A senior adviser to Mayor Adams abruptly walked out of a City Council hearing Wednesday after refusing to answer questions about a bill that would expand the chamber’s oversight of top mayoral hires as simmering tension between the two sides of City Hall exploded into public view.
The bill, introduced by Council Speaker Adrienne Adams last week, would broaden the body’s oversight powers by adding 21 commissioner-level positions, including the heads of the Sanitation, Buildings and Health Departments, to a list of city government appointments for which the mayor must secure the Council’s approval before making a hire.
At the outset of the hearing, the speaker and several of her fellow Democratic members lamented that no one from the mayor’s administration had showed up to offer testimony about the bill.
But at the very end of the session, Tiffany Raspberry, the mayor’s director of intergovernmental affairs, entered the Council chamber and sat down at the dais to testify.
Reading from prepared remarks, Raspberry told members no one from the administration initially appeared because the Council had not “formally invited” anyone. She said she would thereby not answer any questions from members before proceeding to read a statement from the mayor.
“This proposal is misguided,” Rapsberry said after arguing the Council already holds enough oversight authority, including the ability to issue subpoenas. “I urge you to reject this proposal if brought to a vote.”
Brooklyn Councilman Lincoln Restler, a progressive Democrat who lead Wednesday’s hearing as chairman of the Council’s Government Operations Committee, rejected Raspberry’s claim that no one was invited, saying he personally spoke with one of her deputies this past Thursday and asked that someone from the administration come to testify.
Restler also said Jeremy John, the speaker’s chief of staff, extended a testimony invitation to Ingrid Lewis-Martin, the mayor’s chief adviser.
Shawn Inglima for New York Daily News
Lincoln Restler (Shawn Inglima for New York Daily News)
But Raspberry claimed Restler’s invite was issued “in jest.”
“Now that we understand that you didn’t take it that way, we’ll be sure to make sure that anything that is shared in jest, in a collegial manner, that we specify that that is [official],” she said.
After urging Restler to have “a great rest of the day,” Raspberry then got up from the dais and started walking out as Restler accused her and the administration of exhibiting “cowardice.”
“This to me illustrates a contempt for this Council, which we have all witnessed with great clarity,” the speaker said as Raspberry exited the chamber.
“I don’t know how we get any lower,” Restler added.
Before the contentious back-and-forth involving Raspberry, Council members and some government ethics watchdogs invited to testify argued that the speaker’s bill to expand the body’s so-called “advise-and-consent” powers is about putting the Council on the same footing as Congress, the New York State Legislature and other lawmaking bodies across the country.
Unlike the City Council, those legislative chambers have advice-and-consent powers over nearly all cabinet-level appointments the executives in their jurisdictions make.
“This reform measure we are considering today would strengthen our city’s government and representative democracy. Indeed, it would bring us into greater alignment with the processes used by many large cities across the country, as well as the state and federal governments,” the speaker said. “It would help ensure the top positions in city government remain beacons of public service.”
The mayor — as well as some of his Republican allies in the Council who spoke at Tuesday’s hearing — argue that an expansion of advice-and-consent powers would add unnecessary bureaucracy and give the Council’s Democratic majority too much power.
“It would lock in progressive control over this entire city,” said Queens Councilwoman Vickie Paladino, a conservative Republican.
This story will be updated
