By Alex Maroño Porto

New Yorkers, including Upper West Siders, face a crowded ballot this election season, starting with the presidential and congressional races, through state legislative seats, and on down to six choices they’re asked to make on little-noticed ballot measures (you might not notice them on your ballot, either – turn it over to find them on the back side).

Five of those measures are only on New York City ballots, where voters will be asked to weigh in on some procedural changes in city governance, such as giving the mayor a 30-day notice before the City Council votes on certain laws.

The other measure, which will be on ballots throughout the state, is a proposed Equal Rights Amendment, which would amend the state constitution to expand prohibited areas of discrimination. 

Election day is November 5, but early voting in New York starts October 26. In anticipation, the Rag offers this primer to explain what’s at stake in each of the six measures and where some local political leaders stand on them. 

Equal Rights Amendment

Currently, the New York state constitution prohibits discrimination based on “race, color, creed or religion.” The proposition on this year’s ballot would expand that to prohibit discrimination based on “ethnicity, national origin, age, disability or sex, including sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy, pregnancy outcomes, and reproductive healthcare and autonomy.” A “yes” vote favors adding that language to the constitution; “no” would keep existing language as is.

Advocates of this Equal Rights Amendment argue that the additional language is needed to protect abortion rights in New York. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling that struck down Roe v. Wade, other states began enacting strict abortion bans, sparking fears of a similar effort in New York. 

In a commentary supporting the proposed amendment, the New York Civil Liberties Union notes that pro-choice leaders have only been a majority in both houses of the state legislature for eight of the past 58 years. “All New Yorkers deserve the freedom to control their own lives and futures and healthcare decisions, including our right to abortion,” Katharine Bodde, the group’s interim co-director of policy, said in a phone interview with the Rag.

Bodde said adoption of Proposal 1 would also ensure state constitutional protection of the rights of transgender people, a population that has been consistently targeted by conservatives, including in New York. In June, the Nassau County Legislature voted in favor of banning trans girls and women from using county sport facilities unless they compete on teams that match their assigned sex at birth. The NYCLU is challenging that decision in court. 

The Equal Rights Amendment has the support of Upper West Side politicians, including state Assemblymember Linda Rosenthal, state Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal, and City Councilmembers Shaun Abreu and Gale Brewer, all Democrats

In a phone interview with the Rag, Rosenthal, described herself as a “hugely strong supporter of voting yes.” 

“With this huge effort by politicians, many [of them] men, who want to take away our rights, we need to make sure that our right to abortion, birth control and IVF are solid in New York state,” said Rosenthal. 

On the other side is the New York Republican State Committee, which argues that abortion rights are not under threat in the state and that the proposed ERA would undermine parental rights and “create new constitutional protections for new categories of people,” including giving children assigned as boys at birth the right to compete in girls’ sports. Other conservative voices, including the editorial boards of The Wall Street Journal and The New York Post, have opposed the measure. 

Rosenthal called their arguments “distractions” from the goal of protecting reproductive rights. In a phone interview with the Rag, Brewer agreed, saying that “undermining girls’ sports is not part of this at all.” Opponents, she said, “are going to come up with the two topics that are of concern to the conservative movement: They don’t like abortion and they don’t believe in trans rights.”

Public opinion seems to be in favor of the ERA. According to a Gothamist article published in March, 71% of New York voters supported the amendment, including 82% of Democrats, 70% of unaffiliated voters and 51% of Republicans.

However, other surveys show that most voters are unaware of the ERA and other ballot proposals. In a Data for Progress report published last month, 65% of voters said they haven’t heard, read or seen any information about the ballot measures; only 5% said they had heard “a lot” about them. The lack of public awareness prompted Governor Kathy Hochul to say the state Democratic Party would invest over $1 million in promoting the proposal.

Good governance, or a power grab?

Besides the statewide ERA, New York City voters will weigh in on five proposals to revise the city’s charter, the legal document governing the city. These five ballot proposals have sparked a dispute between the City Council and the administration of Mayor Eric Adams.

In June, the council approved a measure that would have expanded its authority to oversee mayoral appointments. Since the change would alter the city’s governance charter, the council-approved language would have needed voter approval in the upcoming election.

But the council’s proposal isn’t on the ballot. Instead, voters will decide on five proposals from the 13-member Charter Revision Commission, a temporary panel appointed by the mayor to review the city’s charter. The City Council says Adams used the commission to rush out proposals that would block the council’s charter amendment to increase oversight of his appointments; under city policy, measures presented by the mayor’s commission take precedence over those of the City Council. 

When the commission presented its proposals in July, City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams depicted them as a “dangerous attempt to shift power away from the people represented by the City Council to one single individual.” Forty local, state, and federal representatives have spoken against the mayor’s proposals, which some describe as a power grab by a defiant mayor facing federal indictment on bribery and fraud charges.

An email response to the Rag from Councilmember Shaun Abreu was scathing; Abreu said “ballot proposals 2-6 only exist because a failing mayor is attempting to evade accountability.” Even Jerry Nadler, the longtime Democratic representative of the UWS in Congress, felt compelled to weigh in on the city dispute, telling Gothamist recently that some of the mayor’s proposals “are just ridiculous.” Nadler characterized them as “a power grab by the mayor and an unhealthful situation for the city.” 

The Rag contacted the Mayor’s Press Office for comment about the proposals and the criticisms but has received no response. 

The Other Five Proposals

Proposal 2 would broaden the Department of Sanitation’s cleaning responsibilities to include city properties such as the median areas in streets and highways. It would also give the department enforcement authority over street vendors, granting them authority to ticket vendors in city parks, for instance, where the Parks Department already holds that authority.

Proposal 3 would require a fiscal impact statement —an estimate of the cost of any proposed city legislation— before the council holds a public hearing on the proposal. Currently, the council must present such statements “only when proposed legislation is on the eve of adoption,” as the commission report reads. That means public discussion of a proposal can take place before its estimated costs are known. The commission’s proposal would change that, by requiring cost estimates from both the council and the Mayor’s Office of Management and Budget. Critics argue that the proposal, particularly the requirement for early cost estimates from the mayor’s office, would delay the legislative process or even give the mayor a back-door way to block a proposal.

Proposal 4 would also increase the mayor’s say over the lawmaking process, requiring the City Council to notify him 30 days before a council vote on any public safety measure affecting the Department of Correction, the Police Department, or the Fire Department. If approved, this would give the mayor or other city offices time to hold their own public hearings about a measure before the council votes. Reinvent Albany, a government accountability nonprofit, said in a press release that this proposal is “arbitrary and illogical” and creates a “two-track process for policy bills in which public safety legislation is subject to greater review.” The Charter Review Commission argues public safety laws are of “central importance” and therefore require added scrutiny.

Proposal 5 would require more information on the city’s facilities and public infrastructure, including condition assessments and estimates of useful life, for the city’s Statement of Needs, an annual document that “provides information on the state of repair of city facilities.” It also calls for more data to be included in the city’s Ten-Year Capital Strategy. In July, City Comptroller Brad Lander wrote that the proposal would not “improve the City’s capital planning process in any way,” an analysis that was also supported by the nonprofit New Yorkers Defending Democracy.

Finally, the sixth proposal is something of a grab bag. It would formalize a new city position: Chief Business Diversity Officer, a job now held by Michael J. Garner. It would give employees of the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment power to issue movie permits (currently permits are only issued by the Department of Small Business Services). It would also combine two review boards, the Archival Review Board and the Archives, Reference and Research Advisory Board, into a single one, “achieving efficiencies and saving City resources,” said the review commission. 

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