Good Government

"People want to be able to send a tweet saying they're in favor of a bill or opposed to a bill or think a bill needs to [be] changed in a certain way and have that be in the official record," Kallos, chair of the city's Governmental Operations Committee, told Fast Co.

At the vote, Council Member Dan Garodnick warned that the massive increase in spending and the ballooning of the city’s workforce would mean trouble in the future. Citing a possible budget deficit of $3.8 billion in fiscal 2019, he said, “As a city we must take steps now in good times to prepare for the inevitable bad times ahead. Progressive, honest and responsible budgeting protects people not only when revenues are strong but when they are weak. We should better protect ourselves from having to lay people off and cutting core services when that happens.” Council Members Corey Johnson and Ben Kallos expressed similar concerns.

"As we've interacted with people in the digital space, we kept finding that folks didn't want to send a tweet and a get a response saying to come to a hearing in person," says council member Ben Kallos, who chairs the city's governmental operations committee. "People want to be able to send a tweet saying they're in favor of a bill or opposed to a bill or think a bill needs to changed in a certain way and have that be in the official record."

It's unclear exactly what from the online commenting proposal exactly what format the online comments would take. It could mean a website designed specifically for public feedback on proposed legislation. Or it could even include entering tweets sent to city council members into the public record. The New York State Senate's recently redesigned website has incorporated similar features, allowing the general public to vote in favor or against bills, leave comments, and sign up for email updates on bills of interest.

As the pair told Fast Company, the resolution is intended to make it easier for NYC residents to have their thoughts counted as part of the official record, something currently limited to those that physically attend public hearings. In addition to allowing those unable to attend such meetings to have their say, the resolution also requires that all legislative proposals be made available in an open data portal and suggests an app as a way to provide an easy alert system for citizens (not unlike the one recently released by the French government).

“New Yorkers should be able to ‘like’ and comment on City Council legislation to make civic engagement as easy as Facebook,” said Kallos, Chair of the Committee of Governmental Operations, in a press release.

“I’m actually working actively with colleagues,” Kallos said during a Friday press conference at City Hall to promote various ethics reforms. “We’re drafting legislation around disclosure and limits to what people can do with (c)4s and moving forward, and to the extent that anyone has (c)4s, making sure that they engage in voluntarily disclosure ahead of us engaging in our legislative advocacy and actually making it a legal requirement. Right now is a good time, if anyone has a (c)4, for it to cease and for folks to disclose. … We need to make sure that we lock down every single place that money and corruption can happen.”

Kallos said it would be inaccurate to describe the legislation as his, however. The councilman said he had discussed potential reform measures with others, but he would not name any potential sponsors. Still, he said he hoped legislation related to 501(c)4 nonprofits would come before the Government Operations Committee that he chairs.

As Crain’s investigated an assertion by City Councilman Ben Kallos last week that Law Department reforms would save the city $430 million over the next four years, one thing became clear: There’s not a lot of love lost between Kallos and the de Blasio administration.

Kallos has been pestering and pressing the Law Department for two years about reducing the amount of money it pays out to people who sue the city, or threaten to.

When budget documents revealed the predicted savings, he claimed victory, issuing a press release attributing the $430 million to his advocacy and the administration’s grudging cooperation. He cited a decision to expand a Bronx pilot program in which one city lawyer handles a case from beginning to end, a policy known as “vertical case handling.”

At Friday’s hearing, BOE Executive Director Michael Ryan couldn’t say where BOE commissioners stood on the proposal since they had yet to analyze it in detail. “Once the details of the proposals have been fleshed out, they will be shared with the commissioners and, ultimately in a quasi-legislative process, the commissioners will have to pass on that either in totality or in part,” he said.

Ryan also couldn’t say whether the BOE would consider replacing patronage positions with professional employees selected through an open-hiring process, a top priority for Council Member Kallos and several of his colleagues (it is also something de Blasio has called for). This authority, Ryan insisted, lies with the BOE commissioners, who are borough-based. The structure of the BOE is also dictated by state law, which de Blasio and others say they want to see changed.

Kallos was less than satisfied with Ryan’s testimony overall. “I got the answers I have learned to expect, but not the answers that I wanted or needed,” he told Gotham Gazette during a break in the hearing.

Councilman Ben Kallos, chairman of the council’s governmental operations committee, asked whether the agency had approved similar deals. “Here’s a chance to come clean,” he said.

Ms. Camilo said the agency had put all of its “13 or 14” requests to alter deed restrictions on hold since the Rivington deal came to light.

Mr. Kallos said the Rivington deal was disturbing, in part because it allowed a building once designated for a nonprofit to be turned into condos when the city could have used the space for other needs.

“We need schools like you wouldn’t believe. We also need homeless shelters. And affordable housing,” he said.

Ms. Camilo said agency officials shared council members’ concerns about the Rivington deal. “No one was happy with the outcome,” she said.

“I am concerned that this is just the tip of the iceberg, and there may be other situations just like this,” said city Councilman Ben Kallos (D-5th).

At a hearing, Kallos put that question to Lisette Camillo, the head of the obscure city agency that is responsible.

Kallos: “How many more situations like Rivington and St. Nicholas are coming down the pike?”

Camillo: “Right now, none. They’ve all been put on hold.”

Kallos: “How many are currently on hold?”

Camillo: “I believe it’s about 13 to 14 currently.”

Kallos: “Wow.”

During a budget hearing at the City Council Friday, DCAS Commissioner Lisette Camilo said the city removes about four deed restrictions a year and that “13 to 14” already in the pipeline were put on hold following a suspicious deal on the Lower East Side, where a developer made a $72 million profit when a deed ­restriction was quietly lifted.

Councilman Ben Kallos (D-Manhattan) told The Post afterward that he had to learn about the Harlem deal from the press and couldn’t get answers from the administration.

“The city has to take ownership of what is happening,” he said. “I am deeply troubled that there was no budget transparency in this process.”

Camilo said her agency would surrender its deed-restriction rec­ords for the past five years to the City Council for review.