Eric pushes back against Council on forms to meet with top officials
Mayor Adams said Tuesday he’s personally involved in reviewing requests City Hall receives as part of a controversial new system requiring local politicians to fill out forms if they want to speak to senior officials in his administration.
Since it was first rolled out last week, the new engagement format has drawn sharp criticism from local lawmakers, who say it creates an unnecessary layer of red tape preventing them from carrying out key functions of their jobs.
Council Speaker Adrienne Adams has called the new requirement “excessively bureaucratic” and even vowed her members won’t comply with it. Brooklyn Councilman Lincoln Restler, a progressive Democrat, announced Tuesday his Governmental Operations Committee will hold a May 1 hearing to grill City Hall officials about the new process.
“Looking forward to questioning City Hall — no form required,” Restler wrote on X about the forthcoming hearing.
At a news conference Tuesday afternoon, Adams told reporters he believes the speaker and other local pols have “overreacted” in their responses. He said he used a similar engagement form while Brooklyn borough president and that it helps his team “coordinate” communication with fellow elected officials.
“Every morning, I get up, and I look at those requests of what people are requesting to meet with our team,” he said at City Hall.
He said he either directly responds to the requests, or delegates it to Tiffany Raspberry, his director of intergovernmental affairs, whose office oversees the new engagement process.
“We’ve had over, close to 100 people who have [filed requests] already. Within hours, at most 24 hours, the request is responded to,” he said.
A City Council member, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a private conversation, confirmed the mayor recently reached out directly to talk about a meeting request.
Under the new system, local lawmakers must fill out the online request form if they wish to speak to agency commissioners, their executive teams or other senior administration officials about “enforcement” or issues “outside the scope of daily operations.”
More than a dozen Council members interviewed by The News say they have agency commissioners’ cell phone numbers and often communicate directly with them about various pressing issues, from sanitation pickup in their districts to emergencies like suspected dangerous lead levels in soil in local parks. They have argued requiring City Hall to sign off on forms before they can engage in such conversations is counterintuitive.
But at Tuesday’s news conference, Adams said politicians can forget about meeting with his top advisers if they refuse to comply with the new engagement format.
“They’re not required to fill them out, then just don’t meet with my commissioners,” he said before adding: “If there’s an emergency … we’re going to still do the job even if we don’t do the meeting, let’s be clear on that. … If there is an issue around we’re having a light out somewhere, we’re still going to fix it, you know, if there’s something a school needs, we’re still going to do it.”