(The Center Square) — New York voters have approved several ballot questions from New York City Mayor Eric Adams that will expand his authority over the City Council, despite claims that the move is a power grab by the indicted city leader.
The proposals, which voters overwhelmingly approved in Tuesday’s election, includes a plan allowing the mayor’s budget office to gauge the fiscal impact of council bills before they are passed, and another requiring more notice if the council plans to vote on legislation impacting public safety.
Other proposals would expand the New York City Department of Sanitation’s authority to clean up city-owned property, overhaul the city’s capital planning process, and make the city’s business diversity officer a permanent post in the city government. At Adams’s request, the city’s Charter Revision Commission cleared all of the proposals for the ballot.
“This is a great day for everyone who desires a safer city, cleaner streets, greater fiscal responsibility, transparency in the city’s capital planning process, and, of course, access to abortion care,” Adams said in a statement that also referenced passage of Prop. 1, which amends the state’s constitution to protect access to abortions and “gender identity.”
The No Power Grab NYC coalition, which includes Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, and about 40 other mostly Democratic leaders, was among those who campaigned against propositions 2-6, which they argued would give the mayor’s office “unchecked power” and “erode government checks-and-balances and make it harder for city government to deliver for New Yorkers.”
The group issued a statement in response to Tuesday’s results that included background material on previous referendums approved with wider margins than Adams’ proposals, suggesting that he lacks a mandate to enforce the new requirements.
“Mayor Adams continues to mislead New Yorkers or he can’t count,” Joo-Hyun Kang, No Power Grab’s NYC spokesperson, said in a statement. “The only ballot proposal to pass ‘overwhelmingly’ was the statewide anti-discrimination proposal, Prop 1. One of the mayor’s proposals was straight-out rejected by NYC voters and the other four passed by the narrowest margins of any NYC ballot proposals in at least 15 years.”
Speaker Adrienne Adams also blasted the approval of the ballot questions, suggesting that voters were deceived and saying Adams’ political maneuver “demonstrates the dire need for better safeguards to ensure city ballot proposals are accurately presented to voters.”
“It is unfortunate that Mayor Adams’ commission advanced anti-democratic proposals and inaccurately worded questions onto the ballot to mislead New Yorkers,” she said in a statement. “There is serious work needed to protect our local democracy from a mayor willing to disregard norms in the pursuit of power that removes checks and balances.”
“The Council will continue to represent the communities and people across our city who elected us to make government more responsive to them, with a commitment to defending and strengthening representative democracy,” Adams said.
New York voters did reject one of Adams’ proposals, Prop. 5, which called for creating a new City Hall position to support minority and women-owned business enterprises and giving the mayor’s office the authority to issue film permits. The measure failed with 54% of the vote, according to the AP’s tally.
