On July 25, after hearing wide-ranging testimony from elected officials, experts, and everyday New Yorkers, the New York City Charter Revision Committee voted to place five amendments to the city charter on voters’ ballots this November.
Of the five proposals, four would represent positive, if modest, changes to the status quo. First, a proposal to expand the Department of Sanitation’s authority to cover all city-owned property would help contain the city’s sidewalk-trash overflow. Second, an initiative to require the city council to offer more time for testimony on public-safety bills would help ensure that such proposals get proper scrutiny. The third and fourth proposals, mandating the publication of fiscal-impact statements earlier in the legislative process and public disclosure of the state of repair of city facilities and properties, would improve transparency and informed deliberation.
The fifth proposed amendment, however—to establish a Chief Diversity Officer to support Minority and Women-Owned Business Enterprises (MWBEs)—would create redundancies in city contracting. Atop the many problems with MWBE contracting generally, including festering corruption and waste, the new officer position would add yet another layer of bureaucracy to the city’s diversity efforts. The last thing the city needs is another officer.
The CRC should have tackled two more pressing issues: city procurement, which notoriously underdelivers on public value, and community-board reform, to ensure that local government is more responsive to voters.
In the first half of fiscal year 2024, 77 percent of city contracts were registered late, up from 66 percent in fiscal year 2023. Meantime, New York faces billions of dollars in outstanding payments to vendors. One potential solution is an amendment recommended by the 2003 charter-revision report. The city’s Procurement Policy Board should be required to create timetables for completing procurement actions, with effective remedies for failing to meet these schedules. These changes could promote greater accountability and efficiency in city contracts.
Additionally, such an amendment should require the city to reform its emergency procurement rules, which let the mayor bypass standard competitive bidding procedures in dire circumstances. The current process has limited oversight, and once approval is granted, the mayor’s office has almost unchecked ability to award city contracts. Mayor Eric Adams’s administration, for example, recently awarded health-care firm DocGo a $432 million contract to provide care to the city’s migrant shelters, despite the company’s dubious track record and lack of experience in administering shelters. The amendment should require agencies to maintain, and to make emergency purchases from, a list of pre-qualified vendors vetted by the comptroller and Corporation Counsel. This would yield greater oversight while preserving the ability to make time-sensitive emergency purchases.
Community boards, alongside borough presidents and city councilmembers, advise city hall on their districts’ needs and concerns through annual statements. Currently, the city charter mandates that borough presidents make personnel appointments to the community boards, based on nominations made by the district’s city councilmembers. The boards’ budgets are undefined and subject to discretionary allocations.
The CRC should have proposed an amendment requiring elections for community-board membership, with a limit of four two-year terms for members, and forced the city council to provide annual budgets to the community boards. These changes would protect board positions and budgets from becoming opportunities for patronage. Additionally, with a set budget and regular elections, boards could better consider district needs strengthened by a sense of democratic legitimacy and with greater budgetary independence. This would not expand the boards’ formal powers, so there’s little risk of undermining the authority of council members or the mayor.
Mayor Adams tasked the CRC with improving city government. Instead of reforming procurement and community boards, come November, New Yorkers will wind up voting largely on whether they want more of the same government.
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