Chi Ossé, Tiffany Cabán and Shahana Hanif lose committee chair positions in City Council shakeup

An active game of musical chairs in the City Council ended on Thursday, with changes in store for nearly a dozen committee chair positions for the 2024-2025 session.

The full list of committee membership, which was approved by the rules committee on Thursday morning, is expected to later be approved by the full council in the afternoon. 

The list of committee membership confirmed City & State’s earlier reporting that several of the twelve City Council members who voted against adopting the budget last year will lose their positions as committee chairs – including Council Member Chi Ossé, who previously chaired the Committee on Cultural Affairs, and Council Member Tiffany Cabán, who previously chaired the Committee on Women and Gender Equity. Ossé and Cabán were not given any other committees to chair.

And changes are also in store for Council Members Shahana Hanif, Sandy Nurse and Alexa Avilés, who each voted against the budget last year. Hanif will be removed as chair of the Committee on Immigration. While she won’t chair another committee, she will co-chair a Taskforce to Combat Hate. Nurse will be replaced as chair of the Committee on Sanitation by Council Member Shaun Abreu. But it’s not all bad news for Nurse; she will be named chair of the Committee on Criminal Justice. And Avilés, who previously chaired the public housing committee, will now chair the Committee on Immigration. Meanwhile, Council Member Carlina Rivera, the previous chair of the criminal justice committee, will chair the Committee on Cultural Affairs, taking over for Ossé.

The shake-ups for some of the progressive members who voted against the budget are being read by some in the council – and some outside it – as retaliation for those members’ budget votes. (Three of the members who voted against the budget last year are no longer in office.) On Thursday, Cabán sent out a fundraising email noting that she was removed and noting the speculation that the move was made in retaliation for her budget vote.

But some members who voted against the budget held on to their committees or gained new ones, and a handful of members who voted for the budget lost out. Council Members Carmen De La Rosa and Jennifer Gutiérrez, who both voted against the budget last year, will remain as the respective chairs of the Committee on Civil Service and Labor and the Committee on Technology. And Council Member Lincoln Restler, who voted against the budget and didn’t chair a committee last session, will now chair the Committee on Governmental Operations.

“I get it, I get the impulse to speculate and try to figure it out, and attribute a singular reason behind committee decisions,” Speaker Adrienne Adams said at a press conference on Thursday, when asked about the idea that the shuffle amounted to retaliation. “But it’s always a lot more complex than that.”

At least one ally of Speaker Adams has already lost a key leadership position. Two weeks ago, Council Member Keith Powers – a loyalist to the speaker – was somewhat unceremoniously removed from his position as majority leader, and Council Member Amanda Farías was elevated to that position. But Powers, who didn’t previously chair a committee, remains on the speaker’s leadership team and will now chair the Committee on Rules, Privileges and Elections.

Council Member Kamillah Hanks – a Democrat on Staten Island who previously chaired the Committee on Public Safety and who aligned with the speaker to support a bill that lost Hanks the backing of the NYPD detectives union – was removed as chair of the public safety committee. New City Council Member Yusef Salaam, a member of the Exonerated Five who was wrongfully imprisoned, will now chair the public safety committee, and Hanks will chair the Subcommittee on Landmarks, Public Sitings, and Dispositions. “Council Member Hanks’ leadership was fantastic,” Speaker Adams said when asked about that change on Thursday. “As Council Member Salaam comes into this body, he brings something that is very, very unique, and that is his unique experience with the system.”

The list of committee membership released Thursday also confirmed that Council Member Kalman Yeger, who voted for the budget but has voted against some of the speaker’s other priorities, will lose his position chairing the Committee on Standards and Ethics, and won’t chair another committee. 

“The speaker is not a person who believes in retribution, but I think she values people who are team players,” one City Council member, who was granted anonymity to speak about ongoing conversations, told City & State on Wednesday, in response to suggestions on that the changes to chair positions are retaliation for members’ votes against the budget.

Members who voted against the budget were already concerned about losing chair positions before Powers was replaced as majority leader, and the surprising move made some even more anxious. “Keith is such a loyalist and was given so little heads up about this that, I think, the thought went from, ‘Oh, maybe there will be some retaliation,’ to ‘Oh, might there be just a bloodbath,’” one source familiar with the assignments before they were finalized told City & State on Wednesday. The final assignments, however, ended up being more of a mixed bag for those progressive members who voted against the budget.

The speaker met with City Council members throughout Wednesday to inform them of their committee assignments, and any chair positions they would receive. Prior to those meetings, labor and advocacy groups had reached out to the speaker’s office to advocate for some current committee chairs to remain in those positions and to voice their displeasure at rumors that there could be consequences for members who voted against the budget. “I think the amount of upheaval we’ll see is less than what would have happened without that,” said one union official.

It’s typical to see some shake-ups in committee membership between sessions, but because the city’s redistricting process resulted in two truncated two-year sessions, some committee chairs have expressed a desire to hold on to their existing committees.

Several key committee positions will remain the same; Council Member Justin Brannan will still chair the powerful Committee on Finance, and City & State earlier reported, Council Member Diana Ayala will remain as chair of the Committee on General Welfare, and Council Member Gale Brewer will continue to chair the Committee on Oversight and Investigations.