For Its 25th Anniversary, Give the City Charter the Gift of Revision

Twenty-five years ago, in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that the New York City Board of Estimate violated the Constitution, the 1989 New York City Charter Revision Commission was established to propose a new city charter. That charter, which redistributed powers of the city government’s branches and offices, was approved by the voters and went into effect in 1990.

As we approach the 25th anniversary of the revamped city charter, it is time for New York City government to improve upon it, with the wisdom of hindsight. Mayor Bill de Blasio, City Council members, and state legislators all have roles to play in this process.

First, Mayor de Blasio and the City Council can establish the most basic form of government transparency in New York City by ensuring that the charter is accessible and understandable to the people of New York.

Mayor de Blasio should publish and continually update the charter as it is amended, in a user-friendly format that is searchable, browsable, and readable from beginning to end. The last full version of the charter to be published online as a .pdf is from 2009, before the 2010 Charter Revision Commission—for which I worked—made proposals that were ratified by voters, and before the Council amended the charter another two dozen times. Currently, New Yorkers only have online access to the full, up-to-date charter on the state’s website, and are only able to view one of over 3,000 sections at a time.

The City Council should also adopt the 2010 Charter Revision Commission’s recommendation to create a task force to streamline the charter. This task force could make the charter easier to navigate, and therefore understandable. The charter needs a preamble: a statement of purpose and vision for the city, and a philosophical underpinning for all the provisions that follow. It needs reorganization, to clarify government structures and procedures, and to specify the powers of and limits on officials. It needs modernizing, to provide for agencies and officials to use best available technologies (in sections 236 and 249, the charter still mandates that the mayor must submit the executive and preliminary budgets to the City Council via floppy disk).

Outdated provisions erode the credibility of the charter overall. Moreover, if New Yorkers can’t read the charter, how can they know of all the laws that bind them, weed out troubling government practices, or hold officials accountable?

Second, Mayor de Blasio or the City Council should utilize the power under the Municipal Home Rule Law to convene an independent Charter Revision Commission. A new commission would be best positioned to examine the distribution of powers under the current charter, and propose reforms to better balance them.

The 1989 Commission gave much of the Board of Estimate’s budgeting and land use powers to the City Council. However, the mayor still wields tremendous power.

Yes, the Council successfully investigated operations and pushed for reforms when examining the work of the executive branch, as in the CityTime scandal and the snowstorm of 2010. Yet the Council has been less adept at checking the mayor when incentives to council members themselves are on the table—often junctures, not incidentally, when higher democratic principles are at stake.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s term limit extension in 2008 was secured through legislation that also gave a third term to council members. More recently, the alliance between Mayor de Blasio and Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito triggered concerns about the branches’ independence from good government advocates: first when the mayor lobbied for Mark-Viverito to win the race for speaker, and again when he nominated—and the Council approved—his campaign treasurer as the commissioner of the Department of Investigations.

New Yorkers may be protected against the consolidation of power in one branch of government when the branches differ on a course of action, but when the Council and mayor agree, they can collude to the detriment of the people without a powerful third branch to check them.

Indeed, the charter vests oversight responsibilities in other offices, but the public advocate, comptroller, and agencies such as the Conflicts of Interest Board and the Independent Budget Office have limited powers and tools to overcome alignments between the mayor and City Council. Furthermore, conflicts of interest provisions allow for transactional politicking, and judicial decisions have upheld actions that many New Yorkers consider self-dealing—such as the New York State Court of Appeals’ decision that council members did not violate conflict of interest laws by extending their own term limits.

To be sure, it is far too soon to pass judgment on whether Speaker Mark-Viverito or Mayor de Blasio put self-interest above the interests of the people and that of good government. But regardless of whether the current crop of city officials will properly check each other, the charter should be revised to strengthen oversight when the executive and legislative branches align against the collective will of New Yorkers.

Finally, state legislators from New York City have a crucial role to play in ensuring the success of a new commission by amending the Municipal Home Rule Law to allow for longer commission terms than are currently legal: a two-year maximum.

The six Charter Revision Commissions which have convened since 1990 have recommended that future commissions evaluate several critical issues, which they could not fully explore because of their truncated timeframes. These issues include nonpartisan elections, instant runoff voting, the uniform land use review procedure, and local control versus centralization in decision-making and service delivery.

Our state legislators should collaborate with lawmakers from the other 61 cities across New York State to amend the MHRL, expanding the lifespan of Charter Revision Commissions to enable comprehensive review and reform of our city’s government.

Talia Werber worked for the 2010 Charter Revision Commission. She is deputy director of Decide NYC and holds a JD from Cardozo Law School.