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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Veteran city politics reporter Ben Max is with us now. Among other things we'll get him to weigh in on one pretty big story that you might have missed because it seemed pretty technical, but it's breaking today and it has big implications. Mayor Eric Adams has put together a commission with the power to fundamentally remake New York City's government and make big changes to the city charter. That's like the constitution of New York City. This charter revision commission was announced and formed quickly and it's largely composed of Adams's allies and donors.

The move has been described by a group of civic leaders as a power play and it's drawn criticism from the city council. It's also in competition with some changes that the city council wants to make that other people are describing as a power grab against the mayor by them. We'll get into the details with Ben and we'll also talk with him about some of the notable successes of Mayor Eric Adams's administration so far.

Despite low approval ratings and ongoing controversies, he highlights in an article Mayor Adams's ambitious City of Yes plan, hailed as the most significant pro-housing zoning reform since 1961, as well as his collaborative efforts with Governor Kathy Hochul, which have led to important legislative wins in Albany. Ben Max, host of the Max Politics podcast and executive editor and program director at New York Law School Center for New York City Law. His recent piece in The Daily News was What Mayor Adams is doing well on. Ben, always good to have you. Welcome back to WNYC.

Ben Max: Thanks for having me, Brian. Good to be with you.

Brian Lehrer: Do a little civics 101 for everybody. What's the charter revision commission?

Ben Max: A charter revision commission is a panel put together by the mayor or in rare cases, it can be put together by a law passed by the city council to review basically the city's constitution and really the fundamental laws and rules governing city government.

Brian Lehrer: Why did the mayor put together a charter revision commission of his own right at this time and who's on it?

Ben Max: We're right away getting into some tricky questions there about motivations. That's been a little bit up for debate. The mayor has said that like other mayor's before him, he's put together a charter revision commission to look at the city charter and see if there's ways to update it for the good of the city. He tasked the charter revision commission with really looking closely at things like fiscal responsibility matters and also things related to public safety issues.

Of course, these are a couple of areas where Mayor Adams has taken a different approach than a lot of other city elected officials, including many members of the city council where the mayor has a bit more of a moderate, centrist, conservative approach, whatever you might want to call it, related to fiscal matters, as we've seen with a lot of the budget discussions, and then also public safety, of course, where he's called himself a self-professed conservative on this front.

He's looking to have this commission and if done so, take a really close look at the process around legislation that impacts both the city fisc and then also public safety matters. In terms of the commission members, it's mostly or pretty much exclusively allies of the mayor. That's his prerogative as New York City Mayor to impanel a the charter revision commission and put really who he wants on it.

Brian Lehrer: Some of what you were just describing there sounds fairly bureaucratic and isn't going to move people to a lot of emotion or a lot of chatter around the dinner table or whatever, but here's the political buzz and tell me if you think this is accurate or not. The city council wants to enact its own changes wherein they would have approval power over many, many of the mayor's commissioners. Right now the Mayor of the City of New York basically gets to appoint his commissioners at will. City council wants to have approval power like the Senate of the United States over many of the cabinet members of the president.

Mayor Adams does not like that one bit. Probably no mayor would like that one bit losing power to city council that way over mayoral appointments and so he created this charter revision commission because it somehow nullifies that city council movement. True or false?

Ben Max: Oh, I think there's something to that. I don't think we know all of the mayor's full motivations, something I was trying to get at before a little bit which is other mayor's have, of course, assembled charter revision committee. This is up to him to do something like this, but the timing definitely raised eyebrows now. The mayor and his people have provided evidence that there was discussion previously, some advocates asking him to take a close look at this, maybe do a commission related to some of the bills that the city council has passed and then overrode mayoral vetoes on, that relate to police transparency and accountability and banning solitary confinement in city jails.

The mayor vetoed these bills, the city council overrode the vetoes and you have the mayor and some of his allies and others who have questioned the process by which the city council engaged in that legislation and did the veto overrides. That's a little bit at play here in this world too of the power struggle.

Then you also get this issue of the expanded city council potential advice and consent on mayoral nominations and appointments. This proposal or set of proposals from the city charter revision commission would then bump that city council effort from this year's ballot to sometime in the future because when a mayor and a charter revision commission put a set of proposals on the ballot, it can knock other things off. The city council's bill to expand its advice and consent on mayoral appointments would have to go before voters and so then with this charter revision commission moving forward, it is very likely to bump the city council's proposal off of this year's ballot.

The council is asking the commission to slow down and not advance its proposals to the ballot, saying there's plenty of time for a further look at the city charter, that this is rushed, but it looks like the commission is moving full speed ahead at the mayor's request.

Brian Lehrer: Here's a clip of the mayor from his Tuesday news conference asked if this process should be given more time to play out, so the public has a better understanding of what's going on and decide which one of these charter revision questions should be on the ballot.

Mayor Eric Adams: It's all going to work itself out. It is all part of the process. All we need to do is take a deep breath, meditate, drink a green smoothie and just be fine.

Brian Lehrer: That was unusual because the criticism is he should slow this down. His response was everybody should just slow down and chill. Your thoughts on that response from the mayor when what he's doing is rushing up this charter revision proposal of his own.

Ben Max: Right at this moment, once the mayor has superseded or is working on superseding the council's power and doing his own power grab of sorts, as you mentioned, for him to say now everybody needs to just chill, of course, he's got things in a place where his proposals and his commission's proposals are probably going to win out the day, so it's easy for him to say, "Let's all relax now. This is going to work out." It's looking like it's going to work out somewhat in his favor in this power struggle.

I do want to mention that I think this is a little bit of a be careful what you wish for scenario here for the mayor adding in some of these elements that are really going to slow down legislative procedures around public safety-related bills. I won't get into all the details of what's going to be in the proposal, but a key piece of this is that the city council will have to take a significant amount of time anytime it wants to pass a bill related to public safety that affects the NYPD, the fire department or the Department of Correction.

There's various new time allotments that have to come in terms of hearings on bills and opportunity for the mayoral administration to submit public safety impact statements and a whole bunch of procedural additions here that are potentially going to be put into the works. Not to mention on the fiscal side, another part of the proposal here that will be one of potentially five ballot questions going before voters, is also related to sort of slowing down the legislative process in other ways.

Not only could this come back to hurt this mayor or other mayors in terms of the relationship with the city council, but very often, mayors want to advance their own priorities quickly and work on legislation with the legislative branch of the city government. If the mayor is having his commission, they're working on instituting some of these delays and additional procedural hoops, you get into gumming up even further the workings of government that can really come back to hurt any mayor in a situation where they want to advance their own priorities because remember, the legislative branch has to pass the laws that a mayor may want for their own priorities as well.

Brian Lehrer: Why, with what you just described, is the mayor promoting these things?

Ben Max: I think from his perspective, these are more in line with his politics. He, as I mentioned earlier, is a bit more, however, you want to characterize him, centrist, conservative on some of these issues. He sees that executive power here is a little bit less than what he'd like it to be in terms of his ability to slow down some of the things that the city council is passing that have a fiscal impact or that impact public safety. For him, I think some of this is a little bit more focused on the short term, which again as a mayor who's up for reelection next year, that makes some sense.

Brian Lehrer: That makes sense. He wants to slow down city council, but in theory, it could come back and wind up slowing down him or some future mayor if it goes through. Listeners, is this all too wonky for you or do you have any comments or questions on these competing charter revision proposals one or the other of which, the city council's one or the mayor's one, or a collection of them will be on the ballot this November?

212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692 for Ben Max from New York Law School and also the Daily News article that he has, which we're going to get into now, on things Mayor Adams is doing really well. Listeners, you can add on to that as well or just state your own thing that you think Mayor Adams is doing really well. Certainly, we tend to focus on things here very often that are controversies and we don't say he's doing well, we don't say he's doing badly, but that's our mission mostly is to talk about things that are issues in the news, things that are issues or things that people don't agree on.

We chew those over on a regular basis. Now we're giving you an opportunity to say what do you think Mayor Adams is doing well or to ask Ben Max a question about his Daily News article on that. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. You want to tell everybody why you chose to focus on a list of things that Mayor Adams is doing notably well, as you put it in your Daily News piece?

Ben Max: Sure. I appreciate that. I totally agree with you. Still being an active journalist here, I often try to focus on the things where elected officials, especially a mayor or a governor, need more accountability. They need to have their feet held to the fire, calls for more transparency, all of that. I also think it's just important at times to step back and say, "Okay, what, if anything, is this elected official doing well?"

The mayor has a lot of challenges. He has been, in some ways, his own worst enemy on a number of things. He's got scandals and investigations and all sorts of challenges, which I briefly alluded to in this brief column. There's also some things that, at least from my vantage point and many experts, he is advancing that are good for the city's future.

There's debate about some of these things for sure, but I also thought it was important to zoom out for a moment and say there are some things that he seems to be advancing that are almost universally seen as positives in a number of ways. They can, of course, be debated. Giving some credit where credit is due, I think, is important, especially in this environment where just as a society and in our politics, we're often so negative that sometimes it's good to recognize some of the positives.

Brian Lehrer: At the top of your list is Mayor Adams's City of Yes, zoning proposal for housing.

Ben Max: There's a lot of room to debate some of the particulars here, but I don't think there's really a lot of validity to saying that the city doesn't need to address its housing crisis in a way that builds, as they put it, a little bit more housing pretty much everywhere in the city. You have callers in on this and guests who reflect these perspectives, but there's obviously pushback from places in the city that they don't want change, and that's true often in a lot of neighborhoods in the city among certain residents.

New York City needs more housing. The crisis is so bad in terms of affordability, and the city needs to continue to grow, and its zoning has been a big barrier to that. This is a proposal to update the zoning code across the city and allow for some more housing just about everywhere. It's not going to significantly alter any neighborhood in any huge way. This is something where it seems like he's advancing a very sensible proposal that actually, according to many housing experts, could really, go a bit further.

He crafted something with his housing and planning people that seems like a smart way to add housing. I know particularly in the piece, and I think it's very important to do so repeatedly that part of the answer to a number of crises that New York faces is something called transit-oriented development where you have more housing near mass transit stops, and that's an important part of this.

Brian Lehrer: Also on housing, you mentioned Adam's efforts on NYCHA. Want to talk about that?

Ben Max: Sure. The biggest crisis facing New York City is the quality and conditions in public housing, home to somewhere around half a million New Yorkers. Obviously, it's gotten a lot of attention over the years that the buildings have been in horrible disrepair and falling down around their residents and almost uninhabitable in a number of cases. He's both, I think, importantly allowed some programs that were already in place to go forward and accelerate.

That's not always something easy for a new mayor to do, but he allowed some of these important programs that have some question marks to them, but overall are important in getting more investment into NYCHA. Then also he advanced the Preservation Trust, which again is another mechanism for bringing in investment into NYCHA, both public investment and private investment through these mechanisms.

Then lastly, I think it's important that he signed off on this important but controversial plan that's going to be a demolish and rebuild project on Manhattan's west side in a NYCHA complex there that also adds still new additional mixed-income housing to the property. If New York City is really going to build more housing to get out of its supply crisis and impact the affordability crisis, these are the types of proposals that probably have to really be part of it and accelerate.

Brian Lehrer: One more for the moment from your list of things that Mayor Adams is doing notably well, he's made youth literacy a focus, drawing from his personal experiences with dyslexia. How transformative do you think his literacy initiatives have been already or could be for New York City's education system?

Ben Max: That's the question. The projections are that they could be very impactful here. I note in the piece in brief that this is one of many areas, including most of the things I mentioned in the article, that really still need to see full execution and evaluation. He seems to be tilting things in the right direction by mandating phonics-based approach to literacy in the early education years where we know so many kids wind up falling behind in early reading, and it's extremely important for their future to be at grade level early on.

Then also expanded dyslexia screenings, which again comes from some of his own experience, but extremely important to catch those issues early and provide early intervention. If these things and many others are implemented well, this could go a long way to improving some of the really scandalous literacy rates in schools, especially in some of the city's most disadvantaged communities.

I know it's funny that we're more than two and a half years into his term, and I'm talking about if it's executed well, but some of this speaks to how slowly the machinery of government moves, even if you're trying to advance priorities. I would also say around execution and implementation of things, we need to keep asking questions about how quickly or not quickly the mayor is moving.

I'm trying to give him some credit here on important policies, but I think there's a lot of areas where the mayor could be trying to move more quickly. There's been challenges with ways that he's been either distracted or he's allowed for some of the workings of government to move too slowly because he has a lot of competing voices at City Hall and other management challenges. There's a lot to dig into here in terms of his leadership, but I do think there's a number of positives to the policies that he's been moving forward in some of these areas I laid out.

Brian Lehrer: Robin in Harlem, you're on WNYC. Hi, Robin.

Robin: Hi, good morning. I have a question about this charter revision proposal. Is it just advisory, or can he say, "No, this is what we're going to do," and then the voters have a yes or no decision about this in November, or how does it work in terms of the mechanics of city governments going forward?

Brian Lehrer: Good question. Ben, how do we know who decides which one gets on the ballot, the mayor's charter revisions or the council's charter revisions?

Ben Max: I believe the rules around that are in the charter itself, and that says that a Charter Revision Commission can bump something that's coming from the city council. As long as this Charter Revision Commission does put these questions on the ballot, the city council's proposal will not be there. Now, of course, if they were taking a more inclusive scope of things, the Charter Revision Commission could easily take the city council proposal on advice and consent and make it part of its own proposals. The Mayor opposes that, so that's not going to be something that his Charter Revision Commission does.

If they wanted to give the opportunity to voters to vote yes or no on all of these things, they could just add that city council proposal in, but they're looking to bump that out as one either primary goal of this depending on what you think are the Mayor's motivations, or secondary goal of this is to bump that off. In terms of the other piece of it, the Charter Revision Commission certainly will consult with the Mayor about what it's advancing, but once it passes its proposals, it sends them to the city clerk, which evaluates them and prepares them for ballot questions and advances those towards the ballot.

Once that happens, it will be a series of questions that are determined by the Charter Revision Commission. It looks like it's going to put five questions before voters, each of them with multiple parts of proposals on different topics, and then voters will get a chance on their ballot this October/November early voting and election day to vote yes or no on each of those proposals to change the city charter.

Brian Lehrer: Here's Lydia in Manhattan who I think disagrees that he's doing a good job on NYCHA. Lydia, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Lydia: Hello. I'm working with a coalition of neighborhood groups and community groups in Chelsea, and with our community board, and we don't think giving public land to private developers who want to build luxury housing on 70% of it is a good approach to helping NYCHA, and creating more affordable housing. The details of the plan have been completely opaque. There's been no transparency for the developer. Were fighting like hell to get the information, and the condition of the apartments, which should be addressed immediately, the Mayor has done nothing to insist that NYCHA make crucial repairs.

That has been left undone, and in fact, he's so busy selling out the public housing to developers that that seems to have been a forgotten thing. I'm sorry, but there is a need to have more money in the public housing, but giving our public land and public property to private developers is not the solution.

Brian Lehrer: Lydia, thank you. What would the Mayor's response to that be, or for that matter, Ben, yours since you wrote an opinion piece that said the Mayor is doing well on NYCHA?

Ben Max: I've been saying in different places for many years that there's been a lot of this hope that tens of billions of dollars would come from the federal government to rescue NYCHA, and just infuse the funding that is needed to get things to a state of good repair. That has not happened. It keeps not happening. It didn't happen when democrats had full control of the federal government. The tens of billions of dollars that people hope for from Washington just doesn't seem to be coming.

I think just hoping for that isn't a plan. That's not to negate what Lydia just said at all, there's valid concerns there for sure. I'm not getting into every detail of that proposal. What I'm saying is that these buildings are falling down around the residence, which obviously Lydia was pointing at as well, and there could be room for more immediate repairs to many units and many buildings, and more attention on that, but in terms of some of these big picture strategies, just the finances of it often raise questions about whether it makes more sense to do demolish and rebuild than to try to repair these buildings that have been falling apart for so many years.

Then the question of infill development, I get the debate over it. I have thought about this a lot, and as part of the future of the city, and the question of where to build more housing, using more public land seems like an important part of the solution because it gives the city more leverage to demand more in terms of affordable housing as part of it. They also have to make the financing work, and if you leverage some of the financing around allowing market rate as a mix income building, then you don't have to provide as much city subsidy.

These are all key questions for negotiation and figuring out the details of things. I don't think there's anything that Lydia said that I don't take to heart, or understand, or even agree with, but there's just this existential question of how do you move faster while these buildings are crumbling?

Brian Lehrer: Lydia, feel free to keep calling on these issues. One more, Chris in Bayside, you're on WNYC. Hi, Chris.

Chris: Hey, there. Originally my point was that it seems that the city council has been advancing things without real much feedback from the public because they have such a super majority that even if the Mayor were to veto it, they'd be able to override the veto. In terms of City of Yes, and I've reviewed this as both a community board member, and as a resident of the city, one, it would drastically change the landscape of a lot of different parts of the city.

Some of the beauty of the city is the diversity in its housing, and its regulations in how there are private one to two family homes and parts of it. That's what allows for movement of people within the city, and not having to leave to have some of that privacy, or to have some of that space. In terms of City of Yes, there's nothing in any of the proposals to up the amount of first response, or city agencies within these areas. Nothing for more police, nothing for more emergency medical services, nothing for more fire apparatus.

You already have the highest emergency response times in the city's history including COVID, and to add more housing, to add more people without the infrastructure being allotted or without the promise of the building of more infrastructure just seems like a dangerous recipe. No, he has given no answers to that. He's given no proposals as to where he is going to build more firehouses, where he is going to build more EMS stations.

He's just said that we'll build this housing, 1 to 2 family houses, could become 10 to 20 person residences as long as they're within, I believe it's a half mile of a train station, which incorporates 80% of the city. It's something that could drastically change the way we approach emergency services, and the availability of those services. That's something that's definitely a concern that he has yet to address, and has refused to address.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting, Chris. Thank you very much. I hadn't heard it brought up exactly like that before. I'm sure it's been out there, and I just wasn't exposed to it, but whenever Mayor Adams, or anyone makes proposals for a lot more density in particular neighborhoods, the question of infrastructure always does come up. The way I usually hear it is what about mass transit? You need to put more bus service, or some other kinds of transit in, or what about the overcrowding of whatever the subway stop is at that particular corner, or in that particular neighborhood.

As arguments against further density, usually neighborhoods of any kind don't want more density, and that's one of the things that comes up as transportation infrastructure. Another one is schools. If you're going to put thousands more people in this neighborhood, are you also devoting more resources to more school buildings? All the kids who are going to presumably grow up there in addition to the ones who are now are going to have classrooms to sit in.

Now, Chris is adding emergency services per person to that conversation. Anything on that as we run out of time about City of Yes, and whether it does incorporate infrastructure or not in any of those ways?

Ben Max: This is a change to the zoning code, and that's not really something that you would do in a zoning proposal, but it is something that needs to come up in combining changes in zoning and projections of new housing and population with the budget process, and the capital budget process, and all of these things that do come up every single year in the city's government processes. Also say, just for clarity for everybody, the projection from the city planning department for what will happen under these zoning reforms under City of Yes, is roughly adding about 100,000 new units over 10 to 15 years across the city.

This is a very modest approach to growth. Now they want to have other tools to add more housing than that. This is only a piece of their puzzle to build more housing, but these zoning changes are really not dramatic. Again, as I noted earlier, there's a lot of housing advocates and people who are worried about the future of the city who wanted them to go even further in the types of density they would allow in places. They took a very modest approach to be able to hear people where they are, and not propose overly dramatic changes to neighborhoods.

Lastly I'll just say, there's always this tension in New York- -City and elsewhere between the people who are currently living there and then the people who want to come and live in the place. When these processes only reflect the voices of people who already have their housing, then it leaves out very often the people who would love to be able to move to New York City to pursue their dreams or kids who grew up in New York City go to college and then want to find an apartment. I could continue down the line, but that is very often left out of this conversation. I think Mayor Adams and his team have rightly tried to look for the future of New York City in some of these proposals, but not doing it in an overly dramatic way.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting. It comes back as it so often does to the two-part law of politics when it comes to New York's housing. One, we desperately need more housing in New York City, and two, just don't build any near me. That's where we leave it with Ben Max, host of the Max Politics podcast and executive editor and program director at New York Law School Center for New York City Law. His recent piece in the New York Daily News is called What Mayor Adams is doing well on. Thanks so much, Ben. Always appreciate it.

Ben Max: Thank you, Brian.

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