‘She is My Speaker - I Will Not Cross the Speaker’: ‘Protocol’ is Blocking a Hearing on Intro. 1099

Council Member Charles Barron says “the protocol” being used to block a New York City Council hearing on a bill he introduced to protect traditional Medicare benefits is a “slap in the face to the democratic process and should be investigated.” Above: Council Members Carmen De La Rosa and Charles Barron at a City Hall rally held in June. Photo by Joe Maniscalco

By Joe Maniscalco

New Yorkers across the five boroughs elect 51 City Council members to represent them — but only one of those people actually calls the shots. If you didn’t already know it, there’s a “protocol” in place inside the hallowed halls of the New York City Council where members do not cross the will of one person — Speaker Adrienne Adams.

Council Member Carmen De La Rosa [D-10th District], chair of the Committee on Civil Service & Labor, raised the existence of this “protocol” earlier in the week to explain why she will not be holding a hearing on Intro. 1099 — legislation aimed at further protecting retirees from being pushed into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage plan — if City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams [D-28th District] doesn’t approve it first.

Council Member Charles Barron [D-42nd District] introduced Intro. 1099 back in June. An earlier version of the measure was left to languish for months until Council Member Barron picked it up largely because Speaker Adams opposed it. Since then, however, Intro. 1099 has garnered just 17 cosponsors.

“There is a bill, as you've heard, that has been introduced by a colleague,” Council Member De La Rosa told Work-Bites following Tuesday’s Civil Service & Labor Committee hearing. “If the Council and the Council leadership decided to move on this legislation, then that will happen. But right now, what I've been told is that this is a matter that is being litigated through the Court of Appeals.”

Mayor Eric Adams, despite calling Medicare Advantage a "bait and switch” on the campaign trail, went ahead and signed a Medicare Advantage contract with private health insurance industry giant Aetna back on March 30 — a State Supreme Court judge, however, has continually blocked that contract from being enacted.

Marianne Pizzitola, president of the New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees President warned back in May that City Council members were being intimidated and told, “if they support our legislation and go against the Speaker they will lose their committee positions and they will lose their discretionary funding.”

New York City’s job vacancy rate, meanwhile, now stands at 6.6 percent with more than 20,000 civil service jobs currently left unfilled. Tuesday’s oversight hearing — ironically dubbed “The Future of Municipal Work” — looked at expanding telework opportunities and combatting worker burnout by regulating after-hour communications as a pair of novel ways of helping to stop the bleeding.

They are policies that are completely necessary and good according to the parties concerned — but as any New Yorker can tell you, people come to work for the City of New York in search of a “good job with benefits.”

Stripping municipal workers of their traditional Medicare coverage and pushing them into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage program rife with scandalous delays and denials of care erases a fundamental draw civil service has always had up until now.

Indeed, Council Member De La Rosa expressed concern over the city’s continued ability to attract people to civil service — along with sympathy for the “plight of the retirees” following Tuesday’s oversight hearing. However, when asked why she will not hold a hearing on Intro. 1099, the Council Member begged off.

“So, as I mentioned, a request for a hearing came to our office and we passed that request onto the Speaker’s Office.”

“Why not push it?” Work-Bites pressed. 

“That’s the protocol,” Council Member De La Rosa said. “Thank you.”

THIS IS WHAT DEMOCRACY DOES NOT LOOK LIKE

Council Member Barron calls the whole notion of a “protocol” blocking Council Member De La Rosa’s ability to convene a hearing on Intro. 1099 “absurd” and “ridiculous.”

“[Council Member De La Rosa] does not need the approval of the Speaker,” Council Member Barron told Work-Bites this week. “[And] no council member that wants to sign onto my bill…and I know for sure some of them wanted to sign on but they were told that they had to check in with the Speaker….this is a violation of democracy. It's a violation of our council rules. It's a violation of the policies of the New York City Council.”

Work-Bites has gotten several unconfirmed reports that one City Council member in particular recently attempted to sign onto Intro. 1099 but was somehow dissuaded or blocked from doing so.

Council Member Barron says every committee chair in the New York City Council has a fundamental right to call their own hearings and there’s nothing preventing them from doing so.

“They check with the Speaker — logistically,” Council Member Barron continued. “Are the rooms available? Is this date available? There's nothing in the rulebook that says you must seek the approval of the Speaker in order to have a hearing — and Carmen knows that. She’s been around. This is really a pathetic slap in the face for any semblance of a democratic process at the City Council. When council members have to call the speaker in order to sign on to a bill — that's ridiculous.”

During her testimony before Tuesday’s Civil Service & Labor Committee oversight hearing, Pizzitola asked members to hold retirees in the same regard as other vulnerable municipal workers being considered and to commit to a hearing on Intro. 1099 — a request she repeated after engaging Council Member De La Rosa in further discussion following the hearing.

“She said I’ve been doing this for two years and everything goes through the Speaker for approval,” Pizzitola told Work-Bites. “I said, let me ask you this: If the Speaker doesn’t approve you holding a hearing — will you bring this bill to a hearing on your own? That’s when she said, ‘She is my Speaker, and I will not cross the Speaker.’”

Work-Bites reached out to the Speaker’s Office for comment on the “protocol” being practiced inside the New York City Council, along with other members of the Civil Service & Labor Committee, and their colleagues — but we’re still waiting for a reply.

Council Member Vickie Paladino [R-19th District], one of Intro. 1099’s 17 cosponsors, expressed reticence about getting into the “internal party politics that may be at work on the other side of the aisle.” But the Queens representitive did tell Work-Bites, “there seems to be a lot of acrimony within the Democrat caucus over 1099, between the unions and the members who support the bill.”

“The speaker made her position clear, and in our opinion the retirees deserve a hearing,” Council Member Paladino told Work-Bites in an email. “1099 is a good bill that protects the healthcare retirees were promised and has no impact on collective bargaining for current employees. As a Republican, this may be an easier ask for us, because we don't owe much to the unions who are trying to kill the bill. It's no secret, Democrats are in a pickle here. It's a shame because we could really do something significant and bipartisan to help our retirees.”

MLC heads Michael Mulgrew, Henry Garrido and Harry Nespoli have continually pushed a narrative that says blocking efforts to push municipal retirees into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage program somehow undermines labor’s ability to collectively bargain.

“No, [my bill] is not going to put a hole in the budget, and no it is not going to interfere and hurt their collective bargaining agreements that the Taylor Law allows them to do,” Council Member Barron told Work-Bites.

Instead, what we’re seeing, according to Council Member Barron, is simply a “divide and conquer tactic” by Mayor Eric Adams, DC37 Executive Director Henry Garrido, UFT President Michael Mulgrew, “and some of the other union leaders — misinforming their rank and file into thinking they're gonna have to pay more [for health care] and it's going to interfere with collective bargaining.”

The entire situation, the Brooklyn legislator insists, “needs to be investigated.”