PUBLIC TESTIMONY
Key elements for an effective charter revision commission
0:17:39
·
4 min
Professor Lane outlines the crucial components necessary for creating an effective charter revision commission. He emphasizes the importance of diversity, motivation, and credibility in the commission's composition and purpose.
- Lane stresses the need for a diverse commission, praising the proposed bill for allowing appointments from different elected officials
- He highlights the importance of having a real crisis or motivation for charter revision, citing the unconstitutionality of the Board of Estimate as the driving force behind the 1989 commission
- Lane emphasizes the significance of appointing respected individuals with gravitas to lead the commission, using examples from the 1989 commission to illustrate how this lends legitimacy to the effort
Professor Eric Lane
0:17:39
I I do agree with Speaker Queen's characterization of a lot of the commissions that followed ours as sham permissions.
0:17:48
Not sham because all of several of them, the first of them, when Giuliani, mayor Giuliani was angry at the speaker of a loan about something the council was doing about the Yankees.
0:18:02
And he set up a commission to block.
0:18:05
It is similar to the one that was set up by this mayor to block you with respect to the oversight through confirmation bill that you had, which I thought myself was a very good bill.
0:18:18
And scenario where we didn't, did my commission go far enough to expand the power and confirmation?
0:18:25
So my overview of this is that the things that you need to really have a good commission do the kind of work that Speaker Adams described, I think that you need in diverse commission, first of all, that I think that's provided for in the bill that she's that that's being discussed right now by having different members of the different elected officials appoint members.
0:18:54
I think you need a real reason.
0:18:56
I think, you know, our commission worked fabulously, what you know, because there was a real crisis in the city at the time, which would have been that the board of estimate had been declared unconstitutional.
0:19:08
So this institution which was based on the apex of most of the government's processes could no longer function.
0:19:16
And so we had something we really had to do.
0:19:20
It was major and would along the route on the basis of the state laws commands at the charter commission.
0:19:28
Look at everything we were able to do numerous collateral changes and reforms in the city administrators, dealing with administrative process and ethics and the native things.
0:19:41
And so I think that you're off to the right start with having this kind of diverse mission.
0:19:51
And I also think there is a motivating prices in the city, which will help you a lot to have this work taken seriously.
0:20:01
And that is, of course, the indictment of the mayor, the trouble with all of the staffies picked over you know, not all many of the members of his staff, the process by which they are chosen and alike, certainly has reflected horribly on the city and has created a lot of concern.
0:20:19
And that concern, I think, will help you in the following way, for example, to find very serious members of the commission for yourself.
0:20:28
And I think who the you guys, who the council chooses, really sets the example for whom everybody comes with true which is and I would urge you to find a good start off with the chairperson who really has some gravitas, and it's gonna get respect.
0:20:44
So it might in our case, we start off with thick ravage.
0:20:48
And then we followed up with for a tort.
0:20:50
Both were a tort of towering figures in in the city, and they added a legitimacy that when other people were asked, they were willing to serve because they stormed by the appointment of the chairman they saw that this was gonna be a serious effort, otherwise, neither shorts nor rabbit would have ever accepted that.
0:21:11
I think the real problem that arises so I think you do have I think you do have the opportunity and it's a structure by which you can really appoint good people.
0:21:20
I I think there's a a crisis significant crisis in the city that will oh, well, it will interest good people to serve.
0:21:33
And so I think those are 2 ingredients that are really very positive toward making a really serious effort here.
