Give NYC’s charter a thoughtful revamp

It’s been nearly 30 years since the last real overhaul of the City Charter, the governing document that functions as New York City’s constitution. With some minor changes made along the way, the 1989 charter has served us pretty well.

But this city confronts new challenges — including widening income inequality, a new breed of complex development projects, and a hostile federal government threatening crucial funding streams — and it’s time to take another look at the ground rules of how our city government works and make improvements.

That’s why this week we introduced a City Council bill to convene a charter revision commission to consider and propose changes to the charter, to be put before voters for approval.

Here are just some of the matters that could use a charter commission’s attention:

Land use and zoning. The 1989 charter gave us the current version of our land use and zoning process, the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure. For the most part, it’s worked well, providing a defined timeline and meaningful transparency. But too often, input from community members comes late in the game, alternative plans are ruled out early on, and changes are negotiated and unveiled at the last minute. We can revise the process to require that far-reaching projects include more community input before applications are finalized and the starting gun is fired.

Budgeting. The framers of the 1989 charter intended the city’s budget to be a clearer, more useful document — one where priorities are spelled out, funding is broken out in detailed categories by program, and Council members have more input in setting objectives. That vision wasn’t realized. Instead, most Council members’ involvement in budgeting is limited to how their own discretionary funds are spent. We should adjust the City Charter to give the Council its intended role in planning city budgets.

Streamlining bureaucracies. In the 30 years since the last major charter revision, new laws, agencies, reforms and bureaucracies to deal with problems have piled up. Consider police oversight: Over time, we’ve accumulated a mayoral oversight board, the Civilian Complaint Review Board and a Department of Investigation unit dedicated to the police. Three different agencies, with three overlapping missions and sets of powers. Should we rethink that?

The city also has at least three different agencies for records, information technology and communications, as well as property and fleet management. Could they be more efficient and effective if we reorganized? It’s worth a look.

Some readers are probably asking why we think a charter rethink is a good idea for the city, when we opposed a constitutional convention for New York State. The answer’s easy: The state’s process is terrible. A state constitutional convention would be a political body of 204 delegates selected in partisan elections. Of those, 189 would be elected from Senate districts gerrymandered to unfairly advantage Republicans and upstate, in elections awash with special-interest money. This is not a recipe for sound reforms. The city’s process is better: through City Council legislation, we can put together a panel of experts large enough to be representative, but small enough to work collaboratively.

We propose 15 appointees, four appointed by the mayor, four by the City Council, one each for the controller and public advocate, and one per borough president. It’s important that no single official appoints a majority. Some previous charter reviews haven’t been independent, instead dominated by appointees answering directly to mayors. If the commissioners act as mere proxies, the process will be weaker for it.

Some will say this is a scramble to seize power. It’s not. While undoubtedly some of the changes we’d like to see will involve empowering other officials — or community members — none of us disagree that New York City needs strong mayors and a strong central government to work properly. The alternative is chaos.

Our goal is simple: empower a panel of genuine experts to do a top-to-bottom review of how our government could work better, and put their recommendations up for public discussion and a vote. We encourage both the Council’s veterans and the newly elected members taking office this January to support a charter review.