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Brigid Bergin: It's The Brian Lehrer Show, on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin, senior reporter in the WNYC and Gothamist newsroom, sitting in for Brian this week. In addition to voting for mayor and other contested local offices, you'll need to turn your ballots over and weigh in on revising the city charter this November. There will be questions about changing the time of municipal elections and issues to do with approving new housing developments.

The mayor's Charter Revision Commission has been holding hearings, and yesterday, approved five ballot questions. We're going to talk about those, plus one controversial proposal that didn't make the cut, with the chair of the commission, Richard Buery. He's CEO of the anti poverty group Robin Hood and former deputy mayor under Bill de Blasio. Richard, welcome back to the show.

Richard Buery: Thank you so much. Good to talk to you.

Brigid Bergin: Now, this might be a little counterintuitive, but I want to start a little bit with what's not going to be on the ballot in November, the proposal-

Richard Buery: [crosstalk] Sure.

Brigid Bergin: -to move to open primaries. That's where all candidates from whatever party are on one primary ballot, all registered voters can choose among them, and the top two vote getters move to the general election. Now, that's one specific type of open primary. The proposal generated a fair bit of excitement from supporters and those opposed to it. Why didn't this make the cut? How did the commission land on this version of open primaries as what it was considering?

Richard Buery: Sure. Thank you so much. Well, as you noted, we did not propose changes to New York City's closed primary process. This was an issue that was not on our agenda when we began the process, when we began hearings in December, but it was a subject on which we received the most testimony by far. We heard compelling testimony on both sides of the issue.

I was personally moved by the number of voters who wanted to be a part of the political process, but who felt, in a city where one primary, a Democratic primary, who typically drives to win the election, they didn't have a voice. This is a large group of New Yorkers, 1.1 million New Yorkers of all ages, of all political stripes, we're seeing that, particularly for young New Yorkers, for Latinos and for African Americans, especially, we're seeing increased numbers of independent voters. I think engaging them in the political process is important.

While there was significant consensus among the commissioners on the benefits of some kind of reform and in making changes, unfortunately, we couldn't get consensus on the type of open primary system, because there are lots of different ways to do this. What we had discussed was what you described, a single nonpartisan primary where people could identify their party, and then, after ranked choice voting, the top two candidates would go to a general election. There are lots of flavors of that.

There are the top four, there is semi open primaries, and we just couldn't get consensus on the right version. At the same time, there was also some concern about moving such a big change at this point in time this year. While we were not able to bring it forward now, I really do hope that future commissions will take up this issue. I hope that New Yorkers will take the time to learn about this issue, because I do think, personally, that the time for reform is now, but it did not, as you say, make it to a vote.

Brigid Bergin: Yes. It sounds like, in part, some of this was a timing issue, because it's such a significant change. Certainly, ranked choice voting, when that was on the ballot, there was a lot of conversation, a lot of voter education, so to speak, leading up to that. Presumably, that was some of the pushback that you were hearing?

Richard Buery: To some extent. I personally believe that New Yorkers could wrap their mind around this issue. It's not really a controversial question. Most big cities in America, I think 42 of the top 50 cities in America have some form of open primary. New York is certainly an outlier in this regard. I certainly think New Yorkers could wrap their head around it, but yes, certainly, that was some of the pushback we received, that people wanted more time for public discussion.

Brigid Bergin: Listeners, what questions do you have about these ballot proposals or the charter revision process in general? We can take some calls on why the open primary question didn't make the cut, or maybe you want to weigh in on one of the housing questions, that would mean fewer breaks on a very long process to approve developments. Maybe you work in this field and have had to deal with some of the official paper maps. Digitizing the city map is one of the proposals we're going to talk about.

Do you want to argue for or against selecting local officeholders at the same time as the President? That's one of the proposals to move municipal elections to even numbered years. Give us a call. The number is 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. You can call or text at that number. Let's talk a little bit more about what will be on the ballots in November. There are four proposals to streamline the housing development process.

Plus, as I mentioned, one to move municipal elections to presidential election years with an eye to boosting turnout. Let's start with the housing ones first. The first one reads fast track affordable housing to build more affordable housing across the city. What exactly would that change? Would this mean these projects would only require the mayor's approval?

Richard Buery: No, not at all. Not at all. To start from the beginning, the biggest thing that this commission came together to tackle was the affordable housing crisis. Everybody, every one of your listeners, understands that New York City has that historic crisis, it's the worst housing crisis in our city's history. That is important for a number of reasons, but it's really vitally important to the future of our city.

It's a question about whether people can raise a family here, can build wealth here, whether companies are willing to come here because their employees can continue to live here. It is probably the most significant crisis facing our city. The challenge with affordable housing is that there's no way out of that crisis without building more affordable housing. We have to build a way out of the process, and we have a system that isn't working. We see that by our historically low vacancy rates, we see that by our rising rents.

The problem is that our system, which in many ways is a good system, it's been around since '89, it's ULURP, the uniform land use review process is, in many ways, a robust system. It involves deep community engagement, lots of public review. The problem is that the process doesn't work for everything. It works for the biggest projects which are likely to garner the strongest responses and where it makes sense to have deep and extensive review, but it doesn't work for smaller projects. It doesn't work for affordable housing.

Right now, a 10 unit apartment building has to go through the same multi year review process as mega projects like Hudson Yards. It just doesn't make sense. What we tried to do through this process is to find targeted ways that don't undermine the values of the ULURP, that maintain community review, maintain community board review, but can speed up and professionalize the process. One of them, as you mentioned, question one, is for fast track affordable housing, which does two things.

It creates one fast track for publicly financed affordable housing projects, where those projects would now be approved by something called the Board of Standards and Appeals, which is an independent expert body appointed by the mayor and approved by the council. That body would have to find that the development is consistent with neighborhood character, it would apply for permanently affordable housing, and it maintains critically community board review, which is a central way of hearing community voice.

The other process it creates is something called the affordable housing fast track for the 12 community districts that permitted the lowest rate of affordable housing over the past five years. You can imagine, a public process, it builds on the city council's visionary fair housing framework, but it gives it teeth by collecting data on what's the rate of affordable housing production across all of our community districts.

The 12 that have permitted the lowest rates of affordable housing projects that are also eligible for mandatory inclusionary housing rezonings. Those projects would then have a shorter review process. Again, that process would maintain 60 days for community boards to review. It would maintain 60 days for the borough president to review. Those reviews would happen concurrently, for making sure that community voice is in the picture.

After that, it goes to a city planning Commission, which has 30 days to approve or deny the application. That becomes the final step in the process, so it makes those things faster and it creates an incentive for community boards who want to maintain themselves in the regular process, to actually say yes to housing. Part of the problem is that, as people know, there are just some communities where housing is a no go.

There are some neighborhoods that are functionally off limits in new housing because of local political opposition. This ensures that everybody does their share of making sure that we're building new housing, so we can have a city that everybody can live and thrive.

Brigid Bergin: Okay. I want to clarify a couple things and I want to make sure we get to the other questions. In this particular question, the definition of affordable housing, how is that defined? Would this process also apply to development that's market rate?

Richard Buery: It's really for affordable housing. The Board of Standards appeal is for publicly financed affordable housing projects. These are projects typically approved by HPD. These are our affordable housing projects, the kinds of projects that, right now, when they come online-- you'll see these projects come online and you have thousands of people on waiting lists for 100 unit apartments. This is really trying to fast track those publicly financed housing projects, so it did not apply to all housing.

That applies to affordable housing only. Similarly, the affordable housing project for those 12 community districts is for affordable housing projects. It's only available for those for whom mandatory inclusionary housing applies, so again, these are long term affordable housing developments.

Brigid Bergin: The second proposal is, "simplify review of modest housing and infrastructure projects." I guess the key question is how modest is defined, and what kind of projects fit into this category?

Richard Buery: Yes. Modest really means modest. These are projects that, as I said, typically don't get proposed at all today. No one proposes projects with such modest rezonings because the ULURP process is so complicated, so time consuming and so expensive, it's just not worth it for developers to even propose something like this. When we say modest, what we mean, depending on whether we're talking about medium or high density residential districts or low residential districts.

For medium and high residential districts, this is zoning R6 or above, it basically means proposals to increase residential capacity by up to 30%, which typically means bumping you up one level in the residential zoning. If you're applying to rezone a district in R3, it basically means you can get bumped to R4. For low density housing, it really is limited to buildings with a height of no taller than 45ft and a floor to area ratio of two.

These are small, short, low density projects, maybe two, three, four family homes. The kind of thing that most neighborhoods say they would want. They're really the workhorse of housing that really don't get proposed anymore. It also includes some other minor infrastructure projects like raising street grades to make it easier to have environmental remediation. These are modest projects. They're typically not even proposed today.

Again, through this process, we maintain community board and borough president reviews, so there's room for local voice. Again, followed up by the city planning commission review, which has 30 days to approve or deny. Again, all sites that are subject to this expedited land use review process, or ULURP, they have to deliver permanently affordable housing in order to use the full developmental potential to get the full impact of those increases.

Brigid Bergin: Just to put a fine point on it, these projects would not require city council to weigh in. Correct?

Richard Buery: They would not require city council approval.

Brigid Bergin: Okay. I want to bring in some of our listeners--

Richard Buery: [crosstalk] It's important to remember, they don't really have city council approval now, because nobody ever proposes these kind of rezonings.

Brigid Bergin: Okay. If you're just joining us, my guest is Richard Buery. He is chair of the mayor's Charter Revision Review Commission. At least that's the way we're talking to him in this capacity. He's also CEO of Robin Hood. We're talking about the five ballot questions that were just voted to be on the ballot in November. If you have calls or questions, we want to hear from you. The number, 212-433-9692. You can call or text that number. Let's go to Ronan, in Brooklyn. Ronan, you're on WNYC.

Ronan: Hi. Thanks so much for taking my call. Thank you to your guest, for getting into the weeds of, in particular, the housing proposal, which I think I want to personally read up on more just so I'm more familiar with the details. I'm actually about to go to school at Hunter for urban planning, so this is really my wheelhouse. I just want to speak in support of expediting and liberalizing housing review processes. I think it's demonstrated that it is way too hard to build housing of all kinds, affordable and otherwise, in the city.

Like your guest said, like we've talked about, a lot of that is because it's politically unpopular to build housing a lot of times, and local elected officials have an incentive, even if they personally think the housing should be built, to come out against it. Just around the corner for me, I think, at city council District 39, I want to say, Shahana Hanif was in a lot of trouble for just trying to redevelop an industrial facility of some kind.

It was an old plant, and she got a lot of flack for just wanting to be able to build housing where there was nothing. I think it's really important that we take steps to bypass these local hyperlocal neighborhood political incentives to say no to housing when, across the board, we're going to be encountering this major collective action problem, indefinitely, unless we take steps like this. I want to speak in support of that housing proposal, and thank you for delving into it in so much detail.

Brigid Bergin: Ronan, thanks so much for your call. I think he was referring to the Arrow Linen factory rezoning in Windsor Terrace there. Richard, any response to some of what Ronan was raising there?

Richard Buery: Well, yes. Well, first of all, Ronan, congratulations and good luck with school at Hunter. Yes. Part of the challenge-- Ronan is exactly right. One of the challenges is that in New York City, under ULURP-- it's not a law, but one of the practices that can be a challenge in developing housing is something called member deference. Right now, the way ULURP works is that ULURP actions come to the City Council, and it was not designed to be this way.

It was not meant-- initially, could not concede that the City Council would be reviewing every zoning application, but that's effectively what happens now. They go to the City Council, the City Council approves or denies. If the City Council denies, it goes to the mayor, who can veto it, but then the council can override it. What that means in practice is that if a council member opposes a development in their district, the council defers to that council person, and the mayor never vetoes it, because the council could just override that veto.

Effectively, member deference means individual council members can essentially veto development in their district. Now, in many districts where council members are really committed to building affordable housing, those council members are real partners. They can work with developers to make sure that the community's needs are met, that there are fair labor standards. It can be a really powerful tool.

Unfortunately, there are some districts, some council people, who don't approve housing at all. What we heard from testimony from lots of developers is that the first thing they do when they see an application opportunity to develop housing, their first question is, "Well, who's the counselor?" In some districts, they just won't even go further, because they know that it'll be a dead end.

It's been 16 years, 16 years ago was the last time that the council approved housing over the objection of a local council person, so that's just not-- it's not meeting the needs of the city. What we've done is, we've tried to build a process that preserves local voice, preserves community board review, preserves borough president review, in most cases, preserves council review.

ULURP remains for most things, but one of the things that we did for affordable housing is that we created something called the Affordable Housing Appeals Board, this is question three, which means that instead of a mayoral override, if the council rejects the housing proposal, it then goes to an appeals board, an Affordable Housing Appeals Board comprised of three members, the mayor or their representative, to make sure there's a city wide perspective, the borough president of the affected borough.

This only works in rezonings where there's one borough affected, so that borough president, which gives a more local view, but still a broader view than the local council person, and the speaker, who can still represent the interests of the council and that individual council person. Only if two of those people override the council action, can the plan, as approved by the city planning commission, go forward.

It's a way, again, of trying to balance, respecting and balancing the importance of local voice, the community board, the borough president, and the city council, but also making sure that in making the final decision, city wide perspectives come into play. One of the things that we've heard from council people, both off the record, and, in some cases, during testimony, is the power that comes with being that council person could also be a burden.

The pressure that those council members feel to oppose development that they often know is right, from local interests, local NIMBY interests that are not supportive of housing can be overwhelming, it's, often, those intense voices, often minority voices, can stand in the way of doing what is good for the city, doing what's good for the borough, and good for the neighbors. It's one of the ways that we're trying to make sure that we can increase the supply of housing in our city.

Brigid Bergin: Richard, that was a-- thank you for introducing our third question on the ballot, which was establishing an Affordable Housing Appeals Board, with council, borough and citywide representation, and also explaining the member deference dilemma that's at play here. Yo push back a little bit, I think some of the council members would argue that some of the reason they want to have a voice in this process is to make sure that their community is getting benefits included in developers plans and pushing them for that.

What would you say to-- as you mentioned, there has been several statements coming out, from council speaker Adrianne Adams, and other council members, calling some of these proposals misguided. How would you persuade those members that you're not just taking power away from them, which is perhaps why they ran for office in the first place?

Richard Buery: Well, I would say two things. First is, the council and individual council members continue to play a critical role and have important platform for driving the kind of community benefits that you want to see when housing is developed. These projects still have to come through community board, they still have to come through the borough president. They still have to be approved, at the end of the day, by the city council.

Right now, if the city council decides to say no to that development, to that rezoning, it then goes to this board, which is still comprised of elected officials who are still accountable to neighbors, still accountable to voters, still accountable to the populace, the mayor, the borough president, and the speaker who still represents the interests of the council and of that individual district. That's the first thing I would say.

The second thing I would say is-- I would start from where I started this conversation, which is that the status quo is not working. Everyone understands that the cost of housing is too high. Everyone understands that people's ability to live lives of dignity and respect are being denied because they can't afford to live in the city that they've given, so many of us, so much. We have to make change.

It is incontrovertible that one of the things that stands in the way of building the housing that we so desperately need is the powerful NIMBY voices that exist in so many communities around the city. We have to break through that. We just have to break through it. That's my second answer. Ultimately, this is not about the power of any council person, the power of any elected official. It's about whether or not my children will be able to raise their children here, in the way that I was able to raise mine.

Brigid Bergin: Let's bring in John, from Astoria, who I think wants to raise a point that I'm getting lots of text messages about. John, you're on WNYC.

John: Hi. Hi, how are you? Thank you for taking my call. I just want to make a point. My main point is, you can label something affordable housing, but it's not. I agree that we need more housing, but what we're building is really not affordable housing. It's mostly tall grass paper buildings with a set aside, for some of them, for affordable housing, but in general, you're not building affordable housing.

I was at the one LIC process, and it says, "Oh, we're building so much affordable housing," but not really. Once that land that could be used to build really affordable housing, maybe more so modest housing, like you're talking about, once it's gone, it's gone. You look at all the building that's been going on, and it hasn't brought down any rents.

Brigid Bergin: John, I'm going to jump in there because we still have two more questions I want to get through with Richard, and just want to give you a brief chance to respond to that. Just to note that that is one of the things that a lot of listeners are responding, the definition of affordability.

Richard Buery: Yes, let me give a 30 second answer, because I know we're short on time. One of the reasons why what the caller is describing is happening is precisely because our current processes disincentivize and make it difficult to build the kind of housing that would actually meet New Yorkers' needs. The ULURP process is so complex, only certain kinds of projects ever get proposed.

Only certain kinds of projects ever really have a chance to be built. I think that what we're talking about in these charter revision reforms, they are not going to solve the problem by themselves, but they do create fast tracks, they do reduce barriers, they do increase incentives for new kinds of housing, for new developments, with strict rules around affordability and strict rules about long term affordability.

Along with other reforms, like the zoning reform that the mayor and the speaker so amazingly puts through the council, through new financing mechanism at the state, replacing 421A, all these things, I think, come together to create the opportunity to build more housing. I think what the caller is saying is exactly the right kind of question. Making sure that we're building housing that has meaningful affordability requirements, but part of that has to be to allow more housing.

If we can't build more housing, everything else is moot. Ultimately, what these are about is creating fast tracks, reducing barriers that reduce the time required to build affordable housing, and opening up geographies that currently are not seeing any affordable housing production, and making sure that they're carrying their fair share.

Brigid Bergin: Okay, we got two more. I know we can do it. We'll do them quickly. One more in housing, or at least tangentially related to housing. It's the proposal to digitize the city map. I could pull up a digital map of the city on my phone right now. What's this all about?

Richard Buery: Yes, right now, the official map-- you imagine, you're building a building, you're building Hudson Yards, you're building a development somewhere in the Bronx. You may have to build new streets, you may have to assign new building numbers. This is a very substantial process. Right now, it happens in five borough president offices, involving 8,000 paper maps that are administered across those five borough president offices.

It's not efficient, it's not effective, it's slower than it needs to be. The proposal here is to have one single digital map administered by the Department of City Planning. It's just a common sense way to modernize what is a critical development in the process of building new housing.

Brigid Bergin: Okay, now finally, the one that I could talk to you about for a whole other segment, moving local elections to presidential election years.

Richard Buery: [crosstalk] Happy to come back another time and do that.

Brigid Bergin: [laughs] Now, this move is a little tricky because it is really something the state controls. Does the city need to change its charter before the state can change the state constitution about moving those elections to presidential election years?

Richard Buery: Both things have to happen. We need a state constitutional amendment to permit New York City to have even year elections, but for that to have effect, New York City has to pass a law allowing even year elections. What this does is, it eliminates one of the barriers to even year elections. Hopefully, by doing so, it helps to build pressure on the state to permit it.

There's already good momentum happening at the state, so every reason to believe that it is absolutely possible, there's been great movement in the state, both around New York City and also other communities around the state, to allow even year elections. This, for us, is really about increasing voter turnout and driving our civic culture.

Brigid Bergin: On that turnout point, for people who aren't looking at the numbers the way you do, the way I do, what kind of difference are we talking about when we think of presidential elec--? [crosstalk]

Richard Buery: More than double. More than double. We're talking about more than doubling turnout. If you look at mayoral elections to presidential elections, what you see every year, if you look at election cycles, presidential elections have the highest turnout. Gubernatorial elections, which happen on the other two year cycle, have the second highest turnout. Then mayoral elections, fewer than 30% of registered voters have participated in our mayoral elections every year since 2009.

Just moving it to presidential election years should more than double turnout. We see that in New York. We see that in every other city around the country that just had a similar move. Clearly, even year elections and presidential elections just drive more people to the polls.

Brigid Bergin: Now, of course, there is a counterargument to that as well, which is-- those local races, which need attention, need coverage, need people like me, the WNYC newsroom, and newsrooms across the city to pay attention to, they could get lost in the coverage of those very important presidential elections, because we're not just talking about mayor, we're also talking about council members and borough presidents.

How concerned were you and other members of the commission, that making a switch like this might mean that people are trying to juggle a lot of different races in their head at one time?

Richard Buery: Yes, look, I think New Yorkers can walk and chew gum at the same time. I appreciate the concern, but what I would say is that those local issues are getting drowned out now. The proof of that is that no one's coming out to vote. In a city where fewer than 30% of the people, of registered voters, are participating, and the majority of them elect our representative, what that means is that tiny minorities of people are deciding who our leaders are.

They're deciding who our mayor is, who our comptroller is, who our public advocate is, who our city councils are. That's not robust engagement either. I think tying elections to presidential elections creates more opportunities for voters to get engaged. What we know, and we see that if you look at politics today, it's not like there's a bright line between federal, state and city politics. These things are all intertwined. They often engage similar issues and mutually reinforcing issues.

I think there's an opportunity to have more people be more engaged when they're paying attention. Look, I'm the first person who-- I recycle a lot of election flyers. So I appreciate the challenge. If I have to choose between the two challenges, I'd rather have an election where people are going to come out and therefore have an actual opportunity to learn and participate, than one where they're not going to vote anyway, and therefore, the challenge of educating them is a moot point, because they don't even know that an election's happening.

Brigid Bergin: Well, I think this is going to be the first of what will likely be multiple conversations about these charter revision questions ahead of November. I want to thank Richard Buery, chair of the Charter Revision Commission and CEO of the anti poverty group Robin Hood. Is this back to your day job now?

Richard Buery: Thankfully, yes, it is back to my day job. Look, I will say it really has been an honor. We heard over 800 people testify at 10 hearings across the city. Thousands more submitted written testimony. I learned so much. It's always amazing to see New Yorkers come out, who care about their city. I'm going to spend the next few months just talking about these things.

I wanted to make sure that people understand what these proposals are, so that when they go into the voting booth in November, they're well informed, and hopefully, they adopt these proposals, which I think can have a transformative impact in our economy and our politics.

Brigid Bergin: Thank you so much for your time. We appreciate it.

Richard Buery: Thank you so much.

 

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