Bill de Blasio’s disappearing mayoralty

It’s a striking shift in New York, where mayors like Rudy Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg enjoyed outsize power over city business and have long had reputations to match. In the short-term, this power dynamic has stalled two key de Blasio priorities: guaranteed paid leave and retirement accounts for private sector workers. But it’s already had other impacts across the city, from added regulations opposed by business, increased sway by the Legislature over local government and, some argue, an excess of obstacles for city agencies.

City Council Speaker Corey Johnson makes no bones about the fact that he sees the Council — and not the mayor’s office — as New York City’s legislative lodestar.

“In the last two years that I’ve been here, the legislation we’ve done has been driven by the Council,” he said during a recent press conference. “There have been some legislative packages that have been important to the mayor, that were priorities of the mayor. But they were also at the same time priorities of the Council, so there was an overlap.”

Since de Blasio took office in 2014, the Council has passed nearly 1,100 bills — more than double the volume under previous administrations. Some recent high-profile packages include legislation requiring the city to release a streets master plan every five years, new laws to curb emissions in large buildings and an increased focus on lead paint hazards. But much of the legislative flow has come and gone with less fanfare.

In large part, the reams of new statutes are the result of ideological unity between the mayor and Council. But a more transactional dynamic is at force as well: Council members facing term limits at the end of 2021 would like to leave office with some sort of legacy.

“They do this,” said one Council member who requested anonymity, “because they all want a piece of the pie.”

Many bills have added requirements for businesses and real estate firms, with an eye to protecting consumers. But city business groups such as the Partnership for New York City say, collectively, the measures entangle entrepreneurs in needless red tape.

“No one of these issues is Armageddon on its own,” said Kathryn Wylde, president of the partnership. “It’s when you put it all together.”

Members have also freely contributed to the substantial library of reporting bills that the mayor’s administration must comply with — essentially legal requirements for agencies to show the Council they’re staying on top of issues of concern to legislators.

Carol Kellermann, former president of the Citizens Budget Commission, wrote in an op-ed over the summer that city agencies must now abide by nearly 850 of these laws — more than 50 of which were enacted by the Council last year alone, according to a POLITICO review of legislation.

“In the end of his administration, is the mayor going to get even more conciliatory toward the Council, or is he going to think about the shared legacy he will have with all of these impositions on small businesses and city agencies?” Kellermann said in an interview.

Under the City Charter, mayors have the power to veto legislation passed by the Council. In turn, lawmakers can override that veto with a two-thirds majority. While mayors are almost always overridden, the act of vetoing nevertheless acts as a check by forcing issues into the court of public opinion, where each side must present their case and more fully own their positions.

Bloomberg vetoed 70 bills over his 12 years in office. And six years through his tenure, the Council had passed around 520 pieces of legislation, or roughly half of what the current Council has under de Blasio in roughly the same amount of time. Vetoes themselves do not account for the difference. But they are emblematic of de Blasio’s laissez-faire approach to the legislative branch, an attitude forged during his first term.

De Blasio is the first Democrat to occupy Gracie Mansion (the official mayoral residence) in 20 years. After his election in 2013, the mayor helped elevate Melissa Mark-Viverito to the Council speaker position and the two largely got along as self-described progressives. Practically speaking, that meant neither side of City Hall wanted to be outflanked on the left.

“There were minor differences, but the two of them were very aligned so it wasn’t hard,” said one former city official. “Also, the city was rolling in money during the first two or three years, so there wasn’t any financial stress that required making a lot of hard choices.”

A mayoral spokesperson, citing low crime, education gains and a push for affordable housing said the shared ideology between mayor and Council has obviated the need for vetoes.

“While our record makes clear legislative action is not the only way to drive change, we’re proud to work alongside a progressive council to pass bills the better the lives of New Yorkers,” said the spokesperson, Freddi Goldstein.

Goldstein said the mayor’s office led several pushes last year that included establishing commercial waste zones, passing plans for a controversial flood wall in lower Manhattan and enacting emission caps on buildings, though the Council also claims credit for the latter.

In general, big legislation is rarely accomplished without heavy lifting from city agencies. The mayor’s office has also successfully negotiated behind the scenes to change certain bills that officials did not like, rather than publicly threaten the veto. When the Council appeared dead-set on requiring 15 percent of every affordable housing deal be prioritized for homeless households, for example, city leaders were able to negotiate a compromise that gives the Department of Housing Preservation and Development more leeway to meet the mandate.

But by and large the administration has avoided acrimony. And at the same time ideologies between speaker and mayor were clicking into alignment, a power shift was taking place within the Council that suddenly allowed members more freedom to act on policies of their own making, or those suggested by advocates.

After becoming speaker in 2014, Mark-Viverito curtailed much of the clout that previous speakers had used to punish or reward lawmakers — a reform sought by the body’s Progressive Caucus of which she was a co-founder. She nixed salary bonuses known as “lulus” and standardized capital allocations (although a recent POLITICO story found that certain ways to bestow favoritism have survived under Johnson). She also shrunk the pot of cash that speakers could spread around to members.

The result was a more empowered membership eager to put pen to paper.

“Council members always had legislative goals, but they were often bottled up at the top,” said New York political consultant George Fontas, head of Fontas Advisors. “Now the members are free to lead the charge.”

Since then, the administration’s aversion to confronting the Council has continued into its second term, even as Johnson vowed to be a stronger check on the executive branch. After winning the body’s leadership post, he negotiated a more than 25 percent increase to the Council budget in 2018. Part of the cash went toward boosting the headcount of the bill-drafting unit, making it easier than ever to turn an idea into reality.

Mayors by design hold almost all the cards when it comes to how the city is governed. They enjoy a bigger bully pulpit, they control the budget — which must be negotiated with and passed by the Council — and they command all of the agencies whose hundreds of thousands of employees have a direct impact on the lives of New Yorkers. That is why officials can propose major initiatives without input from lawmakers. De Blasio’s last State of the City mostly included proposals that could be achieved through agency rulemaking, for example, such as creating an expanded Department of Consumer Affairs — now called the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection — and broadening the reach of 3K education.

Yet the decline of the administration’s influence is palpable.

Two policy planks included in the mayor’s speech that did require the Council’s approval, paid personal leave and guaranteed retirement accounts for private sector workers, did not pass in 2019 as de Blasio promised. And without a critical mass of sponsors, the Council does not appear in a rush to move them.

David Birdsell, dean of Baruch College’s School of Public and International Affairs, said normally mayors will go on the offense to convince, cajole or pressure members to support their case while assembling a coalition of groups from the outside to boost the inertia. Early in de Blasio’s tenure, for example, City Hall was able to use its clout to ram through a complex and highly contentious set of zoning changes that affected every Council district. But aside from a handful of press conferences and a letter, that has not happened with these two bills.

“[De Blasio] has been singularly unwilling to use the powers invested in the mayor in this city,” Birdsell said in an interview.

As a counterbalance to the mayor, the Council oversees and approves land-use actions. And speakers have always been able to use their lawmaking powers to enact proposals over resistant administrations.

But in the current dynamic, with little momentum coming from the mayor’s office, Johnson said that the Council’s legislative agenda has largely become that of the city. And a unique confluence of term limits will fortify those dynamics over the next two years.

First, de Blasio’s lame duck status has the potential to sap his political clout moreso than previous administrations. Unlike Bloomberg, he lacks billions of dollars to spend on political causes after leaving office. And there is no reason to believe his political standing will be unexpectedly boosted by leading the city through a catastrophe, as was the case with Giuliani’s after the 9/11 terror attacks. Former mayors David Dinkins and Ed Koch both lost reelection bids, meaning their departures were not guaranteed in the same way that de Blasio’s is.

In the opposite direction, more than two-thirds of Council members are also facing term limits, and many are trying to raise their stature for new jobs. Aside from Johnson, several of his colleagues also have their eyes on higher office. To distinguish themselves, many will be inclined to propose legislation that they can then champion in their campaigns. Because members typically want support from their colleagues for some future venture, they will often vote in favor of a particular bill.

“Part of the reason there has been so much legislation is that Council members are trying to establish a record of doing something,” said Mitchell Moss, professor of urban policy and planning at New York University. “More than half are going to be unemployed.”

Moss said that the Council has seized the progressive voice of the city and taken leadership on key policy issues.

But whether all of those roughly 1,100 new laws have made the city better depends on who you ask. Johnson is unsurprisingly bullish on his legacy as a member and a leader.

“I am proud of the work this Council has done to revolutionize the way we plan our streets, keep our children safe from lead poisoning, protect tenants, bring fairness and much needed regulation to the for-hire vehicle industry which had run rampant for years, fight climate change, and much more,” he said in a statement.

Kellermann, though, argues many of the bills simply create distractions for agencies who are supposed to be providing services and enforcing rules, and that the mayor is failing to perform an important duty required of his office by leaving legislative floodgates open without putting up more of a fight against a body that is highly deferential to local representatives.

“The mayor is supposed to have the overall interests of the city and economy in mind,” Kellermann said. “And sometimes that will be different from the needs of individual Council members.”

Source: politico.com
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