Bussiness
Voter Guide: Ballot Question 6 Would Make Adams’ New Chief Business Diversity Officer Role Permanent
This ballot question guide is part of our full explainer article on all of the six proposals on the ballot in New York City this November.
What is Ballot Question 6?
Ballot Question 6 is the last of the ballot questions, and is actually three questions bundled into one. Here’s how it’ll look on your ballot:
This proposal would amend the City Charter to establish the Chief Business Diversity Officer (CBDO), authorize the Mayor to designate the office that issues film permits, and combine archive boards.”
The first one would establish a permanent Chief Business Diversity Officer. The CBDO is a new position added by the Adams administration, and the current CBDO is Michael Garner. As the CBDO, Garner is heavily involved in the city’s Minority and Women-Owned Business Enterprises (MWBE) program, and has been part of the push to hire MWBE-shortlisted security firms for the city’s shelters — a list that includes a security firm previously owned by former Deputy Mayor Philip Banks III.
Second, Prop 6 seeks to change which offices have the ability to issue film permits. Currently, if you want to make a movie, you need to get a permit from the Department of Small Business Services. This proposition would make it so that the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment would also have the power to issue those permits.
Third, this proposition would merge two “redundant” archive boards: the Archival Review Board and the Archives, Reference and Research Advisory Board. Pauline Toole, the Commissioner for the Department of Records and Information Services (DORIS), which manages both boards, says that the DORIS proposed the merge in order to increase efficiency. She testified that recently, the boards have been meeting together — because their jobs are so similar that there’s no need to have separate meetings.
Where did this proposal come from?
Ballot questions 2 through 6 on New York City voters’ ballots this year went through a rocky process to make it your voting booth.
In the spring, the City Council put forth a ballot measure to expand the “advice and consent” process that gives the Council the power to approve some mayoral appointees.
Around the same time, Mayor Eric Adams created his own Charter Review Commission, assembling some of his closest allies to lead the process, as THE CITY has reported. His commission met for two months this summer, a timeline that has been criticized by City Council and advocacy groups as rushed.
The dueling ballot proposals caused a legal clash. According to city law, the City Council’s ballot proposals and the mayor’s can’t coexist on the same ballot, and the mayor’s takes precedence. That means only Mayor Adams’ proposed Charter revisions will appear this November.
The executive director of the mayor’s commission, Diane Savino, says that its five ballot measures were the result of listening to New Yorkers’ needs, taking input from thousands of people and that they reflect “the desires they heard from New Yorkers for clean streets, fiscal responsibility, public safety, transparency in the city’s capital planning process and support for Minority- and Women-Owned Business Enterprises,” she said in a statement.
Opponents to the mayor’s charter revisions disagree and say that though these ballot questions seem innocuous, they are actually an attempt to interfere in the city’s legislative process.
“[Propositions] two through six weaken checks and balances and weaken local democracy and increase power for the mayor at a time when people all over the country should be voting for democracy up and down the ballot,” said Joo-Hyun Kang, a representative for No Power Grab NYC, a campaign that was formed in response to the proposed Charter revisions.
“It’s a sophisticated and sneaky move by the mayor,” Kang said.
Have a question about the ballot proposals, or about voting in New York this year? Reach out to our newsroom at ask@thecity.nyc.
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