Most New York City Councilmembers appear to be using Mayor Eric Adams’ much-maligned online form to request resources and meetings with city agencies, despite dozens of lawmakers’ complaints about the protocol, according to a Gothamist analysis of city data.
But there are questions about who is actually filling them out.
The forms were rolled out in April by the mayor’s office ostensibly to streamline communications between both sides of City Hall and deploy administration officials and resources more efficiently. Councilmembers immediately predicted it would have the opposite effect and many declared they would refuse to use the new system.
A Gothamist analysis reveals some evidence suggesting they were correct, and that administration officials are filling out forms on behalf of city legislators. In at least two incidents, forms were filled out for Council Speaker Adrienne Adams and Councilmember Lincoln Restler — both vocal opponents of the new system who denied filling out the forms bearing their names.
“I have never submitted the form, nor has anyone on my staff,” Restler wrote in an emailed statement. “Two entries under my name were submitted by other city employees without my consent or knowledge.”
Data shows one form was submitted on Speaker Adams’ behalf for the sanitation and homeless services departments in May. But her spokesperson, Julia Agos, said it was actually filled out by a sanitation employee days after the speaker met with agency officials – an account supported by the records that Gothamist reviewed.
Gothamist reviewed about 350 form submissions dated from early April through mid-June that were posted on the city’s open data portal last week. The analysis found 25 request-makers whose email addresses belonged to city agencies — including six from City Hall. That suggests in those instances members of the administration — not councilmembers or their staffers — are the ones filling out the forms.
All but 10 of the city’s 51 councilmembers had at least one request submitted in their name by mid-June, data shows. Because the form doesn’t verify the submitter’s identity, there’s no guarantee that those requests actually came from those councilmembers or their staff. The fact that two members say the forms were filled out without their knowledge raises concerns about the cybersecurity of the publicly available questionnaire and the effectiveness of the system.
City Hall did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
They actually respond to us really fast because we did not go through the form system.
Dozens of elected officials have urged Adams to rescind the form. At the time, City Hall framed the multipage form as a way to streamline lawmakers’ requests to city agencies and provide more equitable access to administration officials.
“I need to coordinate these commissioners and deputy mayors to make sure that we’re not duplicating the services,” Adams said at an April press conference. “Because some of my electeds are new. They don’t have the same relationship as those who have been in government a long time.”
Many elected officials at multiple levels of government have panned the policy as yet another roadblock to delivering services to their constituents, and some councilmembers are now considering legislation to scrap the practice. That includes Restler, who chairs the City Council’s government operations committee and held a contentious oversight hearing on the mayor’s protocol in May.
Others are embracing the new administrative reality. Councilmember Joann Ariola, who represents Ozone Park, Howard Beach and other Southeast Queens neighborhoods, confirmed that her office had made the requests listed in her name and said that they were fulfilled quickly.
“We were a little taken aback” when the form was first launched, Ariola said, but added “we haven’t had any problems at all. The meetings are granted in a timely fashion and we have no backlog.”
The offices of Queens Borough President Donovan Richards and City Councilmember Erik Bottcher of Manhattan led the pack in requests, with two dozen submitted in their names apiece to the city’s police, sanitation department and other agencies. Gothamist was unable to confirm whether they actually made the requests; neither returned requests for comment.
Susan Zhuang, the councilmember representing parts of Brooklyn’s Bensonhurst and Sunset Park neighborhoods, confirmed that she used the form nine times since April but said multiple queries to Adams’ office went unanswered. Many of the requests were related to Zhuang’s opposition to a planned homeless shelter in her district.
Since then, she said, her office has returned to its old practice of directly calling contacts at the sanitation and transportation departments to make requests.
“They actually respond to us really fast because we did not go through the form system,” Zhuang said.
Zhuang was arrested Wednesday morning for biting a police officer and resisting arrest at a protest at the proposed shelter site, according to the NYPD.
The police department received more requests through the form than any other agency, with just under a fifth of submissions. Both lawmakers and the NYPD commissioner have said the form is an unnecessary hurdle for fielding quality-of-life issues to precinct commanders. Administration officials have said elected officials should not use the form for emergencies or basic informational requests.
The sanitation, buildings and small business services departments were also in high demand during this period, with more than two dozen requests each.
Speaker Adams has urged her members not to use the form as a form of protest.
“Forcing government officials to fill out a form before engaging with one another on behalf of New Yorkers is the height of bureaucracy and inefficiency,” Agos, the speaker’s spokesperson, said in an email. “It has created roadblocks across government that make it much harder to deliver results for New Yorkers relying on city agencies, impeded oversight and transparency and created disparities between elected offices contradicting its stated goal.”
Councilmember and Deputy Speaker Diana Ayala, another prominent critic of the form, was conspicuously absent from the list of requests.
“We have not used the form and will not be doing so in the future, as the Deputy Speaker believes that this is an attempt to micromanage city agencies and Council Members alike and does not agree with this policy,” Ayala spokesperson Elsie Encarnacion wrote in an email to Gothamist.