Charter Revision Commission: NYC should have even-year elections, member deference should no longer reign

Calling all land use and election law geeks.

The Charter Revision Commission is expected to advance four measures onto the November ballot Monday afternoon intended to tackle the city’s housing crisis by simplifying the land-use process and curbing City Council members’ de facto power to block new housing projects. A fifth proposal would shift municipal elections to even years in a bid to increase voter turnout.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams initially convened the 13-member panel in December to propose tweaks to the city’s governing document in hopes of bolstering and streamlining housing production – a goal underscored by the recent passage of zoning reform plan City for All. While the commission’s public meetings have touched on a variety of issues over the past months, the resulting proposals largely stayed true to that original goal. It’s all been building to Monday afternoon. Coming together one last time, commission members will vote to approve the specific language for how each proposal will appear on voters’ ballots in the general election this fall. 

The ballot measure most likely to stir the most political pushback pertains to the informal but longstanding practice known as member deference in which the City Council typically allows a single member to determine whether a development project proposed in their district moves forward or not. This generally marks the end of the seven-month review for zoning changes known as the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure. Taking aim at member deference, the proposal would establish a three-member “appeals board” composed of the local borough president, the mayor and the City Council speaker that could reverse the City Council’s decision to modify or reject many of these projects if two of the three officials agreed. 

Another measure would create a new fast track review for rezonings proposed in the 12 council districts that have historically allowed the least amount of affordable housing to be built. Projects that include affordable units would culminate in a review with a final vote from the City Planning Commission – not the City Council. The 60-day review periods for a local community board and borough president would also be combined into a single 60-day period. Another similar measure would speed up the review process for modestly sized projects, setting up a new expedited procedure for the project to go through instead of the longer ULURP process. All together, these changes could cut the seven month ULURP process in half while still preserving many aspects of public review. 

The fourth proposal – and certainly the wonkiest – would modernize and condense the city’s 8,000 paper maps, digitizing them and putting them under the purview of the Department of City Planning. The last proposal would move local elections to even years to coincide with higher-turnout national contests.

One thing that won’t be on the November ballot is a proposal to switch the city to a top-two open primary system. Following a slew of input – both for and against the potential change – commission chair Richard R. Buery Jr. announced last week that the panel had decided against advancing the proposal, citing a lack of “clear consensus” from stakeholders on how it should be structured. This decision came as a great relief to the Working Families Party and other opponents. Concerned that switching to a nonpartisan primary election would likely violate the system of fusion voting laid out in the state constitution, the progressive third party had threatened to sue if the proposal ended up on the ballot.

This is Adams’ second charter revision commission since he took office. The first put forward five ballot proposals last summer concerning sundry issues from the scope of Sanitation Department authority to calculating the cost of proposed City Council laws. Despite a campaign from the City Council and a number of other organizations to defeat them, voters ultimately OK’d four of the five proposals. Many council members believed that the proposals would take power from the City Council. They also felt that Adams had convened the commission specifically to block one of their own measures from the ballot. 

Now, as the commission prepares to send another five questions to the ballot, another battle looms. Things are unlikely to be quite as charged this time around (these Charter Revision Commission members by and large have strong relationships with council members) but don’t expect it to be smooth sailing either. Some City Council members have balked at the suggestion that more action is needed on housing, having already approved several massiving rezoning proposals over the last few years. City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, who helped create the chamber’s own commission about a month before the mayor convened his, has also disagreed that members are the greatest obstacle to building new housing. 

A spokesperson for the City Council pointed out that members have approved over 120,000 units of housing and secured more than $8 billion of additional investments “to make housing more affordable and better support neighborhoods since 2022.

“Mayor Eric Adams’ Charter Revision Commission conveniently ignored these facts to advance a self-serving narrative in support of expanded mayoral power, even as his administration hypocritically overturned housing at the Elizabeth Street garden that was approved years ago by the Council,” they said, referencing how the city recently dropped its years-old plan to build affordable housing for seniors on the Elizabeth Street Garden site in lower Manhattan. “This commission’s misguided proposals would undermine the ability to deliver more affordable housing, good-paying union jobs, and neighborhood investments for New Yorkers across the five boroughs.”