expected to<\/a> Free legal work for commission. A notice for the hearing is expected to be published on Thursday in City Record, the official magazine of the municipal government. A notice obtained by POLITICO ahead of publication says members of the public are welcome to attend, though they will not be able to testify, with only commission members allowed to speak at the session.<\/p>\n“We welcome public input every step of the way,” said Kayla Mamelak, one of several former Adams aides serving on the commission. \u201cWe will consider thoughtfully how we can continue to modernize city government and increase public participation in our local democratic process.\u201d<\/p>\n
Many questions remain about the practicality of the Adams Commission. The body has no municipal funding stream \u2013 Mamdani did not allocate money for it in his first city budget proposal \u2013 and any election-related ballot question would require a signature from New York State Attorney General Letitia James, a staunch Mamdani ally, to give her the go-ahead. Legal experts have also said that the question of whether a former mayor can survive a charter amendment commission is so unusual that it would likely lead to a court case.<\/p>\n
Still, with the first hearing scheduled, the commission is becoming a serious headache for Mamdani, who has few legal options to eliminate the panel altogether. The creation of the commission was one of several actions taken by Adams on his way out of office to disrupt Mamdani and his agenda. And its activism sets in motion a remarkable dynamic: Adams \u2014 despite being away from City Hall for a long time \u2014 can potentially exert his will over how local elections proceed.<\/p>\n
A person with direct knowledge of Monday’s planned hearing said commission members are expected to discuss whether Mastro and his law firm, Dechert LLP, can represent the panel on a pro-bono basis under city law, noting that Mamdani’s law department is not planning to do so. The person, who was granted anonymity to discuss private conversations, said Mastro is in communication with the law department about that issue.<\/p>\n
At Monday’s meeting, Mastro’s proposal to fund the commission with money raised from private sources by members is also expected to be discussed. It’s not clear whether Mastro has started raising money yet, though Politico previously reported he tried to raise cash from deep-pocketed business and real estate interests in December.<\/p>\n
Asked about next week’s commission hearing, Mamdani spokeswoman Dora Pekek said Thursday that the Law Department is “currently reviewing the matter.”<\/p>\n
In establishing the commission on December 31, the Adams administration said in a statement that the panel would “examine whether open primaries and non-partisan elections would make New York City’s municipal government more inclusive, accessible, and democratic.” The idea was for the commission to quickly study the referendum questions so that they could potentially be added to the ballots in this year’s New York elections.<\/p>\n
The effects of allowing open primaries are significant. Beyond Mamdani, it may generally be difficult for democratic socialists to win local elections under an open primary structure.<\/p>\n
The charter commission in question is composed primarily of former Adams staffers and political loyalists.<\/p>\n
One of them, Mamelak, said Wednesday that the former mayor’s first two charter amendment panels proved effective in “delivering real results for New Yorkers” on housing development and public safety.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis commission will be no different \u2014 we will review the entire city charter and potentially introduce a ballot proposal,\u201d Mamelak told POLITICO. \u201cWe intend to build on the work of our predecessors, in particular by reviewing a proposal to implement a non-partisan, open primary system for our local elections, like many other major cities in this country.\u201d<\/p>\n
In addition to Mamelak, members of Adams’s zombie-like commission include his former deputy chief of staff Menashe Shapiro; Peter Koo, a former official in their community affairs unit; and Gilford Monrose, his former faith advisor.<\/p>\n
Although the commission is moving forward with public hearings, legal experts have said Mamdani has several ways to bring it to its knees.<\/p>\n
For starters, two members of the body, including the chair, never filed the required paperwork by the January 31 deadline, leaving two vacancies that Mamdani apparently could fill with appointments that could impact the panel’s work. Adams also failed to name a vice president or treasurer, giving Mamdani two more selections who could help with the torpedo operation.<\/p>\n
Perhaps an even more serious threat to the Commission is the fact that it would be abolished by default if five of its members resigned. Mamdani has not said whether he will try to persuade members to resign, but Pekek confirmed in January that the mayor’s team was looking for ways to obstruct it.<\/p>\n
Peck said at the time, “The Charter Revision Commission is another ploy by the Adams administration to sideline the voice of the New Yorkers who elected Zoharan Mamdani as mayor.” \u201cWe will continue to review all available options.\u201d<\/p>\n
There’s also a more permanent potential fix in the works for Mamdani: State Senator John Lieu introduced a bill in mid-January that would allow him \u2014 and any other mayor across the state \u2014 to eliminate commissions created during the previous mayor’s poor term. Liu dubbed that legislation, which is pending, the Election-Related Requirements \u2013 or ERIC \u2013 Act to launch the charter commission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NEW YORK \u2013 Former New York City Mayor Eric Adams’s Frankenstein-like Charter Revision Commission is set to hold its first public hearing next week, giving the legally dubious entity an official forum, though questions remain about whether it will be able to propose changes to the city’s charter during Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s tenure. On his<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":70032,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[3396,2502,10550,468,4661,2875,86,4972,2376,8275],"class_list":["post-70025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bible-verse","tag-adams","tag-change","tag-charter","tag-effort","tag-eric","tag-hearing","tag-life","tag-nyc","tag-public","tag-zombie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70025"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70025\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70033,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70025\/revisions\/70033"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}