Why Can’t New York City Govern Its Own Affairs?

ALBANY, N.Y. — New York City, a thriving metropolis of nearly 9 million souls, has a City Council, dozens of municipal agencies, and a mayor, duly elected every four years. So why is it that it has to rely on legislators from all over the state to pass laws that solely affect New York City?

The issue arises frequently, affecting policies large and small, like a potential ban on plastic bags, or the mayor’s control of schools, or congestion pricing. Most recently, it came up during the discussion over extending the law that provided for speed cameras around city school buildings.

The answer lies in a mix of constitutional structure, legal precedent and the age-old, oft-unbalanced power structure between Albany and the state’s — and nation’s — biggest city.

Blame the ungainly, epic and often convoluted New York Constitution, which at more than 55,000 words, is 12 times longer than the original federal version, pre-Bill of Rights. In particular, the focus here is on the state’s Article IX, which presents the concept of “home rule” — which defines the “rights, powers, privileges and immunities granted to” local governments — and, in the same breath, also outlines the state’s duties and powers over local governments, including their very creation.

The leverage over local issues is rooted in a 1929 case, Adler v. Deegan, and a concurring opinion by Chief Judge Benjamin N. Cardozo, which posited that if there was “substantial state interest” in a law targeting the “property, affairs or government” of a local government, then the Legislature was within its rights to act. And that can encompass a lot, including things like mayoral control of the city’s schools and congestion pricing, both of which have been subject of battles in Albany in recent years.

Another doctrine — pre-emption — also limits home rule power, providing that a local law must cede “when it collides with a state statute,” according to a 2016 report on the issue from the New York State Bar Association.

Certainly. Article IX was wholly amended in 1963 with the purpose of trying to boost the role of local governments, including enshrining the aforementioned “rights, powers, privileges” etc., in its first section. And the home rule provision has been the subject of numerous lawsuits and legal arguments.

But the state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, has repeatedly upheld the state’s authority over localities.

“Despite Article IX’s intent to expand the authority of local governments, Home Rule in practice has produced only a modest degree of local autonomy,” according to the Bar Association report.

A recent, and high-profile, attempt to reconsider and enhance home rule came last year as part of a campaign to hold a constitutional convention, a once-every-two-decades possibility. But voters did not seem to want to try that out: The measure to authorize such a convention was crushed at the ballot box.

It can be argued that almost everything is, a position that stems from the fact that the city itself as an entity is created by the state. (Just ask Mayor Bill de Blasio, who has seen Gov. Andrew Cuomo lay a heavy hand on more than a few city affairs during the two Democrats’ terms in office.) Of course, with great responsibility comes great amounts of paperwork: The 2014 law which initially authorized the city to try speed cameras involved amending state laws like the vehicle and traffic law and the public officers law, and the bill to re-up that program does the same. The law also allows the city to collect fines for violations, which falls into legal areas governed by state law.

All of which gives scholars in the field a distinct sense that the idea of home rule is a lot more palatable to the state’s lawmakers than its practice.

“New York’s version of ‘home rule’ is well-known to be a sham,” said Roderick Hills, a professor at the New York University School of Law. “Unless one means ‘Albany rule’ by ‘home rule.'”