Politics
N.Y.C. Voters Approve Four Ballot Measures Proposed by Mayor Adams
Opponents tried to use Mayor Eric Adams’s federal indictment to argue against the measures, and cast them as a bid to lessen the City Council’s power.
New York City voters approved at least four out of five ballot measures designed to change the way the City Council approves legislation and give the Department of Sanitation more power over how it cleans city streets, according to The Associated Press.
The measures’ passage came in spite of efforts by opponents to cast them as an unwarranted power grab by Mayor Eric Adams as he faces a federal corruption indictment.
The five measures were proposed by a Charter Revision Commission that Mr. Adams hastily convened in May. Many saw the commission as a ploy to block a ballot measure that would have forced the mayor to seek Council approval on 21 of his commissioner-level appointments.
By forming a commission to come up with its own ballot proposals, Mr. Adams effectively knocked the Council’s proposal, which required voter approval, off the ballot.
More than 60 civil rights and community groups and 50 elected officials formed a coalition called No Power Grab NYC to oppose the five proposals. Their pitch: Given his current federal corruption indictment and the likelihood of additional charges, Mr. Adams — and future mayors — should not be given more power.
Eric Lane, a professor of law at Hofstra University and the executive director of the 1989 charter review commission that reorganized New York City’s government, said that Mr. Adams’s commission “wasn’t intended as a robust study of the charter, but rather as an obstacle to passing the Council’s laws.”
