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When the Council Fears Debate

An odd thing happened at the City Council on Sept. 27: there was a debate.

In a world of the overwhelming 48-3 Democratic majority, a world where the fate of legislation is often sealed by press conference fiat, it was strange to see Brooklyn Democrats Lew Fidler and Diana Reyna get into a gavel-pounding shouting match about anything. What was even stranger, and far more depressing, was the sight and sound of so many Council members so eager and so insistent that Fidler shut up, and shut up quickly.

Within the corridors of City Hall, Fidler is rarely a controversial character. He is one of the Council’s assistant majority leaders, after all. He won that post after a surprisingly strong play he made to succeed Gifford Miller as speaker—a run so effective that it had people discussing him as the possible compromise candidate had things gone down a little differently.

The traits that helped him—a mix of sharp humor and righteous indignation on many issues—are what seem to have won him both friends and fans among his colleagues on the Council. He is funny and amiable and smart, and he knows how to latch onto a cause and see it through to reality.

It is a little confusing, then, how quickly Council members attacked him as an out-of-line racist wasting precious Council time when he started demanding specific answers from a woman who would otherwise have been a rubber-stamped mayoral appointee to the city’s Board of Standards and Appeals.

Attendance at the hearing was enormous, but most seemed there to observe the spectacle rather than substantively contribute. Only Republican Leader James Oddo (Staten Island) and Robert Jackson (D-Manhattan) defended Fidler’s right to speak up. He got increasingly angry and eventually apologized, but after he pulled back, the substance disappeared into the heat of the moment.

Apology regardless, he was right to speak up, and he was right to become frustrated when others tried to silence him. Susan Hinkson’s nomination sailed 14-1 through committee and then 45-1-2 through the full Council a few minutes later. By the time the Council meeting was gaveled to a close, it was as if the whole thing had never happened.

The damage to the idea of debate within the Council had been done. Many Council members seem eager to leave public dispute and discussion off the list of responsibilities of their $90,000 per year, officially part-time jobs.

The state legislature is often criticized for the lack of open committees and floor debate, and with change coming in January, many want to believe that a revolution is in the air. But before people start clamoring for Joe Bruno and Sheldon Silver to open up debate in the State Senate and Assembly, they should look at how Council members have behaved with some of the rights their counterparts in Albany lack. Rarely is there actual debate over anything, and votes decided by less than 4-1 margins are rarer than tulips sprouting through the sidewalks. The Council Democrats should tend to their own willful dysfunction before anyone starts talking about Albany’s.

Having the power to debate is one thing. Having the commitment and interest to use it—or at least to let one’s colleagues use them—is another.