. Require that the City make the budget and spending available in real time so residents have accounting software for government to track every penny.
68. Make hiding money “off budget” illegal.
69. Require scoping of capital projects prior to allocations to prevent massive overruns and delays.
70. Track fiscal impact of public policy during and after implementation.
71. Focus on the Mayor’s Management by requiring a hearing on the Mayor’s Management Report following the current requirement for hearings on the Mayor’s Preliminary Management Report.
72. Create a budget lockbox for public transit.

Download the Full Testimony (PDF)

Download the Full Testimony (PDF)

September 27, 2018, Updated October 10, 2018

Our City’s Charter is in desperate need of an upgrade for the next generation.

The last telegram was sent in 2006, so I don’t think the Charter should require telegraph to be maintained by NYPD Commissioner. The minimum wage is about to be $15 an hour, and I don’t think the mayor’s fourth enumerated power should be to pay election workers $20 a day.

We are presented with an opportunity to examine the balance of powers, the infrastructure of our government, and ultimately who is empowered to make decisions on behalf of the 8.7 million people who call this city home. Since August, I have carried a copy of the Charter around with me, highlighting interesting sections, and soliciting input. I must admit that I haven’t made it all the way through to Section 3103 of the Charter. My testimony represents a best effort through a cursory review identifying challenges with proposed solutions as a starting point.

I joined hundreds of New Yorkers in participating in the Mayor’s Charter Revision Commission by testifying over several months in favor of items now on the ballot, including term limits and urban planners for community boards and a slate of Campaign Finance reforms to reduce large contributions and match more small dollars with more public dollars to finally get big money out of New York City politics.

First and foremost, I would ask that if these measures pass, this Commission not weaken them in any way and in fact strengthen them by adding a requirement that any part of the Charter adopted through a vote of the people only be subject to change by those same people at another vote.

Along those lines, certain reforms must be protected from future change by any means short of a vote of the people. These include ethics reforms instating a lifetime ban on lobbying and lifetime term limits for elected officials and enshrining in the Charter reforms that were made by the city council to make the job of council member full time, eliminate “lulus” for equal compensation and standardize budget allocations for each council member.

In the face of an attack on our rights from the federal government, New York City is in need of its own Bill of Rights guaranteeing residents a right to a free higher education and child care, affordable health and mental health care, access to parks, libraries, and public transit, affordable internet, freedom from hunger, clean air and water, just to name a few.

This Commission can create a pathway for all the residents with great ideas for laws at these hearings and in the future to submit bills to the city council for a guaranteed hearing and vote.

Ultimately the 1989 Charter Revision Commission gave many of the powers from the Board of Estimate to the mayor and boards appointed by the mayor. Regardless of the mayor, other elected officials and communities have often been without power to stop a wrong. My recommendations hope to democratize many of the city’s most powerful boards with appointments from the borough presidents and the council to achieve fair housing and affordable housing goals. Borough presidents and community boards must be empowered to veto bad rezonings, the city council empowered with a final vote on franchises that have left residents without reliable cable or Internet, and both empowered to initiate land use changes in their own right.

I would highlight for this commission three main themes:

1. Land Use: Empower communities in land use by changing the makeup of decision-making boards to have fewer mayoral appointments and include representation from the city council.
2. Budget: Create a budget that anyone can review with budgeted amounts, actual spending, and a plan for the future, and create the lockbox we need to protect congestion pricing from unscrupulous politicians.
3. Protect the Will of the People to Enshrine Campaign Finance and Ethics Reforms in the Charter: Reforms that are essential to the functioning of our democracy, established through previous referenda, local law, and city council rules, should be enshrined in the City Charter.

Summary of Recommendations to the

2019 Charter Revision Commission

Create New Rights for New Yorkers

1. Create a New York City Bill of Rights to recognize certain inalienable rights and guide and restrain our government as it makes decisions moving forward.

Support Mayoral Charter Commission Proposals

2. Empower small donors and get big money out of politics by eliminating the cap on publicly matched campaign funds.
3. Increase the matching funds ratio from 6:1 to 8:1, consider expanding to 10:1.
4. Lower the contribution limits to $2,000 for citywide, $1,500 for borough and $1,000 for city council.
5. Establish term limits for community boards of four terms of two years and consider term limits for leadership and lifetime term limits.
6. Provide urban planners and other technical resources for every community board.

Protect and Improve the Charter

7. Require amendment of anything original established in the Charter by a vote of the people to be amended or removed only by another vote of the people.
8. Require public engagement in government policymaking, including by creating a process through which residents can propose legislation to be heard and voted on by the city council and then signed or vetoed by the mayor.
9. Review the Charter to identify powers that are being ignored, and propose a system of checks and balances that allows for different parts of our government to act when those with the primary responsibility fail to do so.
10. Remove outdated references from the Charter like a duty to maintain telegraph.
11. Remove references to specific wages in the Charter that are now illegal poverty wages.

Improve Democracy

12. Stop matching big dollars (over $175 for city council and borough president or $250 citywide) with public dollars.
13. Provide Democracy Vouchers so that everyone can participate in the political system.
14. Eliminate “war chests” that allow candidates to raise vast amounts of money over multiple election cycles.
15. Kill all the zombie committees by terminating all campaign committees after each election.
16. Run student voter registration drives in the classroom with mock voting and civic engagement as part of every child’s education to teach a new generation of New Yorkers to take back their government.
17. Implement all changes now in time for 2021.
18. Eliminate draconian petition requirements in favor of ballot access triggered by qualification for public dollars.
19. Implement automatic voter registration.
20. Separate Voter Assistance and Campaign Finance so the administration of the public matching funds system is done impartially and separated from legislative advocacy, voter registration, and voter engagement.
21. Remove post-census half term because having an election in 2021 for a two-year term is wasteful and can be avoided with new technology.
22. Establish lifetime term limits for elected officials.

Ethics Reforms to End Patronage and Corruption

23. Limit the number of provisional employees allowed to replace civil servants.
24. Publicly post all jobs for at least 14 days prior to conducting interviews.
25. Instate lifetime ban on lobbying for elected officials and agency heads.
26. Eliminate salaries of elected officials from Charter and tie them to the Consumer Price Index.
27. Protect elected officials and independent agencies from retaliation with protections for their office’s budget and from termination other than for cause.

Permanently Reform City Council

28. Permanently make the city council a full time job and prohibit all outside income.
29. Permanently equalize compensation for all council members by banning “lulus.”
30. Expand prohibition against serving political party leadership to council members.
31. Budgets for council members must remain equal, with transparent formula to account for difference in geographical and land cost challenges.
32. Permanently standardize formula for council members’ discretionary budgets for their districts.
33. Limit Speaker’s discretionary budget to 50% of the allocation of all 50 other members of the city council in order to ensure fairness and an equitable distribution of funds.
34. Provide full 7 days public notice online of upcoming votes.
35. Legislation should include problem, solutions, evaluation, metrics, and sunset.
36.  Eliminate excessive reports, studies and taskforce laws by empowering city council to request information or adopt rules and regulations.
37. Mandate inclusion of experts from academia and private sector in the adoption of laws and regulations of government.

Empower Residents through the City Council and Borough Presidents

38. Adopt the New York City Council Report to the New York City Charter Revision Commission of 2010.
39. Expand city council’s power of advice and consent to all agency heads.
40. Allow city council to remove agency heads for cause and borough boards to begin a process against borough commissioners for cause.
41. Establish a right of visitation at all city facilities for all elected officials upon notice or reasonable cause.
42. Empower borough presidents to oversee capital projects.
43. Give binding power of approval or disapproval on all land use decisions where a community board, borough board, and borough president all vote in favor or in opposition.
44. Provide environmental studies for any community board, council member or borough president initiated zoning text amendment or rezoning.
45. End automatic reappointment and open community boards with standardized applications.
46. Automatic removal of community board members for non-attendance.
47. Prohibit political party officials or lobbyists from serving on community boards.
48. Mandatory training for all community board members on conflicts of interest, city budget, and land use, including landmarks, Board of Standards and Appeals, and ULURP.

Empower Communities in Land Use Decisions

49. Weaken mayoral control of land use boards and commissions by empowering borough presidents and city council.
50. Allow for meaningful public review with community notice and public hearings at initiation of land use applications with city agencies.
51. Protect potential landmarks from eternal limbo with 6 months to respond and another 6 months to vote on calendaring proposed landmarks with codification of protections for items under consideration.
52. Redefine “Major Concessions” to cover more city land that is being privatized.
53. Require wage and job standards following a city land use action.
54. Limit land use approvals by requiring groundbreaking within 3 years and project completion within a total of 5 years or lapse back for renewal, a new developer, or a new purpose.
55. Make 197-a plans binding and require the Department of City Planning and applicable city agencies to include them in any subsequent land use decisions.
56. Protect any land used as a park from real estate development.
57. Enforce fair share provisions of the Charter.
58. Achieve fair housing and affordable housing goals in every district.
59. Protect residents in rent regulated housing from displacement by new affordable housing development.

Bridge the Digital Divide with Universal Broadband and Improved Cable and Phone

60. Require franchise agreements to guarantee universal access to every New Yorker of every income without censorship.
61. Empower residents in franchise process by giving votes to public advocate, borough presidents, and city council.
62. Empower city council to participate in the selection of a franchise and to vote on final franchise agreements.

Save Money with Better Contracts

63. Any benefit legislated by government for the private sector must also automatically apply to public sector city employees as a minimum benefit.
64. Stop overpaying by adding borough president and city council appointments to procurement board and, when bids are more expensive, allow purchasing from retail market.
65. Create enforcement mechanism for Charter requirement to compare cost to in-sourcing any time out-sourcing is considered.
66. Notify affected borough presidents, community boards, and council members when the contracting process begins so that all may have a voice in key elements of requests for proposals, and encourage local residents to respond or to play a role in evaluations of any received proposal.

Empower Residents in the Budget Process

67. Require that the City make the budget and spending available in real time so residents have accounting software for government to track every penny.
68. Make hiding money “off budget” illegal.
69. Require scoping of capital projects prior to allocations to prevent massive overruns and delays.
70. Track fiscal impact of public policy during and after implementation.
71. Focus on the Mayor’s Management by requiring a hearing on the Mayor’s Management Report following the current requirement for hearings on the Mayor’s Preliminary Management Report.
72. Create a budget lockbox for public transit.

Download the Full Testimony (PDF)