City Council members want more control over community board appointments

A new bill could give New York City Council members more direct say over who is appointed to community boards.

While council members currently can nominate who they’d like to see serve on community boards in their district, only borough presidents have the power to appoint applicants – and in turn, reject or ignore any suggestions as they see fit. Legislation sponsored by Republican Council Member Frank Morano and an unexpected bipartisan assortment of his colleagues could change this by way of a future ballot proposal.

“I’m doing this essentially to restore fairness, accountability and transparency to community board appointments,” said Morano, who was elected to represent his South Shore Staten Island district in a special election this April. “Council members are the officials that are closest to neighborhoods and we should have a real say in who represents them.”

If approved by voters at a future election – perhaps next year if Morano gets his way – the city charter would be amended to give council members the authority to directly appoint up to half of the members on community boards, which are each capped at 50 people. While he acknowledged that borough presidents generally approve most nominations council members make, there are also instances in which they’ve rejected or even ignored them. Staten Island Borough President Vito Fossella for example has yet to act on any of the three individuals nominated by Morano back in June. A Democratic council member speaking on background said that while this hasn’t been their personal experience with a different borough president, some of their colleagues have at times run into similar trouble when making nominations.

A spokesperson for Fossella declined to speak on the record.

“I’m not saying that borough presidents shouldn’t have a say – of course they should, but they shouldn’t have unchecked veto power over qualified nominees,” Morano said. “This is a reform that makes democracy more democratic and lets voters decide themselves if they want this change.”

The bill, which was first introduced Thursday, has so far garnered support from eight council members who span a broad ideological spectrum. In addition to Morano, Republicans David Carr and Inna Vernikov, conservative Democrats Susan Zhuang and Robert Holden, Progressive Caucus members Nantasha Williams and Julie Won, and City Council speaker candidate Julie Menin are all signed on as co-sponsors. Together, the group makes for a strong, albeit unusual, coalition of council members. Morano said he expects to garner more support in the days and weeks to come. 

The change could be a big deal for council members, many of whom have sought more definitive say over community board appointments. These 59 boards, each of which correspond with a community district, are composed of up to 50 members – all of whom are volunteers and serve in staggered two-year terms. It’s a role commonly thought of as an entry level into government. Like City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams and Land Use Chair Rafael Salamanca Jr., many council members and other elected officials got their start in politics serving on a community board. While advisory – meaning any votes they make are non-binding – community boards have a voice in important neighborhood-related decisions like liquor license applications, budget requests and development projects going through the city’s land use approval process. 

Shaking up who gets the final say on appointments is likely to be divisive and stir conversations about conflicts of interest and impartiality. This is helped in no part by recent disagreements between individual council members and their local borough presidents over land use decisions – like Council Member Kristy Marmorato’s opposition to a casino in her Bronx district or the passage of the sweeping zoning reform overhaul City of Yes for Housing Opportunity last year.

Council members like Morano argue that the most democratic and fair thing to do is to ensure they are able to make their share of appointments to community boards. This could be particularly significant for a council member who serves in a borough helmed by a borough president of a different political party. Vernikov for example represents the 48th District in Brooklyn, meaning Democratic Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso has final say for any community board appointments in her district. 

The change would also help prevent any bias, favoritism or or personal beef interfering with borough president decisions to approve or reject council member nominations, according to Morano, who pointed to the fact that he only just ran against Fossella’s son for City Council. Tensions between the Republican council member and the borough president’s office date back even further. In February, Morano, then the chair of Community Board 3, resigned from his post amid a feud with Fossella and other local leaders. 

The Staten Island borough president’s office said in a statement that they take seriously the power to appoint community board members. “We have exercised this duty responsibly, and we will continue to do so,” they said in a statement.

On the other hand, those same concerns about impartiality and conflict of interest could also apply to council members who would bring their own set of biases to the decisions. 

Scott Stringer, a former Manhattan borough president who played a big role in reforming community boards during his tenure, said he understands the intention of the legislation, but ultimately has concerns about it. After making it one of his main campaign issues, Stringer dove Into reforming Manhattan’s 12 community boards upon taking office in 2006, revamping the appointment process by establishing a screening panel led by good-government and civic groups, moving quicker to fill vacancies and taking steps to increase the number of applications. The goal was to bolster diversity and to prevent corruption from marring the application process and he’s been lauded for this work in the years since. 

If he hadn’t had control over the appointment process, Stringer said, he wouldn’t have been able to sufficiently implement those reforms. “You want to maintain local people having a say, but you have to overlay it with a broader perspective because that’s the only way we get to do big things,” he explained. 

It’s unclear when the legislation will get a hearing, if at all, but Morano said his goal is to get it passed this session. 

“We shouldn’t have to go hat in hand like Oliver Twist begging the borough president to consider qualified neighborhood activists to be able to go on the community board,” Morano said. “That’s why I really think this legislation even though it’s only a day old has such a diversity of support.”