Charter Amendment Voting Guide

There’s a local election coming up! I know, I was surprised too until I got a voting brochure that told me an election is coming up. We have a chance to elect a new public advocate (which is a whole other blog post, I don’t have time to explain the position now, but I’ll just tell you to vote for Jumaane Williams, simply on the strength of Joe Borelli’s answer to the questions included in the NYC Voter’s Guide). We also have a chance to amend the city charter, which has some very cool and sexy initiatives. You laugh! But I think as we go through my West Wing, Best Wing Voter Guide, you’ll agree that some of these initiatives are both cool and, dare I say, sexy.

Bill, he only makes fun of you so much because he likes you! Or he’s a little unhinged. Or both. Both is good.

Ranked Choice Voting

Ranked choice voting is used around the world, including Australia and the UK. It also shows up in towns and even states across America. Ranked choice voting is when voters are allowed to rank candidates in order of their preference, instead of just picking one. So how does that work in practice?

Let’s say I am running for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors (which utilizes ranked choice voting) along with Dianne Feinstein, Clint Eastwood, and Benjamin Bratt, all well-known San Franciscans. If the majority of voters put me as their first-preference candidate, due to my policy to ban tech bros, I will win the election. But let’s say no candidate wins the majority of first-preference votes. Then, the candidate with the least number of first preference votes is eliminated. Sorry Clint Eastwood. All of the people who put Clint Eastwood as their first-preference choices would have their second-preference choices distributed to candidates and have those then treated as first preference choices. This could give one of the other three candidates an edge to win the election. So let’s say 45% of people put Benjamin Bratt as their first choice and 40% put me as their first choice. But then, all of Clint Eastwood’s votes put Benjamin as their second choice. Benjamin then gets those votes. And if 6% of San Franciscans picked Clint, and all of them had Benjamin as a number 2, Benjamin would win the election.

Benjamin Bratt: Good enough for Julia Roberts, good enough for San Francisco

Ranked choice voting allows people to pick the candidate they most believe in without the fear that they will be throwing their vote away. You can’t possibly throw your vote away, because even if your candidate has very little support, your preferences will be taken into account.

As someone who really loves lists, I love the idea of ranked choice voting. But it also would be incredibly advantageous for a city like New York, where the majority of elections are decided at the primary phase, where there is often a very crowded field. It could mean that candidates are elected with a broader base of support. It also could allow voters to send a strong message to elected officials. If a sizable majority of people put a candidate first, but not enough to actually elect that candidate, the candidate who is actually elected may have an incentive to take up certain mantels the losing candidate believed in, in order to appeal to more supporters. It can be a signal to candidates to take certain issues seriously. And it can begin the process of reforming our electoral system, which clearly doesn’t work as well as it should. So when you go to the polls in this election:

Vote YES on Amendment 1!

Civilian Complaint Review Board

The Civilian Complaint Review Board is a city agency that investigates, mediates, and recommends actions on complaints from citizens about excessive forced used by police officers. The members of the board are not police officers, and can present relatively impartial rulings to the Police Commissioner. This amendment would first alter the composition of the board. The Board currently has 13 members, five of which are appointed by the City Council and three of which are appointed by the Police Commissioner, with final authority from the mayor. This amendment would add two members, one of which is appointed by the Public Advocate, and another that is appointed jointly by the Mayor and the Speaker of the City Council, and would allow the City Council’s five members to be appointed without mayoral oversight. The bill would also require the CCRB to hire one employee for every 154 officers, for a staffing ratio of .65%. The current ratio is .59%. Finally, this amendment would require the Police Commissioner to provide an explanation to the CCRB when he choses not to follow action recommended by the board, and would allow the CCRB to investigate cases when an officer makes false statements in a CCRB investigation.

The New York City Police Benevolent Association hates this amendment. They are big fans of Joe Borelli (remember, from before?) and generally a pretty conservative institution. And I’m always down to increase police accountability, so I say:

Vote Yes on Amendment 2!

Ethics and Government

There are five proposals in this amendment. First is a lobbying proposal I can really get on board with. Curren law requires elected officials and senior administration officials to wait one year before they can lobby the same organizations they used to work for, and this law would increase that time to two years. The bar is two years for state employees, so this would just bring the city in line with the state. Awesome!

The proposal would also create a mayoral office for the director of the Minority and Women Owned Small Business Enterprise Program. Now, there already is a Mayor’s Office of Minority and Women Owned Business Enterprises, but it seems like this amendment would make that mandatory and would require the director of the program report directly to the mayor. The law would also require the City Council to confirm the Mayor’s appointment of the Corporation Counsel, which is the top lawyer for the city. I guess I’m fine with both of those, but quite frankly, I don’t really care either way.

Then the amendment makes some changes to the Conflicts of Interest Board. If you don’t already follow me on Twitter (what’s wrong with you) you may not know my deep and unending love for the New York City Conflicts of Interest Board. And they love me back.

This amendment would take away two of the Mayor’s five appointments to the board and let the Public Advocate appoint one and the Comptroller appoint another. It would also prohibit COIB members from being involved in city office campaigns and restrict the amount of campaign contributions COIB members can make.

The COIB hasn’t said anything about this amendment. I don’t know how they feel. I don’t want to disappoint them and vote the wrong way. That being said, I think the current COIB is running great. I kind of think, if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it. And Citizen’s Union, a good government organization in New York, recommended a No vote on this. It’s gonna be a

Vote No on Amendment 3 decision for me, dawg.

This blog post will be updated if the COIB responds to my Twitter request for their opinion on the amendment.

Budgets

This Amendment would establish a “rainy day fund” so the city could save money during good economic times to use when the budget wasn’t as good. I don’t like this in my gut, I think it’s a bad look for the government to be saving money. It’s not a business, and there’s so much need here and now, that I just can’t see the benefit to squirreling money away. But smarter people than me think a rainy day fund is a good idea, primarily because of how New York has to approach their budget.

Basically, state law requires that New York balance their budget every year, so all revenues have to be accounted for by the end of the fiscal year. So if you have an extra million, that may not be enough to build new affordable housing, but it has to be spent, so it goes to initiatives or projects that may not be what the city needs, but what they can afford with the leftover money. In the face of being forced to balance a budget, I can see what a rainy day fund may be beneficial, allow the city to put away tax revenue and hopefully use it for projects down the line that we cannot afford now, but may be able to afford in three years.

I still think it’s not a good way to run a government, and it would require changes in state law to make this a reality. The amendment would also set budgets for the mayor and public advocate through 2020 and make other budgeting changes.

I think this is going to come down to how you feel about a rainy day fund. Personally, I know the state doesn’t always like it when the city tries to go behind their back and make new law (remember that plastic bag fee? I sure do. A man on twitter harassed my boss about it for months). I don’t think it’s good for the government to operate like a business and start putting money away, the potential for abuse is too high. That’s why tomorrow, I’ll

Vote No on Amendment 4, though I urge you all to do some extra research if you want. I simple don’t have the time, my administrative law class in in a half an hour and this is already such a long post.

Land Use

This amendment requires developers send a summary of their land use application to relevant community boards 30 days before the proposal comes up for discussion. It also gives Community Boards more time to review land use applications. Original land use proposals were more radical, and tried to use zoning to address the housing crisis, but only these moderate proposals passed the charter review committee. This is a start. We’ll take it. Let’s hope we modify zoning law to help end the housing crisis but in the meantime,

Vote Yes on Amendment 5.

So there you have it! The charter amendments! I think you can agree, these are some pretty fun and flirty amendments, and this local election is going to be a hot one. Remember, it’s these local elections where you can really make a difference! And also, turnout’s pretty low, so you can probably get some extra stickers at the polls.