Only One New City Council Member Attends Mock Session

A "mock" New York City Council meeting designed for freshmen Council members to get up to speed on the chamber's legally mandated parliamentary procedures—seven months into their time on the job—ended up being sparsely attended after the media revealed that it would occur, Council sources tell City & State.

An email invitation obtained by Capital New York on Tuesday billed the session as a "mock Stated Meeting along with a brief history of the Council to more clearly explain the order and procedures which are followed at the stated meetings pursuant to law and council rule." Council sources said that while a number of legislative staff members were in attendance at the meeting, no Council members were there for the whole session. Moreover, only two members even bothered to stop by the chamber even to poke their heads in, and only one of those members was a freshman, Antonio Reynoso of Brooklyn, who presumably was already considerably more knowledgable about the rules than some of his colleagues, having served as chief of staff to his predecessor, Diana Reyna.

"The freshmen [Council members] didn't want to be seen there and look like they didn't know anything," said one source who attended the meeting. "It was all staff, a lot of the summer interns were there."

Press was barred from the meeting, but the fact that the meeting was leaked beforehand made new Council members wary of attending, sources said. 

When asked why more Council members did not show up, a Council spokesman said members were "cycling in and out" of the room, and referred to a previous statement touting the importance of the meetings. 

“Like most legislative bodies, including the U.S. House of Representatives, the Council sometimes offers refreshers for members, staff and interns on parliamentary procedure for Stated Meetings. With rules reform happening just a few months ago this was an opportunity to help make the Council’s already efficient meetings run even better.”