The New York City Council is firing back at Mayor Eric Adams’ new protocol for requesting engagements with agency leaders with a well-established procedure of its own: an oversight hearing.
Councilmember Lincoln Restler of Brooklyn on Tuesday announced the hearing, just a week after multiple members of the 51-person legislature alerted Gothamist to the administration’s rollout of a lengthy online form to be filled out when elected officials want to meet with or hold events with commissioners and their executive teams.
The hearing is currently scheduled for May 1 and could spark a showdown at City Hall between the Council and mayor, who have increasingly clashed over policy and are in the midst of sorting out the city’s next multibillion-dollar budget. While Adams has defended the protocol as a way to coordinate and address various requests from elected officials, councilmembers including Speaker Adrienne Adams have largely rebuffed it as overly bureaucratic and likely to hinder constituent services.
“It makes no sense, and he and his team should have to answer for it,” said Restler, who chairs the Council’s governmental operations committee. “We are holding an oversight hearing to question City Hall, get to the bottom of why they’re doing this and hopefully persuade them to reverse this silly policy.”
The form wasn’t officially communicated to the Council and reached lawmakers in a haphazard manner, according to Speaker Adams and interviews with councilmembers. A day after news of the mayor’s directive broke, the speaker told her members to ignore it, calling it “inappropriate.”
A spokesperson for the mayor declined to comment on the scheduled hearing and pointed to his comments during a press conference earlier on Tuesday, when he doubled down on the protocol.
“I’m seeing on the ground, firsthand, what my elected officials need,” Mayor Adams said. “I think they overreacted. And now that they’re seeing how well the system is going … all levels of government have sent in their requests.”
The mayor added that he’s been monitoring responses to the form to make sure city services aren’t duplicated and newer elected officials who lack the same rapport with agencies as their more veteran peers receive equitable attention from his administration. He also said he didn’t expect lawmakers to fill out the form for emergency matters requiring an immediate response.
Queens Councilmember Sandra Ung used the form earlier this week to alert Adams’ office about the illegal removal of hundreds of trees from a local park by vandals who officials said wanted to create a dirt bike track, according to the mayor. He said her outreach spurred him to text the parks commissioner just 20 minutes after his office received the form, and the commissioner held a press conference with Ung about the trees’ destruction on Monday.
“This is not punitive, this is not going after people,” Adams said of the form, which includes a disclaimer that the city “reserves the right to decline requests.”
Adams also said “someone” recently used the form to submit a request related to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway on Restler’s behalf. The councilmember told Gothamist that a member of Adams’ administration had filled it out, and that when the mayor found out what had happened he canceled a planned meeting on the issue.
Restler refuted Adams’ argument that the protocol would boost the city’s efficiency and fairness in who gets heard by the administration.
“I don’t think there’s a lobbyist in New York City who has ever had to fill out a form to meet with Mayor Adams and his team,” he said. “I don’t see why duly elected representatives [who] are responsible for fighting for the constituents of New York City should have to fill out a multipage, extensive form just to fight for their communities.”