Copyright New York Daily News
Proposals 1 and 6 on the back of the mayoral ballot shouldn’t even be there and show a lack of regard for what should be normal practices and process in New York government. Whether they pass or fail matters less than the wrongness of them appearing. Proposal 1 is a repair job of an existing absolute violation of the state Constitution and Proposal 6 is an irrelevancy that has no legal standing because it itself violates the Constitution. The Daily News has already strongly endorsed a YES vote on questions 2, 3 and 4 offered by the city Charter Revision Commission to speed the construction of desperately needed more housing in New York as the measures remove from the City Council their notorious ability to block housing development. Smart people like Andrew Cuomo, Comptroller Brad Lander and the future comptroller, Mark Levine, agree with us and all say YES, as the Council is furiously opposed (see today’s op-ed from Council Speaker Adrienne Adams) and while Zohran Mamdani cowardly won’t even take a stand. The other questions are much less heated. Proposal 5 updates the city’s official map from paper to digital and is unobjectionable. But Proposal 1, offered by the state Legislature, and Proposal 6, from the Charter Revision Commission, don’t belong on the ballot. Proposal 1 is an amendment to the state Constitution, in which Article 14 says that the state forest preserve in the Adirondacks and the Catskills “shall be forever kept as wild forest lands. They shall not be leased, sold or exchanged, or be taken by any corporation, public or private, nor shall the timber thereon be sold, removed or destroyed.” The 1932 and 1980 Winter Olympics at Lake Placid used Mount Van Hoevenberg. Some of the property used for events by the state Olympic Regional Development Authority is on town land, but some of it, for Nordic skiing and biathlon and parking lots, is on 323 acres of state forest preserve land, which is never allowed. What the state Constitution says matters, every word, just like the U.S. Constitution matters. These are not suggestions or recommendations. Now Albany is trying to rectify the problem by writing 1,039 acres (containing the sports venues and parking lots) of Mount Van Hoevenberg into the Constitution as an exemption to the forest preserve land and requiring the state to buy 2,500 new acres to add to the preserve, which is how it should have been done in the first place. In 2021, New York’s highest court ruled that the state wanted to unconstitutionally build 27 miles of snowmobile trails in the Adirondacks, which was blocked. And even now, the state has built a downhill mountain biking racecourse on Whiteface Mountain, which is probably not allowed either. So what happens if Proposal 1 fails? It seems to us that the Nordic skiing and biathlon tracts and parking lots must be returned to their natural state. That would make for an interesting winter sports competition. Proposal 6 is simpler. It would move NYC’s municipal elections to presidential years, but that is determined only by the state Constitution, so the ballot question has no legal weight, even if it passes with 100% of the voters in support. The Charter Revision Commission was wrong to put it on the ballot, as it is deceptive and without any impact. Questions 2, 3, 4 and 5 legitimately deserve YES votes, but 1 and 6 don’t legitimately deserve to be on the ballot.
