The New York City Council took a step toward wresting control from the mayor’s executive appointment powers at a committee hearing on Wednesday, leading to a tense exchange between a mayoral representative and councilmembers.
It was the latest episode in an ongoing power struggle between Mayor Eric Adams and City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, who have clashed over how lawmakers interact with city agencies, public statements by NYPD leaders, and other policy issues, including housing and criminal justice. It also comes as the mayor and Council negotiate the city’s next budget, which Mayor Adams proposed at $112 billion and councilmembers are currently reviewing.
Last week, Speaker Adams introduced legislation that would give the Council more say over the mayor’s appointment of 21 key commissioners by expanding the Council’s “advice and consent” powers. But the mayor separately formed what’s known as a Charter Revision Commission that could hold up the effort by forcing its own ballot initiative to go before voters.
In opening remarks at the hearing on Wednesday, Speaker Adams said her bill had nothing to do with the current mayor and builds on the Council’s authority to review candidates for various agency and board roles.
“Advice and consent ensures that city agency commissioners who control critical services that affect and determine the well-being of New Yorkers are held to the highest standards,” she said.
“I want to be clear that this bill is certainly not about curbing the power of any particular mayor, but is instead focused on improving government as a city, we stand to benefit from this change and will continue to work on increasing transparency and good governance regardless of who is in office at any given time,” she added.
The legislation would allow the Council to formally weigh in on new nominations for about a quarter of the city’s agency heads, including the commissioners of emergency management, buildings, health and parks. Earlier this week, Mayor Adams said he liked the status quo “because people should know who they blame if the streets are not clean, if the commissioners are not delivering.”
After councilmembers criticized his office for not sending a representative to testify on the measure on Wednesday, Tiffany Raspberry, senior adviser to the mayor and his director of intergovernmental affairs, appeared in the Council chambers and was sworn in. She said the administration opposed the legislation and that it would be “undoubtedly bad for New Yorkers.”
“Any uncertainty or delay in appointing agency leadership creates the real possibility for harm from delayed service delivery,” Raspberry said. She added that “right now, we regularly experience significant delays in scheduling confirmation hearings for the relatively small number of nominees to even be considered by the City Council.”
Raspberry also argued that the bill could politicize executive appointments and drive away potential talent. “We have a clear example of how this process can be corrupted by politics when we look to our nation’s capital and see a process that is weaponized and politicized to score cheap political points and is a disservice to the American people,” she said.
But Raspberry refused to take questions from councilmembers after delivering her prepared statement, saying she was not prepared because the mayor’s office was not formally invited. Committee Chair Lincoln Restler pushed back on that assertion, sparking a fraught exchange between the two before Raspberry left the chambers.
“At no time did we receive, in the traditional way in which the administration is invited to testify to hearings, a formal invitation to testify,” she said.
Restler responded that the administration “is not required to receive a formal invitation to testify” and noted that he had corresponded with the mayor’s legislative affairs director about the hearing. To that, Raspberry said the director had told her the correspondence was done “in jest.”
“So now that we understand that you didn’t take it that way, we’ll be sure to make sure that anything that is shared in jest in a collegial manner, that we specify that,” she said.
When Restler began to object to Raspberry’s comments, she spoke over him, thanked the Council and wished the lawmakers a good day before walking out.
“This, to me, illustrates a contempt for this Council, which we have all witnessed with great clarity,” Speaker Adams said of Raspberry’s exit.
Later on Wednesday, at a dueling meeting on the Upper East Side, Mayor Adams’ new appointees to the Charter Revision Commission praised him for bringing them together in the spirit of giving a “voice for the voiceless.”
Former state Sen. Diane Savino, a senior adviser to the mayor who focuses on legislative issues, was named the commission’s executive director. The meeting was led by Chair Carlo Scissura, president of the New York Building Congress. NAACP New York State Conference President Hazel Dukes, a key Adams ally and a longtime force in New York politics, serves as the commission’s vice chair.
Michelle Bocanegra contributed reporting.
