Mayor Adams' feud with the City Council takes a turn over seats
In New York's majestic City Hall, the first-floor rotunda has served as a kind of Switzerland: neutral ground amid the eternal battle between the mayor's office and the City Council, which share the building.
But on Tuesday, Mayor Eric Adams' office conducted a raid.
As the Council president was about to begin a press conference with faith leaders on an issue that was troubling the mayor, his deputy chief of staff suddenly appeared in the rotunda, along with an aide driving a hand truck.
Menashe Shapiro, the deputy chief of staff, ordered several reporters to sit there for the news conference. He took away their chairs.
To close government observers, Mr. Shapiro's actions seemed familiar, an outgrowth of the mayor's treatment of people or things he doesn't like. In this case, it was the subject of the press conference: Council President Adrienne Adams announcing her intention to override the mayor's veto of two criminal justice bills that he claims would undermine public would endanger safety if they were to become law.
Earlier this week, the mayor's schools chancellor, David C. Banks, disinvited certain major publications from attending a major speech by him on anti-Semitism and Islamophobia in schools, allegedly due to space constraints.
Earlier this month, the mayor's police force ejected reporters from their own storied press room at police headquarters and moved them to a trailer outside. City Hall reporters have also been warned that desks in Room 9, the common press room, may be taken away.
Now they came for the chairs.
If the “city council wants to give you something to sit on,” Mr. Shapiro said said on Tuesday it was the Council's job to do this. “Let's go,” he said.
The reporters didn't flinch. The standoff was captured videos by reporters watching the unusual event. Mr. Shapiro eventually gave up and the chairs were allowed to remain.
The press conference then went ahead, but under suboptimal circumstances: the mayor's office had refused to turn on the main lights that normally illuminate press conferences on the picturesque cantilevered steps below the dome of the rotunda.
A few minutes later, during the mayor's weekly question-and-answer session with City Hall reporters, Mr. Adams defended Mr. Shapiro's actions as arising from a natural desire to maintain order. He declined to say whether Mr. Shapiro was acting on his orders.
“We want to maintain control in the roundabout area,” Mr. Adams said, adding that his team would sit down with the speaker's team to ensure they “can be good tenants together.”
It all seemed small to an old Democratic strategist.
“Don't major in the minors,” said Peter Kauffmann, a former adviser to Hillary Clinton and Andrew Cuomo, and a senior adviser to Mayor Bill de Blasio's Covid-19 response team. “All this mayor does is focus on trivial matters.”
The mayor's focus also extends to criticism, especially from other elected officials.
At a recent news conference where the mayor decried a bill that would require police to document more of their interactions with the public, Mr. Adams directly addressed one of the bill's sponsors, Jumaane Williams, the city's public advocate.
The mayor mocked Mr. Williams for pushing the bill while living on an Army base in Brooklyn.
“He lives in a fortress,” the mayor sneered.
After the blacked-out news conference at City Hall on Tuesday, Mr. Williams hit back.
“The mayor has shown that he doesn't like people disagreeing with him, he doesn't like transparency, he doesn't like shining a light on things,” Mr. Williams said. “This is very much in line with the way he tries to govern.”
Former City Hall communications staff say the City Hall rotunda is generally neutral ground, available for use by both the mayor's office and the City Council. The Citywide Administrative Services Department manages the lights and seating.
A council spokesman said department staff had refused to switch on the lights. An agency spokeswoman had no immediate answer as to why.
“The Council respects the role of a free press and the right to freedom of expression and does not need to seek to censor those who simply tell the truth,” said Council spokeswoman Mara Davis. “We are dismayed by Mayor Adams' administration's efforts to try to muzzle the voices of faith leaders who support the police transparency promoted by the How Many Stops Act at City Hall today.”
On Tuesday, following the chairman controversies, a reporter asked Mr. Adams whether he considered the City Council an equal branch of government.
“We are all colleagues,” the mayor said.