Overview:
New Yorkers approve the Equal Rights Proposal and 4 of 5 Metropolis Constitution modifications by Mayor Eric Adams.
By Katie Honan | Nov. 5, 2024, 11:24 p.m. | Up to date Nov. 6, 2024, 6:58 a.m.
A statewide poll proposal to safeguard rights for ladies and different minorities handed on Tuesday night time. On the identical time, 4 out of 5 Metropolis Constitution modifications proposed by a panel convened by Mayor Eric Adams additionally appeared to prevail, in line with outcomes from state and metropolis election boards.
Proposal 1, often called the Equal Rights Modification, was on ballots throughout New York State. The measure enshrines abortion rights within the state structure. It additionally sought to codify within the structure safety towards unequal remedy based mostly on nationwide origin, ethnicity, age, incapacity and intercourse (together with sexual orientation, gender identification, and being pregnant standing).
“Sure” prevailed at over 77% of votes solid in New York City and about 58% statewide, as of 11 p.m.
“Tonight, New Yorkers stood up for ladies and LGBT, immigrant and disabled New Yorkers by approving essentially the most progressive and complete state Equal Rights Modification within the nation,” Donna Lieberman, the manager director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, stated in a press release.
4 poll provisions in New York Metropolis, proposed by a controversial charter-revision panel convened by Adams, handed with smaller margins.
A type of measures codifies sure powers of the Division of Sanitation, together with permitting it to require waste to be put into containers for pickup.
One other requires the publication of capital planning stories on the price of sustaining metropolis amenities.
The remaining two add procedural hurdles for the Metropolis Council earlier than it passes laws — one requiring multi-step overview for proposed new public security measures, and the opposite increasing budgetary opinions previous to votes on new laws.
The one Adams panel measure that failed, with simply 47% of voters in favor, would have institutionalized the position of “chief enterprise variety officer,” given the mayor management over movie permits and mix archive boards.
Adams launched a press release after midnight hailing what his workforce billed as “doubtless overwhelming” passage of his fee’s poll objects. “Working-class New Yorkers spoke, and the Constitution Revision Fee listened,” it learn. “That is an awesome day for everybody who wishes a safer metropolis, cleaner streets, larger fiscal accountability, transparency within the metropolis’s capital planning course of, and, after all, entry to abortion care.”
Collectively, the proposals give extra management to the mayor and had been criticized by most members of the Metropolis Council. By convening the constitution revision fee that proposed the poll objects, Adams preempted the Council’s own attempt to convene a charter commission to get its personal proposals on the poll this yr.
Some critics stated the constitution overview course of was rushed, noting that previous constitution opinions passed off over a protracted time period — nearly a year for the 2019 charter review — whereas the one this yr took simply over two months.
Speaker Adrienne Adams (D-Queens) actively campaigned towards the mayoral proposals, criticizing the process on television and urging voters on her private social media accounts to “vote NO to proposals 2 through 6!.”
Dozens of different Council members joined the pushback effort, in partnership with a coalition of about 50 civil rights and teams that spent more than $218,000 on mailers, web adverts and different efforts to steer voters to reject the proposals. They referred to as the constitution overview course of a “sham” and campaigned closely towards it, passing out fliers all through town. (That impartial expenditure group’s membership contains Mark Winston Griffith, a board member of THE CITY.)
The Adams administration targeted on schooling concerning the initiatives, urging voters to flip their poll — utilizing movies of flipped pancakes and bagels however not expressing an opinion on the best way to vote.
A spokesperson for the mayor, Frank Dwyer, informed THE CITY the adverts ran on-line, in addition to in 40 print and digital newspapers and radio stations, and in addition appeared in six languages.
Members of the council’s progressive caucus stated in a press release late Tuesday that they “are deeply disillusioned by the passage of Proposals 2-5.”
“These undemocratic measures had been pushed by the mayor and his special-interest-filled fee within the lifeless of summer season with little public enter,” they stated. “They fail to make our metropolis safer, cleaner, or extra accessible.”