Among the questions voters will decide upon at the voting booth today (Tuesday, November 7) is an innocuous-sounding provision that reads as follows: “Ballot Proposal 1: Shall there be a convention to revise the Constitution and amend the same?”
This measure, if enacted, may prove to be of keen interest for residents of Battery Park City, who have long chafed at the lack of a direct voice in how they are governed. The 92 acres of landfill between West Street and the Hudson River are physically located within New York City, but are overseen by a State agency, the Battery Park City Authority (BPCA). The Authority is run by a seven-member board of directors, all of whom are appointed by the Governor, and none of whom lives in the community, or is elected by people who reside here. This contrasts markedly with arrangements at similar communities, such as Roosevelt Island, which is also located within New York City, but governed by a State agency, the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation. At that agency, every member of the board of directors is a resident of Roosevelt Island, elected by fellow residents.
Community leaders in Battery Park City have long fought to remedy this anomalous state of affairs. For more than a decade, Community Board 1 (CB1) has enacted a series of resolutions demanding that BPCA board members be chosen from among residents of the neighborhood. Elected officials have sponsored legislation calling for the same requirement. (After years of abortive attempts, such a bill finally passed both houses of the State legislature earlier this year, and now awaits the approval of Governor Cuomo, who has declined to say whether he will sign or veto the measure.) And grassroots organizations, such as Democracy for Battery Park City, have collected thousands of signatures from residents demanding that people who live here be appointed or elected to BPCA board seats.
All of this effort has thus far availed little, due in part to a gridlocked legislative process that is widely perceived as dysfunctional and corrupt, but also because a succession of governors has been reluctant to relinquish control over the BPCA, and the hundreds of millions of dollars it generates each year. The Authority offers other enticements to politicians, as well: It signs contracts worth more than $10 million each year, and has a payroll of millions more. It carries a debt load of more than $1 billion, and has the capacity to borrow hundreds of additional millions.
So, if years of protests and political activism have yielded scant results, what could make a difference? “A Constitutional convention,” says Sharon Stern Gerstman, president of the New York State Bar Association. “Everything is on the table.” In cases where a proposed amendment to the State Constitution conflicts with existing State law (such as the enabling legislation for the BPCA, which empowers the governor to appoint its board), “the Constitution always controls,” she adds, emphasizing that an amendment would trump any statue.
The time last a Convention was held to amend the New York State Constitution was in 1967.
In addition to the composition of the Authority’s board, there is a broad range of other local issues that such an amendment might transform: the ability of the BPCA to issue new debt without the consent of residents (which could be banned), the pending increases in ground rent that threaten to make the neighborhood unaffordable for middle-class and elderly residents (which could be frozen, or even rolled back), the looming end of the ground lease in 2069 (which could be extended, and thus avert a scenario in which everybody who lives here at that time will be rendered homeless, and property values eviscerated in the interim), and affordability for renters. Such an amendment could, for example, impose on all rental buildings within Battery Park City the same form of modified rent stabilization currently in effect at Gateway Plaza, while compensating the owners of these buildings with smaller increases — or outright reductions — in their ground rent.
“These are all things done by Albany and forced onto residents without their consent,” observes Ms. Gerstman. “If we are going to return control to the locality, Albany would no longer decide on issues like debt.”
“Any issue can be addressed,” says professor Gerald Benjamin, a nationally respected political scientist and State constitutional expert at the State University of New York at New Paltz. “The convention is a direct agent of the sovereign people, and they can do whatever they want.”
In terms of circumventing a process that has for years been hamstrung by a succession of governors, professor Benjamin notes, “the governor has no role in a convention. He is not there to police or exploit relationships.” In this context, the Governor’s customary sway over State legislators would be neutralized.
Ms. Gerstman notes that such a body would also represent a clean break with what is regarded as a broken process in another way: “It is very unlikely that many State Senate or Assembly members will be delegates,” she says. “These people are unlikely to risk their legislative seats by running at the same time for seats as delegates to the Constitutional Convention. So this is an opportunity that opens up the process, and brings the question directly to the people.”
“The Convention, if one is called,” says professor Benjamin, “will be populated by people in public life, who care about these issues. The whole point of a ballot proposal on whether to call a Convention is to bypass the governor and the State legislature.” Such a development could potentially break the paralysis that has hobbled earlier attempts at reform.
If Ballot Proposal 1 is approved by the voters, Democracy for Battery Park City would seek to field candidates to represent the community at the Convention. Such an election would take place next year, with the Convention itself held in April, 2019. (Each of the State Senate’s 63 districts would send three delegates to the Convention.) Any amendments that came out of such a Convention would then go before voters in November, 2019.
In terms of the content of a hypothetical “Amendment to Reform the Battery Park City Authority,” Ms. Gerstman anticipates that, “broader language is more likely. Something that returns to Battery Park City the opportunity to govern itself would be sufficient to accomplish other goals, which could then be enacted by local representatives.” She adds, however, that, “it could be very specific.”
This point is echoed by professor Benjamin, who notes that, “you could enact a broad provision governing entities like the BPCA, which would be specific in effect, but general in character. But some amendments are so specific, they resemble legislation. There is one amendment currently in the Constitution, for example, that specifies the number of extra points that will be given to combat veterans when they take civil service exams.”
However, even if statewide voters approve a Constitutional Convention tomorrow, there is no guarantee that such a gathering would ratify an amendment specific to Battery Park City. Realistically, people who live in far-flung corners of the State have sparse interest in the workings of a small community on the Lower West Side of Manhattan. But delegates from places like Utica, Rochester, and Syracuse, would also be coming to the assemblage with local issues of their own. The dynamic that would likely emerge is the formation of coalitions, in which delegates from various regions agree to support one another, in exchange for reciprocal accommodation of their own priorities. Such a gathering, professor Benjamin predicts, “would have it own politics. The error is in presuming that these politics would be the same as the State legislature’s.”