The City Council has scheduled a hearing for Monday to discuss how to reform itself. Pardon our skepticism, but fat chance.
Among the issues up for consideration by the Rules Committee is the abolition of the speaker’s power to buy the loyalty of members through financial rewards and punishments.
Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito can dip into a big pot of money to get her way: She has a $400 million slush fund from which she can disperse allotments to her allies’ favorite causes. These “member items” support politically popular non-for-profit activities.
Councilman Jones gets $10,000 for a baseball league; Councilwoman Smith gets $20,000 for an after-school program. Traditionally, the speaker has awarded the money based on the good behavior of a member, not on the needs of a district. And far too much of the cash has wound up wasted or stolen.
In her inaugural year as speaker, Mark-Viverito has called for preserving member items while distributing them either by an even-steven split among the 51 members or by an objective measure of district needs.
Better, but not good enough. The members would still have too much discretion over selecting where the money ends up, thus ensuring that politics, not taxpayer value, would rule while also perpetuating the risk of thievery that has plagued the spending.
The solution: All member items should be competitively bid through city agencies.
Mayor de Blasio has called for abolishing member items, seeming to put him at odds with Mark-Viverito. That will become clear only if he matches his rhetoric with action.
If de Blasio is serious, he has the unilateral power to simply end member items.
His weapon is the city’s little known Procurement Policy Board. Written into Chapter 13 of the City Charter, the Board sets rules for “all goods, services, and construction to be paid for out of the City treasury,” which in almost all cases must be by sealed, competitive bidding.
Exceptions to sealed competitive bids are few. One was written specifically to allow the Council and borough presidents to have slush funds. Repeal it and slush funds vanish. Just like that.
The Procurement Policy Board has five members, three picked by the mayor and two by the controller. The mayor also names the chair. The slot is presently filled by Jennifer Jones Austin, who was appointed by Mayor Bloomberg but helped lead de Blasio’s transition.
De Blasio should not be shy in any way about intervening in Council business. After all, he elbowed his way into pushing the Council to elect Mark-Viverito as speaker. He picked the body’s leader, and now he can rewrite its rules.
