Council Members Push for More Individual and Committee Power

With the support of more than a dozen City Council members, the Citizens Union yesterday released a report proposing reforms that it said would make the council's actions more transparent and shift power to individual members and committees.

Council members David Yassky and Gale Brewer joined the watchdog group's president, Dick Dadey, and its director of public policy and advocacy, Douglas Israel, in announcing the report yesterday at a press conference at City Hall.

"While there have been notable improvements made over the last four years to make the speaker less autocratic and the council a more collaborative body, it's functioning and operation is not as openly transparent, publicly deliberative, or as democratic as it should be," Mr. Dadey said.

He added, "The challenge to the New York City Council is how to make it more democratic and effective when it is so largely controlled by one political party." There are three Republicans, one member of the Working Families Party, and 47 Democrats on the council. A total of 206 bills have come to the floor of the council since 2001, all of which have passed - all but five with veto-proof margins.

The report presents 23 potential reforms, including making transcripts of witness testimony available on the council's Web site in a timely fashion and requiring earlier public notification of meetings and hearings. The report also recommends that committees be allowed to schedule their own meetings and votes, set their agendas, and make their own hiring and firing decisions. It urges a cultural change in the council to encourage members to propose amendments to bills - a practice that is currently frowned upon - and it suggests that the council distribute funds to individual districts "based more on needs and less on political considerations."

"The way the council operates now makes it particularly susceptible to special interests," Mr. Yassky said. "All the issues are resolved behind the scenes and then council members just are presented with an up or down vote."

Mr.Yassky defined "special interest" as "people who have a business interest in city government ... anyone looking for city contracts or the real estate lobby." In Congress, he said, when a bill is drafted, substantive questions are settled in public, with votes. "These are the decisions that should be debated in public and voted on, so that people can understand how their council members are affecting policy."

The leader of the council's three-member Republican minority, James Oddo, called the report "well intentioned, but misguided." He applauded its calls for greater transparency, but said that its shifting of power away from the speaker was impractical.

"Over-democratization opens the door to legislative anarchy," he said, adding that it would allow the mayor to "divide and conquer" the council. "You can't have the executive with the ability to negotiate with the satellites and ignore the speaker."

He said the council Republicans had sufficient access to the speaker and a much greater ability to pass bills than the minority parties in the state Legislature, a state of affairs he predicted would continue under Christine Quinn, who is expected to win today's vote for speaker.