trying to deny voters their say in amending the – Latest News
“Unprecedented, undemocratic and unlawful”: So the government director of the metropolis Charter Revision Commission describes the last-minute plot by the City Council and shifty Brooklyn hack Frank Seddio to keep pro-housing measures off the November poll.
The scheme, apparently blocked as a result of phrase acquired out, turned on Seddio (the former Kings County Democratic boss) main the Board of Elections to invalidate the measures due to allegedly complicated language.
These constitution proposals would give mayors more authority over housing development by lowering the (utterly unofficial) veto energy that particular person councilmembers now train of rezoning and associated points in their districts.
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The council appoints BOE commissioners (who’re nominated by county Democratic and Republican occasion bosses), so it apparently thinks the board will do because it’s ordered.
Yet by precedent and law, the BOE is restricted to inserting constitution revision questions on the poll — what’s referred to as a “ministerial duty,” not a discretionary energy.
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And final month, the City Clerk — additionally a council appointee — licensed the measures (raising zero concern about language), clearing the means for the board to approve them by Thursday to allow them to go to the printers in time to get the ballots out to navy voters, as federal law requires.
Only with days to go did Seddio raise the “clarity” challenge, plainly with an eye to having the BOE take the proposals off the poll with no time for the choice to be reversed by, say, a courtroom problem.
In different phrases, the conspirators waited ’til the final minute to spring this shock, a lawless and cowardly bid to end-run round Mayor Eric Adams’ legal authority to current constitution amendments straight to voters.
How sleazy is Seddio? Well, in the previous 12 months, he has filed over 500 “no-fault” auto-insurance lawsuits on behalf of a Brooklyn-based doctor with a historical past of insurance-fraud allegations.
Publicity could have already stopped this scheme, however we will’t be sure till the board votes: If the soiled trick goes forward, the commissioners who performed alongside should face some reckoning for betraying their oaths and duties.
