Selecting the Next City Council Speaker

Next to the mayoral election, the most important election in NYC is one in which most voters will be locked out of the process: The selection of City Council Speaker is decided by Council members, not the public, and usually only after deals with the leaders of each borough's Democratic Party.

This is not a democratic process, and it shouldn't be allowed to play out when the next Speaker is selected after next year's municipal elections.

The Speaker of the City Council is the second-most powerful public official in New York City,and is the single individual with the institutional authority to stand up to the mayor, whoever that happens to be. Voters should insist that we have input into the selection of the next Speaker.

According to a recent story in The New York Observer, the early race for Speaker is shaping up as a battle between Council Members Mellissa Mark Viverto and Inez Dickens, who represent neighboring districts in Harlem. One unidentified council member described the differences between the two contenders this way: "It's rabble-rouser, change-the-whole-place left-wing Melissa, and old-school, old world, status quo Inez."

I urge voters and political activists to pose this question to City Council candidates: If you are elected, who will you support to become the next Speaker of the City Council? This decision is too important to be left to five Democratic Party leaders, or even to the 51 members of the City Council. The rest of us have a right to be heard on this momentous decision.

Mayor Dinkins' Silence on Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly

I recently attended a judicial induction during which two speakers briefly noted the discriminary practices of the New York City Police Department.

Unfortunately, one speaker, former Mayor David N. Dinkins, had nothing to say about the NYPD or about the commissioner he empowered, Raymond W. Kelly. As the mayor who first appointed Kelly to head the NYPD, Dinkins is in a unique position to call Kelly to task for his department's systemic violations of civil liberties in New York City under Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Dinkins' continuing public silence about Commissioner Kelly's transgressions is troubling, to say the least.