The City Council is demanding unprecedented approval powers for the chiefs of the NYPD, Fire Department and other key agencies, accelerating its power grab over the mayor’s top picks.
Speaker Adrienne Adams (D-Queens) has actually said the city should be run like the federal government, with the Senate having to approve all Cabinet members and their senior aides.
That’s crazy. Nowadays, when a new president takes office, it can take months just to staff his cabinet, and more than a year to fully staff a new administration.
This is one of the main reasons why Washington is so dysfunctional. Why should the city go down this path?
Mayor Bill de Blasio foolishly gave the Legislature veto power to veto the city’s top lawyer, the attorney general, and now the Legislature is blocking Randy Mastro from taking office simply because he served as a (brilliant!) deputy mayor under Rudy Giuliani.
Mayors gained sole power to appoint agency heads and commissioners 140 years ago, and for good reason: Governor Grover Cleveland at the time said, “Since the appointment alone could secure confirmation, no complaint should ever be heard that an erroneous appointment had been made.”
Why should a citywide elected mayor defer to the narrow, ideological interests of his city council members? The mayor (or mayors, someday) will be solely responsible for the blame when his appointees fail.
The Adams administration points out that the City Charter already gives the City Council “significant checks on the mayor’s authority, including budget, land use and oversight.”
The Council has used its limited power to commit misdeeds such as billions of dollars in overspending, limiting the power of the NYPD, and removing violent criminals from Rikers Island.
New Yorkers want their mayor and his top officials to focus on their jobs, not take arbitrary steps to please time-strapped City Council members.
In fact, city government would run more smoothly if the city council’s powers were significantly strengthened. Diminished.
