A person votes early within the NYC mayoral major on June 15, 2025.
Picture by Dean Moses
New York Metropolis voters will doubtless determine on 5 poll measures in November that embrace fast-tracking reasonably priced housing and holding metropolis elections the identical 12 months as federal elections.
One of many poll measures would rewrite longstanding growth practices to take away limitations to reasonably priced housing and infrastructure building. One other would shift metropolis elections to even-numbered years, in keeping with federal elections, which see considerably larger turnout.
The proposals come from a report launched Tuesday by the Constitution Revision Fee, a brief 13-member physique empaneled by Mayor Eric Adams in December to evaluation the Metropolis Constitution.
The adjustments to housing and land use coverage notably goal Metropolis Council members’ use of an unofficial veto, often known as “member deference,” to manage developments of their districts, which the report discovered usually hinders housing building.
The Tuesday report is technically “interim” and the measures nonetheless should move a last vote of the fee on July 21 earlier than being submitted to town clerk. Nevertheless, members of the board have been assured that they had reached a consensus and the report file is mislabeled “final report,” probably indicating their certainty.
The primary poll measure would fast-track reasonably priced housing by expediting public evaluation for communities with restricted reasonably priced housing, whereas the second measure would simplify the evaluation course of for modest infrastructure tasks, often known as ULURP.
The fee additionally proposed creating a brand new “appeals board” to overrule Council selections on growth tasks with a majority vote, consisting of the mayor, the speaker of the Metropolis Council and the suitable borough president — changing the mayor’s unilateral veto energy.
Rachel Price, govt director of the New York Housing Convention, praised the suggestions in an announcement after the report was launched.
“The four land-use proposals put forward by the Commission — including fast-tracking public processes for affordable housing and streamlining the ULURP process — will create additional opportunities for residents of all income levels across our city at a time when more homes are urgently needed,” Price wrote. “By expediting the creation of new housing across the five boroughs, we will help bring the promise of the historic City of Yes plan we adopted last year to life.”
“We hope New Yorkers will be given the chance to vote on these recommendations in November to help make a more affordable and livable New York City a reality,” Price added.
In response to the report, the land-use measures tackling member deference are notably essential to handle rising affordability for the reason that final time a member’s unofficial veto was overruled was in 2009.
Affordability and growth has been a centerpoint of the mayoral race, with Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani and Adams, who’s looking for re-election as an impartial, making housing a core concern of their campaigns.
New York Metropolis’s housing emptiness charge is the bottom it has been in 50 years, indicating a serious citywide housing scarcity. Adams particularly tasked the fee with addressing that housing disaster.
The election 12 months poll measure — which the fee added after enter from public hearings — goals to extend turnout and reduce prices by matching metropolis elections with federal elections.
“Shitting elections to even-numbered years is perhaps the simplest and most effective way for New York City to significantly increase voter turnout,” the report reads. “A similar change has been implemented successfully in many cities across the country, which have seen immediate improvements in voter participation — including electorates that are more demographically representative of the public at large.”
Whereas the opposite 4 poll measures would solely must move metropolis voters, a change to the election 12 months would moreover require amending the state structure, which includes passing two successive legislative periods.
The fee additionally remains to be “considering” a poll measure that will institute open primaries in New York Metropolis, the place candidates from all events compete in a single major open to each registered voter, and the highest vote-getters advance to the final election. Over 1 million voters are usually not registered with a political social gathering and thus unable to vote in a major election underneath the present system, based on the report.
Metropolis Council members who assist member deference are more likely to actively oppose the poll measures, making their November passage unsure. These advocates argue that native management is essential for growth, however critics contend that it quantities to a private “fiefdom” for council members.
Metropolis Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, who ran an unsuccessful marketing campaign for mayor, has additionally pushed again in opposition to the notion that the Metropolis Council is answerable for the dearth of reasonably priced housing. She opposed the mayor’s constitution fee as a result of she argued it was solely created to cease a Council-led fee from November, which couldn’t submit poll measures if the mayor’s fee did, based on state regulation.
The Constitution Assessment Fee will maintain a public listening to on July 7 earlier than the ultimate public assembly on July 21, the place the members will vote on the language to look on November ballots.
