His Agenda Is Our Agenda

Rules reform was intended to change the way the New York City Council performed its primary job: debating and voting on laws. In the old system, the Speaker wielded total authority over the legislative process, from the drafting of bills, to their progress through committee, to votes on the floor. The new system, according to Councilman Fernando Cabrera, “decentralizes power, allowing members to effectively push for legislation that New Yorkers need.”

Sounds great. But if we review the current legislative session, it is remarkable how completely the Council’s work has dovetailed with the agenda of Mayor de Blasio, down to the timing, rollout and terms of debate. The mayor’s dominance of the Council’s legislative calendar is so complete that one Council member, speaking on the condition of anonymity, complained, “The mayor is now running the Council. His agenda is our agenda. The Speaker is powerless.”

Even before his inauguration, Mayor de Blasio imposed a heavy hand on the inner workings of the Council, strong-arming his political ally Melissa Mark-Viverito into the speakership. Immediately upon her election the Council went straight to work fulfilling a key de Blasio campaign promise: expanding paid sick leave. It may have irked the soi-disant progressives that the reviled Christine Quinn had managed to pass a sick leave bill before leaving office, so they quickly— and with virtually no discussion— broadened the law’s scope to fall in line with de Blasio’s pledge to do so. A few Council members grumbled about the hasty changes, but the measure sailed through nonetheless, thereby giving the mayor the opportunity to make his first bill signing be for one of his pet causes.

As this year has unfolded, the Council has continually seconded the mayor on his every initiative. When de Blasio announced his plan to reduce traffic fatalities, the Council was there to (sort of) debate and quickly pass a package of bills in support of the mayor’s Vision Zero. The same grandiose rhetoric regarding the legislation echoed on both sides of City Hall, though the details of the bills fell a little short of the operatic heights with which its praises were sung. For instance, Local Law 21, “to amend the administrative code … in relation to a study on left turns,” will doubtless produce a stunning analysis of left turns, but you don’t have to be a total cynic to ask how many lives it will really save.

When the mayor chose to take on Albany in order to make the richest New Yorkers pay for universal prekindergarten, the Council was right beside him. It was odd when the governor offered to fund the program out of general revenues, and then the mayor and Council together insisted that the funding had to come from higher income taxes, even digging in their heels over the issue. Was it, some wondered, really that the progressives wanted the tax in order to pay for UPK, or did they want UPK in order to justify the tax?

When the mayor sought to strip charter schools of their use of space in municipal buildings, the Council was happy to hold an eight-hour hearing on the role of charter schools in shredding democracy and imposing “apartheid” on the city. Leading Council members specifically insulted longtime de Blasio political rival Eva Moskowitz, in continuance of the mayor’s campaign strategy to embody school inequity and the achievement gap in her person.

The bill to provide illegal aliens with municipal identification cards was another joint production of the progressive regime, with a series of show hearings staged at which first the Council and then the mayor nodded sympathetically as a parade of the un- or misdocumented explained why getting a $6 state ID from the DMV was beyond their capabilities.

In early May the mayor unveiled his masterwork, “Housing New York,” which was to explain exactly how he planned to build 200,000 units of affordable housing. June hearings in front of the housing and buildings committee were scheduled for the administration to flesh out the plan’s details, but then abruptly canceled. “We’re trying to make sure we give enough time for the administration to be able to answer all our questions,” explained Jumaane Williams, the committee’s chair and deputy majority leader of the Council.

Wouldn’t the publication of the report imply readiness to answer questions about it? And isn’t it the role of the Council to push back against the administration’s unwillingness to talk about this signature plan? In any case, hearings have yet to be scheduled, and nobody is making much of a fuss about it.

In August the mayor issued a message of necessity demanding that the Council authorize an unheard-of $42 million disbursement to private bus companies, in order to increase the salaries of school bus drivers and matrons who felt they had had a raw deal in their last contract negotiations. The Speaker immediately took up the issue, pushed it through hearings and had it on the floor for a vote in the space of about a week.

Minority Leader Vincent Ignizio commented that the act was likely illegal, and noted that customary process had been radically short-circuited in response to the mayor’s message. Councilman Dan Garodnick asked why such an expensive problem hadn’t been brought up during the budget process. Progressive stalwarts such as Councilwoman Margaret Chin defended the bill as being in the interest of the safety of children, but ultimately the whole farce was a crude display of de Blasio’s utter dominance of the Council.

Reform of the Council’s rules has had a salutary effect on the operations of the body, and Council members praise the Speaker’s leadership. Councilman Mark Weprin, who wanted the job, calls Melissa Mark- Viverito a “revelation,” and says, “She has gone out of her way to show that she works for the members and not the other way around.”

Councilwoman Elizabeth Crowley, who was punished under the previous regime for getting on Christine Quinn’s bad side, says, “The change has been night and day. Morale is dramatically improved; communication and efficiency are way up. Equitable discretionary funding, the availability of central staff: The Council is truly member-driven now.” Garodnick, who also vied for the speakership, echoes the comments of his colleagues, saying, “The Council adopted some rather significant rules reform which has increased the autonomy of individual members. Also, the preliminary budget response was much more member-driven than I have ever seen.”

But a side effect of equalizing discretionary funding and the other member-friendly reforms is that nobody really has to fear the Speaker any longer. As our anonymous Council member revealed, “If [the Speaker] and the mayor went to war, not one member would side with her. Why would they? She is gone in three years, and he may pick the next Speaker, too.”

Someone has to fill the power vacuum, and that someone is the mayor. It seems that de Blasio may have chosen a politically reliable one-term Speaker in order to ensure that he could dominate the Legislature and get his agenda through easily. It is ironic that as public advocate he never showed up to preside over the Council in his official ceremonial role as president. Now, as mayor, he rules the Council from a distance, but definitively.

Seth Barron (@NYCCouncil Watch on Twitter) runs City Council Watch, an investigative website focusing on local New York City politics.