NOVEMBER DOESN'T COUNT; CITY COUNCIL SHOWS WHY
By Henry J. Stern
November 11, 2002
 
    President Bush and Governor Pataki were not the only chief executives to win victories in last Tuesday's elections.   Mayor Bloomberg enjoyed a small success when the voters approved the ballot question which would limit Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum's tenure as Acting Mayor to sixty days if, God forbid, anything should happen to the Mayor.  The change will apply to all future Mayors and Public Advocates; it is not a bill of attainder.

    In her campaign last year, Ms. Gotbaum told newspapers that she did not aspire to the mayoralty, and only wished to serve until a prompt election could be held. Once elected, she did a 180°, ostensibly because a technicality of state law required the charter amendment to include a change in the presiding officer of the City Council.

    She held City Hall press conferences and campaigned against the Charter change, appealed to prominent Democrats to support her, and helped persuade the city's Democratic Party clubs to oppose the charter change.  The Working Families Party, some of whose members disrupted the public hearing held in Brooklyn by the Mayor's Charter Revision Commission, also had strong objections to the Mayor’s plan.

    Now Ms. Gotbaum has indicated that she may complain to the Justice Department that the sixty-day term would injure the rights of ethnic minorities.  The charter amendment has nothing at all to do with ethnicity; the only person whose rights may be impaired is the Public Advocate, who is white, and desirous of serving up to fifteen months (455 days) as mayor instead of sixty.

    The Charter change was supported editorially by the Times, the Post, the Daily News, Newsday and El Diario.  It was opposed by the Staten Island Advance, but it received its highest percentage in that borough (64.9%).  The other four boroughs came in at Queens – 62, Bronx – 60.6, Manhattan – 60.3 and Brooklyn 59.3.

    The total vote citywide was Yes- 241,810 and No- 153,835, which comes out to 6l.1% in the affirmative.  Almost 400,000 people voted, a high number considering the difficulty of finding the question on the ballot.  (It was down by the red handle, in the lower right-hand corner of the voting machine.)

    The result was somewhat surprising, considering the opposition of most elected officials, the Public Advocate, the prominent former Public Advocate, the City Comptroller, three borough presidents and a slew of local officeholders from four boroughs.  Elected proponents were mostly Staten Islanders, and there are relatively few of them, due to that borough's smaller population.  Palm cards supporting candidates and urging a "No" vote on the charter were distributed by Democratic clubs on Election Day.

    The Mayor had the support of business leaders and a number of prominent black clergy.  There was very little advertising, and the feared Bloomberg Blitz of vast sums spent on media did not materialize. In fact, the Mayor seemed to avoid great personal involvement with the measure, since he knew that his loudest opponents were trying to turn it into a referendum on him and his administration.

    If the charter change had been defeated by the voters, that would have been interpreted as a rebuke to the Mayor by his opponents and some of the media, as it was when Mayor Giuliani 's charter proposals were rejected.  Giuliani won the passage of six charter amendments in 2001, but did you know that?  Almost no one else does.

    In a strange but amusing follow up to the November 5 vote on the charter amendment, two days later Council Speaker Gifford Miller announced that despite the vote, Ms. Gotbaum would preside over the City Council anyway, since Miller now had the authority to chair the meetings, and he would delegate it to her.  This action is described by Diane Cardwell in the Times much better than I could.

    This decision by the Speaker is evocative of his action, early this year, to extend his own term (and that of seven of his colleagues) by two years, through 2005, although the term limits referendum, approved twice by the voters, would have limited him to 2003.   In fairness, there were legitimate and equitable reasons to allow him two more years, but the matter could have been submitted to referendum in 2002, rather than allowing the legislature to overturn the voters’ decision on the length of their own terms.

    The unilateral term extension had been vetoed earlier this year by Mayor Bloomberg, after which the Council overwhelmingly overrode the veto.  The two-year extension is now being challenged in a lawsuit by Councilman, now also State Senator- elect Martin Golden, whose lawyer is former Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro, who chaired two charter revision commissions for Mayor Giuliani.

    The question of who presides over the City Council is relatively trivial, since its main prerogative is sitting on the elevated throne which overlooks the Chamber. But the scheme to frustrate the referendum, announced with a chortle two days after the vote, does indicate a certain problem in attitude.  The City has very serious problems, which will require everyone’s cooperation to resolve.  Tweaking one referendum, and overturning another, is not exactly a display of school spirit.

    Congratulations to the mayor, the newspaper editorial boards, and the business and religious leaders who supported the charter change.  Condolences to the city's Democratic Party establishment who, having lost three consecutive mayoral elections in an overwhelmingly Democratic city, have now failed to persuade their followers to give them a year in Gracie Mansion by the back door.

Henry J. Stern is the director of NYCivic.