Melissa Mark-Viverito’s puzzling punt on Right to Know Act

By scuttling the widely supported Right to Know Act legislation in favor of “internal changes” that the NYPD would institute, New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito blew her best opportunity to distance herself from an embattled mayor with whom she has been inextricably linked for the last three years.

Just as her predecessor, Christine Quinn, drew heavy criticism for supporting many Michael Bloomberg initiatives, Mark-Viverito has effectively hitched her wagon to de Blasio since the mayor expended political capital to make her speaker in 2014.

The major difference between the two is that Quinn actually wielded the Council’s veto override power when she and Bloomberg disagreed. Quinn presided over 27 overrides of Bloomberg vetoes, compared to a relatively astonishing zero overrides during Mark-Viverito’s tenure.

When Quinn did block legislation from a Council floor vote – such as the Paid Sick Leave law, which de Blasio and Mark-Viverito expanded in early 2014 – there were at least clear political implications for doing so. It was no secret that Quinn wanted to be mayor, and running afoul of the business community she had spent considerable time cozying up to as speaker was seen as potentially damaging to her 2013 candidacy.

But for Mark-Viverito, who is term-limited and unlikely to run for mayor in 2017, the political calculus for the Right to Know compromise is puzzling, to say the least. As a lame duck, her only constituency (besides the residents of the 8th Council district that voted her into office) is the 50 other City Council members who elected her speaker. Mark-Viverito’s speaker candidacy was buoyed by a commitment to inclusiveness that didn’t previously exist in the Council – a complaint leveled by many of Quinn’s Council colleagues. Instead, Mark-Viverito employed a Quinn-esque tactic – blocking the Right to Know Act from a floor vote, despite enough support for the legislation to pass, in order to broker a compromise with Bratton and de Blasio while one of the bill’s co-sponsors, Councilman Antonio Reynoso, was on vacation.

The only transparent aspect of Mark-Viverito’s decision is her loyalty to the mayor, who exerted significant pressure on Council members to make her speaker, with an eye toward having a rubber-stamp City Council for his progressive agenda. While I would never argue against loyalty as a virtue, not only has Mark-Viverito campaigned on police reform, but she was also well out in front of many city and state politicians on proposing to close Rikers Island prison, and has spoken eloquently about the dangerous proliferation of stop-and-frisk under Bloomberg and Bratton’s predecessor, Ray Kelly.

The Right to Know Act was seen by many police reform advocates as another step in the right direction, and Mark-Viverito putting these bills to the side to let Bratton institute similar changes with no legislative oversight – at a time of heightened tension between police and communities of color – is bad optics.

Moreover, just as Quinn was dogged by her perceived loyalty to Bloomberg, it’s not clear at this point what Mark-Viverito has to gain by being in political lockstep with de Blasio. The mayor’s approval ratings are at the lowest point of his tenure, and allowing the Right to Know Act to pass muster in the Council would put the onus on de Blasio to either appease Bratton (who may not even be around if de Blasio wins a second term) or show and prove that his rhetoric supporting police reform is more than just that. If the mayor vetoes the bill, Mark-Viverito has political cover if she can’t whip enough votes to override.

Nobody knows what’s next for Mark-Viverito after her speakership, and maybe there is a long-term rationale at play here that makes sense for her. Many political observers assume she has a good chance at getting a Cabinet post in a potential Hillary Clinton administration, given her early support of Clinton and prominent surrogacy during the 2016 primary campaign. But even Clinton, long criticized for being cautious, has seemingly embraced politically dicey positions on police reform, pledging to adopt many of the recommendations of President Obama’s 21st Century Policing Task Force.

All of this adds up to a controversial decision that could end up being what Bloomberg’s third term was for Quinn – a blemish that clouds her political future.