All Power to the…Speaker!?!
Advocates of Council Member Chris Marte’s “No More 24” bill banning round-the-clock shifts in the home care industry denounce Speaker Adrienne Adams’ leadership at a May Day rally held outside City Hall last year.
By Joe Maniscalco
You can’t take it with you—but if you’re the outgoing head of the New York City Council you can try and make sure the power you’ve built into the Speaker’s position over the last four years continues long after you’re out of office.
That’s what term-limited Speaker Adrienne Adams [D-28th District] is attempting to do this week, introducing nearly 50 pages of City Council rule changes that critics on both sides of the aisle are denouncing as “alarming” and “crazy.”
“Consolidating even more power around the Speaker, a citywide elected official whom New Yorkers never directly elected, is bad government,” fellow Democratic Party Council Member Chris Marte [D-1st District] said on Monday. “These are the same rules changes that were proposed and scratched in 2022, but this time they are even more egregious and heavy-handed.”
Scratched or not, established “protocol” within the New York City Council already mandates members never cross the will of Speaker Adams.
Work-Bites learned that back in 2023 when Civil Service & Labor Committee Chair Carmen De La Rosa [D-10th District] conceded that the reason she was blocking earlier legislation aimed at protecting the New York City municipal retirees from being herded into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage health insurance plan—was because that’s the way Speaker Adams wanted it.
“If the Council and the Council leadership decided to move on this legislation, then that will happen,” the Brooklyn legislator said at the time. “But right now, what I've been told is that this is a matter that is being litigated through the Court of Appeals.”
One of the most alarming rule changes Speaker Adams is proposing now, according to Council Member Marte, is scrapping the City Council’s independent bill-drafting unit, originally initiated back in 2014 as an attempt to give members more of an independent say in how bills are actually drafted and introduced.
“Good government groups have long understood independent drafting as the gold standard for fair and transparent legislation,” Council Member Marte said this week. “Stripping away that independence means giving the Speaker unchecked power over which bills see the light of day. Instead of helping members serve their districts, this will leave even more bills in legislative limbo while only Speaker-prioritized bills move forward.”
Two of those bills left in limbo include Intro. 1096, legislation protecting municipal retirees from profit-driven Medicare Advantage plans, and Intro. 615—the “No More 24” bill—banning mandatory round-the-clock shifts in the home care industry.
Both have been actively suppressed under Speaker Adams’ leadership.
Earlier this month, Council Member Marte—who hopes to succeed Adams as the New York City Council’s next Speaker—said that, historically, special interests have, indeed, “called the Speaker and stopped bills in their tracks.”
“We're elected as legislators and to say that we can't write a bill on our own…it’s crazy,” City Council Member Frank Morano [R-51st District] told Work-Bites on Monday. “It makes no sense whatsoever.”
The Staten Island legislator also doesn’t appreciate the push to move the motion to discharge from seven members to 11 members that Speaker Adams is also advocating.
“I think it's totally unnecessary—and I think it potentially could stop some legislation which deserves a vote,” he added. “I’m thinking about bills like Ryder’s Law and Intro, 1096 on retiree health care. There's no reason that these bills shouldn't get voted on by the full Council, and I don't think that we should be making it more difficult for the full council to vote on them.”
Mayor Eric Adams announced in June that he was abandoning the Medicare Advantage push—at least for now. At the same time, however, he celebrated a New York State Court of Appeals ruling in which the high court found retirees had failed to prove the City of New York ever promised them the health care package that enticed them into civil service in the first place.
Council Member Marte insists Intro. 1096 must be enacted into law regardless of Mayor Adams’ decision to abandon the Medicare Advantage push because at any moment, “this mayor or a future mayor can reverse positions and try again to put retirees on Medicare Advantage or an equally dangerous plan.”
At the time of this writing, Intro. 1096 still only has fewer than 20 cosponsors. Intro. 615—the “No More 24” bill— only has 14.
“These are not minor [rule] changes, and all New Yorkers should be alarmed,” Council Member Marte continued this week. “Our constituents elected us to represent them, not to hand over their voices to centralized authority. Weakening member independence undermines the Council as a legislative body, and I will stand firmly against these changes.”