Latest news with #CharterRevisionCommission
Yahoo
21-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
NYC voters will decide on even-year elections in November
NEW YORK CITY (PIX11) – New York City voters will decide whether to move local elections to even-numbered years. The city's Charter Revision Commission on Monday approved a ballot measure to align local elections with federal presidential elections. It's one of five ballot measures proposed, the other four being focused on housing and zoning. More Local News Now, the question will go to a vote in the November general election. 'This reform is intended to improve voter turnout, make local democracy more inclusive, and save taxpayer money,' the commission wrote in a recent report. Voter turnout for federal elections is way higher than local elections in New York City. In the 2020 presidential election, some 62% of registered New York City voters cast a ballot, compared to just 23% in the 2021 mayoral election. Other cities, like Phoenix and Baltimore, have seen huge increases in voter turnout by moving to even years, according to the commission report. The commission recently dropped a potential ballot measure to open up New York City's primary elections, which would all voters and candidates regardless of party membership. More News: Politics 'Polls have shown widespread, cross-partisan support among New Yorkers for consolidating local elections—and nearly every time this question has been put before voters across the country, it has passed by large margins, with an average approval rate of 72%' said Grace Rauh, executive director of the Citizens Union. The commission could not agree on the manner or timing of open primaries, according to Richard Buery, chair of the Charter Review Commission. Many commissioners expressed disappointment at discontinuing the open primary proposal. 'I remain personally convinced it is time to open our primary system to independent voters,' Buery said. Emily Rahhal is a digital reporter who has covered New York City since 2023 after reporting in Los Angeles for years. She joined PIX11 in 2024. See more of her work here and follow her on Twitter here. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Solve the daily Crossword
New York Times
21-07-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
New York City's Housing Crisis Will Be on the November Ballot
New York City residents will be able to vote this November on several ballot measures that would make it easier to build apartments and diminish the power City Council members wield over development in their districts. A special city panel, known as a Charter Revision Commission, voted on Monday to place five measures on the ballot. Most of them are intended to remove some political and bureaucratic barriers to development that have made New York's housing shortage difficult to fix, the commission said. One measure would create a 'fast track' by giving the City Planning Commission, instead of the City Council, the authority to approve or reject affordable housing projects in the 12 community districts that have allowed the least housing to be built. A majority of the City Planning Commission's members are appointed by the mayor. Another measure would make it easier to build 'modest' developments, such as those that would be up to 30 percent bigger than the current rules allow. A third would create an appeals board that could overrule a decision by the Council to reject or modify an affordable housing development. The board would need an agreement between two of its three members: the mayor, the Council speaker and the president of the borough where the development was proposed. Richard R. Buery Jr., a former deputy mayor who is the chair of the commission, said the measures would help make New York a 'more equitable and affordable city.' Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
New York Times
17-07-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
N.Y.C. Panel Withdraws Proposal to Switch to Open Primaries
The primary elections that New York City uses to pick its mayors will remain unchanged, after a special panel that had been formulating a switch to an open primary system said on Wednesday that it would not put the proposal on the ballot this fall. Under the proposal, all registered voters, regardless of their party affiliation, could participate in primary elections. The 13-member panel, called a Charter Revision Commission, said it had decided not to put the proposal before voters because there was no consensus among civic leaders as to what the new primary model should look like. Richard R. Buery Jr., the chairman of the commission, which was created by Mayor Eric Adams, said in a statement that he was 'personally disappointed' in the decision and hoped the issue might be revisited in the future. 'I hope civic leaders will build on the progress that we have made this year, develop greater consensus and advance a proposal to voters prior to the next citywide election,' Mr. Buery said. In a 135-page report released earlier this month, which outlined the open-primary plan and other proposals, the commission acknowledged that some members of the panel felt that this year was not the right time to introduce such a major change. One reason to delay a move to an open primary system, the report said, was that New York had only recently enacted a big change to its elections — ranked-choice voting — that some voters still struggled to understand. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
New York Post
12-07-2025
- Politics
- New York Post
NYC's broken election system needs far more than these Band-Aid fixes
New York City's election system is badly broken — and the proposed 'fixes' from Mayor Eric Adams' Charter Revision Commission barely amount to putting new windshield wipers on a totaled wreck. Commission staffers flinch from facing the issues that skew politics far to the left, focusing instead on how low turnout in primaries lets small factions, such as the 60,000-member Democratic Socialists, grab the Democratic nomination and so become the prohibitive favorite in November. So they suggest opening up primaries to all registered voters: Anyone could vote in any primary, so the Democratic line could be decided by unaffiliated voters, and Working Families members could jump into the Republican race. Another idea is still more radical: Switch to a 'jungle primary' among all registered voters, with the top two finishers moving on to face off in November. Finally, the commission suggests moving city elections from odd to even years to align with national calendar, since more people already come out to vote when federal offices are on the line. Yet juking primary rules seems unlikely to do much: The reality is that open primaries have worked no miracles in the many states that have them, while jungle primaries have largely hastened the death of the two-party system in California. As for changing the calendar: The main effect there would be to submerge local issues even deeper below the waterline of popular attention than they already are. This year's Democratic primary already degraded into a 'who is most anti-Trump' farce; it wouldv'e been worse with Trump (or his GOP heir) actually on the ballot. Face it: The real concern here is the fact that sensible working-class minority voters are fleeing the Democratic Party, whose NYC enrollment has dropped 400,000 these last five years even as the ranks of the unaffiliated have soared. That creates a whiter, woker primary electorate less concerned about who can make city government deliver safe streets and decent schools. Thing is, those voters are leaving for a reason: In the city, as statewide and nationally, the Democratic Party establishment's only priority these days is just holding onto power and keeping the cash coming in — which means protecting the vast, tax-eating social-services industry and the public-employee unions, while also emphasizing issues that appeal to the woke white donor class. The commission's main 'fixes' are simply about giving the establishment a better shot at fending off the challenge from the left. Meanwhile, past efforts to shore up the Dem establishment are making things worse: Above all, the ridiculous rules for public funding of campaigns, including the power of the unelected Campaign Finance Board. City taxpayers forked over $100 for every vote cast in June's primary election, with nearly all the cash going to a pack of progressives who (thanks to the supposedly 'more fair' ranked-choice rules) were able to tag-team against ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Multiple 'rivals 'cross-endorsed Zohran Mamdani, then colluded not to attack each other, instead all running ads to take down the onetime frontrunner. And that's after the CFB invented new rules on the fly to allow it to deny funds to the incumbent mayor. (It later made up more new rules to limit what it paid Cuomo, too.) The board also basically engineered Bill de Blasio's victory 12 years ago, , by shutting down the campaign of his closest competitor for progressive votes, John Liu. Taxpayer funding of campaigns was sold as making it easier for challengers to win. But incumbents continue to get re-elected at North Korean rates — unless the board decides to burn them. Turnout, meanwhile, is lower than ever. In 2021, less than a quarter of all registered voters turned out for the mayoral election. The Democratic establishment set up a profoundly undemocratic system to serve itself — only to now find itself hoist on its own petard. And the mayor's commission wants to rearrange some deck chairs on the Titanic rather than give voters a chance to undo this unholy scheme.
New York Times
06-06-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
New Yorkers Can't Remove Mayors for Misconduct. That Could Change Soon.
After Mayor Eric Adams of New York City was indicted last year on federal corruption charges, he faced steady calls for his resignation or removal. He did not resign. And Gov. Kathy Hochul, the only person in New York empowered to force a mayor to leave office, declined to begin removal proceedings. Now a group of city officials want to create another legal option to kick a mayor out of office. A Charter Revision Commission, created last year by the City Council, will recommend on Friday that voters be presented with a ballot question to decide whether the Council should be granted the power to begin removal proceedings. Danielle Castaldi-Micca, the panel's executive director, said in an interview that the city had a 'pretty traumatic year' and there was 'frustration among the public about the existing means of removing the mayor.' 'There isn't a means of local control over this,' she said. 'What we're looking at is creating a means of local control, and there is a high bar because there should be a high bar.' She said the process would only be used in 'extraordinary circumstances' when a mayor had been accused of wrongdoing. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
