Shut Down the Council’s Power Grab
In an outrageous bid to grab more power — but not an ounce of added accountability — City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams and her lefty allies are seeking a council veto over top-ranked mayoral hires.
For a sign of how they’d use that power, consider progressives’ push to nix the confirmation of Randy Mastro as corporate counsel, heading the city Law Department.
Look: The mayor is elected citywide to run the city; he (or, someday, she) deserves his own choices to run city agencies. And the council’s existing powers of oversight and investigation are more than enough check against any abuse — coming, as it does, on top of the mayoral power to fire any agency chiefs who fail at their jobs.
The council’s members, by contrast, are elected only in their own districts — and even then, the real race is only in a low-turnout primary. Most average New Yorkers don’t even know the name of their council rep.
Which is why the City Charter gives the council a very limited role in local government. Heck, it only gained the right to veto a Law Department nominee because then-Mayor Bill de Blasio foolishly agreed in 2019 to support amending the Charter to allow it.
The correct reform to make now would be undoing that 2019 change: Mastro, a centrist Democrat who happily (and ably) served as a deputy mayor under Rudy Giuliani, is eminently qualified for the job. Those resisting him only want to force Mayor Adams to choose a hard progressive who’d serve their agenda rather than his. Adams needs to shut this power grab down hard.
Indeed, he can appoint a Charter Reform Commission to put his own amendments before the voters. And the City Council as an institution is a growing source of dysfunction: It’s time for a commission to look at retooling the whole council. If Randy Mastro’s free, he can chair it.