City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams tapped legislative newcomer Yusef Salaam to lead one of the chamber’s most high-profile committees Thursday, but kicked other, left-leaning members off their committee chairs as part of a shakeup some insiders saw as at least partially aimed at exacting political revenge.
Salaam, who was as a teen wrongfully imprisoned for years over a rape he didn’t commit that came to be known as the “Central Park 5” case, was elected this fall to represent Harlem’s 9th Council District.
Adding to Salaam’s bonafides, Speaker Adams confirmed Thursday afternoon she’s picking Salaam to serve as the chairman of the Council’s Public Safety Committee, which performs oversight of the NYPD and has been the forum for some of the chamber’s most heated hearings in recent memory. Salaam’s expected appointment was first reported by the Daily News late Wednesday.
“He brings something that is very, very unique, and that is his unique experience with the system,” the speaker told reporters at City Hall. “I think that we need that. I think he will be amazing.”
Salaam did not immediately return a request for comment on his priorities for the Public Safety Committee.
EARLY_VOTING
Luiz C. Ribeiro/for New York Daily News City Councilman Yusef Salaam is pictured in Harlem in this file photo. (Luiz C. Ribeiro for New York Daily News)
Salaam’s replacing Staten Island Councilwoman Kamillah Hanks, a moderate Democrat, as Public Safety chair. Hanks, who was Salaam’s high school classmate, told The News there’s no bad blood about the switch-up and that she’s excited to chair the Land Use Committee’s sub-panel on landmarks instead.
But the celebratory mood around the Salaam pick was clouded by discontent over other committee moves by the speaker.
Since news first broke late Wednesday of the looming overhaul, Council sources have said the decision by the speaker to kick Council members Tiffany Cabán, Chi Ossé and Shahana Hanif off their committee chairs without assigning them new ones seemed at least in part politically motivated.
Cabán, Ossé and Hanif are all members of the Council’s Progressive Caucus and voted against last year’s city budget in the face of efforts by the speaker’s team to line up support for it.
Cabán, a democratic socialist who was stripped of her assignment to lead the Women and Gender Equity Committee, was the most outspoken of the booted lefties after the overhaul and used it as an opportunity for campaign fundraising.
“Insiders are speculating that this is punishment for my votes against the mayor’s cruel, dangerous budget cuts,” she wrote in an email to supporters.
Ossé and Hanif did not immediately return requests for comment.
A Council member allied with the speaker disputed the notion that the speaker is bent on punishing anyone who voted against last year’s budget. Rather, the member, who spoke on condition of anonymity to disclose private discussions, said chair removals were considered individually.
“It’s about being a team player,” the member said of kicking Cabán, Ossé and Hanif off their chairs.
Asked whether budget-related revenge was a motivating factor behind the removals, the speaker said, “there’s no there there.”
“I get the impulse to speculate and try to figure it out and attribute a singular reason behind committee decisions, but it’s always a lot more complex than that,” she said. “Some people are going to be unhappy about the decisions. There were members that didn’t have a committee chair, they wanted to have one last session, they didn’t have one — all of that was involved. But we really do have to be clear that there shouldn’t be an expectation that committee assignments remain static across different legislative sessions … Nobody owns a committee.”
Cabán will be replaced as Women and Gender Equity chair by Brooklyn Councilwoman Farah Louis, a moderate Democrat. Ossé, meantime, is being replaced as Cultural Affairs chair by Manhattan Councilwoman Carlina Rivera.
Hanif was replaced as Immigration chair by Brooklyn Councilwoman Alexa Avilés, a fellow Progressive Caucus member who used to chair the Public Housing Committee.
Replacing Avilés as Public Housing chair is newly-minted Brooklyn Councilman Chris Banks, a freshman who unseated longtime socialist Charles Barron in an upset last year.
There were some positive news for the Progressive Caucus members in Thursday’s overhaul.
Brooklyn Councilman Lincoln Restler, co-chair of the Progressive Caucus, was picked as chair of the Council Governmental Operations, State and Federal Legislation Committee.
Another Progressive Caucus member, Brooklyn Councilwoman Sandy Nurse, got tapped to chair the Criminal Justice Committee, which has oversight of the city’s troubled Department of Correction.
Nurse once chaired the Council’s Sanitation Committee, a post Manhattan Councilman Shaun Abreu will take over.
“For far too long, we’ve asked New Yorkers to just accept that we live in a dirty city—with all the smells, litter, and pollution that come with it,” Abreu said in a statement on his appointment. ‘I am getting right to work building clean, green, rodent-free communities where all New Yorkers can live with dignity.”
