Tech Expert + Common Cause/NY Lay Out Tools for How New York City Council Can Continue to Legislate Remotely

NEW YORK, NY (04/16/2020) (readMedia)-- Today, Common Cause/NY and Andrew Hoppin, the former and first ever Chief Information Officer for the NYS Senate, held a press conference call to provide clear guidance and direction for how the New York City Council can and must continue legislating remotely. Common Cause/NY has previously called on NYS lawmakers to continue doing the people's business during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Albany Times Union, the New York Times, the Buffalo News, and Daily Gazette have all published editorials urging lawmakers to step up and continue legislating remotely.

LISTEN HERE.

While NYC Council Speaker Corey Johnson's announcement yesterday that the Council will hold the first ever remote stated meeting on April 22nd is a good first step, he has yet to indicate when or if the Council will hold hearings, committee meetings or future stated meetings. Unlike the New York State Legislature, the New York City Council is a full time legislative body that also functions as a co-equal branch of local government. 51 councilmembers are responsible for passing a $95 billion dollar budget, applying oversight of government agencies, and approving or declining land use decisions, among other policy issues.

"New Yorkers have elected 51 councilmembers to represent them 12 months out of the year. Nothing about this situation is ideal, but we expect our government to adapt and continue functioning. Ceding responsibility solely to the executive is never an option, much less during a crisis that has engulfed the city, " said Sarah Goff, Deputy Director of Common Cause/NY.

"The New York City Council has professional technologists amongst its ranks, and already employs modern technologies to manage and track its legislative process. I'm confident that the Council could readily adopt off-the-shelf cloud-based meetings management tools and continue to be fully operational while working remotely during this time, as scores of other cities have already done," said Andrew Hoppin. "Furthermore, we're fortunate in New York City to have one of the most vibrant civic technology talent pools of any city in the world-- by engaging this talent through organizations like BetaNYC, Tech:NYC, and Civic Hall, the Council may have the opportunity to not only support continuity of operations in the near-term, but also to innovate new tools and methods that will engage all New Yorkers in the lawmaking process better than they ever were before."

Existing technologies and options for a remote legislature

The NYC Council's existing technology vendor, Granicus, also offers a GovMeetings tool suite that could readily add remote voting and remote public comment functionality to the Council's existing Granicus "Legistar" agenda management software. Other vendors like Granicus include Tallan, PrimeGov, and Propylon. Such works can interoperate with and add requisite government compliance features to the same affordable off-the-shelf tools that most industries are commonly using today, such as Zoom, WebEx, Google Hangouts, Microsoft Teams, or BlueJeans.