NYC Charter Ballot Questions: What You Need To Know

NEW YORK — Arguably the most exciting contest of this year's New York City elections is not a race between two candidates. Big Apple voters will decide Tuesday whether to make several changes to the City Charter — including one that would alter the nature of most future municipal elections.

The 19 amendments to the city's governing document are lumped into five ballot questions on which New Yorkers can vote yes or no. If approved, they would affect local elections, police oversight, government ethics policies, the city budget process and public land-use reviews.

The proposals are the product of a charter revision commission the City Council empaneled last year to give the city's constitution its most thorough revamp in three decades. The 15-member panel held more than 20 public hearings and meetings over the course of about a year before putting forward its ballot questions.

This may sound familiar to New Yorkers — Mayor Bill de Blasio set up his own charter revision commission last year that led to the approval of three amendments, including changes to the city's public campaign financing system.

The latest changes are on the ballot in an odd-year election with only three elected offices at stake. But some have nonetheless drawn vocal opposition from the city's largest police union and a bloc of City Council members of color.

The proposed amendments are on the back of the ballot you'll get at your polling place. Be sure to flip the page over to vote on them.

Here's what you need to know about the proposed changes to the City Charter.

Ranked-Choice Voting

The headline of the first ballot question is ranked-choice voting, a system that allows voters to choose multiple candidates for an office without making extra trips to the polls.

Also known as instant runoff voting, the scheme would ask city voters to rank up to five candidates in order of preference for mayor, public advocate, comptroller, borough president and City Council. The system would take start in 2021 and would only apply to primary and special elections, not general elections like this week's.

If no one wins a majority of the votes, the last-place candidate would be eliminated and people who ranked them first would have their votes counted for their second choice. That process would continue until there are only two candidates left, and the one with the most votes would be declared the winner.

The proposal has broad support from election reform advocates and some lawmakers, who say it would eliminate costly runoff elections, improve civic engagement and help the chances of lesser-known candidates.

Some 19 U.S. cities, one county and the entire state of Maine have implemented ranked-choice voting or are on their way to doing so, according to FairVote, a nationwide group that backs the idea.

But a handful of City Council members have taken up a last-minute campaign against it. The opponents, led by the council's Black, Latino and Asian Caucus, argue the system would reduce the power of voters of color and potentially confuse older voters and immigrants.

"These communities of color routinely prove themselves to be the exception to the city’s abysmal election turnout," Council Member I. Daneek Miller, a Queens Democrat who co-chairs the Black, Latino and Asian Caucus, wrote Saturday in the New York Daily News. "The implementation of ranked-choice voting could diminish the value these voters bring to the ballot box."

If approved, the ballot question on elections would also give the mayor more time to call special elections when offices become vacant and change the timeline for the City Council redistricting process, which occurs every 10 years.

Strengthening Police Oversight

The second ballot proposal would make five changes to the operations of the Civilian Complaint Review Board, the city's independent police oversight agency. It's sparked a fight between the board and the Police Benevolent Association, the city's biggest police union.

The review board investigates certain allegations of police misconduct and prosecutes disciplinary cases against cops it finds to have done wrong. The agency was thrust into the spotlight this year when it prosecuted the administrative trial of Officer Daniel Pantaleo, who was fired for his role in the 2014 chokehold death of Eric Garner.

Two changes would allow the agency to recommend discipline for cops who lie to its investigators, and another would let the board delegate its subpoena power to its executive director. A third would require the police commissioner to give a written explanation whenever he or she deviates from the discipline recommendations of the board or the NYPD officials who oversee disciplinary trials.

The proposal would also increase the size of the review board to 15 members from 13, with one appointed by the public advocate and another named by both the mayor and City Council speaker. And it would require the agency to have enough money for a number of employees equal to 0.65 percent of the NYPD's uniformed ranks.

The Police Benevolent Association has urged New Yorkers to vote down the proposal in recent weeks. The union worries it would empower an "outrageously dysfunctional agency that is viewed as a 'kangaroo court' by both cops & complainants."

But the board has countered that only a tiny portion of the cases it investigates are unfounded. Additionally, the agency says the proposal would only give it one new power: The authority to investigate false statements.

Revolving Door Reforms

The third ballot proposal aims to limit conflicts of interest within city government. One piece would ban certain former city officials in the private sector from appearing before the agency in which they worked for two years after they leave the government. The current restriction is one year.

The measure would additionally give the public advocate and city comptroller the power to appoint one member each to the Conflicts of Interest Board, which investigates ethics violations; and ban board members from participating in local political campaigns.

It would also require the City Council to approve the mayor's appointment for corporation counsel, the city's top lawyer; and make sure the director of the city's Minority- and Women-Owned Business Enterprise program reports directly to the mayor.

A Nest Egg For NYC

The most significant piece of the city budget proposal would allow for the creation of a municipal "rainy day fund," an account in which the city could stash money to be used in future years. State law would also have to change for the city to use such a fund.

The measure has support from the Citizens Budget Commission, a fiscal watchdog group that argues a rainy day fund would assuage the impacts of a future economic recession.

"To weather the last two recessions, the city reduced police and ambulance staffing, cut library hours, suspended recycling and increased personal income, sales and property taxes," commission President Andrew Rein wrote in an op-ed last month. "A well-structured rainy day fund can help protect New Yorkers from the most harmful service cuts or counterproductive tax increases."

If approved, the fourth ballot proposal would also tweak the timeline of the city's annual budget process and set minimum budgets for the public advocate's and borough presidents' offices, unless the mayor deems lower budgets "fiscally necessary."

Tweaking ULURP

The fifth and final proposal would make small changes to the city's Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, or ULURP, the public review process governing major development projects.

One piece would make sure community boards, borough presidents and borough boards get a summary of each project at least 30 days before the application gets certified, a step that kicks off the review process.

The other piece would give community boards more time to review projects during the summer months. Boards would have 90 days to look over proposals certified in June and 75 days to examine thoose certified between July 1 and 15, up from the current 60-day period.