Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.

Welcome to the New York City Council hearing for the Committee on Governmental Operations, State and Federal Legislation.

At this time, I'd like to remind everyone to please silence all devices and at no point during the hearing.

May you approach the dais.

If you wish to testify at today's hearing, please see a sergeant at the back of the room to fill out a testimony slip.

Even if you have already registered previously online.

Chair, we are ready to begin.

Thank you very much.

I am Gail Brewer.

I am the chair of the governmental operations, state and federal legislation.

I want to thank everyone who's here.

I know that there are those who are going to be speaking from campaign finance, borough president's office, civic engagement commission, conflicts of interest board, as well as members of the public who are very interested in community boards and other topics.

We're going to be talking about community boards.

I think you know they're the most local form of government.

I certainly know that.

They are intentionally designed to give people who live or work in the neighborhood a voice and governing.

They provide valuable feedback to agencies and other government bodies on how services are being delivered.

They also provide local policymakers with information on how their decisions could affect a local community district.

I think I know, I think I've been to more community board members than any other human being I know.

Borough presidents, and I was one of them, appoint all community board members.

Half of the members must come from nominations made by the local council member or members.

Each borough president has their own method for selecting members, but generally applicants must fill out an online application and appear for an interview by a representative from the borough president's office.

A 2018 ballot proposal imposed a requirement that borough presidents seek out community board applications from diverse backgrounds.

Council members do not directly appoint members, which I think is a good thing.

They can only nominate members who then may or may not be appointed by the borough president.

Actually, I think that's how it should stay.

Community board members are all volunteers, they are unpaid, they're expected to attend monthly board meetings.

I used to take people off who did not do that.

In addition to serving at least one committee, most of them meet monthly.

Board members serve two-year terms.

The 2018 ballot proposal also imposed term limits on board members.

I thought that was a terrible idea.

No members may serve more than four consecutive terms.

The first members subject to these new terms will be need to be replaced by 2020-17, which is a brain drain.

While this will create room for newer members, it will also mean the loss of long time members with significant knowledge about complex issues, particularly land use.

Their duties include processing complaints, presiding over the district service cabinet, and other duties assigned by the board.

District managers are responsible for organizing both committee and full board meetings.

The Civic Engagement Commission created by the 2018 Charter Revision Commission was formed to provide assistance to community boards.

That assistance seemed to come primarily in the form of Zoom trainings designed for community board members with some additional trainings that appear to be designed for the board's executive leadership.

There are past trainings that are available on the CEC's website, have included parliamentary proceedings, the budget, land use and equity planning.

As a board president, just so you know I did all that.

Just so you know.

In addition to doing oversight, we will also be hearing five pieces of legislation.

We'll be hearing proposed intro number 12A, sponsored by the Speaker, which would require the disclosure of digitally altered content in local elections.

Also, intro 320, sponsored by council member Morano, which would codify the official flag of Staten Island.

I think that's a good idea.

Introduction 322, sponsored by Council Member Morano, which would give council members the power to make appointments at community boards.

You know how I feel about that.

Intro 501A, sponsored by Councilmember Williams, which will alter the terms of appointment for district managers.

I don't like that one.

An intro 951, sponsored by Councilmember Thomas Henry, which will prevent policymakers and their relatives from trading on prediction markets using insider information.

Thank you.

I'd like to thank the following staff from the government operations committee to Hari Fraser, Erica Cohen, and Seymour Hamid, and everyone working in the background.

Thank you very much, Chair, for the opportunity to uh speak.

And as much as I would love to stay and devour every minute of today's testimony, I am uh chairing a meeting that began 10 minutes ago.

So I'm gonna run next door and then hopefully come back if this meeting goes on a bit.

Uh I appreciate the chair's generous introduction.

And I also appreciate the open-mindedness with which you're approaching all the pieces of legislation today, and uh I certainly concur that there is not a human being alive that has attended more community board meetings than uh Gail Brewer.

I do want to say um a bit about Intro 320, uh, which is my bill, which is sponsored by the entirety of the city council delegation from Staten Island and a good portion of the chunk of the city council as a whole, which would give Staten Island an official flag.

Currently, uh while every borough has at least an unofficial flag, there are only two boroughs that have official flags codified in the law.

Those are Brooklyn and the Bronx.

The Staten Island flag, which has been our unofficial flag since 2019, and we're really honored uh to have the uh director of visual design from Staten Island Borough President's office, Amo Micah here, and to speak about how this flag was created, some of the incredible imagery, some of the symbolism, some of the history behind the flag.

Uh, when I've been talking about this bill for over a year, the resounding complaint against it, really the only one against it, is don't you have anything else better to do?

And by the way, that's a complaint from everybody about every anything, but um the answer really is no, and I'll tell you why.

This bill is so meaningful to Staten Island and to me.

Um, in one swoop, namely adopting and giving us a flag, this city council has the ability to do two things.

One, celebrate recognize borough identity, and two, make Staten Island feel like we're actually a part of this city.

And I can tell you both of those things from time to time are in short supply.

Um, and we'll get into why, and I'll I'm eager to hear uh Amo Micah, Staten Island's Betsy Ross, in his testimony a little bit later.

Then uh intro 322, my bill on the uh community board appointment process.

This is basically just codifying what I believe was always intended to be the law, where instead of council members recommending half of the community board members, council members would get to pick and nominate in a binding manner half of the community board members.

Why is this important?

Well, I think it's important for a few reasons.

One, on a practical level, we've seen borough presidents in multiple boroughs, not just mine, simply refuse to act on community board nominees from council members.

The people, in many cases, dedicated community activists that are nominated by the council members, are never told that they're accepted, they're never told that they're rejected.

They just stay in this perpetual limbo.

Additionally, by ignoring nominations from local council members, these are often the people that know the individual neighborhoods best, and adding people from these neighborhoods that understand the unique concerns that they have, rather than simply allow the only binding appointment to be a borough-wide voice.

It adds to a diversity, not just when it comes to gender, race, age, or anything like that, but a diversity of experience, a diversity of worldview, which is sorely lacking now.

And the best thing about this bill, if the council adopts it, is all it does is give the voters the right to choose for themselves whether council members should have this appointment process.

And to me, that's the best situation.

Put it on the ballot, let those of us that think council members should have binding appointment make our argument.

Let those that think that the borough president should get to appoint everybody, make their argument, and let the voters decide.

So I'm very excited about both bills being heard today.

I'm grateful that uh dozens of my colleagues in the council in both parties and all five boroughs have sponsored both bills, and I'm eager to see them voted on by this body and by the council as a whole.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you very much.

I just want to talk about your second bill to point out that the borough presidents, if they're good and they're not all, have a process that says this person is qualified, this person isn't.

I worry that I, Gail Brewer, if given the opportunity, would not have the ability to put that person through a process because I don't have the staff to do it.

That's what my concern is.

So that they're not vetted.

So that's why I have a concern.

Now, the borough person has no process.

That's a different story.

Maybe they should be mandated to have one.

So I am concerned about people who are not vetted and who are politically interesting to the council member.

That could happen to me, and I want that not to happen to anybody.

So that's where my concern is.

But I have great respect for you, sir.

I will tell you.

Uh, Councilmember Thomas Henry to give a statement on your bill, intro 951.

Good morning, and thank you, Chair Brewer.

Uh, thank you for holding today's hearing.

We often think of insider information in the context of stock market of the stock market.

But as technology evolves, so do the ways that privileged information can be used for personal gain.

Prediction markets and event-based trading platforms have created a new frontier where individuals can place financial wagers on the outcome of elections, policy decisions, regulatory actions, and other events that may be influenced by government activity.

The question before us today is straightforward.

Should public officials or policymakers be allowed to profit from information that the public does not have access to?

I believe the answer is no.

Public service is built on trust.

New Yorkers expect that decisions made by elected officials and government policymakers are guided by the public interests, not by personal financial opportunities tied to non-public information.

That's why we're here today.

Intro 951 is about making sure our ethics laws keep pace with the times.

This bill will prohibit elected officials, policymakers, and their immediate family members from using non-public government information to profit through prediction markets and event-based trading.

Because public service should never come with a private advantage.

New Yorkers trust us with information, responsibilities, and decisions that impact their lives every day.

They deserve to know that people serving them are not also looking for opportunities to personally profit from information that the public does not have.

And while prediction markets may be new, the principle behind this legislation is not.

We already understand that insider trading undermines trust.

We already understand that public service carries a responsibility to avoid even the appearance of self-dealing.

This bill applies those same basic values to a rapidly emergent emerging marketplace.

At a time when trusting government is fragile, we should be doing everything we can to strengthen it.

That means being proactive, it means anticipating challenges before they become problems, and it means ensuring that our laws reflect not just what is legal, but what New Yorkers expect from those who serve them.

This legislation is about fairness, it's about transparency, and it's about protecting the integrity of public service.

I want to thank Chair Brewer and the members of the committee on governmental operations for hearing this issue today, and I look forward from hearing from all the witnesses.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

We've been joined by Council Members Wing and Council Member Wong, and then I'm going to read this as ironic, a statement from Councilmember Dr.

Natasha Williams.

And it says to the committee, and it's about intro 501.

It says this is her talking, not me, just so you know.

I appreciate the opportunity to submit the statement in support of Intro 501A.

Community boards play a vital role in New York City's local governance.

They serve as an important bridge between residents, city agencies, borough presidents, and elected officials, helping to ensure that community voices are reflected in local decision making.

At the center of each community board's operations is the district manager.

District managers are often the first point of contact for residents seeking assistance with quality of life concerns, service complaints, and neighborhood issues.

They help coordinate responses from city agencies, support board operations, and play a critical role in ensuring that community boards function effectively.

Given the importance of this role, it is essential that we establish clear expectations and accountability measures regarding the terms of employment for district managers.

501A would establish four-year terms for district managers while allowing community boards to reappoint individuals for successive terms.

The bill also clarifies the circumstances under which a borough president may remove a district manager prior to the end of their term, including repeated failure to attend full board meetings or failure to ensure required reporting obligations are met.

This legislation is intended to provide greater structure, consistency, and accountability while preserving the ability of community boards to retain effective leadership.

Clear standards help strengthen institutional stability and ensure district managers remain responsive to both their boards and the communities they serve.

Strong community boards require strong leadership and strong systems of accountability.

This intro helps advance both.

That's from Dr.

Councilmember Natasha Williams.

And now we're going to call the first uh speaker, Ethan Carrier from the New York City Conflicts of Interest Board, also known as COI.

This person is and also uh Carolyn Miller, also from COIB.

Thank you very much.

Begin whenever you wish.

Go ahead.

Oh, I swear you in, sorry.

You have to be sworn in.

I always forget that part.

Okay.

Uh we will now hear testimony from the conflicts of interest board.

Before you begin, I will administer the uh oath of affirmation.

Panelists please raise your right hand.

Do you affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth before this committee and to respond honestly to council member questions?

You may begin when you're ready.

Yes, we um uh certainly appreciate the importance of public servants, not trading on government information or using their city positions to violate the public trust for their own financial benefit.

The legislation that's proposed uh regulates conduct that is already prohibited by the conflicts of interest board.

The legislation has two components to it.

Um, the first of which, and um Ethan Carrier, our board's general counsel will speak more depth, just um addresses conduct that's already prohibited by the conflicts of interest law.

And the second component changes to the city's annual disclosure law would reflect a dramatic expansion of the reporting requirements that reflects nothing comparable currently in the annual disclosure law and create a burden on people way beyond those who are regulated by this conduct.

Substantial policies makers reflect just a fraction of people who file annual disclosure reports, and the reporting that's um proposed in this legislation would impact people way beyond those that are uh arguably covered by the proposed legislation.

So let's first discuss how this law is already addressed in the current conflicts of interest law.

Uh thank you.

The um this is an incredibly important subject.

I mean, this is uh this is a uh a real risk and something that needs to be, you know, addressed.

We believe that the law that already exists does address it.

First, the city charter has a remarkably robust uh provision prohibiting the disclosure or the use of confidential city information by public servants.

Uh, and so I'm just gonna talk about those two sections of that charter prohibition.

The first part is the prohibition against public servants disclosing confidential city information.

And this is a remarkably broad prohibition.

It really prohibits public servants from disclosing confidential city information for any purpose, regardless of whether there is any benefit or loss or anything else.

It doesn't matter who they're disclosing the information to, the mere disclosure all by itself is a violation of the city charter.

So a public servant who disclosed confidential city information for the purpose of uh for their uh for their own purpose or somebody else's purpose related to uh making money on a prediction market would certainly be encompassed by that restriction, again, regardless of uh to whom the disclosure is made.

The second part of the confidential information restriction is a prohibition against public servants using confidential information for their own private gain or for the private gain of associated parties, and associated parties is a you know a certain set of close family members, and also people with whom they have a business or financial relationship.

So a business partner, a roommate, someone to whom they own money, these are all people whose uh interests essentially function as their own interests under the conflicts of interest law, they could not use confidential city information to obtain any kind of benefit again for themselves through a prediction market or for one of these associated family members or business or financial related parties.

Um to the extent that those two provisions don't cover uh a public servant's uh actions related to a prediction market, we think that the uh city charter's prohibition against the use of the authority of their city office to obtain a private gain again for themselves or an associated party, uh would cover the rest of it.

That is, if you uh used your city position to obtain the confidential information that you would use, this would be a violation of the use of the prohibition against misusing your city position.

Or um, you know, the the law as written uh has uh uses a definition, I'm saying confidential information because that's an established definition within the conflicts of interest law.

This law uses the term non-public information, which is maybe broader and we're uh a little concerned we don't know exactly what the scope of that might be, but if a public servant were to use information uh that they obtained that was uh non-public but not confidential, the misuse of position restriction would likely uh prohibit most, if not all of the conduct related to obtaining or using that information for their own private gain or the private gain of those associated parties that I've uh just described.

So, to the extent that the confidential information restrictions don't cover it.

We think the misuse of position restriction would cover it.

Um, so again, we think this is an incredibly important new area that needs to be thought about.

We think the law as it exists uh covers this concern, and uh uh and we believe the board uh would robustly enforce this provision if a public servant were obtaining a private gain uh in any way related to uh this or disclosing confidential information even again without a private gain for themselves or anyone else.

Uh I'll hand it back to Carolyn to talk about the um uh public disclosure piece of this.

So the the second the second piece of the legislation talks about a major change to the annual disclosure law where it requires the reporting of all transactions uh $50 or more related to uh that contracts on prediction markets.

There's nothing, absolutely nothing even comparable in the current annual disclosure law.

For example, the closest thing would be the reporting of securities, and a public a current public servant can buy and sell securities over the course of the reporting year.

There's no reporting of the purchase or sale of any security of the who you bought it from, who you sold it to, when you made that transaction.

The only reporting requirement currently is the assets that you hold on the final day of the reporting period.

Similarly, there's no requirement of reporting of any other kinds of gambling.

You don't have to report when you placed a bet, who you what casino you placed it at, what the bet was for, what you earn.

There's nothing comparable in the annual disclosure law.

You just have to report your winnings on the final day of the reporting period.

And there's no reporting anywhere in the annual disclosure law of losses.

And this would be the first time that there would be any reporting of losses.

So this would be a dramatic expansion of any kind of comparable reporting in the annual disclosure law.

But also note that the regulatory regime, the conduct is directed at substantial policymakers.

And substantial policymakers are maybe comprise about a third, if not less, of people who report under the annual disclosure law.

For example, there's every candidate for elective office in the city has to file an annual disclosure law.

This provision would apply to those people, those people, many of whom are not public servants at the time they run for office, so they're having to report conduct which is totally uh fine, not prohibited, maybe thus deterring them from um seeking public office because they'd have to report conduct which is in no way prohibited, wouldn't reflect a conflict of interest or anything like that.

This uh so there's um I think a lot of ways in which this is um maybe more than what is necessary given the current state, it's it is a brand new field, prediction markets.

Why this particular robust reporting regime where there isn't anything similar seems to be disproportionate to the concern, and we're happy to take any questions on either of it.

Council member, do you want to go ahead with uh questions?

Why don't you go on?

Thank you.

So I have a couple of questions.

Um you mentioned that this may be more than what is necessary, so given that this rapid change it changing um environment has has your team looked at what would be needed or should be added to make sure that we deal with this.

I think generally the annual, well, so there's like always two things.

The first thing is first education, because the goal is not to um sort of catch people after the fact, but to prevent um violations before they occur.

So our focus is always on public servants to try to educate them about their obligations under the conflicts of interest law and to protect confidential city information.

And we're doing we do that all the time.

We're very um rigorous in trying to reach out to public servants in every way we possibly can about protecting confidential city information.

And there's all kinds of confidential city information that one might not place an event contract on confidential information about someone's public assistance benefits about child abuse and neglect investigations, things that public servants are incredibly private that we're we have for decades ensured that that information is kept confidential.

The annual disclosure law in particular is sort of a very difficult way to regulate that conduct because it has to do with things that happened uh almost a full year prior.

So, right.

You're the council has just reported recently on conduct from 2025.

So it's it's the most effective way to restrict to change people's behavior is forward-looking, is the advice and education context and not in the annual disclosure realm.

So when we talk about the annual disclosure, um, because arguably, because you said there are certain things um that aren't necessarily conflicts, especially when you're running as a candidate, but that per pertains to anything that's in the annual disclosure.

Earning owning property.

Um, where your spouse or any other um works.

Like there's multiple layers of what is already disclosed.

So I'm not understanding why it would be difficult to add this one more section.

Because there are several sections in the annual disclosure does take some time, but to the point that you made where some things are not excluded, so why disclose them?

Why disclose the things that are currently in the disclosure?

Well, I would argue that I'm sorry.

Yeah, so certainly there's um holding real estate these are assets that you hold over the course of the reporting year or on the final day the current uh prohibition or the current reporting regime that's being articulated are uh event contracts that have are closed they're concluded so these are these are this is conduct that's being reported versus your assets and liabilities on the final date of the reporting period so um there's a there's a distinction and there's nothing about when someone is a candidate for elective office just for that example one might want to know what positions they've held where their assets are um because that's going to impact the kinds of the kinds of things that might be interests of theirs as a public servant in other words if I have an affiliation with a particular business or own 10 buildings in a particular community that might impact my concerns about how a certain community is regulated but here these are in and out contracts that could happen in a day or two that you someone could be reporting zero or could be reporting a hundred event contracts.

There's just nothing comparable to it at the end of suppose it does pass.

There are multiple penalties um that a person violating the law could have assessed on them have you guys looked at and do you feel these penalties seem sufficient given the potential of a policymaker to use prediction market to enrich themselves based on the events they control.

Yeah we've looked we have looked at the the penalties that are in the proposed legislation I mean they they mirror the penalties that the board has in its normal enforcement context with a couple of uh I think important differences one of the differences is this would allow the board it if I'm reading it correctly to remove a public servant from office that is not a power the board has ever had before and uh we don't think it's a power the board should have uh we think that that's a power that should be reserved for the uh entity that is in fact employing that public servant um the uh other distinction here is the uh about the sort of scope of the enforcement which is the board has never had the authority to engage in enforcement against people who are the family members of public servants before and we're honestly not sure what all the ramifications of that might be uh but you know certainly when thinking about conflicts of interest it's about which is you know sort of the core function of the board we're thinking about people who have uh duties uh right as public servants and so we're always sort of thinking about how the law uh applies in in all respects but maybe particularly in the enforcement respect with regard to where those public duties conflict with um private interests so it's a it's uh unfamiliar and and maybe problematic territory for us to get into uh engaging in administrative enforcement against the family members of public servants that being said we also think that the the confidentiality restrictions capture you know the use of confidential information or disclosure of confidential information by a public servant to a family member or in the case of disclosure to anyone uh in a way that would uh capture that family member concern but the onus is on the public servant who actually has that public duty to maintain public trust as as you were describing as sort of one of the fundamental values uh underlying your uh proposed legislation and and and conflicts of interest law in the city so that's an incredibly important value we're a little concerned that maybe we've drifted beyond that when we get to uh fan uh actually engaging in enforcement against family members of public servants.

Gotcha.

Um Chair, can I go ahead too?

Okay.

Um, going back to the example when we go back to the annual disclosure with um, I think you use real estate as an example, like if a member holds real est large amounts of real estate within an area could potentially affect their governing.

Um do you think prediction markets could have this same negative effect on government decision making or other aspects of running the city?

Could prediction markets as a general matter certainly the whether my personal view about whether people engage in online gambling or buy event contracts, uh is uh it's hard to even assess that.

Um I think it's way too early to determine that.

The goal is to ensure that once people enter public service, they are focused on serving the public.

And I think that's distinct from conduct that occurred before they entered public service.

So overall, do COIB have any particular concerns, or do you not have concerns at this moment about the widespread use of prediction markets?

Yeah, I mean, we definitely have a lot of concerns about the use of pr uh the involvement of public servants in prediction markets that have anything to do with uh public servants' public duties or confidential information.

This uh the subject matter of your proposed legislation is incredibly important.

We are uh entirely on board with the values that you're uh uh articulating here.

Largely what we're saying here is we think we've got you covered.

Like we think the city's conflicts of interest law uh, which is based in those same values that you uh articulated uh when you were providing your introductory statement about your bill.

Uh I couldn't have said it better myself.

I mean uh and but we just think that the law actually just already covers it and that ultimately what this would be is um you know essentially redundant with the existing law.

Um we think as I said, we've we we think the the chapter 60 of the city charter has this covered and that the the board has the ability and certainly the willingness to uh enforce the existing provisions to address the concerns that you've articulated.

Okay, thank you.

That's all I have, Chair.

Thank you very much.

Uh Council Member Wilson has joined us.

Thank you.

One quick question has this issue ever come up if you're able to state.

I know in some cases you can't see if you're working on any cases, but is this something that has uh come across your desk at all in terms I mean there are many people who are corrupt, I got it, and they have their own issues, but is this particular one up?

We haven't uh I mean certainly as as you're you're alluding to complaints to the board are confidential, but certainly at least in general reporting, I haven't seen reporting about city public servants uh utilizing their public information or their city positions to engage in prediction markets.

The the committee report identifies uh public officials in other uh areas of government who who've been entangled in certain arenas.

It ha you know, that doesn't mean it hasn't happened here, we just haven't seen it yet.

Okay, but now you're on notice.

Yes.

Okay.

Yes, and I think that the annual disclosure piece just to say it's like we're very um cognizant of the burdens of the reporting regime, and that's just the main concern there.

We get, you know, as as you identified, a lot of um concerns about why do I need to report this, and we want to just make sure that the reporting requirements are as uh tailored to the situation as they possibly can be.

Thank you, council member for bringing this up.

Thank you very much.

All right, you you're you're finished with this.

Thank you.

For now.

Campaign finance board, Paul Ryan, the executive director, and Amanda Mejillo.

Go ahead.

Hold on, I have to throw them into.

Oh, I'm sorry, I'm forget about that.

They always tell the truth at COP.

Alright, we will now hear from the campaign finance board before they testify.

I will administer the oath of uh the office of affirmation.

Uh, do you uh please raise your right hand?

Do you affirm to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth before this committee and to respond honestly to council member questions?

Alright, you may begin when ready.

Good morning, Chair Brewer and members of the Committee on Governmental Operations.

Good morning, Chair Brewer and members of the committee on Governmental Operations, State and Federal Legislation, and other Council members.

My name is Paul Seamus Ryan, and I'm the executive director of the New York City Campaign Finance Board.

Joining me today is first deputy executive director, Amanda Mulillo.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify today regarding Intro 12A of 2026.

The CFB is an independent nonpartisan city agency dedicated to strengthening local democracy.

The CFB combats the influence of big money and politics by amplifying the power of small dollar contributions from everyday New Yorkers through our matching funds program.

We work to eliminate barriers to participation by equipping New Yorkers with the information and resources they need to get out to vote and run for office.

Through our NYC votes initiative, the CFB engages directly with voters and provides resources to make voting more accessible.

Intro 12A, sponsored by Speaker Julie Menon, would require disclosure to the campaign finance board when candidates for local elected office or entities making local election related independent expenditures create political materials or advertisements using artificial intelligence software capable of generating synthetic content.

The CFB previously provided testimony on an earlier version of this bill, intro 293-2024, on December 4th, 2024.

The CFB acknowledges the council's efforts to protect the integrity of our local democratic process as artificial intelligence technologies advance.

The CFB has a unique perspective on this topic rooted in our dual mandate to serve candidates and voters.

We sympathize with the perspective of both.

We wholeheartedly share your concerns about the ways that AI technology could be used to spread false information to intentionally mislead or deceive voters about council members and other city candidates and office holders.

At the Campaign Finance Board, we have placed a priority on learning about artificial intelligence.

Ms.

Malillo and I recently completed the Harvard Kennedy School AI in Action Certificate course.

We have formed an agency-wide AI working group, and we are learning more every day.

Nevertheless, AI technology is evolving at such a rapid pace that we cannot say with certainty how best to regulate its use in elections.

To that end, we appreciate that the amended version of this legislation meaningfully addresses our most significant legal and implementation concerns shared at the hearing in December 2024.

By shifting from a prohibition to a disclosure model and naming the CFB as the agency in receipt of these disclosures, as well as naming the CFB as the agency responsible for implementing the new disclosure regime, the council eliminated the greatest vulnerabilities to First Amendment legal challenge and clarified administrative and enforcement responsibilities.

The CFB is well qualified to administer and enforce the requirements of intro 12A.

We receive disclosure reports from all campaigns running for city office and all independent spenders active in city elections, and we impose fines and penalties for violations of our campaign finance rules and laws.

Importantly, this bill casts the CFB in a role we have already played as a disclosure administrator, receiving processing, and making public the information reported to us, not as a content regulator.

For that reason, we are relatively confident in our ability to implement this new mandate, though significant resources and time will be required.

Shifting the strategy to a disclosure model means the council would be placing an entirely new administrative and enforcement mandate onto the campaign finance board.

We want to be realistic about the timeline and resources that would be required to implement this legislation.

We are still researching the exact technology and staffing costs associated with implementing the bill, but we anticipate that the cost would be steep and that it would take at a minimum a year to implement after bill passage.

This estimate includes both updating our existing Canada and independent spending reporting systems and building an entirely new internal system to receive and to make public the provenance data and other similar ad information we would be receiving from candidates and independent spenders.

As noted moments ago, the legislation's shift from a prohibition to disclosure largely mitigates the First Amendment risks present in the original draft.

The Supreme Court has consistently upheld disclosure requirements against constitutional challenges over the past half century, including in Citizens United, McConnell v.

FEC, and in the court's seminal 1976 campaign finance decision in Buckley v.

Valleo.

Over and over, the Supreme Court has recognized the governmental interest in providing the electorate with information necessary to make informed choices in the political marketplace.

Intro 12A serves this interest.

To even further strengthen Intro 12A, the council should consider narrowing the law's application in several ways.

Intro 12A incorporates by reference a definition of synthetic content creation systems in the state Stop Deep Fakes Act.

The most recent version, E of that legislation, which was passed by the Assembly on June 4th, defines the term to mean, quote, a class of generative artificial intelligence system capable of generating wholly synthetic content.

This is a very broad standard, encompassing not only ads that contain synthetic content, but also ads generated or modified using a system capable of generating synthetic content, even if such synthetic content was not incorporated into the ad.

The earlier version of the Stop Deep Fakes Act that was passed by the state Senate on June 3rd exempted from this definition technology such as red eye filters and other technologies that are only capable of making changes to existing audio or visual content.

And we'll return to the significance of this legislative language in a moment.

Another aspect of Intro 12A's broad coverage is its application to quote any literature, advertisement or other communication.

Combined with the Stop Deepfakes Act definition of synthetic content creation systems, Intro 12A would seemingly require a campaign that uses generative AI or generative text software like ChatGPT or Claude to draft or edit a fundraising email, for example, to report this communication to the CFB.

A third element of Intro 12A's breadth is that its candidate disclosure requirements are triggered when a candidate makes, publishes, or publicly distributes a covered communication.

This language would seemingly encompass instances where a candidate or campaign staff member reposts someone else's content on a social media platform like X, Instagram, or TikTok without spending any money, and perhaps with no knowledge of whether the content was created or modified with a synthetic content creation system.

The council should look to the federal AI Transparency and Elections Act, principally sponsored by Senator Amy Klobuchar, for an example of a narrow scope of regulatory coverage.

First, rather than covering all forms of communication, such as fundraising email created or edited by ChatGPT or Claude, the Federal AI Transparency and Elections Act applies only to an image, audio, or video that was substantially generated by artificial intelligence.

Second, the federal bill's coverage is narrowed further by exempting images, audio, and video that have only minor AI alterations, including cosmetic adjustments, color editing, cropping, resizing, and other immaterial uses that do not create a fundamentally different understanding than a reasonable person would have from an unaltered version of the media.

This approach is similar to the version of the state's Stop Deepfakes Act passed by the State Senate on June 3rd, an exemption that was removed from the version passed by the Assembly on June 4th.

Finally, the Clobuchar bill applies only when a person makes a disbursement for the purpose of financing a covered communication, effectively exempting from the law candidate reposts of social media content.

As an alternative or a complement, the council could apply the disclosure requirements of Intro 12A only in instances where candidates know or should reasonably know that the media they are distributing contains AI-generated content.

Narrowing Intro 12A in these ways might better serve the public interest.

As currently written, Intro 12A requires disclosure not only of malicious synthetic content but of all political communications that were, in whole or in part, created or modified using software that is simply capable of generating synthetic content.

Given the ubiquitous incorporation of generative AI capabilities into design and other software, and the widespread use of Chat GPT, Claude, and other text generation software, intro 12A could require disclosure of nearly all political communication.

The CFB may end up with a database filled with information about innocuous immaterial uses of AI, muddying the water for journalists, law enforcement, and members of the public seeking information about malicious use of artificial intelligence for deep fake images, audio, or video.

We may inadvertently bury the needle of information the public wants and needs in a haystack of information that serves little or no public interest.

Limiting the disclosure laws coverage in the ways I suggested moments ago would help reduce the volume of extraneous information.

Even with the refinements we suggest, we want to be clear-eyed about the practical limitations of this regulatory approach so as not to create unrealistic expectations.

The combination of low-cost, high-quality deep fake technology, and social media platforms enables bad actors to spread disinformation in elections with speed and effectiveness unfathomable just a year or two ago.

Earlier this month, the New York Times ran a disheartening profile of the world's leading deepfake expert, Professor Hani Farid, who has given up on his own ability to distinguish deep fakes from reality and moved from the Bay Area to a cabin in the Green Mountains of Vermont.

Unstated in the Times profile is that Professor Farid is an advocate for digital provenance systems of the sort reflected in intro 12A.

However, the real utility of digital provenance systems is enabling people to trust verified images as true and to dismiss unverified images as untrustworthy.

Digital provenance systems serve as a sort of digital media nutrition label.

Candidates would likely comply with the disclosure requirements of intro 12A, and that's a good thing.

Unfortunately, even with the enactment of intro 12A, the public will still have access to the equivalent of digital junk food created by bad actors who may be unlikely to comply with the nutrition label like disclosure requirements of Intro 12A.

The increasing difficulty of distinguishing deep fakes from truthful media combined with the anonymity offered by social media platforms and other internet-based communication streams may present enormous enforcement challenges for the CFB.

Nonetheless, we remain deep, we remain deeply committed to working collaboratively with the council to ensure this becomes an effective piece of legislation.

While we have outlined specific concerns today, our ultimate goal is to partner with you and to provide realistic guidance on resources and funding needed, refine and improve the legislation, and deliver a bill that truly serves New Yorkers.

The CFB is committed to ensuring our city's elections are transparent and secure.

Thank you for your time and your leadership on this issue.

Amanda and I are available to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you very much.

Excellent testimony, Mr.

Ryan, I have to say, very current, and I appreciate it.

But a lot of thought went into that.

Two questions.

One is I think already some of our candidates have used AI and then other campaigns find about it, and then they pull it down.

Some guy jumping up and down on a platform.

I was pretty impressed until I learned it was AI.

I saw that.

My question twofold, just quickly, and then I'll turn it over to my colleagues.

One is will this require an outside vendor to help figure it out?

That's question number one.

And the second is you have been excellent in trying to uh close a gap in finishing the audits.

And I didn't know this would add to the time that it would take to finish the audit.

So those are my two questions.

My first deputy, Miss Malillo, leads our technology work, and I invite Amanda to comment on your first question.

Thank you so much.

As to your first question, yes, I do believe we would need the support of an outside vendor for two reasons.

One, in order to be able to expand on our current databases and build out our public website to make this data both collectible and available to the public, we would likely need to bring in outside support from a vendor in order to speed that build so that we could do so within the confines of the law.

But I think our larger concern would be around building the expertise necessary to continue this ongoing monitoring of potential deepfakes or use of AI that perhaps goes undisclosed to us.

So we recently, for example, spoke to our colleagues in Connecticut at the State Elections Enforcement Commission.

They had contemplated similar legislation in Connecticut.

They spoke to federal counterparts who do this for a living, and they basically said a couple things.

One, there is no existing software today that can effectively spot deepfakes anymore.

I think we're just in a place where the technology is evolving so rapidly.

Any sort of detection tools can't effectively keep up.

So there's nothing that we could purchase to allow us to monitor this in an ongoing way, and we would therefore have to then rely more heavily on both proactive disclosure from campaigns and independent spenders, complaints from the public, and then building expertise on our own staff.

The other thing that we heard from our colleagues in Connecticut is that those staff members do tend to be expensive.

This is highly specialized knowledge that only a few people have.

So we would need some time to be able to build that out to come up with a true cost estimate, and we would likely need to rely on outside expertise in order to build our internal knowledge.

As to your second question about pace of the audits, and I'm going to separate out what we're doing for previous elections and what we're doing for future elections.

For previous elections, we essentially are tackling our audits on three tracks right now.

We have our quote quote older election cycles of 2021 and 2023.

We have a we have a team in our audit staff that is basically clearing out any outstanding audits from those prior election cycles.

For 2025, I think Paul probably didn't mention this, but I got my role and transitioned into it in September of 2024, only a few months before the 2025 election cycle.

Realistically, there wasn't a lot we could do from a technology perspective.

We sort of had to treat our existing technologies baked in.

So we took a look at what processes that we could implement independent of the technology in order to look at how we could speed up our post-election audits.

I think we've mentioned before this committee before we have a 2029 goal to complete 90% of audits within one year of the election.

We set ourselves an intermediate goal for 2025 to complete 50% of audits within one year of the election.

And the way that we did that was by starting to send out our initial document requests and kicking off the post-election audit process much earlier than we ever had before.

So for any campaigns where the candidate lost in the primary election and didn't move on to the general election, we started issuing those initial document requests in July 2025 through October 10th to begin kicking off that process.

And I'm very pleased to say that we are at the same point now today where we have closed out 8% of post-election audits that we were in November after 2023, which was a much smaller election.

So that was what looking at what we could do within the constraints of our existing technology.

I'm giving that information to set up what we're truly doing to prepare for 2029, which is making significant investments in essentially replacing and rebuilding all of our underlying technology within the next two years.

So this will include streamlining and improving the front-end experience for candidates and campaigns.

That becomes very important and how it intersects with this bill, because then we will look at how we can accept AI disclosure and providence data as part of that system.

But we are also right now taking a look before we even begin to build the back end technology that powers our entire audit process, we are taking a look right now at are there ways we can simplify and streamline our existing processes from a high level without sacrificing rigor accuracy or the things that we know the public relies on the campaign finance board to provide.

The reason I think that's important is because the very same people who are doing that work will also need to figure out how to implement this legislation.

So, just as a little bit of background, between now and the end of this year, we are working very intensively between my division, uh, with audit leadership and with our legal team to take a look at: okay, if we want to administer this program in a much more effective way for 2029, if we want to completely rebuild systems and move away from our legacy technology, how do we redesign the process from the beginning to improve it for campaigns for uh for candidates and for our own staff and for the public at large?

Um, and so I wanna be realistic about that when we're looking at an implementation timeline of this bill, because our team working on that will also be working on what do we need to do to really stand this up, both from a rulemaking perspective, from a process perspective, and from an expertise building perspective and building our technology.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate the response we've been joined by councilmember Carr here and Councilmember Dinamitz on Zoom, and now uh councilmember Thomas Henry for questions.

Thank you, Chair.

Um I have a question about the audit.

Have you guys considered um because as you're going through a campaign, you have multiple disclosures?

I think they're like every six to eight weeks or something.

Um, so as a recent candidate, the assumption is when you go through the disclosure process, you're asking for all the information that's missing that you need to entail.

So then when you get after post-election, you get this detailed audit request of all these.

Is there any way to include it in the disclosure to make the audit that much more timely and less of a headache?

Um let me start with what I think we've learned over the years.

One, the process can feel very, very painful for campaigns, uh, especially because when you're in the heat of an election, you have to disclose a lot to us, and then when the election's over, we come back to you and we say, hey, we need all of this other documentation, or what was this receipt for on this date?

And what the response we often get is that was six months ago.

I don't remember what that $10 receipt was for, or whatever it was that we are asking for.

I think what we are very seriously considering now, and this is why we are going to spend an intensive amount of time in the next six months or so redesigning our process.

If we are ever going to hit 90% of audits within one year of the election, what we will realistically need to do is to create a lot more real time back and forth between ourselves and the campaigns so that we can be looking at things closer to the time that they were disclosed to us, um, that we can be getting information out to the campaigns so that they can correct it in a more timely and responsive way, and then that we can lighten the post-election load.

Essentially, what's happening now because so much of our technology is very, very old, and a lot of our audit processes are very manual.

So our audit staff are really spending the time before the election to actually review and validate all of the matching claims, and this eats into their time to be able to look at the expenditure documentation that we mainly focus on in our post-election audits.

So, what we're seriously looking at right now is how can we lighten the load of uh validating those matching claims to create more space for our audit staff to be able to pull the post-election expenditure work into the pre-election period, so that campaigns are much closer to being done by the time election day rolls around.

So I think it's to everyone's benefit for us to be able to do this in closer to real time.

We are looking at ways to redesign the whole candidate experience to make it just a more user-friendly experience and uh to make it less painful after the election.

I think I can go ahead and say that.

Um, and all ideas are on the table.

We've actually been working with campaigns for the first time ever in sort of user research sessions to hear from campaigns what those experiences are like, to understand what are the barriers, what are the things we think we're explaining very well, and it turns out that we are not what are ways that we can make this just a little bit more intuitive?

Um, and I that research is going to be ongoing up until the 2029 election and beyond.

I will say I always give credit where credit is due.

Having the representative work alongside you has been very helpful.

I've had two, and they've both been amazing.

Um just staying on top of things.

So I don't know how when you added that feature, but that's a great feature, um, one more audit-related question.

How do you decide when to gather certain expenditure information from particular campaigns?

Because having again coming off a campaign, consultants would be like, I have to get all this information from another for another candidate.

And I'm like, well, why don't I need that yet?

So, like, how do you decide which candidate when and when and what information you need from a particular candidate?

Yes, absolutely.

So I'll just um to start out, clarify that campaigns are able to submit expenditure documentation before the election, but we do not require expenditure documentation before the election.

So some campaigns are continually submitting it.

Um, but as I mentioned before, we often don't have the capacity to look at it until after the election.

But one thing that our audit leadership team began doing for this election cycle, because one of the things that we implemented for 2025 was more defined and limited extensions on both audit and enforcement, so that both sides can actually plan a little bit better, and we no longer give out unlimited extensions, but we still give out generous extensions because we know that sometimes campaigns need more time to get their responses together.

So what our audit team began to do was take a look at if we kick off for us, our clock begins with the initial document request.

That is when the post-election uh clock officially starts.

Once we get the documentation, we have a certain defined period of time to complete a draft audit report and a final audit report.

What our team took a look at, and we can get more information after this hearing, is essentially how do we plan it so that we can have a balanced workload across audits, which is why we did stagger release of some of the initial document requests.

So some candidates might have gotten it that first week I mentioned around July 25th.

Some candidates might have been a little bit later on October 10th.

I don't have exact details today on how that was determined, like who goes where in what order.

Uh, but the intention there was to ensure that we can complete our audits in a timely way once we start requesting that documentation and that our staff time is sort of maximized throughout the entire process.

I want I want to take this opportunity to note one more difficulty in the process on our end, which is that it is not uncommon for campaigns for candidates to not respond to the initial document request, and that dramatically increases the amount of work our auditors need to do to produce a draft audit report without effective documentation.

Um it is also uh quite common, unfortunately, for campaigns not to respond to the draft audit report, which in turn makes it much more difficult for our auditors much more time-intensive to produce the draft final audit report that they then refer to the legal team to decide whether or not this matter goes to enforcement for violations or instead gets closed out.

Um we have no ability as an agency, the board has no ability to impose a penalty on unresponsiveness in real time when a campaign doesn't respond to the IDR, the initial document request, when a campaign doesn't respond to the draft audit report, to the extent they get penalized for that, it comes at the end of the road.

And oftentimes campaigns then do show up for the hearing before the board and they say, Yeah, yeah, we know we didn't respond to the IDR or to the DAR, but we do have these receipts.

Here they are.

That requires both our legal team and our audit team to redo the audit and reconsider the matter for enforcement.

It is a lot of rework, which is a form of waste in our system that we definitely need to cut down on in order to speed up our audits overall.

Um so candidate cooperation as well as perhaps um an ability and amendment to the act that will allow us to impose some penalties in real time to better incentivize responses to the IDR and to the FAR or to the DAR and to the FAR.

Okay.

Um as it relates to intro 12A, there is a $10,000 for each violation penalty.

If there is no disclosure, do you think that is sufficient given the amount of money that is honestly no?

Okay.

Um I want to be clear that my board, our board has not taken an official position on a policy recommendation to increase the penalty cap, but I will share with you my views on that.

And if the council is amenable to considering an increase in the penalty cap, I'm sure my board would be happy to discuss it and develop a formal policy position on it.

But that cap 10,000 is in the law.

It's in the Campaign Finance Act for any violation.

The board cannot penalize more than 10,000.

If you have a multi-million dollar independent expenditure campaign, they very well may consider a 10,000 dollar fine a year or two after the election to be little more than the cost of doing business in elections.

But we are constrained by the statute by the Campaign Finance Act and how we can penalize violations of every variety, including a failure to file a disclosure report of the sort that would be required by Intro 12A.

I would also jump in to note that after every citywide election, we are required by the city charter to publish a post-election report where we take a look at how the program worked, how well we administered it, and also make recommendations to improve it.

And this very issue is a live issue under debate at our agency right now for inclusion in that post-election report, which will be published in September.

So we expect to come before the council again and speak about all the recommendations that we have, but this is certainly one of the big ones that has come up.

As Paul mentioned, we're discussing it internally.

We've heard a lot from the good government groups and advocates about their concerns in this area as well.

Um it has some intersection with this bill because right now we are capped at 10,000, but theoretically that could change.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

We really appreciate your testimony.

Next is uh CEC.

Um Sarah Sahid and Benjamin Saltayer, and they will be sworn in, so I don't make a mistake again.

We will now hear from the Civic Engagement Commission.

Uh, before you begin, I will administer the affirmation.

Panelists, please raise your right hand.

Do you affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth before this committee, and to answer uh council member questions honestly.

I do.

I do.

Thank you.

You may begin when ready.

Okay, um.

Thank you, Chair Brewer, and members of the Committee on Governmental Operations, State and Federal Legislation for holding this hearing and for the opportunity to submit testimony about the work of the Civic Engagement Commission or CEC.

Thank you.

In regard to community boards, my name is Dr.

Sarah Saeed, and I am the chair and executive director of the Civic Engagement Commission.

I'm joined by Benjamin Solitaire, senior advisor.

To begin, I'd like to give you an overview of CEC's current structure, staff, and programs.

CEC consists of 15 commissioners, eight of whom are appointed by the mayor, two by city council, and five by borough presidents.

The C the Charter grants CEC broad authorization to increase civic participation, enhance civic trust, and strengthen democracy.

Our mandates include citywide participatory budgeting, language assistance at poll sites, complementary to the board of elections, and assistance to community boards.

We also manage the Task Force for Racial Inclusion and Equity Tree Neighborhood Initiative, a coalition building program that began during the COVID-19 pandemic and continues to strengthen community engagement.

Our vision is to create a dynamic civic engagement process.

Sorry, our vision is to create dynamic civic engagement processes where communities who have been excluded from government are heard and affirmed in their civic power.

Today we are specifically discussing our work with community boards.

Some of our accomplishments include since September 2025, this EC has held 29 workshops and 11 topics, for which we had 703 board members registered and 298 attend.

And we have had four, we will have four more workshops this week.

Topics included parliamentary procedures, motions and amendments, nominations and elections, committees, and efficient meetings, de-escalation training, affordable housing, how to use artificial intelligence, social media, how to use the open data portal, and disability voters' rights.

After hosting these sessions, we post many of them to our CEC YouTube channel, where we currently have had 22 videos posted in a combined views of 12,809, combined 12,894 views.

To remain responsive to the evolving needs of New York City's diverse population and to support community boards in language access, we provide yearly training on best practices for implementing language services as well as how to request language services from agencies.

We do receive requests from boards from time to time for translation services, which we accommodate as budget allows.

And for interpretation service, we refer requests to the mayor's office of immigrant affairs or one of our trusted vendors.

Finally, the CEC continues to make over the phone interpretation available to all community boards through a paid contract with language line.

We work to make training more accessible and responsive to board members' needs and interests.

We offer workshops at different times and days to meet members' busy schedules.

We also provide more personalized service for individual boards, including parliamentary procedure topics of their choosing and exclusively for their own members.

We're in regular communication with the future of community boards working group discussing ways to improve services to boards, including exploring approaches to the upcoming member term limits.

At the request of Brooklyn Community Board 4 and Councilmember Gutierrez's office, we are in the process of organizing a workshop on how boards deal with liquor licenses that will consist of a panel of board members who have expertise in that area.

We expect that to occur in the fall of 2026.

Lastly, in February, we began a partnership with the National Civic League and Perfect City called Better Public Meetings NYC.

This has included conducting surveys and interviews at six community boards, including Brooklyn 4, Queens 6, Manhattan 3 and 11, and Bronx 7 and 9.

Working with the borough president's offices, we are conducting a survey of all boards asking for their best practices and policies on public meetings.

This coming July, we'll be hosting a public forum to discuss what we've learned so far and how we can implement the learnings.

We will also work to form peer learning groups with community board members and staff.

We look forward to reporting back on that work in the future.

Thank you so much for your attention, and we're happy to answer any questions.

Thank you very much.

Councilmember Wilson.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you for your testimony.

So we have two bills before the hearing that uh before the committee that we're considering today.

Has the CEC taken a position on either of these?

We have not.

Is there particularly with the uh intro 501 that would set a term limit for district managers?

I'm curious if you think that there would be what the burden might be on boards that uh are anticipating a changeover from their um with the term limits for uh existing members and then also pondering and where we're opining on a bill that would do that for district managers if there's concern about sort of the institutional knowledge and the ability of the boards to function with these changes.

Um I can just say very briefly that I think these any transition requires support and making sure knowledge is transferred for the institution to continue, right?

So, regardless of how that transition happens, whether it's through a term or not, I think for the institution to continue to serve the public, it's very important that a knowledge transfer is arranged for.

So that's my opinion on that.

I don't know if Benjamin you want to add anything.

And um, you mentioned you're working to assist the boards with the transitions for the uh for the term limits for the members.

Are there certain practices or uh that you're looking to help them with to maintain that knowledge on the board?

I think so far we've just been uh talking, and I'll let Benjamin uh comment as well.

Um, we've just been talking about um opportunities for people who are well-versed to share their best practices and you know how we can arrange those kinds of forums, you know, as the CEC in our role and support working with the future of community boards.

But Benjamin, do you want to add anything?

Yeah we have discussed uh potential citywide gatherings or borough wide gatherings with board members who are leaving to share knowledge of the incoming uh we've talked to the borough presidents uh letting though we're available to help convene things so I think it's uh they're all all the BPs are working towards that goal of helping the transition well so we're just trying to work with them and the board members themselves to make it smooth and effective one question I have is the um district managers and the community boards themselves do they reach out to you do you reach out to them the reason I say this as borough president that with all due respect to look at the list with Dr.

Alden Bonillo in charge we had every single one of those um forums in terms of trainings except AI that we didn't have A at that time every one we had.

Do the other borough presidents do that so do the boards are they confused about reaching out for you to train to go the borough president for training how do you coordinate all that we had all those trainings.

Benjamin do you want to answer?

He doesn't want to answer all my questions I think no I'll answer of course any questions council member.

I know Benjamin very well I like Benjamin but I do not agree with this.

Go ahead.

Yes.

Um we consult with the borough president's offices uh you your office when you were there and it was superstar superstar for sure so yes you offered a lot of those trainings not all the BPS I looked at that list Benjamin every single one AI go ahead I get it I get it not every board does that um you'll see that you know we are uh mandated to do a lot of land use trainings but that is something that the borough presidents do across the board so we offer occasional ones but we know that we don't want to be duplicative.

So we are asked to do certain trainings we look at the board members we ask surveys from them what they want to do when we try to fulfill those needs we have heard with the AI we had heard that the the it was being used and poorly so we implemented that um you know with the parliamentary procedure which was one that we offered uh a lot uh that is now required to be held by VPs so we have stopped offering that one um you know there's only so many uh uh trainings we can we can offer every year if all board members are busy they have a lot of meetings um we're basically offer sort of one a week I think if I did the math so uh we offer what we hear the board members asking.

Okay.

And then in terms of um I know you're not taking positions I just heard on these bills but do you feel that do you have any sense of whether or not each borough president has a process I know Manhattan does for um implementing um I would say quality community board members versus just in the old days it was political it was a bad situation.

So that has changed in Manhattan I assume elsewhere.

Do you have some sense of how it works across the board or you don't pay attention to that?

No no we talked to them about that I mean it was certainly sorry.

Yeah go ahead yeah um uh they all uh do the interviews that I know of I don't deal as much with South Island we don't talk to them as much but uh happy to we just don't um but they do an interview process they get the applications we talk to them about where the applications are coming from so I feel that they do all have a process that is pretty robust.

Okay.

It seems to me that as a council member I know I don't have the staff to do something similar.

So I that's why I feel very strongly that the process is important.

Otherwise you will have people who are just friends and not gone through vetting.

Well you so you're will your board take a position on these bills or you're not going to as far as you know.

You're talking about the commission yeah CEC board no uh I don't think so okay is there some reason why not why not to or you think it's up to the council to decide and not the CEC?

Uh I think it's yeah I no there's no specific reason.

I think um it's beyond the scope of what we are asked to do.

So yeah.

Okay.

And the future of community boards working group.

What what does it achieve?

I just don't know it.

That's my ignorance.

Um they do they convene on a regular basis.

They you know obviously they showed that report a while ago.

They helped do the um term limit session two years ago that you were part of and that we helped fund.

Um they they meet regularly to make recommendations for things.

I think they're they've called for increased funding, they've called for better land use, but uh I'm not aware of the tangible uh achievements.

Okay.

But I find them a useful, obviously, group to talk to.

Okay.

And and who's on that?

Is that community board members and DMs?

Mostly the district managers.

Yeah, okay.

And the other question I have is do you get a lot of requests for language?

You have to refer to Moya quite a bit.

How does that work?

Because obviously that would be a good if you did.

I just didn't know.

Yeah, I I'm not I don't think we are getting a lot.

We do get them occasionally.

Benjamin, do you want to have a we get one or two a month of somebody asking for interpretation or translation services?

Yeah, it would be we should be doing more because then that would bring more people into that.

I think that's the one of the biggest frustration the boards have is the lack of ability and funding to do that.

To do the outreach for that.

Okay.

And do you advocate for community boards to get more funding, or that would be something that will come out of the a different process?

That would not be what CEC would do.

That's a different process.

Um my other question is.

Yeah, you gave some good numbers in terms of those who are participating in your trainings.

Do you find that like are do you find that all the community boards are getting trained?

Is it some that do more than others?

How how do you how do you feel about the trainings?

Like is it across the board that people participate?

Are they all Zoom?

Are they in person?

Just give me a better sense of the trainings.

The trainings are all virtual.

Um, and I think that the attendance really varies by topic and by um board as well.

I mean I think we are seeing that over time there are board members who are coming to you know multiple trainings, so interested in different topics, and I'll let Benjamin add to this as well.

We do provide some in-person, like tonight I'm going to the borough president of the Bronx.

We're doing in-person de-escalation training.

Uh, and we used to do the parliamentary procedure in person before that was handed off.

I think we have a dedicated uh uh followers.

You know, I don't I don't think every DM does share the information.

We do share it with whatever uh board members directly that allow us to use their emails when when they sign up.

Uh but I don't think every board, and I we we do keep track of every board that that attends.

Um so it's uh we would like more, obviously.

Okay.

Um and then this issue of uh term limits.

So obviously a board member can come back after a year if they so choose, or if they get reappointed, that's the other issue.

I don't know that that's gonna happen much, to be honest with you.

Um, but my question is this notion that you can share data or share, not just data but information, particularly on land use, I think is a bit false because it just doesn't work like that.

You gotta be in the room when the developers there to negotiate, as I have done 215 times on terms of ULERPs.

Nobody else has done that, and so you have to have somebody there to say, you know, this AMI is no good or whatever.

So I don't what plans do you really have to try to share the data or share the expertise that is going to be lost with this stupid charter revision that I hate term limits for community boards I hate.

I think that again, sort of uh work working off the peer learning.

I mean, that's one direct in-person conversations, but we really want to support what the borough presidents and the and the boards themselves want to do.

So we'll be working on that over the next several months.

Okay, so you don't know yet what the uh process will be for doing that.

Not the exact process, no.

All right.

I don't have any other questions, so thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um our first testimony is from Alice Camara, reInvent Albany and and also Ben Weinberg from Citizens Union, and you have three minutes, but you can talk longer because I know you both can.

Come on up.

I'm not supposed to say that for the record, but I am.

Thank you.

Good morning.

Oh, we're here we go.

Good morning, Council members.

Thank you, Chair.

My name is Ben Weinberg.

I'm the director of public policy at Citizens Union, a nonpartisan good government group that works to advance honest and accountable government and fair and open elections in New York.

Thank you for holding this hearing.

So on intro 951, we commend Councilmember Thomas Henry for recognizing the ethical risks posed by prediction markets.

When public officials can profit from outcomes they influence or know about before the public does, there is a clear risk of conflicts of interest and abuse of insider information, as the prominent example is mentioned before in the committee's report indicate.

However, we believe much of the content, much of the conduct, sorry, the bill seeks to prohibit is already covered by the city's conflicts of interest law.

Chapter 68 provide prohibits public servants from using their positions for financial gain and from disclosing confidential information to advance their advance their private interest.

Those provisions apply to all public servants, not just policymakers, as the bill does.

For that reason, we recommend addressing any remaining gaps through chapter 68 rather than creating a separate regulatory framework, building on the city's existing ethics laws and its definitions would make enforcement clear and more effective.

We also recommend removing provisions that would impose penalties on relatives of public servants.

The obligation to protect the integrity of public office should rest with the public servants, and extending the COIB's enforcement authority to spouses or parents or siblings would raise practical and legal legal concerns.

If the council does determine that existing law is insufficient in addressing the new risks posed by prediction markets, it can it could consider other alternatives.

Our written testimony offers uh some options.

Uh for example, one could prohibit public servants from participating in prediction markets when the event, so-called event is related to their official duties, whether they um whether they were they participated in it or not.

Um North Carolina governor issued a similar executive order recently.

Um, one could tailor a specific definition of non-public information that's relevant to this context if the current definition of confidential information doesn't cover all cases related to prediction markets.

Um you could also require written affirmation of existing restrictions so that every public servants will have to kind of sign that they acknowledge that restriction and and that that provides for um uh a way to enforce uh that form, basically signing that form later on.

Um perfect.

That's the I'm I'm actually done with uh with that one, so um I'm happy to take any other questions.

All right.

Thank you.

Uh good afternoon, Chair Brewer and members of the Council Committee on Governmental Operations, state and federal legislation.

My name is Alex Camarda.

I'm a senior policy advisor for reInvent Albany.

ReInvent Albany is a watchdog organization that advocates for open and accountable government in New York.

ReInvent Albany supports the intent and spirit of both intro 12A and intro 951, but believes the council needs to better account for how these proposals intersect with the existing law.

Regarding intro number 12A, reInvent Albany supports disclosure of when political communications are created by artificial intelligence or altered by it.

The advent of social media and more recently, artificial intelligence have made it very challenging for New Yorkers to discern between the truth and fiction in digital media related to candidates running for office and political and public policy discourse.

Social media platforms are awash in communications where the sources are not clearly identifiable and facts and untruths mingled together.

The growing use of artificial intelligence compounds this already significant problem with videos, sound, and pictures reflecting reality altered to create a false impression with the view or often unaware of the manipulation.

Intro number 12A takes a first step in addressing the growing challenges to voters, making informed choices about candidates by requiring provenance data, underlying metadata indicating when political communications were altered and by what tool to be disclosed to the New York City Campaign Finance Board and made available to the public online.

While not explicitly indicated in the bill language, this disclosure appears to be implemented in concert with CFB's disclosure regime and its rules and subject to the existing enforcement procedures and penalties, the latter of which is referenced in the bill summary.

While reInvent Albany commends the speaker for tackling this issue, it is also imperative that the bill at minimum clarify that disclosure is required in the communication itself that simply states this image, video, or audio has been manipulated consistent with New York State election law.

Reinvent Albany will only support legislation that contains this disclosure in the communication itself because it ensures that voters are informed in real time and can adequately process the message to make an informed consideration of the candidate running for office.

Beyond the recommended disclosure in the communication, there are several other issues the council should clarify or consider before passing this bill.

Some embodied in Governor Hochel's fiscal year 27 budget proposals and contemplated in briefs on the issue by national experts like the Brennan Center for Justice.

Specifically, the council should clarify in the bill summary or legislative intent how this legislation builds on or intersects with New York State Election Law 14-106, which all requires disclosure of quote, material deceptive media with few exceptions.

Adequately defined synthetic content creation system and provenance data, as the bill references section 1550 of the New York State General Business Law, which currently doesn't exist.

In determining these definitions, the council should consider whether to include personal identifying information, for example, as part of the provenance data, such as an internet protocol address.

Charge synthetic content creation system providers like OpenAI and Meta with providing a tool to the public to read provenance data and political and policy-related communications, as is mandated in the New York State Fiscal 27 executive budget proposals.

Prohibit the creation or publication of a deep fake within 90 days of an election if the publisher knows or should know it was fake.

It was intended to impact the election and was made without a candidates or individuals' permission if they are featured in the deepfake, as was done in the executive budget proposals.

This will require examining constitutional permissibility and clarify if copies of communications will be provided to the campaign finance board and made public with prominence data for communications sent by candidate committees.

It's our understanding that unlike independent expenditure committees, candidate committees are not required to submit originals or copies of their campaign communications until the post-election audit process and are not posted publicly in the searchable database.

If provenance data is not provided until well after voters have cast their ballots or is provided without a copy of the communication, a voter can reference when reviewing the data, the utility of this disclosure requirement will be greatly diminished.

And lastly, amend section one of the bill to not only reference new additions to the campaign finance database this bill requires, but also other disclosures beyond contributions and expenditures of a campaign's authorized committee.

Regarding intro 951, we support the intent of this bill to clarify that public officials may not use confidential insider knowledge, gain from public and pointless to profit in prediction markets.

Governor Hochel recently enacted executive order 60 that prohibits state employees from profiting from inside information that they learn while work while working as public servants.

We supported that ban because it clarifies the state code of ethics, public officers' law section 74 and provides clear guidance to public service public servants serving under the governor.

Intro 951 in its current form would create a diverging regime outside of Chapter 68 of the city charter, the City Ethics Code, which as reference already prohibits useful using confidential information for personal gain under section 2604.

We urge the city council to rework this legislation to ensure that it does not create a different enforcement regime from other prohibited conduct.

Chapter 68 already prohibits profiting from confidential information in section 2604 B4.

If the City Council wishes to explicitly include prediction marks in this prohibition, it should amend this section rather than include a new section of law in the administrative code with different definitions and covered individuals.

Specifically, 2604 B4 provides that public servants cannot disclose confidential information that is quote obtained as a result of the official duties of such public servant and which is not otherwise available to the public, and they cannot quote use any such information to advance any direct or indirect financial or other private interest of the public servant or of any other person or firm associated with the public servant.

Intro 951 would create a new chapter 12 in Title III of the administrative code that diverges from some of the standards in Chapter 68 of the city charter and section 12-11 of the administrative code, the annual disclosure law.

Specifically, it creates new definitions of policymaker and relative.

Chapter 68 applies to all public servants and defines those associated with public servants, including children, spouses, domestic partners, and persons with whom the public servant has business or financial relationships.

Intro 9951 only includes policymakers and their relatives.

Relatives under this bill include all those listed in Chapter 68 under associated, but adds step parents.

It would impose fines upon the relatives of policymakers who profit from inside information and prediction markets.

Chapter 68, in contrast, only provides penalties for public servants.

And the bill adds new reporting requirements for financial disclosure statements requiring a listing of all transactions of $50 or more for prediction market transactions.

Event contracts currently the thresholds for reporting income started a thousand dollars.

We also note that the bill excludes event contracts issued on plants regulated by the New York State Gaming Commission.

While this is likely an attempt to differentiate between sports betting authorized by New York State and betting related to city government or political actions that are regulated by the commodity futures trading commission, we caution that New York should decide at some point to regulate these markets.

Thank you, both.

I think you're sort of saying both of you uh something similar to what the agency stated, basically, you know, that uh uh Amy Klobucha's bill in Washington sounds like it's what we're aiming for.

That was one thing that I came out.

And then secondly, um, you know, you like the concept, obviously we all do that public officials uh state to the law and not uh try to break it.

But I think um Ben, you were stating that you don't think uh relatives should be involved, and I wasn't clear what uh reInvent Albany was saying about that.

Uh on 951, I think our overarching recommendation is that um the bill needs to align with existing law.

It's creating which does not include relatives.

Yeah, I mean, I'm I'm commenting generally, but um it's the council wants to.

If the council wants to add prediction markets to the existing law, we think it should amend the sections that relate to existing law rather than creating a separate enforcement regime.

You know, the as far as the relatives questions goes, I I don't think we weigh in specifically as to whether uh who should be included uh as relatives, but I think we're more focused on just alignment.

Okay.

And you're yeah, I'll just say uh relatives are included in existing provisions to in uh to the extended day profit from something that the uh public servant does, and then the um enforcement and the investigation is uh directed towards the public servant.

Um the assumption is that they had or may have something to do with the gain that their um uh their relative had.

So the enforcement in that case would remain uh the same.

Okay, and I think you're both stating in terms of the issue of um AI that the image video and audio is where we should stick and not go into the campaign fundraising letters and so on and so forth, right?

I would agree with that.

Yeah, I'd say for 12A, I our principal um question really to the council is how does this intersect with existing New York state law?

Um, you know, there are the provisions that I reference in the testimony that relate to uh disclosure of material deceptive communications, those are pretty narrow.

I think they align with a lot of the recommendations that the CFP made in their testimony.

So if the disclosure of the communications is meant to align with state law, I think that will address a lot of the concerns the CFB had, but that's not clear to us from the from the bill if that's the intent.

Um, but that's what we think um it should work off of.

There's there's a larger question of enforcement in that uh related to that law state law that requires candidates and campaigns to basically stamp uh this was generated by AI because enforcement of election law is uh difficult matter.

It's it's um conducted by the state board of elections and by the division of of um enforcement within the state board of elections, and both of these bodies have you know been prone to delays and and other issues with enforcement.

Um the state law actually allows candidates to petition the court uh uh to um to do something about it if if their likelihood is is part of that campaign or that ad.

Um, but that law still applies to New York City candidates and campaigns, so in that sense there wouldn't be much of a difference.

Yeah, the CFP said I thought it was an honest answer that to do it they'd have to have a vendor and they'd have to have expertise and they'd have to hire people who are paid more who are expertise in this area.

So I thought they were honest about what's involved if they're really gonna do the investigation and um keep people accountable.

It's not it's not as easy as one might think.

Uh that's right.

You know, I sometimes think about this as um similar to the post-employment restrictions.

Um it's difficult, uh almost impossible to uh for the regulating agency to find all cases where someone violated a post-employment restriction because they're not monitoring the actions of thousands and thousands of uh so um it's based on on reporting of violations, and in that case that um that would probably look the same.

Okay.

Thank you both very much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Uh Jonathan Weinberg, who Manhattan Borough President's office.

You have to be sworn in because you're representing the borough president.

All right, we will now hear uh testimony from the Manhattan Borough President's office.

Before we begin, I will administer the uh oath of affirmation.

Please raise your right hand.

Do you affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth before this committee and to respond honestly to council member questions?

I do.

Alright, you may begin when you're ready.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair Brewer, and thank you to the other members of the council and the members of the public gathered here today.

I'm here on behalf of Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Siegel.

My name is John Weinberg.

I'm general counsel to the borough president, and I'm here to enter into the record official testimony in opposition to intro 501 on behalf of Borough President Hoylman Siegel.

And this uh written testimony is also uh signed on to by Bronxboro President Vanessa Gibson and Queensborough President Donovan Richards.

Uh, President Hoylman Siegel has significant concerns regarding intro 501, which is drafted would undermine the institutional effectiveness of New York City's community boards.

Intro 501 would impose term limits on community board district managers.

District managers are professional public servants whose institutional knowledge and long-standing relationships with residents, agencies, and stakeholders are indispensable to the effective operation of community boards.

These positions are not political appointments, nor should they be treated as such.

At a time when land use and service delivery issues are becoming increasingly complex, community boards benefit from experienced administrative leadership.

Mandatory turnover would unnecessarily weaken continuity, diminish expertise, and impair the ability for boards to effectively serve their communities.

Community board members have universally told us that district managers are quite literally the glue that hold community boards together.

We have heard no concerns whatsoever from our constituents on the performance and dedication of these district managers.

So why disturb something that is working so well?

We know Chair Brewer and other members of the council understand firsthand the important role that community boards play and the district managers specifically play in New York City civil life.

We therefore respectively urge the council to reconsider the bill in its current form.

Thank you for your time and attention to this matter.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate this, your testimony, and we will certainly take it under consideration.

Thank you, Chair Brewer.

We appreciate your time and attention.

Thank you.

The next speaker, Susan Stetzer, Community Board 3.

Mark Diller, Community Board 2.

Raphael Moore Punnett, who is Board 6th in the Bronx.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'll go first.

My name is Susan Stetzer.

I'm district manager for Manhattan Community Board 3.

And just like to mention that we're actually city agencies, not the public.

I want to thank you for this opportunity to share concerns regarding proposed legislation and budget.

Because of the limited time, I will speak to Intro 501, which is the most shocking.

Community Board 3 executive committee voted last Thursday to oppose legislation in TO 322 and 501.

This will be voted on tomorrow night and submitted to the committee as testimony.

And I'd like to say I actually agree with council member Williams that our terms of employment should be clarified, and I'd like to suggest that the council can go on our website under resources and tests and standards and see very detailed, lengthy responsibilities that the board voted on for the district manager.

It is on a managerial test and standards form provided by DCAS.

I'd also like to say that I will not personally be impacted by this as I've been in position for 22 years and expect to be retired well within the next four years.

City Charter provides each community board within budgetary appropriations, shall appoint a district manager as it deems appropriate, who shall serve at the pleasure of the community board.

There seems to be diverse opinions on whether this would require a charter revision commission to allow borough presidents to terminate a district manager as this would diminish the power of a city agency.

There is no precedent in New York City government for an elected official to terminate a staff person at a different city agency outside of their direct line of authority.

The immediate and long-term impact of a four-year hire would be that district managers would leave community boards to find stable jobs.

The board's abilities to hire for this position would be materially impaired.

District manager value is in long-term institutional knowledge of the community and the board, especially important as boards transition to member term limits.

Community boards already have the usual uh human resource procedures to hire and fire district managers.

We're subject to, as I mentioned, to New York City managerial Tests and Standards.

Boards can evaluate and when necessary necessary, terminate district managers.

And I would say I've been evaluated by uh against the tests and standards by several chairs from my board.

And several chairs have done this several times.

So the process is absolutely in place.

Uh so same process used by agencies for all mid-level managers and the same process used by elected officials for their staff.

Um I won't go into what we do because um you've already mentioned that.

Um for borough presidents to have the power to remove district managers who are carrying out the wishes of their boards and the community at large would put district managers in a bind between carrying out the directives of their board and those of borough presidents when the directives and positions uh differ.

I'm not aware of any reason to treat district managers different than any other city manager, and I'm not aware of any borough presidents seeking the ability to remove district managers.

And I didn't have time to talk about the budget, but I would just like to add that community boards have not had an increase to their other than personal service services in many years, and with the technology and training needed these days, we are in dire need of uh budget increases.

Thank you very much.

Thanks, I'll go out.

Good morning, council member and council.

Um, my name is Rafael Morey Pennite.

I'm the district manager for community board six in the Bronx.

I'm here representing the community board who adopted this position at a board meeting.

Um we would like to ask the council for a baseline budget increase to community boards.

Um, the responsibilities of community boards have grown over time.

Um we recently opined on several citywide zoning tax amendments, which created a new universal affordability program, which is uh creating more as of right development while still including community board review of that development.

Um we are now uh pining on open dining permits, retail cannabis licenses, um we are pining on open street applications, uh city charter amendments, um, as well as our ongoing regular duties of responding to constituent complaints of agency service delivery, uh U-LERP actions, liquor licenses, and traffic redesign projects.

So if the various recent uh legislative changes to the scope of the community boards have increased the amount of work that their boards are responsible for doing, it would make sense that the council would allocate more funding to community boards to support this work.

Most of our budget is used for salary to support someone answering the phone when a constituent calls the office about a pothole or a tree, et cetera, et cetera.

Um we ask that the community that the council consider this and push for it in the current budget process.

Um the council has shown time and time again that you value community input and that what the city is attempting to streamline and centralize land use procedures and other um processes that community input is valuable, and in order for community input to be valuable, community boards need to be properly staffed to field those complaints and and hear from the community on local issues.

Um, and then lastly, my personal capacity, I want to just reiterate that uh intro 501A is an attempt to politicize the district manager position and is very much antithetical to the value of community input at a local level.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Next, thank you.

Uh, my name is Mark Diller.

I am the district manager of community board two in Manhattan.

I'm also a former chair of a community board, so I bring two perspectives to the issues before this committee.

I thank you for the opportunity to testify.

I have submitted on behalf of community board two our resolution from last year regarding what was then intro 1065, which has the salient provisions are virtually identical to 501.

Um, my colleagues have already identified many of the issues that I wanted to address, so I'll try to streamline.

There are two key aspects to a district manager's position.

Obviously, some looking inward and some looking outward.

Those looking inward are to support the board members in their work on things like ULERPs, which are increasingly rare because of actions like the charter amendments and the city of yes, requiring ever more nuanced abilities to bring in legacy information.

Um the removal of the creation of as of right development opportunities makes the community board's work in trying to find benefits for the public more nuanced, more complex, and requires history and legacy information to be brought to the bear.

So that is so, and then looking outward, being a resource for constituent services.

I'm three and a half years into being a district manager, which I thought I would know how to do, having been a chair of a board, but boy, is it different.

And it takes time to build those relationships in the community to be trusted by community or organizations.

My board has a very active uh constituency, and active sometimes means doubting, sometimes means you need to earn their respect and trust.

I'm on my way, maybe two more years I'll be off probation.

But that's something that is uh antithetical to the idea of a four-year term.

Um so intro 501 would create instability in a place where we need it more and more, especially as board member term limits take effect.

Um switching to the option of or the issue of borough president termination.

Uh, I have the greatest respect for uh the current Manhattan Borough president to whom we uh look for guidance.

Um, but this is a long-term issue, and as my colleague has said, politics the uh office of district manager is not in the service of the community's needs.

Uh finally, um, the uh again to talk about the the borough president's role.

Um, the current borough president has followed in uh council member Brewer's footsteps in terms of enhancing the outreach and meaningful engagement of uh recruiting and discerning who should be a board member.

Um, and uh trying to replicate that across 51 council districts is neither feasible nor is it a good use of public money.

A better use would be the increase in the community board budget that my colleague just advocated.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

I guess one question.

Um I I'm glad you're all against these, at least 501.

I didn't you didn't talk much about the other bill, I don't ask about it.

But what would be the amount?

Because I have been advocating for more money for community boards, but I haven't heard a lot of specifics.

So is there an amount that you are suggesting or is there is it it's often staffing?

I laugh a little bit because Manhattan has had Ulurps, we've had street, you know, we've had um street issues, we've had liquor issues for years, and now haha, every other borough stuck with it too.

My question, my question is there's some numbers what I'm asking.

My board has requested a $50,000 budget increase per community board.

Okay.

So that would be that's what that would be something that others will others have numbers, or do you think that's appropriate?

Um my board has not voted on a number, but I would say it would have to be at least 30.

And the reason for that is we can keep a lot of our staff, even there's not even equity within city government.

So some of the money needs to go to pay the staff members as well as OTPS for the boards.

Okay.

Um I would think 50 is a low end of the spectrum, and the reason is that um now you're talking to the two district managers who have the most liquor licenses in captivity.

So we need a whole nother staff person.

Um we have uh my my state liquor authority committee, I have two of them.

Each of them meet once a month, including all 12 months, and we typically get between 60 and 70 uh 30-day notices every month.

Um I need another staff person, and by the way, I need the ability to use right now.

I have consultants who I have to pay OTPS, but it requires council member approval in order to move more than enough money to pay that person.

Um, and so I need a whole full-time staff member.

So 50,000 is kind of on the low end of what we would want to get.

And as my colleague has mentioned, we do a great job of training city employees who they're then snapped up for higher paying jobs elsewhere.

Okay.

That's very helpful.

I will advocate for that, but we probably need some more help in doing so, just telling you.

Now, in terms of 322, have your boards voted on that.

I know you have on D501.

322 being the uh appointment process.

My executive committee voted on it Thursday night unanimously to oppose it, and we'll go to full board tomorrow night.

Okay.

Anybody else?

CB2 has not taken up that issue as of yet.

Okay.

Board six has not either.

Okay.

Well, thank you very much.

I appreciate it, and we will work ongoing with some of these issues.

Thank you.

Next is uh Camillo, looks like Robot from Bushwick, uh, Celeste and Leon, Community Board 4 in Brooklyn, Laura Singer, um, board 15 in Brooklyn, and Ursa Weatherspoon, Brooklyn 8.

Thank you.

Thank you all for joining us.

Thank you very much.

And whomever would like to start, whenever you're ready.

Good afternoon.

My name is Laura Singer, and I'm district manager for Brooklyn Community Board 15, which is Sheepsay Bay, Garrett's in Beach, Manhattan Beach Home Crest in Madison.

Um, speaking in regards to intro 501, what city agency manager has a term limit?

What agency manager would take a job outside of perhaps an elected official if they could potentially lose it in four years' time.

Not all of us have that calling to be an elected official, but we still want to serve our community, and so this is the path that we chose.

By placing term limits on district managers, we wind up in actuality denying ourselves as some truly talented people who would never consider a position with a potential term limit.

Currently, resourcing and attracting staff with our very small budgets has been challenging.

Now with the caveat of being not being extended past a four-year term, but only further term potential hires off.

Board members with historic knowledge are now being termed out.

So you want to take a potential long-standing staff member with institutional knowledge and place them on the chopping block as well.

To what end?

With the potential for a constant turnover of district managers, you run the risk of having new hires using crucial time, learning the job, and focusing on procedures, giving them less time to devote to actually serving their community.

There's a natural progression in turnover that occurs.

Limiting a person's capacity to serve will prove more of a detriment to those who truly care and want to make a positive impact.

Boards have bylaws that determine how employees are hired and terminated.

Giving an outside agency such as the borough president's office, who does not resource or hire the ability to fire a district manager seems quite frankly illogical.

And fortunately, as of late, it seems to have been open season on community boards, with legislation being created each and every day to silence that voice.

This bill is no different.

It's just targeting another component of the community board, a key staff member that oversees its management, which is just looking to further rip community boards asunder.

As elected officials, you are entrusted to serve your communities to the best of your abilities, you should be visionaries to bring about positive change and amplify your community's voice, not silence it.

This legislation just serves to incassitate community boards further, and I urge you as champions for your communities to let Bill Intro 501 go no further than this hearing.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Who wants to go next?

Yes, go ahead.

Good morning, Chair Brewer and Counsel.

I'm Celestina Leong.

I'm the district manager for Brooklyn Community Board for representing Bushwick, and coming to the community board for a professional opportunity was unexpected for me, but it was a way to come back and serve my community after my family was displaced from the area.

The community board that hired me in 2017 is not the same board that I work for now.

We have to deal with the added layer of the transition from gentrification, which is something that's repeated itself over time in the city, but is still new to Bushwick.

I am also a founder of the Future of Community Boards working group.

I was very eager to learn as a new district manager, and who else better to learn from than my colleagues who've been doing this work for a very long time.

I owe a lot of what I know now to them and to also the board members who prepared me for this role.

I was facilitating that group from 2019 to about 2026 this year, when, due to capacity limitations being the full-time, the one full-time staff member prevented me from doing so.

But I am encouraged and empowered by my board to continue to do this work.

In regards to intro 501, while I can appreciate the need for structure, I believe the boards need consistent support and preparation to manage staff, especially as we experience term limits.

There are inconsistent practices and access to information across the boroughs that change each with each term with each borough president's administration.

I ask how are we retaining information or requiring transitional documentation to support incoming members and elected officials?

This is something that's been discussed preliminarily with colleagues in the Civic Engagement Commission while preparing on a citywide level for term limits.

In reference to intro 322 for council member appointments, to my knowledge, the borough president will have the ability to appoint when the council seat is vacant.

And this is something that will address the situation that occurred in the past during the pandemic at CB4.

One council member had resigned, and half of the board wasn't reappointed when a special election was canceled until that vacant seat was filled, which impacted representation on the board.

Alternatively, while the current appointment structure is longstanding, it leaves room for potential politicization.

I encourage city leaders to consider alternatives or other amendments that further empower community members while holding them accountable.

And there's an example you will hear.

Our precinct community and clergy councils have a process and also considering a civic lottery process in the future.

I encourage and remain hopeful for greater collaboration with the board slash board citywide.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Who's next?

Yes, there.

Thank you so much.

Good afternoon, Chairwoman Brewer and members of the Governmental Operation State and Federal Legislation Committee and those in attendance.

My name is Irsa Weatherspoon, Chairperson of Brooklyn Community Board 8, and I thank you for the opportunity to provide my testimony at today's hearing.

On June 11, 2026, the members of Brooklyn Community Board 8 voted unanimously to oppose intro 501.

The proposed local law that would attend would amend the New York City Charter by imposing four-year term limits on community board district managers subject to reappointment and by granting board presidents the authority to remove district managers at will.

Brooklyn Community Board 8 believes that both provisions undermine the authority, independence, and effectiveness of community boards.

Under the New York City Charter, district managers are city employees who are hired by and serve at the pleasure of their respective community boards.

They are accountable to the boards that recruit, evaluate, and supervise them, not to the city council or board presidents.

By imposing arbitrary term limits on district managers, intro 501 diminishes the discretion of community board members and interferes with the ability to retain experienced and effective administrative leadership.

Moreover, community board 8's bylaws already establish clear procedures for evaluating performance, addressing concerns and when necessary, removing a district manager for cause.

The safeguards provide accountability while preserving the board's authority to manage its own personnel decisions.

The proposal to grant borough presidents unilateral authority to remove district managers is particularly concerning.

Allowing an elected official to dismiss an employee whom they've never hired, not directly supervised, is inconsistent with the structure, purpose, and independence of community boards.

Such authority would disregard the extensive time, effort, and deliberation that boards invest in recruiting, selecting, and overseeing qualified district managers.

At a time when community board members themselves are subject to turn limits, the importance of experienced district managers cannot be overstated.

Long serving district managers provide critical institution knowledge, institutional knowledge, continuity, and stability.

They cultivate long-standing relationships with city agencies, city uh elected officials, community-based organizations, houses of worship, local businesses, and residents.

These relationships strengthen the board's ability to advocate effectively for the communities it serves and ensure the important initiatives and concerns addressed without interruption.

District managers are professional administrators whose performance should be evaluated by the community boards that employ them.

Intro 501 appears to treat these positions more like elected offices, subject to periodic political review rather than professional management roles grounded in expertise, experience, and accountability of the board.

For these reasons, board community, Brooklyn Community Board 8 respectfully urges the Committee on Governmental Operations State and Federal legislation to oppose intro 501 and preserve the authority of community boards to select, supervise, and when necessary, remove their own district managers.

Thank you kindly for your time and consideration.

Thank you very much.

Go ahead.

Hello, Chairperson Brewer.

And members of the committee.

My name is Robert Camacho.

I'm the chair of community board for.

I'm Celeste Leon's boss.

I don't call on my boss, I call on my friend.

I have been on the board for 42 years, since I was 23.

I'm 65.

I became the chair in 2018.

I am term limit in 2027.

What the board means to me, I've been advocating for my community.

Ever since nobody wanted to live in my community.

Now they want to turn someone like me out.

I still live there.

Another important uh how to speak out.

Volunteers, that's their job.

You want the job submitted, an application, let them do the work.

And if they can't do the work, that's the responsibility and address to the board.

There are already term limits for board members now.

They want to introduce term limits for district managers.

Yet there is no bill to assure members who are volunteer, represented to the manager city staff.

The borough presidents are doing different things.

One HR does this, one doesn't do that.

You always want to take away the board's job as an independent agency to give the borough president uh entitle to terminate a city employee at will.

That cannot be legal.

And the board is the only responsibility for addressing the issue before terminating an employee.

This will polarise or likely further politicalize the board's uh discouraged candidates from the position, and guess what?

Weakens the board ability to conduct business, board members gone, district managers gone.

What do we do?

Maybe at least encourage new ideas and respective of what happens to people that are underrepresented.

What happens when we're pushed out?

The bill for council members appointed like the borough president.

It might help, or again, it depends.

It's 2026.

Why aren't they considering other options like the precinct community council do?

You sign in, and that's how every year uh they put X amount of people that come in to the meeting, so if they meet uh 10 times a year, you have to have X amount of percentage, and then the peers vote them in that are there.

I know you know the procedure very well, and it won't be politicalized because they didn't do their job.

I'm getting turned out.

So they needed to do their job because I represent my community, love my community.

I'm getting charmed out because they didn't do theirs.

So they appoint it look like it's political to me.

So if you're not part of the clique or you don't agree with them, then they turn me on and say we don't need you now.

But when the press was burning down and no one was living there, all of a sudden now they need members.

It took me a almost a year myself volunteering to get 13 board members to get on the board.

A year I've been getting rid of board members that hasn't been coming to meeting and we haven't had quorum.

I've been doing my job.

Now I'm the bad guy because I did my job and it says it was three minutes.

We need quorum, and we need if you want to work for this community and help this community.

We need you here.

We don't need you home.

And I did that.

And if you look it up on the Brooklyn Borough President, you'll know everyone that I terminated with the board with their recommendation in regards that they haven't been coming on.

We don't have quorum to do.

Also, before uh I ended, I also we need to scrutinize also the borough presidents in regards to appointments, because now we're having people with personal agendas because they're part of this click, part of that click, and part of that click.

When all the time I'm constantly gotta tell them it has to be for the community.

Every community is different, every area is different.

So you have to work and have the public's opinion, the people that live there, and that's gonna impact that area or whatever it is they want them and not their personal agenda or being biased, and that's what we're getting.

So please don't um don't let this go.

I I I my district manager, I always thought she was a gentrifier.

It's funny.

I tell this to everybody.

I see this young girl, and then I realized that when I seen this man that was there, was her dad.

I didn't know it was a dad.

I grew up with a dad.

Her grandfather used to teach me b uh baseball.

You gotta wrap up a little bit, but go ahead.

So we gotta write.

I agree.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

I want one quick question, though.

Is so you guys generally your boards have a post 501.

I got that.

Did you take a position on the other the 322 or you didn't take a position on that one?

Go ahead.

Our board has yet to take a formal position on that.

I did not.

They did not.

Okay, that's true.

Okay, okay.

All right.

Do you think that the uh do you have any sense in Brooklyn of the process for uh getting community board members on board?

Because I just know the Manhattan process, so I'm not familiar with the other process.

Is there a process for that or you're not familiar with it?

In other words, when you apply to the community board, you fill out an application.

Then in Manhattan you go through a screening panel, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Does something like that happen in Brooklyn or you don't know?

Yes, yes, yes.

There's a process, but we don't know the process.

Hold on, let her answer and then I'll come to you.

Go ahead.

There's a process, but a lot of the members that I get have never even been to a community board.

I'm district manager for over 11 years, and I'm teaching them.

They've it's their first time ever seeing a community board, so something's lacking.

Okay.

All right, that's helpful.

You want to come in?

My yeah, my understanding is that there is a process.

Uh, once you apply, interviews will be conducted, and most of the time it's interviewing of new applicants as opposed to people who've historically been on the board, but sometimes they will re-interview people who've been on the board, and that's how they make their determination.

It's a variety of staff at Borough Hall that help out with that.

Okay.

Did you want to say something?

Okay.

Thank you.

Go ahead.

Yeah, go ahead.

You gotta push the button though.

Go ahead.

Thank you.

In addition to what's been said already, we find at community board eight that our best board members are ones that have visited without from the community and just sit in on our on our meetings.

Right.

I just want to add that in Manhattan.

If they hadn't been there, honey, they weren't getting on.

That's what I can tell you that right now.

Thank you very much.

The next is Sean Campbell from uh Brooklyn 14.

Um, Sandra McKee, Manhattan Six, Carl Henry Caesar from Brooklyn, uh Brooklyn, Emile Micah from Staten Island, and Dante Arnwine.

Thank you.

Um, good afternoon, Chair Brewer and members of the committee on governmental operations, state and federal legislation.

My name is Sandy McKee, and I am the chair of Manhattan Community Board 6.

I'm here to state CB6 opposition to Intro 501.

Manhattan Community Board 6 opposed the earlier version of this measure at this committee's oversight hearing last June, and our position has not changed.

Intro 501 is a solution in search of a problem.

No one has shown a need for it, and what it would actually do is introduce instability into community boards and inject politics into a role that is meant to be free of it.

The strength of a community board comes from two things: its independence and the deep institutional knowledge built up in its district office and members over many years.

That knowledge of the district's history, its agencies, and its people takes years to build.

And it is often the difference between a community board that gets a community problem that gets solved and one that doesn't.

That institutional knowledge matters now more than ever.

With term limits for community board members taking effect in less than a year, members will soon begin turning over far more quickly.

And in the in the continuity that holds a board together will rest less and less on the members alone, and increasingly on the district manager's shoulders.

Disrupting that continuity as an arbitrary on an arbitrary schedule doesn't reform anything, it discards the very thing that makes the board effective, and it is the residents we serve who will pay the price.

If there were real concerns somewhere about a district manager, we would want it addressed.

But the remedy for an isolated concern is not an amendment to the city charter that affects all 59 community boards.

Intro 501 reaches into every district in the city to solve a problem that we are not even aware exists.

A change of this magnitude to how community boards function should never be made without the boards themselves at the table.

And we were not consulted.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Who's next?

Good morning, Dante Arnwine, District Manager, Brooklyn Community Board 9.

First, I just want to take the opportunity to thank my colleagues for their strong testimony so far.

A little bit about this is trust.

Prior to being district manager, our board at CB9 didn't have a district manager for five to six years.

So what does that mean?

Think about if your district didn't have a representative, right?

That means that your community, all the community conversations, whether it's about sanitation, ULAR, transportation, all of those community conversations, that community gets left out of, and that's what I walked into as when I took the job as district manager.

And I can tell you, after five years of being on the job, it's taken five years for me to gain the trust of not only board members who have come in and out of the board, but also the people that I serve.

I know that because I can stand in a room now with people who used to sue our community board, our elected officials, and now I can speak to them and have that cordial conversation about how we get things done together to move the needle on things that we might not necessarily agree on.

And so I think that this position in itself is really about the trust of the community.

Elected officials come and go.

So do board members, but typically, district managers are there for some time serving.

There's no better feeling I get when I get a constituent who comes into the office and says, I voted for you.

And I get to say, no, you didn't.

This is not an elected position.

And so no matter who the person is, no matter what they think, their political party, we get to serve in a nonpartisan in a fair manner.

And so I ask that the city council for the members who don't know their district managers, reach out to your district manager, ask them what they need, ask them what they're going through, because I can tell you from my time as district manager, I've done it all.

And we're asking for support from this city council.

And it's for various things, right?

Wild things happen in a community board office.

One date, the gate goes out.

That's ten thousand dollars, right?

That literally just happened.

And so these are small little things.

We can't call and find a vendor.

These are small things we need help with.

So I ask the council to oblige all the requests to increase our budgets.

And again, if you do if you don't know your district manager, meet with them.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Next, hello, Sean Elise Campbell, uh district manager, Brooklyn Community Board 14.

Um, I would just reiterate what my colleagues and their chairs have said today.

And I would just reiterate the uh four previous times I've come to testify before this body.

Um, and in fact, to save money, I found some hard copies of the last time I testified, so I've just updated the date and resubmitted that that testimony.

Um, one thing that has changed since submitted that testimony back in March is that I had at that time two community coordinators plus myself, I now have one because we are at the point in our budgets at CB14 where we will not be able to offer.

Well, now that there's a staffing change, this has changed, but we were not able to offer a merit increase to anybody, not even a percentage.

Um we um so I have a staffer who left for a job where where uh salary increases are uh on her horizon again.

Um, I did want to speak to the question about how much because the the idea of at least $50,000 for a baseline budget increase, that that figure derived from the idea that we wanted the an annual budget increase to be tied to something so that we didn't have to come begging annually since it doesn't clearly work out for us very often.

Um, and the the $50,000 was pegged to the borough president's um budget increases over the years, um, and or uh a full complement of staff.

Um that's what would have made us whole a couple of years ago when we came up with that number.

So that number would have to increase, and then I would encourage the council to consider pegging a baseline budget increase for community boards to a formula or to another pegged budget increase um for for uh future ability to plan and continue to serve our communities.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Next, Chairwoman Brewer and members of the committee, good afternoon.

Thank you very much for allowing me to testify.

So my name is Carl Henry Cesar.

I am a current board member of Brooklyn Community Board 14.

I am the former chairperson of Brooklyn Community Board 14, and I am testimony.

I am testifying on my behalf.

Again, I'm not testifying on behalf of the board.

And so I'm here in opposition to 501 to restate what everyone said so eloquently before me.

I think number one, it is a reckless power grab.

I think by 501's standpoint, then council member Brewer, you could fire a legislative aide from Councilmember Morano's office, and then the mayor could fire someone from a legislative aide's office.

There's no end to that.

Number two, I think it's operationally abusive because, as people have said before me, which is very eloquent, term limits are coming, so that puts more stress on the district offices, which puts more stress on the borough president's offices to pick the right people.

So I feel like giving that forthcoming climate, it makes more sense and better use of their time to figure out how to pick better people, not figure out, oh, now I can fire district managers at will as well, too.

And then the third thing is because I'm a fan of sports, there are many franchises across many sports that languish for decades because they're management medals in the wrong things.

The cowboys have languished for decades because Jerry joins medals in the wrong things.

Dan Snyder with the Washington Commanders meddled in the wrong things.

If this bill passes, you will have borough presidents meddling in the wrong things.

And so that's it for me.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

Go ahead.

Thank you, Chair Brewer and uh committee members, and particularly Frank Moreno for inviting me here to talk about this favorite project.

Um that being the design of the flag for Staten Island, which is it.

I promise it wasn't created with artificial intelligence.

It replaced this one, which then borough president James Otto, uh brought to me and said, We've got to redo this.

We're we're being represented poorly, and so uh happily we got started on a uh brand new brand new flag.

Um we began with the basics.

There was some equity built into the Staten Island seal, which existed, but as far as I was concerned, it looked like it was squeezed out of a toothpaste tube.

So uh it needed some freshening and some smartening up and crisp graphics.

So uh we began pencil sketches, we had our colleagues pose for the illustrator.

Sounds wonderful, Michelle Cocosa, my partner, and then we took the step-by-step journey to a final design, which was this.

And so, um, we got a little bit of press, we got a story in the Staten Island Advance, and a full page in the New York Times.

So we were quite pleased.

And uh thank you again for allowing me to speak about it.

Thank you very much.

I like it a lot.

And then I learned from the briefing paper.

Thank you, Councilmember Ronald, that Manhattan doesn't have it codified either.

Thank you.

That was very interesting.

I saw other boroughs do, so like Staten Island and Manhattan there.

So congratulations.

You've got great leadership with Frank Morano and Jimmy Otto's my hero, so he's a lot of folks' heroes.

Oh, so anyone you have questions, go ahead.

Thank you.

I have uh one question for Mr.

Micah on the flag, and then one question for the community board panel.

Um Mr.

Micah, one, thank you not only for being here today and spending hours here and waiting to to testify and give some of the perspective and the history of the flag.

I have a a two-part question.

Uh, one is what does it matter what flag a borough has?

Uh, Staten Islanders still have to pay the same taxes, they still have to deal with the same problems with cost of living and crime and sanitation and everything.

Who cares what kind of flag that we have?

And second, a lot of my colleagues in this uh the council, because of concerns about how things used to be in the 17th century, 18th century, 19th century, and evolving trends of uh treatment of uh American Indian groups, for instance, and numerous other groups that were formerly mistreated by European colonial settlers.

They wonder what actually is in this flag, and is there somebody or something in this flag that might be controversial?

I'm wondering if you can actually explain some of the symbolism, some of the images in the flag itself.

So my colleagues know what they're voting on.

Sure.

Um we we like very much the original seal for its allegorical content.

And that is to say, there's a uh Henry Hudson came into the Narrows in 1609.

So his ship, the half moon is portrayed there.

He was greeted by indigenous uh Staten Islanders.

They wasn't Staten Island yet, but they were um uh uh for uh farmers and and fishermen uh who greeted him.

This figure, again, an allegorical figure represents the city.

Her sword is pointed down, indicating peace.

Her shield contains two turtle doves may made for life so we thought there was great value in in the imagery it just needed to be uh uh brought into contemporary uh feeling and and so that and to what you asked for I've been privileged to work as a art director and graphic designer all my life uh most recently for the Metropolitan Museum of art.

It has always been my goal in in doing my work to communicate ideas.

And for Staten Island to be proud of uh a flag that represents us I think is has value.

And so if we can bring it up to a a level that someone could look at and say yeah that's I feel good about that I think that's that was the purpose.

So my one question on the community board front for anybody that wants to answer it is um what do you think of the idea of allowing council members to appoint half the community board members in a binding rather than an advisory manner for anybody.

Yeah just turn your mic on if you do want to comment I was gonna say I I am I'm the chair of my local community board and there's it's a really robust review that goes that happens now and the community board actually has the opportunity to to opine to say oh you know this person has come to meetings they're interested in the community they volunteer I and especially for new council members that's just not available so I really I really think it it should be the current system that we have where the borough president works with the council members to determine from the pool of people that have applied who would be the best fit for that community.

Our board has not taken a stand on this so this is my personal understood opinion at this point.

Thank you.

Anybody else have a personal opinion they want to share.

Well I of the and the witness table.

Uh yes so personal opinion um I agree with what the chairperson said where yes exactly yeah yeah just to reiterate right so yes I agree with that where it would have to be like basically the two things that would have to work would be a borough president's office that would be equally engaging with that city council member right just because if one of those two weren't participating in um in like full faith then that would fall apart um I don't believe because my concerns would be not only some of the politization but also just the fact that you would need both parties to see hey who's saying lip service that they're coming to the community board meetings and engaging versus who's actually doing so I think that partnership um I think if both parties are engaging in good faith with each other then yes I'm a fan of that but I do have hesitation just outright.

The last time we we were together and spoke about this I said that in Brooklyn it didn't feel like it would have a practical impact because the borough presidents that I've been district manager while they've been BPs and there's three of them have always honored the nominations and the only time where there was a glitch in that system was when the council members did not turn in names for their nominations and then whose responsibility was it to fill those those those slots some borough presidents argued that without nominations those were going to be vacancies and others understood the the language of the charter to direct them because it says borough president shall and I think you know council members may um so I think that's where the glitch could continue um in even if this were to pass is what happens if names aren't forwarded by council members.

So I would, if if the council does consider this, I would um look at that potential crap.

And there's a theme today where there's some things already written into the language of the charter in the law, and if it's not being enforced now, and instead we're just introducing new new um laws on top of the ones that aren't being enforced, then then there is a there's a systems problem that should also be considered.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Okay.

Thank you, everybody.

You're fabulous.

I love community boards.

I love district managers.

Uh now we will turn to the virtual panelists.

Uh for virtual panelists once your name is called a member of our staff will mute, unmute you, and the sergeant at arms will set the timer and give you the go ahead to begin.

Please wait for the sergeant to announce that you may begin before delivering your testimony.

And now I have several names.

First, we're going to Wayne Rosenfeld.

Good morning, Chair and members of the committee.

I'm here in support of intro 032.

I am a former 10-year member of community board 3 on Staten Island.

Professionally, I am the executive director of the East Midwood Jewish Center in Brooklyn.

When I first joined community board, appointments were made through cooperation between elected officials.

Recommendations came from different voices, different perspectives, and different parts of the community.

The result was a board that was better reflected the people it served.

Today, community board members are ultimately appointed by a single borough president.

While the borough presidents play an important role, no elected official should have the exclusive control over the composition of every community board in an entire borough.

Community boards work best when they reflect the full range of voices within a community.

No single elected official, regardless of party or philosophy, should be able to shape the membership of an entire community board on their own.

Community boards are intended to represent neighborhoods, not the agenda of any one office holder.

A shared appointment process promotes independence, diversity of thought, and better outcomes for the communities these boards serve.

Council members are elected directly by the communities they represent and often have the closest connection to the neighborhood concerns and local stakeholders.

Given council members the authority to appoint half of the members creates balance, countability, and broader representation.

New York City has 59 community districts.

Manhattan is 12, Brooklyn has 18, Queens is 14, the Bronx is 12, and Staten Island only three.

Each community has its own character, priorities, and challenges.

It is unreasonable to expect five borough presidents alone to determine the membership of all 59 boards.

This bill does not eliminate the borough president's role.

It simply creates a shared appointment process, ensuring that more voices are involved and the community boards better reflect the communities they serve.

For those reasons, I urge the council to support intro to 322.

And thank you for your time.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

Eddie Mark.

Eddie Mark?

Yes.

My name is Eddie Mark.

I am the district manager for CB13, Valerie and Coley, right?

Cate and Gravesend.

I'm going to read my testimony to the members here.

So do the members of the committee and New York City Council member as large.

Thank you for the opportunity to submit this testimony in reference to an intro model a local law amend to the New York City charter in relation to the term of the appointments for district manager.

This bill would limit the term of the community or the district manager to four years with the possibility of reappointment and provide a borough president with power to remove district manager uh at will.

With this management to a projects and situation that takes place within a community board, it stands to reason that a four-year term isn't sufficient time for a district manager to grasp the needs and issues of a diverse community.

Community boards are now and have always been independent, non-mayor uh city agencies, they are advisory bodies on proposals, permits, events and um applications and overriding uh responsibilities of a community is to be a mediator between the community and the city agencies.

The community board independence must be preserved and the the borough the board's function must be supported with a budget that works with inflation and with all city agencies and elected officials.

The idea that an elected official, the mayor or the borough president, can find the staff of an independent city agency for no reason is without precedent uh and against all regulations of the city charter.

This proposal must be withdrawn entirely.

Uh this is uh submitted by my chair, Jeff Sano and myself, and you mark as district president.

Thank you very much.

The next is I'm sorry.

Sabrina Massey.

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes.

Yeah, good afternoon.

Um thank you for having me.

Um, my name is Greenamasse, and I'm here to say that I am against the term limits for district manager.

Uh I'm with CB16.

I'm a uh community board member, and as a new community board member, CB16 have a lot of challenges and a lot of issues.

And if you put a term limit on the district manager, that's limiting the information that the board members are going to be able to receive.

We already have the challenge with having the board members show up, so with the work of the district manager who has to learn a wealth of information and pass it down to the board members, that's going to come uh have a challenge.

The board members will also suffer with knowledge.

It's going to limit people wanting to become a board member as well as a district manager.

So I am against it.

I think that once the board members and a district managers um form a relationship and try to have a successful board, that's going to be taken away if you put a term limit.

So uh thank you for letting me speak, and that is my opinion.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for your service.

Annalisa Purdy is next.

Thank you very much.

My name is Annalisa J.

Purdy.

I am a board member also with community board 16.

I work with Miss Matthew in Ocean Hill Brownsville, and I am a legislative chair.

I'm also a fourth-generation New Yorker, and I would like to reiterate the opposition to intro 501 as has been mentioned by other community board members and district managers.

This proposed legislation would actually limit the power that community boards have to make decisions about their community and would severely impact the work that is being done in the communities by replacing institutional knowledge and time spent both with practical application of knowledge and the nuances that come with working with people within the community with the potential for disruption, the ramifications of which we would not be able to see for years to come.

And in a time when community members across community board districts across the five boroughs are looking for stability in their neighborhoods and the opportunities to voice their opinions in their neighborhoods and participate.

The work of district managers is an integral part of that.

They're not just colleagues.

They are people who we have grown close to and who have a very intense knowledge of the different issues facing the community, and that is knowledge that cannot be simply replaced or constantly turned over by the disruptions.

And we also want to ensure that people are encouraged to serve on their community board and maintain, as is mentioned by previous community board members, that sense of trust that is integral to how community boards work.

Thank you for your time, and I will be submitting a written testimony as well.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate that testimony.

Amanda Wilkinson.

Hi, good afternoon, Chair Brewer and um the committee on governmental operations, state and federal legislation.

I really appreciate all of your time.

I'm a mother, I'm a health care provider here in Manhattan, also mandated reporter.

And much of my concern, along with many parents, leaders, teachers, health care providers as well, um, and most importantly, our students, our children.

But speak and ask for your support for further enforcing what I would suggest is a safety transparency and accountability act on however that could be implemented.

Because at this time, there's not much enforcement for leaderships of schools to be as transparent with uh with parents or guardians when it comes to um acts towards their children, when the students are reporting certain incidences that are concerning their mental and their physical health and our harm or any threats.

This includes sexual harassment, bullying, um, discrimination, threats, breaking of personal property, physical assaults.

Um there's a lack of accountability.

There's not transparency involved.

Much often the students are silenced.

Most often the parents are left out of any of the reporting itself until they find out through their children or other students or other parents.

And when you come as together as a community to try to hold accountability when certain behaviors and incidents is continue to escalate where there's physical harm, there's threats, and there's ethical and legal um dispute that isn't being accountable for any anything taking place for disciplinary action, rightfully so, either with a student who is in question or with the uh student leadership or staff member, and most often um this is just silencing our students and leaving the parents and communities helpless when they are reporting and asking for assistance in keeping their kids safe.

All right.

When it comes to all No, keep going, keep going.

I just this is not on the agenda today, so we're letting you finish, but I just want to make sure you know that.

Go ahead.

I appreciate your time absolutely.

Thank you so much.

This is not just one time, this is across the board of our city, it's our cross-board of our state.

Um, it is across the board federally as well.

Um, there are acts in place, there are laws in place, anti-bullying, sexual harassment, therefore, there are no transparency and enforcement when things are not getting reported and children are in um are at risk and are being harmed and their safety.

Another thing that I'd like to mention is when we have youth officers on board with our schools, whether there's lack of staffing or for any reason that they um get involved in a school related.

Thank you very much.

We have to go to the next.

So I but thank you very much for being here.

The next is uh Justinino Diamanis.

Um good afternoon.

Um to the committee, Chair Brewer, um, and we'll the rest of them that have testified today.

Um, my name is Giovanni's Justiniano, and I am a community board member of the Brooklyn Community Board Forum.

Um, as I said, the other community boards that have testified today in addition to my uh direct uh district manager, Celestia Leon, and our chair person, Robert Pamato.

I'm also lending testimony against Intro 501.

Our district manager is really a student now who have a teleinstitutional knowledge that is valuable to our community board.

And unlike other community boards that management, particularly where waiting they are, you know, waiting for us to join the community board.

That's not something that we really experienced in Brooklyn CB4.

And as that's something that's experienced in other Brooklyn community boards.

Because of the loss that we're going to be experiencing next year with our chairperson who is now term limited, it would like the passing of this bill would severely cripple our community board because most of the people that are joining don't have any institutional knowledge or the knowledge that they do have of city agencies, city law, just politics in general, are minimal and very specific.

We depend greatly on our district manager for information.

She has always very quick to give us information very quick to answer our questions and very quick to keep us accountable.

Um this intro really is kind of like a power brab, and I just don't feel like it's appropriate to have somebody, you know, a thorough president or anybody to have the ability to remove a district manager because the process already exists to remove them if the community board so chooses.

Um it's unnecessary, and I think that it would have implications or ramifications in the future that things of right now that we wouldn't even be able to anticipate.

Um so I I would hope that this bill also just stops here and it doesn't move on any further because again, the processes exist to already remove a district manager, and if that happens in our Brooklyn community board core, many of our knowledgeable members are also to be admitted and leaving next year.

We won't have the authority or the efficacy to continue the work that we do on our committees.

We won't have quorum, we won't be able to hold city government and city agencies accountable, especially neighborhood like ours, Bushwick, that is, you know, it's still experiencing gentrification, it's still experiencing hostility from landlords, it's having a tremendous growth in nightlife concentrated in a single area.

Um, something that the state labor authority, you know, honestly doesn't give to putts about it.

Um, and our borough president is like up, you know, he might be in Congress, you know, like he's he's on his way out.

We don't know what state of politics we're gonna be getting into in the next coming years.

You need to wrap up.

It's really important that we continue to have our district manager at our community board.

So, thank you so much for your time.

Thank you very much.

And I want to thank all the district managers, the community board members, and of course, the uh individuals who have spoken today on this topic, as well as people who spoke about intro 951 and intro 12A.

Your comments were very well thought out and much appreciated.

And thank you for taking the time to be here.

That's also something that's very precious to you, as I know.

So I thank you, and um, needless to say, I support what you're stating.

Thank you so much.

Thank you very much.

Okay.

This is the meeting is ended.

Thank you.