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TESTIMONY
Testimony by Eric Lane, Executive Director of the 1989 Charter Revision Commission, on the origins and potential fixes for member deference
1:01:13
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8 min
Eric Lane, who served as Executive Director and Counsel to the 1989 Charter Revision Commission, discusses the origins of the City Council's role in land use approvals and the practice of member deference.
He explains that the original intent was to limit Council review to rare instances, but political compromise led to the current system allowing automatic review (call-up) of City Planning Commission decisions.
Lane notes that while early Council leadership prevented member deference, it eventually emerged due to member pressure, and suggests that removing the automatic call-up provision could be a legally and politically viable way to address the issue.
- Lane takes responsibility for the current council deference mechanism, explaining it resulted from political compromise in 1989.
- The original plan ('triple no') intended much more limited council involvement in project-specific land use decisions.
- Speaker Peter Vallone initially prevented member deference, but the practice emerged later under member pressure.
- Lane suggests removing the council's automatic call-up power as a potential charter change to curb deference.
- He believes fixing deference this way is more politically feasible than significantly altering community board roles.
Eric Lane
1:01:13
Okay.
1:01:15
So thank you for the opportunity to participate.
1:01:20
I've been offered this opportunity by several charter commissions over the last bunch of years, always refusing them because it seemed to me that the that to to have a real charter vision commission, you needed independent commissioners, independent staff, and an issues that would energize the commission.
1:01:46
And I see that that's present in this case.
1:01:50
So I'm grateful for this opportunity, and I'm grateful if you're willing to undertake this arduous task that you have undertaken.
1:02:03
So as as the chairman said, I was the council and executive director of the eighty nine Charter Commission.
1:02:10
I'm responsible for the deference that you've all heard people speaking about.
1:02:16
And, yes, I do think there's a way to address it.
1:02:19
So let me give you the background of that, why we did it.
1:02:25
There's actually a lesson in it for, I think, a commission.
1:02:28
And how why has as miss as commissioner Wilde said, it worked for a number of years.
1:02:36
I don't know if she was referring to particularly that, so I'm putting this thought in her head.
1:02:40
But it did work for a number of years, and I'll tell you why it collapsed.
1:02:45
So the original idea was never to have never to have deference among the count among council members.
1:02:53
Although I am a great fan of the legislative process, I worked as the chief counsel of the senate democrats in Albany for six years.
1:03:01
I'm the coauthor with the honorable Abner Mikva of two law school texts on the legislative process, and I greatly enjoy participating and observing it.
1:03:17
The one thing I never wanted the council to have was the opportunity for this difference.
1:03:22
And let me explain to you why if you give, you know, councils work best when there's a collective sense of policy.
1:03:31
There's an issue of policy.
1:03:33
Everybody most people have some take on it.
1:03:36
The broader it is, the more important it is, the more participation.
1:03:39
And that's what councils ought to be doing, like zoning, for example, in in the land use case.
1:03:46
When it comes to, individual projects, the same thing happens every time.
1:03:55
They don't care.
1:03:56
It's not a policy issue.
1:03:57
It's a log rolling issue.
1:03:59
It's always about if you don't if you help me support me in my district, I'll support you when something comes up because some of these projects aren't when are so small, they're not seen as citywide or even borough wide having borough wide policy impact.
1:04:17
So they get less attention from the legislator.
1:04:20
There's more value for the legislator to be able to stop the process from going, to stop the project from being built than there is, for for him or her to participate.
1:04:31
I think miss Valisquez, her story was kind of amazing to me.
1:04:36
I would never predicted that kind of anger, but maybe that's the time.
1:04:39
But her explanation of what happened is exactly what was intended to happen.
1:04:44
And, you know, I think that Trish Schwartz and I honestly wrote about why we did this in the end.
1:04:49
So, anyway, we had a plan where originally was called three yeses where it would never go there there was no automatic call up permissible for the council.
1:05:03
So there had to be a combination of the the city, planning commission supporting a project, the city, community board not support supporting it, the borough president not supporting it, and then the borough president repeating his not support of it.
1:05:22
And if that if those events occurred, the triple no, then the you know, our our thought was that this would be significant enough project to allow council attention, and the hope would be that, you know, this would happen infrequently.
1:05:41
One of the lessons that you hopefully will pay attention to that we had was that you have to try you know, one of your goals is to win.
1:05:50
You're not gonna spend all this time or letting people testify and then come up with a series of proposals that you think won't win would make no sense.
1:06:00
You're wasting everybody's time.
1:06:02
So politics is part of this business of being on a charter commission.
1:06:07
And sort of toward August of eighty nine, a number of our biggest allies, Ruth Messenger, a bunch NIDPIRG, a bunch rather groups, started to put a lot of pressure.
1:06:21
And they were strong allies of ours from a, both from a content point of view and from a political point of perspective.
1:06:30
And they began to really put pressure on us with respect to more community, more city council participation on narrower and narrower projects difference.
1:06:44
And, you know, the long and the short of it is that we compromise we we gave in to that pressure politically because they were our strongest allies.
1:06:58
And I then had met with Peter Valone who was then the speaker and who was really pushing us a little bit.
1:07:07
He didn't really he wasn't it's interesting.
1:07:09
The the leadership of the council was not that overwhelmingly interested in this as a outcome, but he was getting a lot of member pressure.
1:07:18
So we met and he agreed with he promised me that it would never met deference as you now understand it would never be tolerated in the council.
1:07:29
And if the land use committee and the council made a decision, then that would be the end of it.
1:07:35
And he had Gail Benjamin, many of you may know.
1:07:39
She was the council and executive director, and they she was extremely tough on her.
1:07:44
And I bet you during the last part of a the years after the charter was enacted under Valon's leadership, and, I don't think there was ever a case of what we're now calling deference.
1:07:57
And this was continued for at least the first part of Chris Quinn's, speakership.
1:08:04
I'm not sure remembering when Gail Benjamin left, but it doesn't matter.
1:08:07
At some point, the pressure from members collapsed the system.
1:08:12
And so you get what you're getting now.
1:08:15
Seems to me that you could, respond in the commissioner a while, I think we could just remove the call up or remove part of that process and end it at the community board or end it.
1:08:26
Or you could do it leave you could go back you could just remove the the automatic call up and you could simply go back to the triple no, the triple e triple no, procedure, which allows a debate over whether or not something is so impactful to the community that ought to get the council processed.
1:08:49
But I do share the view that you should, you know, figure out something to do about this deference.
1:08:55
It it's very bad for the council.
1:08:56
It's bad, obviously, as I've heard from your witnesses in the last panel, bad for the city, and I think easily remedial.
1:09:04
And I don't think that not that you wanna I don't think it's particularly politically threatening to do that.
1:09:12
Some
Richard R. Buery Jr.
1:09:13
of
Eric Lane
1:09:13
you are starting to fool around too much with community boards.
1:09:15
I'd pay attention to that from political perspective, but I don't think this would be would sink your, referendum ship.
1:09:25
Anyway, thank you for your time.