Mayor Adams’ team refuses to answer questions from the New York City Council at hearing on eligibility for nomination

The New York City Council took a step toward stripping the mayor of control over executive appointing power during a committee hearing Wednesday, leading to a tense exchange between the mayor’s representative and council members.

It was the latest episode in an ongoing power struggle between Mayor Eric Adams and City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, who have clashed over lawmakers’ interactions with city agencies, public statements by NYPD leaders and other policy issues including housing and criminal justice. The ruling also comes as the Mayor and Council negotiate the next city budget, which Mayor Adams has proposed for $112 billion and councilors are currently reviewing.

Last week, Speaker Adams introduced legislation that would give the Council more influence over the Mayor’s appointments of 21 key commissioners by expanding the Legislature’s “advisory and consent” powers. But the mayor separately established a so-called Charter Revision Commission, which could have stalled the effort by imposing its own ballot initiative before voters.

In opening remarks at Wednesday’s hearing, Speaker Adams stated that her bill has nothing to do with the current mayor and that it relies on the Council’s authority to review candidates for various agency and board positions.

“Advisory and consent ensures that commissioners of city agencies who control and determine the critical services that impact and determine the well-being of New Yorkers are held to the highest standards,” she said.

“I want to be clear that this bill is certainly not intended to limit the power of any particular mayor, but instead focuses on improving governance as a city. We will benefit from this change and will continue to work to increase transparency and good governance regardless of who is in office,” she added.

The legislation would allow the council to formally consider new appointments for about a quarter of the heads of city agencies, including commissioners for emergency management, buildings, health and parks. Earlier this week, Mayor Adams said he liked the status quo “because people should know who they’re blaming if the streets aren’t clean, if the commissioners don’t do their jobs.”

After council members criticized his office for not sending a representative to testify on the matter on Wednesday, Tiffany Raspberry, a senior adviser to the mayor and his director of intergovernmental affairs, appeared in the council chambers and was sworn in. She stated that the administration opposes the legislation and that it would be “undoubtedly bad for New Yorkers.”

“Any uncertainty or delay in the appointment of agency leadership creates a real possibility of harm resulting from delayed service delivery,” Raspberry said. She added that “at this time, we regularly experience significant delays in scheduling confirmation hearings for the relatively small number of candidates who are even expected to be considered by the City Council.”

Raspberry also argued that the bill could politicize executive appointments and scare off potential talent. “We have a clear example of how this process can be corrupted by politics when we look at our nation’s capital and see a process weaponized and politicized to score cheap political points, to the detriment of the American people,” she said.

However, after submitting a prepared statement, Raspberry declined to answer questions from council members, saying the mayor’s office had not been formally invited and therefore she was not prepared. Committee Chairman Lincoln Restler rejected that claim, prompting a heated exchange between the two before Raspberry left the chamber.

“At no point did we receive – in the traditional way in which the administration is invited to testify at hearings – a formal invitation to testify,” she said.

Restler responded that the administration “is not required to receive a formal invitation to testify” and noted that he had corresponded with the mayor’s legislative director about the hearing. In this regard, Raspberry stated that the principal told her that the correspondence was “in jest.”

“Now that we understand that you didn’t take it that way, we will certainly make sure that anything that is shared in a joking and collegial way is clarified,” she said.

When Restler began to object to Raspberry’s comments, she shut him up, thanked the council and wished lawmakers a nice day before leaving.

“To me, this illustrates the contempt for this Council that we have all witnessed with great clarity,” Speaker Adams said, reacting to Raspberry’s exit.

Later Wednesday, at a dueling meeting on the Upper East Side, Mayor Adams’ new candidates for the Charter Revision Commission praised him for uniting them in the spirit of giving “a voice to the voiceless.”

Former state senator Diane Savino, a senior legislative adviser to the mayor, was named the commission’s executive director. The meeting was chaired by Chairman Carlo Scissura, president of the New York Building Congress. The commission’s vice chair is New York State Conference of the NAACP president Hazel Dukes, a key Adams ally and a longtime New York political force.

Michelle Bocanegra contributed reporting.