Council Challenges Adams Official in Charge of New Interagency Forms

The City Council grilled a top Adams administration official on Wednesday over a new policy that requires any lawmaker to fill out a form to meet with the mayor and his commissioners, saying it encourages micro-managing and jams up government.

Tiffany Raspberry, the director of intergovernmental and external affairs for Mayor Eric Adams, testified about the “elected official engagement request form,” which was introduced last month.

While Council members criticized the change, Raspberry said it’s aimed at efficiency and equity.

“The form is not intended to stand in the way of elected officials picking up the phone to reach out to a commissioner, borough commissioner, or anyone else in the administration,” she said.

Some lawmakers may have friends or connections at agencies and within the mayor’s office but others don’t, so the form can help level the playing field, she added.

“There are many newly-elected officials who may not have those contacts,” she said.

Since it was introduced in early April, as first reported by THE CITY, the intergovernmental office received 182 requests, including 51 from the City Council, according to Raspberry. The average turnaround for a response was 24 to 48 hours, she said — noting that no request has been rejected.

“I do not envision a scenario where a request will be denied,” she told Councilmember Lincoln Restler, a Democrat from Brooklyn and a major critic of the administration.

He said that the form is a “maddening approach to governing the city” as opposed to an effective way to talk to officials — especially if Mayor Adams has to review each request. The fear from him and other Council members is that the mayor will pick and choose who can meet with agency and administration officials based on whoCouncil Challenges Adams’ Official in Charge of New Interagency Forms he likes.

The mayor told reporters last month that he would — and had time to — review every request that came in.

Raspberry said the mayor has access to every submission but ultimately it’s her office that responds to requests.

‘Rome Is Burning’

The Council’s criticism of the new form policy comes amid increased tensions between the legislative body and the mayor’s office.

Some lawmakers compared it to extra paperwork required by police officers under a newly-passed bill that Adams initially vetoed, but was then overridden in the Council .

The form is now required for nearly all interactions between city, state, and federal lawmakers and top officials from the mayor to local precinct commanders.

If a lawmaker wants to discuss an uptick in crime in their district, or request a tour of a new building, it is all filtered through the form. Elected officials said they previously would reach out to city agencies directly, but are now being told to fill out a form.

Councilmember Bob Holden, a Democrat from Queens, agreed with Public Advocate Jumaane Williams — a frequent foe — in his criticism of the form.

“We have quality of life issues,” he said. “The last thing we need is to talk to somebody to fill out paperwork on an ongoing issue.”

But Republican Council members Vicki Paladino and Inna Vernikov, who represent Queens and Brooklyn, respectively, sided with the administration and took the hearing as an opportunity to protest their colleagues’ push for more paperwork for police officers.

“While Rome is burning, we’re concerned about filling out papers,” Paladino said at the hearing. “These papers take exactly two minutes to fill. I agree with the format, I’m not going against the format because if the police have to fill out paperwork, so do we.”

But other former elected officials and staffers testified against the form, including former City Council member and Manhattan borough president Ruth Messinger. She said she felt “sorry for the administration’s efforts to present this as logical, because it’s not logical.”

“What matters in this very large city, and what helps it to be human, is relationships,” she said. “I think there is no one who knows that better than the mayor whose style prioritizes relationships.”

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