Mayor Adams announced early Thursday he’s convening another Charter Revision Commission to advance referendum questions onto next year’s local election ballot — and just like his first one, this initiative is set to block a plan by City Council leaders to launch their own effort to amend the city’s constitution.
The mayor’s new 14-member commission will look into proposing ballot questions for the November 2025 ballot that would amend the City Charter to help “combat the city’s generational housing crisis,” according to a press release from Adams’ office. The move comes on the heels of the City Council passing the mayor’s “City of Yes” plan that seeks to boost housing production across the five boroughs.
The announcement didn’t elaborate on any specific housing proposals the commission will dig into but three sources familiar with the matter told the Daily News the panel will, at least in part, be tasked with reviewing the role the City Council plays in the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, or ULURP.
The Council currently holds large sway in the ULURP process, which proposed real estate developments and other large land use changes must undergo before shovels can hit the ground.
One of the sources, who like the others spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations, said the mayor is specifically hoping the commission can find ways to dilute the Council’s ULURP powers to make it harder for individual members of the legislative body to block any given real estate project.
Spokespeople for the mayor declined to comment beyond the press release.
Besides housing, the sources said the mayor’s team have engaged in discussions about tapping the commission to look into repealing components of New York’s “sanctuary city” status.
The status bars city resources from being used to help federal authorities with deporting immigrants, except in cases involving individuals convicted of serious or violent crimes.
Adams has long lamented changes made under the de Blasio administration that strengthened protections for the city’s undocumented population. His interest in rolling back those changes comes as incoming President Trump has vowed to launch mass deportations of immigrants across the country, regardless of whether they’ve been convicted of any crimes besides crossing into the U.S. illegally.
City & State first reported Wednesday evening the mayor was expected to soon launch another Charter Revision Commission.
The new commission will be chaired by Richard Beury, the CEO of Robin Hood who was a deputy mayor under Mayor Bill de Blasio. Other members of the panel include Partnership for New York City’s Kathy Wylde, homeless advocate Shams DaBaron and Adams adviser Diane Savino.
Adams’ first Charter Revision Commission, formed this past spring, advanced five ballot questions onto this year’s presidential election ballot.
Four of the questions passed, including the two most meaningful ones — which placed new requirements on how the City Council drafts and assesses the cost of new legislation.
The mayor launched that commission after Council Speaker Adrienne Adams said her Democratic majority was planning to advance their own ballot referendum questions on the 2024 ballot that would have given the Council more power to block certain top city government hires the mayor can currently make unilaterally.
Because of a quirk in state law, referendum questions pushed through by the Council can’t appear on a ballot that features questions advanced by the mayor. Thereby, the mayor’s commission this year derailed the Council’s effort.
That dynamic prompted Speaker Adams and scores of her Democratic colleagues to accuse the mayor earlier this year of deliberately launching his commission to stifle their initiative. The speaker said in July the mayor was behaving like an autocratic “king.”
Like his first commission, the mayor’s second charter revision effort is infuriating the speaker and her colleagues as it stands to block an announced plan by them to roll out their own Charter Revision Commission for next year’s election.
“Mayor Adams’ administration once again appears ready to politicize the Charter Revision Commission process by establishing yet another commission to block the democratic rights of New Yorkers to offer charter revisions, despite the Council opening its own commission up to the mayor,” said Shirley Limongi, a spokeswoman for the speaker, referencing a proposal for the Council’s commission to include mayoral appointees.
“This Commission seeking to hand our city over to the Trump administration to sow chaos by changing sanctuary city laws that protect our diverse immigrant communities and public safety in New York City will be something that Council Members and New Yorkers fight and oppose,” Limongi added.
Last month, the Council overwhelmingly passed a bill introduced by the speaker that would convene a 17-member commission tasked with looking over the full charter to find ways to improve it.
The speaker hasn’t floated any particular ballot questions she might want her commission to advance but sources have indicated there could be a push to resurrect the blocked initiatives to expand the Council’s oversight of mayoral appointments.
Regardless, with the mayor launching his second commission, the speaker’s panel could be dead in the water, at least as it relates to the 2025 election ballot.
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