A resolution supporting the censuring of President Bush for his telephone surveillance program will be introduced in the City Council tomorrow.

Council Member David Yassky, a Democrat of Brooklyn, will ask the council, which three years ago approved a resolution opposing the Iraq war, to support a Wisconsin senator’s resolution to censure the president for using wiretapping as a tool in the war on terror, which the U.S. Senate began debating Friday.

“I wanted to try to put the City Council on record in support of Senator Feingold” because “now is when the Senate might be considering it,” Mr. Yassky, who is running for Congress, said. The council will meet tomorrow for its general stated meeting, at which time the resolution will be introduced and likely sent to the Committee on Cultural Affairs, Libraries and International Intergroup Relations.

The 2003 resolution condemning the use of force in Iraq was sent to the committee in 2003 before being passed by the council on a vote of 30 to 18.

Critics of Mr. Yassky’s resolution range from those who want an investigation into the program, as opposed to additional rhetoric, to the minority leader of the council, who called the resolution “dopey.”

“I think it’s such a stupid resolution I’m encouraging a vote on it, so New Yorkers can get a look at the mental health of the members of the council,” Minority Leader James Oddo, a Republican of Staten Island, said. “Lets see where people stand on this dopey idea. … This is partisan politics. And I like David, but this is so partisan, so pointless, this is the type of resolution that embarrasses the council.”

“I do not support that resolution, obviously,” the chairman of the council’s Public Safety Committee, Peter Vallone Jr., a Democrat of Queens, said. “When you’re at war, it is necessary to monitor enemy communications. When we fought Hitler, we monitored the Nazis. Now we’re monitoring terrorists. Unfortunately some people would like to claim to be fighting a war on terrorism without actually engaging in any of the actions that it would take to win the war on terrorism.”

A Democratic candidate for attorney general, Sean Patrick Maloney, who is running television commercials promising to file a federal lawsuit to investigate the wiretapping program, said he doesn’t agree with the idea of censuring the president now.

“It’s an interesting idea.The only disadvantage … it prejudges the issue … and takes a punitive step against the president without an investigation into what happened,” Mr. Maloney said.

“In a perfect world, we would have a complete investigation, which would likely support the outcome the council favors, which is why I proposed to bring the matter to the courts,” he said.

Mr. Maloney added, “Congress isn’t doing its job, and the Justice Department isn’t doing its job and private plaintiffs have been unable to get this into courts, so it’s only now that state AGs step up to that role.”

Calls to the campaign office of the front-running Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Eliot Spitzer, were not returned. Mr. Yassky’s resolution, a copy of which was sent to The New York Sun, reads in part, “It is clear that the President of the United States authorized a domestic surveillance program in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 and intentionally mis led the American public about the existence of the program; now, therefore, be it resolved, that the Council of the City of New York supports Senator Russell Feingold’s call for the censure of President George Bush for his domestic wiretapping program.”

“I’ve always been opposed to pointless wiretapping,” Mr.Yassky said.

Mr. Feingold’s resolution says the president “repeatedly misled the public prior to the public disclosure of the National Security Agency surveillance program by indicating his Administration was relaying on court orders to wiretap suspected terrorists inside the United States.”

The retiring congressman Mr.Yassky hopes to replace, Rep. Major Owens, is one of a handful of House Democrats who want the president impeached, not censured.

“This doesn’t deal with the idea of impeachment at all … it doesn’t oppose or rule out anything else,” Mr. Yassky said.

“He doesn’t want to say impeachment. He wants to be a moderate,” Mr. Owens’s son, Chris, who is also running for the seat, said. “I think it’s an example of copycat politics. He didn’t show leadership early on.”

The younger Mr. Owens said his father was in “secret meetings” with other members of Congress to discuss how to move forward with impeachment. “What does the word secret mean? If there was something concrete that came out of them, I would have known.”

A campaign spokesman for another candidate, Council Member Yvette Clarke, said Ms.Clarke plans to vote for Mr.Yassky’s resolution.

“For those who have a low opinion of the New York City Council, it will go one notch lower,” the chairman of the Kings County Conservative Party, Gerard Kassar, said.