New York has a fugitive from justice occupying Gracie Mansion, and no clear plan for eviction. The City Council must pass a non-binding resolution declaring Eric Adams unfit to lead and unwelcome to remain as mayor, adding to yesterday’s call for him to resign from Speaker Adrienne Adams. Only then will those who still retain power over him have the ethical high ground and democratic consent to remove him.
Adams was already unfit to lead after he was indicted under federal bribery and campaign finances charges. But with no impeachment provisions in the City Charter, it looked like his fate would be determined by a jury of his peers and, separately, a million or so New York voters. Ever since Adams cut his quid pro quo deal with the Trump administration to hold his indictment in abeyance while he cooperates with the president’s unpopular mass deportation drive, the city has been in a democratic crisis.
The one person with the legal authority to remove Adams is Gov. Hochul. While Hochul catches all kinds of political heat for her long, drawn-out hesitation, she’s not wrong to be concerned about the precedent she would set by removing a democratically elected mayor from office.
“Democratically elected” is doing some heavy lifting in these abstract concerns. We should not forget that among Adams’ alleged crimes, he stole tax money earmarked for fairer elections by making large foreign donations look like qualified, small donations from actual New York voters. The result, one could argue, was a stolen election in 2021. But, as urgently as Adams needs to become an ex-mayor, removing him from office will set a precedent fraught with the potential for abuse.
Why has nobody in the Council thought to take up a “vote of no confidence” in the mayor? Universities are no stranger to unaccountable executives and occasional unethical behavior from our leaders. And while we have a degree of representative governance, usually in the form of a faculty or academic senate, our powers are often as toothless as the City Council’s is in this case.
But a “vote of no confidence” — a bill of particulars outlining the ways that a leader has disappointed the community and violated its norms — still holds enormous moral authority, as well as public embarrassment. So much so that the mere rumor of a drafting document has been known to inspire an embattled provost or chancellor to “return to the faculty” to avoid the black mark of censure on their reputations.
Some college presidents decide to weather the storm, hoping to placate enough constituents so that the motion fails for a lack of votes. Those who stick around and suffer a formal censure from their governing academic body usually — but not automatically — face removal from office by a higher power (typically the university’s board of trustees, or the state’s governor).
The practice of demonstrating that a leader has lost majority support is derived from parliamentary systems, where a formal “no confidence” vote is proof that the leader cannot govern; that the government must be dissolved and new elections scheduled. In those cases there is always a ceremonial president or king whose sole purpose is to act on a no-confidence vote.
We will be in uncharted waters if a group of clear-eyed Council realists begin circulating a resolution condemning the mayor and calling for him to resign or be removed. I have few allusions that Adams can be shamed. His alleged crimes were so tawdry and clumsy that a normal politician would be tempted to flee the country out of pure embarrassment. And the spectacle of being Donald Trump’s plaything, Adams’ very freedom predicated on how quickly and enthusiastically he can agree with the wannabe dictator makes one wonder just how bad could minimum security prison be.
But if Adams continues to stubbornly hold out, even after he has officially lost the confidence of the City Council that he needs to effectively govern, then Hochul will be on much firmer ground in using the power vested in her to finally get him out of Gracie Mansion. Better still, the Council will have essentially created the precedent that the governor does not have the authority to unilaterally remove a mayor from office; that she can only do so after a local legislative body has officially denounced and condemned its executive.
In any event, it is time for the Council to assert its authority.
[This post originally appeared at New York Daily News.]