Commission: impossible
Thursday, a day after the City Council under Speaker Corey Johnson voted overwhelmingly to create a panel to edit the City Charter, Mayor de Blasio tapped his own Charter Revision Commission. It is a cynical mayoral trick, a transparent power play — because, under law, if Hizzoner’s commission comes up with a question to put before voters, it automatically pushes the Council’s aside.
And we’re just fine with that, because the Council’s panel, as designed, will almost certainly drag city government in the wrong direction.
Promoted by various factions to give community boards more say over local land use matters (a disaster) and the Council more power over the budget (a fiscal nightmare) and maybe even muck around with term limits (good grief), the Council’s commission is wrong, wrong, wrong.
With a chair picked by Johnson, a Council-centric panel should be stopped. The mayor should veto the legislation and suffer an override. He then should use his own panel to block Johnson’s group from putting anything on the ballot.
Already, community boards interfere enough in neighborhood development projects. Revisions would make matters worse.
Another bad idea would be Senate-style advise-and-consent okay on leaders of key agencies.
One need not endorse the often inept management of the politician formerly known as Warren Wilhem to believe that supercharging a hyperlocal legislative body that has barely proven its capacity to wield its current authority is a very bad idea.
Legally speaking, de Blasio doesn’t need a Charter Revision Commission to accomplish the narrow goals he laid out in January’s State of the City speech. Those hew to improving the city’s campaign finance system and boosting voter participation. Plain old local laws can get them done.
A bolder, better de Blasio commission would swing bigger on broader reforms — like abolishing do-nothing borough presidents and the do-less public advocate. Barring member items, which let the Council reward favored nonprofits with public money. And weakening local members’ land-use prerogatives.
Alas, we’ll have to settle for this: a panel designed to prevent mischief-making. It’ll do.