NOTE: The City Council Committee on Government Operations will hold a public hearing on this issue Thursday, October 16, starting at 1 PM, at City Hall. Those who wish to testify should arrive during the afternoon and register with the committee's sergeant at arms. A second hearing will be held Friday, October 17, starting at 10 AM, in the Council's Committee Room in City Hall.
Charter Says "Depart";
Council Wants to Stay.
Their Plea to Mayor:
"Save our Seats and
We'll Save Yours."
By Henry J. Stern
October 13, 2008
The travails of Wall Street eclipse other issues as the market struggles to establish a base. To oversimplify the situation, two forces are locked in perpetual combat: fear and greed. When greed prevails, the market rises, often to levels which are not sustainable. When fear prevails, prices collapse and stocks sell for far less than they are worth in terms of the earning capacity of the companies being traded.
If you can find the tipping point when fear surpasses greed, which was about a year ago, you could have become rich, especially if you used puts and calls, options, short selling, derivatives and other financial devices which magnify both risk and reward. We do not yet know when greed will surpass fear, whether it will be today or whether a new bottom will be tested, but history tells us we are at or close to the low point of the cycle.
How the City Council's tenure will affect the stock market is a mystery to us, but it was explained by Council Speaker Christine Quinn at a press conference yesterday in the Red Room (not the Blue Room, which is on the Mayor's side of City Hall). She said that the Council was working co-operatively with the mayor, and that stability and continuity were important in government and would benefit the city in these difficult financial times.
Why a new set of councilmembers would be less stable or co-operative than the current bunch was not made clear. There is no evidence of insurrection afoot in the colony, and there are numerous relatives, friends, supporters, hangers-on and wannabes willing to take the places of those who would rotate out under the term limits which made them councilmembers in the first place in 2001 when their daddies (literal or political) had to step down.
This controversy is fascinating (at least to us) because what the Council is about to dot is such a brazen attempt to strip the public of its right to determine term limits for elected officials. The incumbents who seek to prolong their tenure ignore two referenda on the subject, in 1993 and in 1996. They seek to overcome by twenty-six votes (a Council majority) what hundreds of thousands of citizens voted for on both occasions when they had the opportunity to do so.
The preposterous excuse for this self-serving maneuver is the world-wide financial crisis, an admittedly serious problem which has nothing whatsoever to do with the City Council. There would probably be value for the city in Mayor Bloomberg being eligible to serve a third term, as Mayors LaGuardia, Wagner and Koch did in the last century. An extension would be an appropriate subject for a new referendum, which most New Yorkers would be pleased to support. It should have been proposed months ago, but there is still time for it to go to a vote in February, when a few local vacancies will be filled by election.
For some reason, it was not until Rosh Hashanah that the mayor made public his not-so-secret desire to seek a third term.. As luck would have it, that was just a few days after the deadline (September 5, sixty days before the November election) for the matter of his eligibility to run to be placed on the ballot for Election Day. That is the time when the largest number of people would vote, without the additional expense to the taxpayers.
The honorable way to proceed would be to seek to amend the charter by the same route it was amended fifteen years ago, sending the matter to the public for them to vote on how long city elected officials could serve.
Instead, the mayor chose to use the City Council, which has the power to amend the charter by majority vote (It should be two-thirds.). Whether the proposed amendment is permissible or ultra vires is a matter that the New York State Court of Appeals and the United States Department of Justice will eventually determine.
The price the Council charged for extending the mayor’s term is their own inclusion in the bailout package. That means 51 more bodies whose term, by law, is up, will hold on to their part-time jobs, at $112,500 per year plus lulus, to December 31, 2013. It is more than likely that when that time approaches, the emboldened incumbents will seek to abolish term limits altogether. Only God or law enforcement will be able to loosen them from their seats.
There are 59 city elected officials (by coincidence, the same as the number of community boards). Three are elected city wide: the mayor, comptroller and public advocate (formerly city council president), Five are elected borough wide (the borough presidents) and 51 from council districts, which have been gerrymandered over the years to suit the political needs of the incumbents, their parents or other predecessors.
The Mayor and Other Officials
Considerable public attention is focused on the mayor, the city's chief executive. His actions, or failures to act, are widely publicized, his popularity is measured by polls and his district (the city as a whole) cannot be gerrymandered. He would be eligible to seek a third term if the people wish to change the charter, as is likely in this case. One should not need the pretext of financial crisis to be able to re-elect a mayor with whom you are satisfied.
The comptroller’s position is important but considerably less so than the mayor's. He supervises about a thousand employees, compared with the mayor’s 300.000 plus. The decisions he makes are significant, but not comparable to the ones made by the mayor. Comptroller Thompson was elected in 2001 and re-elected in 2005 without contest in the general election. Mayor Bloomberg chose to leave blank the ballot lines for comptroller and public advocate on the parties that supported him, the Republican and Independent in 2001, and the Republican-Liberal and Independent lines in 2005. Between 2001 and 2005 the Liberal Party came under new management.
The public advocate is a visible city-wide official independent of the mayor, and a potential candidate to succeed him. Two predecessors tried that, Carol Bellamy in 1985 and Mark Green in 2001. Both lost. The public advocate has media access, a modest staff and the opportunity to raise issues, usually matters where she is seeking policy changes or finding fault in situations where there may well be fault. She also acts as an ombudsman, assisting individual citizens or groups with complaints. In the event the mayor is incapacitated, she succeeds him for roughly sixty days, during which a new election must be held. She has nothing to do with the financial crisis. She is currently eligible to serve through 2009 (eight years). She strongly opposes the Council's effort to unilaterally extend its members' terms.
Borough Presidents used to have considerable power as members of the Board of Estimate, which was abolished by the Federal courts in 1990. They have staffs of over a hundred, and participate in the land use process. Some reformers want to abolish the position, but we believe it is useful, both to represent borough-wide interests and to groom candidates for higher office. Eight years more than enough for them to demonstrate their abilities without becoming stale. They were included in the referendum in 1993 and 1996 which imposed term limits.
This office is particularly important to limit because incumbents can serve a generation, their names becoming known and their duties relatively light. BPs are generally not enmeshed in controversy. An eight year limit also gives more people an opportunity to hold the office, and be judged on their ability to serve. The borough presidents are usually most closely connected to the political machines, which are organized by county, the equivalent of a borough.
We will write about conflicts of interest tomorrow or the next day. We hope this column has been informative, and tomorrow or the next day we hope to write about the enormous conflict of interest involved in the proposed Council action. Meanwhile, we are prepared to answer any questions you wish to ask. You can reach us by landline, cell phone, facsimile, e-mail, snail mail or carrier pigeon.
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