NYC Ballot Questions

Brian Lehrer (0:10)

Brian Lehrer on WNYC. We are in our 30 issues in 30 days election season. Let other media focus only on the polls and personalities. We are choosing an issue a day for 30 straight shows to help you be as informed a voter as you can be in the upcoming elections. And you know, the voting has actually begun in our area. Mail and ballots are already in people's hands. If you signed up for them earlier in the year, early in-person voting starts on Saturday next week, October 24th in both New York and New Jersey. In this series, we've been talking mostly about issues in the competitive congressional districts in this area and the New York state governor's race. But for today, Issue 16 will turn over the New York ballot to the flip side. Remember to do that once you have a paper ballot in your hand.

The flip side where you will find the five New York City charter revision questions that voters have to approve or not. The city charter, remember, is like the city constitution, right, more of a bedrock than regular laws that can simply be passed by city council. So we will now let you know what those ballot questions are and the arguments and interest groups pro and con. Grace Rauh will help us with this.

She's the executive director of the 125-year-old Citizens Union, which defines itself as a nonpartisan and independent good government group. For full disclosure, they have come out in favor of all five proposed changes. I think there's one that's more controversial than the others. We'll get to that. But Grace will grace us with arguments all around. Hi, Grace Rauh. Welcome back to WNYC.

Grace Rauh (1:54)

Hi, Brian. Thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer (1:56)

And listeners, if you have questions about the charter revision proposals, or if you want to lobby for yes or no votes on any of them, call or text us at 212-433-WNYC-212-433-9692.

And Grace, I've got the language for all of these in front of me, but let's start with a little bit of where they came from. There have been quite a few charter revision commissions just in the last year. These are from the one put together by Mayor Mamdani after he basically canceled the one put together by Mayor Adams, correct?

Grace Rauh (2:32)

Correct. Yes. We've had some dueling charter commissions over the last several years. And so we certainly at Citizens Union are very in favor of overall reforms to improve the charter commission process, because Brian, this process was meant to be an extraordinary one, not a regular one, but to essentially give the city power to review its constitution, give the voters an opportunity to make amendments at critical moments in time. But we have seen, I think, far too many charter revision commissions in recent years.

They've become very politicized overall. So at a high level, setting aside these five questions which we support, at a high level, we think there needs to be some real significant reform overall so that we're not seeing so many of these so often. And really, one is pitted against another, which is what's happened here.

Brian Lehrer (3:31)

And I'll say that having read through these, people's eyes could glaze over reading these ballot proposals and think, okay, well, they're all just aimed at removing bureaucratic barriers with bureaucratic language.

But there are really issues baked in here. So proposal number one, speed up process for granting a revocable consent to use public space. People won't even know what the word revocable means in that context, but they'll think, well, speeding up the process is a good thing. Speed up process for granting a revocable consent to use public space. But in plain English, this is largely about sidewalk cafes.

Grace Rauh (4:16)

Yes. This is really about a straightforward fix to make it easier to open sidewalk cafes, outdoor dining facilities.

It will not surprise anyone in the restaurant industry. They know very well that the approval process to set up a sidewalk cafe, which by and large are incredibly popular with New Yorkers, has been cumbersome, costly, and it's meant that there are fewer of them than I think New Yorkers would want to see and certainly restaurant owners want to open. So this ends mandatory public hearings for outdoor dining facilities. There is a public comment period, so the public still has an opportunity to weigh in on these proposals. But it just streamlines the process and the idea is that it becomes easier to set up a sidewalk cafe.

Brian Lehrer (5:12)

And you at Citizens Union have come out for this. But on that issue of public input, the Charter Revision Commission says this will cut approval time from eight months to two months.