Ending the Sanctuary City lies

 

Migrant hotel shelter by Penn Station-Photo by JQ LLC

NY Post

 New York City voters in November could have the power to repeal “misguided and dangerous” “sanctuary city” laws that severely limit the NYPD’s ability to cooperate with the feds on immigration matters and are a clear “threat to public safety.”

Joe Borelli (R-Staten Island), Robert Holden (D-Queens) and six other members of the City Council’s “Common Sense Caucus” fired off a letter this week to a newly-appointed Charter Revision Commission, asking it to put a referendum question on the ballot to determine whether to roll back the “sanctuary” laws that help criminals avoid deportation.

“We are writing to urge the Charter Revision Commission to advance a ballot initiative asking voters if New York City should repeal recent so-called ‘sanctuary city’ laws that prohibit members of law enforcement and other agencies from cooperating with federal authorities to help detain or remove unauthorized, non-citizens who have committed crimes in our city,” says the letter dated Tuesday.

“We feel these laws, as currently construed, are not only misguided and dangerous, they have strayed far from their original purpose of fostering public safety. Ultimately it should be put to voters to decide who is right.”

Earlier this month, Holden and Borelli drafted legislation to repeal the sanctuary laws — but they realize it’s a pipe dream to think the Council’s left-wing majority would pass it.

So they’re hoping for better luck with the commission, which was appointed by Mayor Eric Adams, a retired NYPD cop and moderate Dem who has said the current rules are too soft on crime.

Some Common Sense Caucus members expect to pitch the referendum plan in person during a future public hearing hosted by the commission. Both Holden and Borelli said they believe voters would back their proposed ballot initiative.

Meet the new community boards! (Same as the old community boards!)

The NYC Charter Revision Commission has issued some recommendations that should be on the ballot this November. If adopted, they will impose the following on community boards:

Term limits

 Provide a limit of four consecutive full two-year terms for community board members, provided, however, that for purposes of staggered implementation, certain initial appointments may include a limit of five two-year terms;

 Establish that the four-term limit would become effective for appointments or reappointments beginning on or after April 1, 2019; and

 Establish that community board members who had previously served for four consecutive terms are not barred from re-appointment after one full term out of office

So in summary, the dinosaurs that have been on the board for 30 years will likely get another 10. There's also a whole lot of gobbledygook about a Civic Engagement Commission which just sounds like an unnecessary government expansion.

All hail democracy!

Charter changes up for discussion

This is to let you know that the city's Charter Review Commission is having a series of meetings in the boroughs next week, Queens' turn is Thursday evening, July 26 at Queens Borough Hall. The Charter is basically New York City's "constitution" that lays out the broad parameters for administration and operation of the city. Please see the attached flyer for additional information. - Jessica Douglas, Queens Borough Director of the Mayor's Community Affairs office

Community Boards:
1) Whether to place term limits for Community Board members as a method to encourage diversity.
2) How to Standardize and enhance the existing appointment process
3) Provide additional support in resources; particularly as it relates to urban planning
4) Things to adopt methods to ensure Community Boards are representative of the community they serve.

Campaign Finance:
1) The Reduction of spending limits (no amounts provided).
2) Increasing the public match ( no ratio provided).
3) Look into the timeline for implementation given that candidates are raising money under the current system.

Elections
1) Language accessibility ( providing interpreters, translation of ballots and materials, and community advisory groups)
2) Instant Runoff Voting - Look to implement within local primary elections and for citywide elections (where runoffs is provided) or to extend to all offices (Borough Presidents and City Council offices)

A Citywide Civic Engagement Program
1) how such an entity or office could support, supplement, or coordinate the City’s existing efforts in this area, including the recently announced DemocracyNYC initiative.
2) how such an entity or office could facilitate the expansion of participatory budgeting while working within legal and operational constraints
3) where such an entity or office should be situated;.
4) whether such an entity or office should be independent and non-partisan.

Redistricting for City Council Seats
1) In light of the lack of DOJ oversight, solicit testimony from experts and affected communities about the effects of districting process on racial and ethnic minorities and their voting power.
2) Look at altering the Districting Commission to promote independence, including the appointment process.
3) Studying whether there are ways to counteract effects of an undercount in the next census.

NEW YORK CIVIC TO SEEK PUBLIC REFERENDUM TO MAKE TERM LIMITS LAW EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY

Good Government Group to Join Councilman Ulrich, Charter Commissioner Cassino and a Coalition of Former City and State Officials to Close “Grandfather” Loophole That Exempts 34 Elected Officials from Two-Term Law

New York Civic, a nonpartisan good government group founded by former NYC Parks Commissioner Henry J. Stern, will announce Monday morning on the steps of City Hall that it will pursue a public referendum to eliminate the controversial “grandfather” clause of the recently passed term limits ballot question, which delays the effective date of the law until 2021 and exempts 34 city incumbents from being restricted to two consecutive terms.

Joining New York Civic in undertaking this landmark public referendum will be a grassroots coalition of community leaders and activists, including Councilman Eric Ulrich of Queens, who is one of the 34 elected officials the term limits loophole would benefit; Anthony Perez Cassino, one of the Charter Revision Commissioners who objected to the inclusion of the grandfathering clause in this year’s referendum; former New York State Lieutenant Governor Betsy McCaughey; Director of the Hugh L. Carey Center for Government Reform, former State Senator Seymour P. Lachman; and Michael Meyers, President and Executive Director of the New York Civil Rights Coalition. Former Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro, who will serve as legal counsel in pursing the public referendum, will also be present at the 10 a.m. press conference on November 22nd.

“This referendum is not about term limits, it’s about respecting the will of the people,” explained Henry J. Stern, the founder and president of New York Civic. “It was bad enough that the City Council ignored the voters in 2008 to extend term limits for itself. It is outrageous that, after 74 percent of New Yorkers voted for two terms for the third time in a generation, 34 incumbents can still serve a third term because of a loophole snuck into the last referendum to benefit a handful of officeholders.”

“Although I supported the recently passed term limits referendum, I was very disappointed that the Charter Review Commission created this loophole for me and my colleagues,” stated Councilman Ulrich. “That’s why I am acting, contrary to my self-interest, to restore the trust of the voters who clearly intended for there to be two terms. This referendum will allow us to make things right again.”

"This campaign is about respecting the will of the people and ensuring that their votes count on term limits and their decision stands unless they vote for a change,” said former Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro, who was the counsel for the plaintiffs in the lawsuit opposing the term limits extension in 2008. “Our local democracy still hasn't recovered from the harm done by Mayor Bloomberg and the City Council two years ago to the true two-term limit that the voters twice imposed by referendum and that they have still not had the opportunity to restore. This campaign will finally afford them that opportunity."

Anthony Perez Cassino, one of three members of the Charter Commission to sign a minority report objecting to the grandfather clause, agrees with Councilman Ulrich’s concerns. “The Charter Revision Commission did the right thing by returning term limits to the ballot for the voters to decide, but we didn’t go as far as we needed to regain the trust of the public. Getting rid of the grandfather loophole is the only way to heal the wounds of 2008.”

Last word on term limits hasn't been written yet

From City Hall:

After last Tuesday’s big win for term limits proponents with an overwhelming 2-1 margin in favor of reinstating a two-term limit on elected officials, the issue, which has been eating at many New Yorkers since Michael Bloomberg’s 2008 decision to overturn the law, would appear to finally be settled.

But Anthony Perez Cassino, a lawyer from the Bronx and member of this summer’s Charter Revision Commission, says he is not done yet. Cassino is already putting together the pieces for a new term limits battle next year.

In August, after a protracted and confusing procedural fight, the Charter Revision Commission decided by a small majority to allow all officials who were elected before Nov. 2, 2010, to serve a full three terms.

That means the two-term limit approved by voters on Tuesday would not fully kick into effect until 2021.

During the commission hearings, Cassino argued that this would be an affront to the voters who clearly had twice stated that they wanted all officials to have two terms. And even before the term-limits vote on Tuesday, Cassino was laying the groundwork for a citizen-led ballot question in 2011 that would give voters the chance to also roll back the term of all current elected officials from three to two.

“I’m 100 percent on board with the idea,” Cassino said. “We didn’t go far enough to heal the wounds of 2008.”

The change would affect all City Council members elected in 2005 and 2009 (plus Council Member David Greenfield, elected in 2010), as well as Public Advocate Bill De Blasio, Comptroller John Liu, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer and Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr.

Cassino has already begun to reach out to current and former elected officials who might support the effort, potential donors who could pay for a signature gathering effort, and a prominent election lawyer to fight legal challenges.

How should you vote on the charter issues?

Someone asked that we talk about the Charter Revision ballot measures.

Queens Civic Congress advises you to vote yes on question 1 and no on question 2.

But others disagree.

Here's some info on the ballot measure that deals with transparency in campaign finance reporting.

And here's another about the ballot measure meant to bring about environmental justice.

These are on the reverse side of the form, so make sure you fill out both sides before you feed it into the machine. Here are all the questions.

From the "No shit, Sherlock" file...

From the NY Times:

Two years after Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg extended the limit on New York City’s elected officials from two terms to three, paving the way for his re-election, nearly three-fourths of city voters favor reversing his move, according to a New York Times poll.

The remarkably unified public support is a rebuke for Mr. Bloomberg, who overturned the results of two voter referendums when he asked the City Council to rewrite the term limits law in 2008.

Now voters appear poised to undo Mr. Bloomberg’s actions at the ballot box this November, when they will be asked to select limits of two or three terms.

If anything, the battle over Mr. Bloomberg’s decision to revise the rule has intensified public support for the original measure, which restricted most officials to eight consecutive years in office: in 1993, it was adopted with 59 percent of the vote. Today, 73 percent want it restored, the survey found.

Interviews with respondents to the poll show that frustration with the mayor’s aggressive tactics two years ago has influenced their views on the issue.

In a city where consensus on anything can be elusive, the poll revealed broad, bipartisan support for returning to the two-term cap: 74 percent of Democrats, 73 percent of Republicans and 72 percent of independents back it.

Charter commission goes out with a whimper

From The Real Deal:

Six months after being formed, the city Charter Revision Commission issued its final report yesterday, declining to make any recommendations on the three thorniest land use issues before it.

The 15-member panel appointed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg heard from deeply divided interest groups such as the Real Estate Board of New York and Pratt Center for Community Development, but said certain issues were too complex to tackle in the brief period allotted to them.

The commission acknowledged the deep divide on those issues, such as a proposal from community advocates and elected officials to increase the influence of community boards and borough board presidents within the ULURP process. The commission declined to make any changes.

"The commission has considered both the criticisms and the responses to [increasing the role of community boards and borough presidents] and recommends for the future both further empirical study and analysis of how such changes would affect development in the city," the report says.

The panel declined to suggest changes to the city Department of City Planning uniform land use review procedure, known as ULURP. In addition, it decided not to propose regulating controversial community benefits agreements or to revise a locally-driven land-use mechanism called 197-a.

However, the panel in its 219-page report did suggest requiring disclosure of third-party campaign spending from independent groups such as real estate interests, and publishing on city maps the locations of private as well as public waste-treatment facilities, the panel's report issued yesterday says.

The commission, appointed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg in March, was directed to review the city's charter and after holding a series of hearings, to make recommendations on how to revise it. Its major recommendations yesterday were a term-limit proposal, the disclosure of independent campaign expenditures and reducing signature requirements for candidates' petitions.

The report contained no surprises, coming weeks after a draft was released, but the findings do memorialize the arguments of the competing interests for any future attempts to change the charter, which is the city's constitution.

Like deja vu all over again

From CBS 2:

The wording of the questions has yet to be finalized, but the term-limits measure likely would ask voters whether New York City’s charter should impose a limit of two consecutive full terms for the mayor, comptroller, public advocate, borough presidents and City Council members.

The charter commission also approved including a measure to let voters decide whether City Council members should be prohibited from changing the term-limits law to benefit incumbents voting on the proposal.

The commission also voted to let the voters say whether a two-term limit should take effect later for some officials, depending on which term they are serving.

Passing that measure would allow officials in their first and second terms to have the option of a third, and the two-term limit would apply to those elected on or after the 2013 November election.

In regards to petition signatures for candidates, the commission did not set a number Wednesday night but approved putting before voters a question that asks whether the city should reduce the signature requirements by about 50 percent.

Candidates for citywide office now must obtain 7,500 signatures to get on the ballot, but because of the requirements needed for each signature to be valid, they typically obtain about three times the requirement to guard against potential legal challenges.

The Village Voice put it the best:

Remember that time our plutocrat mayor basically gamed the system by having the city council he put into place give him the go-ahead to run for a third term? Well, now, voters -- and not the city council -- will have a say on whether or not New York's political power-mongers will get to keep their office for a third term.

Yes, New Yorkers now have the right to vote on an issue they never thought would be out of their hands in the first place, and it comes a year after Bloomberg decidedly kept this decision out of the hands out New York's voters regarding one of the most powerful positions in the state, and as far as city officials go, the country. The best part, of course, is that this vote was Bloomberg's doing. To, you know, make up for it. If this counts for "political capital," we are a city of nihilists.

The New York Post points out that voters have upheld term limits twice and are in favor of them by a 70 to 22 percent margin according to a Quinnipiac poll put out in March. So if you see this term limits fall in November, well, be surprised, especially because there's not one city politician savvy enough to figure out how to get around them. Except, of course, for Bloomberg. Which he already did.

QCC's position on revising the city charter

Lost in the Ozone has posted the Queens Civic Congress' Statement of Principles for Charter Revision. You can read through the lengthy document if you choose to. I don't think it goes far enough, however, with respect to strengthening the roles of Borough President and Community Boards in the ULURP process or changing the way community board members are appointed. And they're for expanding the BSA? It needs to be eliminated, IMHO.

Charter Commission pulling a fast one

From City Pragmatist:

They didn’t say it in so many words, but the 2010 Charter Revision Commission members are heading in the direction of giving the mayor even more power than Mike Bloomberg has today — at the expense of the City Council and government transparency.

How: by creating a new “reporting commission,” putatively to get rid of unnecessary advisory bodies and trim the number of reports the mayor has to submit each year. Some of those reports are not used. But the charter revision commission would give the new reporting commission the power to review (and reject?) any future City Council decision to “extend or enhance” a report the mayor already provides.

Because a majority of the members of the reporting commission would be appointed by — you guessed it — the mayor, he would be able to frustrate the Council if it wants to ask for additional information from his agencies: a loss for the Council and transparency, and a gain for him.

After almost four months of working together to shape the city charter’s future, the 15 charter commission members undoubtedly have developed a strong sense of team identity and mutual respect. They also probably understand that the most important external critic of their performance is the mayor who appointed them — and whose remaining incumbency and personal wealth could give him the power to shape their professional futures.

Two-timers may not become three-timers

From Gotham Gazette:

When City Council members Sara Gonzalez, Darlene Mealy and Jimmy Vacca voted to extend term limits nearly two years ago, they may not have expected to miss out on the opportunity to serve 12 years at City Hall.

But as the city Charter Revision Commission mulls what type of term limit proposal to put on the ballot this November, members who joined the council after 2002 could end up stripped of their shot at three full terms.

The commission has not decided what type of term limit proposal it will send to voters this fall, let alone whether it will apply to the current council. At a meeting in Lower Manhattan Monday, several members of the 15-member commission voiced support for a return to the two-term limit instead of the current three.

Should voters approve it, the question becomes whether 32 sitting council members will be sent packing after a potential term two. For 13 of them, that means their current term could be their last.

Charter Revision Commission has recommendations

From 1010WINS:

The commission appointed by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg to review the city's constitution and put possible changes on the ballot this year is considering the option of rolling back term limits to two terms.

The panel released a report Friday outlining ideas it wants to examine in the next several weeks. The process includes a series of hearings to gather comment from the public before deciding by early September what issues to put before voters in November.

Besides term limits changes, the report recommends examining the idea of instant runoff voting in New York City primaries. The process, which is done in several other major cities including San Francisco and Minneapolis, lets voters rank their preference of candidates, eliminating the need for costly runoffs.

The panel did not take a position on the idea of nonpartisan elections, which Bloomberg supports and had hoped to get on the ballot. The commission studied the idea but did not recommend putting the question before voters this year.

Term limits is the chief issue that voters expect to be on the ballot this year, the commission said.

Among the possible changes the panel is examining is to roll back the three terms to the two-term limit the city had previously. Another option would be to give citywide officials -- like the mayor, comptroller and public advocate -- two terms while letting City Council members have three.

The panel's report also poses the idea of an amendment that would prohibit the City Council from changing the term-limits law to benefit incumbents voting on the proposal. It was a popular sentiment at the public hearings held by the commission this spring.

"This has already been twice determined by the people's vote," Barbara Glassman, a Queens resident, said at a hearing in April. "The charter should firmly prohibit the overturning of legitimate election results by a governing body or person."

Are non-partisan elections in our future?

From the NY Times:

In a reversal, a prominent government watchdog said Wednesday that it now supported eliminating the role of parties in city elections, adding momentum to an effort to bring the issue before voters in November.

The group, Citizens Union, had opposed the idea of nonpartisan elections seven years ago, when Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg campaigned for it. His effort was handed a decisive defeat by voters.

But in a report released on Wednesday, the group said that turnout had grown so low and elections so preordained that parties should lose their domineering power.

“We want to reduce the gamesmanship,” said John P. Avlon, who led a task force that studied the City Charter for six months. “It’s a remedy to our current problems. Its time has come.”

Under the proposal, primaries would be open to all voters no matter their party registration. The top two candidates, regardless of party affiliation, would face off in the general election. Similar systems are currently used in other cities, including Boston, Dallas, Detroit and Los Angeles.

To move forward, the proposal must gain the backing of the city’s Charter Revision Commission, which is charged with examining the governing structure of New York. The commission, appointed by Mr. Bloomberg, is expected to make preliminary recommendations in July, followed by a round of public hearings.

It will most likely issue a final report by early September, and can place recommended changes on the ballot in November.

The Daily News thinks this is a bad idea.

Burden says "hands off" ULURP process

From the NY Observer:

Looks like the Bloomberg administration, currently updating the city charter, may leave its land-use approval process untouched.

Amanda Burden, chairwoman of the City Planning Commission and the administration's empress of all things zoning, said last night that she does not want to see the seven-month review process changed.

Speaking on a panel on the land use policies of Mayor John Lindsay, Ms. Burden was asked about her thoughts on the Charter Revision Commission.

"Some people think that ULURP takes way too long; half the people think it's way too short, and that means it's probably just about right," she said. "I think we definitely should make sure we don't mess with things that aren't broken."

While many good ideas will come out of the commission, she added, "changing the ULURP process doesn't seem to be one that really makes sense."

The strong statement suggests that the commission, which is controlled by mayoral appointees, will indeed leave the rezoning process alone. Developers have long pushed for a shorter process, and community boards have worried that their voices would be marginalized by any change.

Meanwhile, Hunter College professor Tom Angiotti holds a different view:

Speaking at a meeting of the City Charter Revision Commission Thursday evening, Mr. Angotti was the only one of a five-person panel of land use experts to take serious issue with the way the current rezoning process--known as the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure--now operates.

The problem, he said, is not what happens during ULURP but rather what happens before a rezoning application is certified--before ULURP, which over the course of seven months determines how a piece of land can be used, officially begins.

"What happens in the pre-ULURP process is that there are agreements made between public officials and communities that occur outside the sunshine of the public process, many of them behind closed doors," he said. "They are informal arrangements, informal meetings, and quite logically they happen before the ULURP process because no applicant wants to go through a seven-month process with all the time and effort that it involves and find that in the end their application is going to be turned down because they didn't anticipate the opposition of certain groups."

He said that because important decisions are made before ULURP even begins, community boards are left with the queasy feeling that their participation in the process is only for show.

"This leads to frustration, cynicism, division and anger within communities because they perceive that what's presented is a fait accompli," said Mr. Angotti, who has done consulting work for groups opposed to city-led redevelopment projects. "They feel that the time and resources that they invest in ULURP's process are wasted, and they're constantly reminded that the community board's vote is only advisory."

Borough Presidents' power unused

From the Daily News:

The city's five BPs -- borough presidents -- argue what they need is MORE power, not banishment, as many have suggested.

So I looked at the one little-known power they have: The ability to introduce laws.

According to their respective offices, it has been used about a half dozen times in the last decade.

Queens Borough President Helen Marshall has done it twice in nine years. Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer has done it twice in five years. Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr. has done in once (the living wage bill) in two years.

Staten Island Borough President James Molinaro has never done it in nine years. And Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz has done "it once in the past year, and on one or two occasions earlier" during his nine-year tenure.

None of their laws have passed so far.

Independent thought?

From City Pragmatist:

The strongest push to hobble NYC’s community boards by forcing them to hire dedicated planners and revert to a narrower “planning board” role (an idea we strongly oppose) came not from Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, but from the former chairman of Manhattan Community Board 2, Brad Hoylman, who was one of five invited “experts” who spoke at the Charter Revision Commission’s June 10 session on Government Structure in Staten Island. Why the commission chose Hoylman as a featured guest became evident upon examination of his credentials.

Hoylman’s official Charter Revision Commission bio shows him only as “a senior executive and general counsel at a New York City nonprofit organization.” But a Web search reveals that the nonprofit he works for is the Partnership for New York City, the pre-eminent policy and public relations arm of New York’s big business and real estate development community and its principal advocate for a strong-mayor, weak-community form of government.

Hoylman’s co-panelists also have credentials that raise serious issues about their ability to take a fresh look at City Hall’s structure: Eric Lane, who with F.A.O. Schwarz, Jr., shaped NYC’s current strong-mayor government; Gerald Benjamin, who helped Lane to do this; Doug Muzzio, a CUNY Baruch College political affairs professor who develops and delivers “cultural diversity training programs for the New York City Police Department;” and Marc V. Shaw, a member of the city and state permanent governments since 1981 who currently works for commission chair and CUNY chancellor Matthew Goldstein as Interim Senior Vice Chancellor for Budget, Finance and Financial Policy.

Given Lane’s and Benjamin’s charter revision commission history, and Hoylman’s, Muzzio’s, and Shaw’s current employment, it’s evident that the commission did not cast its net very far looking for dissenting views.

Voting on term limits....again

From the NY Times:

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg will not be on the ballot in 2010, but the issue that many New Yorkers lambasted him over in the 2009 election very likely will be: term limits.

“We need as a commission to be heard this November,” Matthew Goldstein, the chairman of the New York City Charter Revision Commission, said on Monday night, during a hearing at Brooklyn Borough Hall.

Asked afterward to elaborate, Mr. Goldstein, who is the chancellor of the City University of New York, said, “I haven’t heard any commissioner opine that we ought to pass in November about term limits.”

The statement was hardly a surprise. After all, when Mr. Bloomberg decided in the fall of 2008 to upend the city’s term limits law (which had been approved twice by voters) to give him and other city officials a chance at a third term, he promised that a charter commission would revisit the issue. And when Mr. Bloomberg appointed the 15-member panel in March, Mr. Goldstein said that term limits would be one of many issues on the table.

Still, Mr. Goldstein’s comments represented the most definitive statement yet that term limits would be on the ballot this year — as opposed to next year or even in 2012, as some people have suggested. Mr. Goldstein also indicated that the commission was far from a consensus about what the term limits ballot question would be:

For example, should voters be asked to return to the old system of limiting city officials to two terms? Should voters be asked to make three four-year terms the standard? Should voters be asked to consider a multi-tiered system of term limits, like two terms for the mayor, and three for the City Council members and other officials? Or should any plebiscites be legally protected, so that future City Councils that wanted to emulate the actions of the “Bloomberg 29″ (as the Council members who voted to extend term limits in 2008 were derided by critics) would be barred from doing so?

A chance to vote on charter reform?

From the AP:

NEW YORK — New York City voters could have the chance this fall to change the balance of powers in city government, overhaul development procedures and maybe make city elections nonpartisan.

A panel examining an update to the city constitution on Monday announced areas it is planning to study. The charter review commission will be holding forums on five issues over the next two months.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg appointed the panel earlier this year, following up on a campaign promise.

When he had the term-limits law changed so that he could run again, he promised a charter group would look at the issue again.

That’s one of the possible changes the group says it will look at.

The panel has an eye on putting potential changes to the voters by referendum this fall.

Commission not after BPs and Public Advocate

From NY1:

Even before Mayor Michael Bloomberg appointed the 15 members of the city's charter revision commission, political circles were abuzz with questions about whether the group charged with proposing changes to the city's chief governing document might try to eliminate the Public Advocate's seat and the office of Borough President, perhaps in the name of budget belt tightening.

But in an exclusive interview on NY1's "Inside City Hall," Deputy Mayor Howard Wolfson said he doesn't think that's on the table. Instead, the top aide to Mayor Bloomberg said he thinks the commission will focus on term limits and may possibly propose ending political primaries in the city.

Any proposed changes to the charter must be approved by city voters.

"The mayor believes that the city would be better off without partisan primary. He is a strong proponent on nonpartisan elections," Wolfson said.