Whatever the motivation of City Hall’s new directive that every elected official who wants to connect with an agency commissioner or senior staffer must first fill out an online form summarizing their request in 1,000 characters max, it’s a policy with the potential to run counter to the responsive government Mayor Adams says he wants to create. We encourage a rethink on this one.
Elected officials — whether on the City Council, state Legislature or Congress, including the House minority leader and Senate majority leader, both Brooklynites — need to be able to get top members of the executive branch on the horn without layers of bureaucracy. In fact, the way we read the policy, it even applies to Gov. Hochul and President Biden. Interaction is how problems get solved; it’s how constituents’ concerns get answered.
The response is that nobody is preventing anyone from connecting with the Adams administration, only that they’ve put in place a process that allows for more rational prioritization of communications. That sounds reasonable, but that’s not the real world.
Police Commissioner Eddie Caban lives in that real world, which is why in a private meeting last Friday, he said the new rule would be a problem for precinct and borough commanders, who by necessity are in regular contact with local electeds.
Those calls probably sound like this: Let me tell you about a corner of my district where armed young men are hanging out, scaring my constituents; let me tell you about a street where people are drag racing late into the night, wreaking havoc on families trying to sleep. When a member of the City Council who represents thousands of New Yorkers can’t reasonably easily get a live person with responsibility on the phone, accountability is at risk.
Or consider the city Department of Education run by Chancellor David Banks, now engaged in a high-stakes debate about whether mayoral control of the public schools ought to be preserved. Is a member of the state Assembly or Senate with urgent questions or advice for Banks or his senior staff really supposed to go through an online exercise?
Same for the Sanitation Department. We’d think Jessica Tisch and her top aides want to hear directly, and quickly, from members of local, state or federal legislatures who see problems with the implementation of new trash pickup rules.
We’re sure Adams will see the irony here on closer inspection of this policy. He routinely talks about how accessible he is to everyday New Yorkers; he’s known for handing out his personal cell phone number. He set up an (automated) texting number that sends automated messages purporting to be directly from him. But now, a New Yorker might have a direct line to the mayor, while someone who represents 50,000 New Yorkers can’t have a direct line to a commissioner or a member of his or her senior staff.
Do commissioners have their favorites on the Council, Assembly, state Senate and Congress, whose calls they take, while others get ignored? We’re sure they do, but nothing about the new policy prevents favoritism from persisting. Are there times when too many people are swamping agency leadership with phone calls? We’re sure there are. Responsive representative government is hard and messy and sometimes chaotic. That’s life in the big city.
