REMARKS
Council Member Lincoln Restler discusses Intro 77-A and post-employment lobbying restrictions
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4 min
Council Member Lincoln Restler, chair of the Committee on Governmental Operations, State, and Federal Legislation, discusses two bills being voted on: Intro 77-A, which enhances restrictions on post-employment lobbying activities, and Intro 587-A, which requires 311 to conduct customer satisfaction surveys. He focuses primarily on Intro 77-A, explaining the need for stronger ethics laws and the problems with current lobbying practices.
- Restler highlights the doubling of lobbying expenditures over the past decade, reaching $131 million in 2023.
- He cites the example of Frank Carone, the mayor's former chief of staff, to illustrate the "revolving door" problem in city government.
- Restler emphasizes the importance of strengthening oversight agencies, particularly the Conflicts of Interest Board (COIB).
Lincoln Restler
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Good morning.
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My name is Lincoln Ressler, and I have the privilege of serving as the chair of the Committee on Governmental Operations, State, and Federal Legislation.
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I'd like to start off by thanking those of my colleagues who have joined today's vote, Ina Vernakov, Vicki Paladino, David Carr of the finest borough in New York City, Brooklyn, Council member Gail Brewer, and not a member of this committee, but a gentleman passing a great bill today, Eric Dinowitz.
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And on Zoom and on the phone, we have council member Jennifer Gutierrez, who is with her gorgeous new baby, council member Shahana Hanif, and council member Jim Gennaro.
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Today, we'll be voting on my bill, intro 77 a, which would enhance the restrictions on post employment lobbying activities for certain public servants, and intro 587 a, sponsored by council member Eric Dinowitz, which would require 311 to conduct customer satisfaction surveys.
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Over the last decade, we've seen an explosion in lobbying.
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In 2023, lobbyists were paid over a $131,000,000 to lobby city officials.
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That is about double what they brought in just a decade ago.
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Governing doesn't happen in a vacuum.
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We all rely on external stakeholders for policy expertise and technical information, but we must ensure that there is real transparency, accountability, and integrity in our government, and that certain special interests do not have an outsized influence.
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Unfortunately, our lobby our our lobbying laws have failed to restrict the most powerful people in the mayor's office from capitalizing on their public service for personal gain.
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The mayor's former chief of staff, Frank Caron, was involved in the hiring of senior agency officials and making key policy decisions in the Adams administration.
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He freely, freely admitted that he was building a future lobbying practice and signing up clients while still working across the hall in the mayor's office right here in city government.
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But when he left city government at the end of 2022, he was legally permitted to lobby 99% 99% of city workers the very next day.
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The single restriction he faced was lobbying people who work in the office of the mayor, but every other mayoral agency, parks, sanitation, housing, city planning, the vast majority of city employees were fair game to Frank Caron.
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I find this legalized corruption to be both disturbing and shocking.
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We are slamming the revolving door shut today.
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We need to ensure that public officials are anyone in city able to lobby anyone in city government for 2 years after they leave office.
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We greatly appreciated the feedback that advocates and experts at our hearing, that advocates and experts provided at our hearing in April, which helped us target the most problematic issues while ensuring good governance and efficient administration of the law.
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To ensure the success of this law and all of our ethics laws, we also need to strengthen our oversight agencies.
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Since Eric Adams took office, OMB has not authorized the conflicts of interest board to fill any vacancies, resulting in a 16% loss in COIB staff, including 2 critical attorneys' roles.
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It is imperative that we restore full funding to COIB so they can carry out the essential work of enforcing our conflicts of interest laws.
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This bill is about protecting the integrity of our city government.
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New New Yorkers deserve to know that our public servants are delivering for them, not special interests.
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I'd like to thank our committee counsel, Jace Reganopathi and Erica Cohen, for their hard work on this.
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I'd especially like to thank David Seitzer, from legislative division for his expert guidance in the drafting of this bill as well, as well as Jeff Baker, Jeremy John, and, of course, our speaker, Adrienne Adams.
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But most of all, I'd like to thank my chief of staff, Molly Haley, who cares about ethical government more than anyone I know, and her brilliance really guided us through every step of the way on this bill, which was a multi year process.
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Lastly, I'll just take a point of privilege to say I'm currently on paternity leave, but I wanted to come in today because this bill is so important to me, and I think so important to how government should work in restoring the confidence of New Yorkers in our local government.
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I wanna just thank my parents for being home with my wife today and my baby Elliot, and I wanna thank my fabulous staff for just holding it down and doing such a great job in my office while I'm out on paternity leave.
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I really, really appreciate it.
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I'm lucky to have such a great team, especially Molly.
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I would now like to turn it over to Eric Dinowitz for his remarks, on his bill, which is a really great bill.
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I hear from constituents almost every single day who are infuriated that they put in a complaint to 311.
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It gets closed out, and nothing happened.
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This bill will do will, I think, really help us, shift, greater accountability to city agencies to make sure that they're following up on the things that our constituents complain about.