As she writes in these pages today, City Council Adrienne Adams wants to amend the City Charter to give the body the power to confirm 21 additional mayoral appointees beyond those currently subject to advise and consent. Before expanding that authority, the Council must fulfill its existing oversight obligations and give a fair hearing and vote to Mayor Adams’ choice of Randy Mastro to be the city’s top lawyer. We don’t have a vote on the Council, but if we did we would be casting it for Mastro.
The speaker’s stance to enlarge the legislative branch’s purview is not new for the Council leadership; in 2019, her predecessor as speaker, Corey Johnson, wanted to add the corporation counsel, police commissioner, City Planning Commission chair, chief administrative law judge, and the executive directors of the Campaign Finance Board and Conflicts of Interest Board.
However, the Charter Revision Commission then in place agreed only to ask voters to add the corporation counsel, the city government’s top lawyer who runs the Law Department and its 800 attorneys.
Called by all the corp counsel, the job has been held by a series of outstanding lawyers for many decades who serve as managing partner of one of the country’s biggest and best law firms. The mayor now wants Mastro to take over for the departing Sylvia Hinds-Radix. However, what was a routine process for Mayor Bill de Blasio’s corp counsel choice of Georgia Pestana in 2021 and Adams’ nomination of Hinds-Radix in 2022 has now degenerated into rank obstructionism with some Council members saying that they oppose Mastro even before he has been formally nominated.
Sound familiar?
In 2016, Mitch McConnell and the U.S. Senate Republicans left President Barack Obama’s superbly qualified Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland out in the cold. They refused to even hold a hearing.
Last year, the Democrats in the New York State Senate left Gov. Hochul’s superbly qualified Court of Appeals chief judge nominee Hector LaSalle out in the cold. They refused to even have a floor vote until they were sued in court and lost.
So here comes the City Council playing the same horrible game? How can the speaker expect New Yorkers to even consider her plan to add 21 commissioners, from Parks to Sanitation to Health to Transportation, to the confirmation test, when one of the most important posts that is already in the Council’s bailiwick is not getting fair consideration? Mastro was a Democrat in Rudy Giuliani’s City Hall (the pre-crazy Giuliani). Tarring Mastro with the crazy Rudy of today is guilt by long-past association.
All 51 members of the City Council have a duty. They all took the same oath. If someone wants to vote for or against Mastro for a good reason or a bad reason, that is their choice. But opposing a lawyer who represented an unpopular client is not a good reason. Mastro was hired separately by two different New Jersey governors. We think that Chris Christie was at fault in the Bridgegate scandal and we think that Phil Murphy should take a jump in the Hudson for his lawsuit to stop congestion pricing. But Mastro wasn’t the client in each instance, he was the lawyer. Christie and Murphy hired a good lawyer. Eric Adams wants to do the same.