NEW YORK, NY December 04, 2001 — To fill the institutional memory void, Baruch College offered a sort of pre-school for council members. WNYC’s Andrea Bernstein attended class.

In a luncheon address, Actress Valerie Harper called them thirty eight new babies. Actually, 20 are more like toddlers: Six had high-level council posts. Four served in other elective offices. And ten had relatives in the in the council or state legislature . But all of them soaked up all the words of wisdom they could get. Outgoing members, like minority leader Tom Ognibene, were free with their advice.

Ognibene: Anybody else know why they got elected?
Koppell: I got more votes than my opponent.
Ognibene: No its because of term limits. None of you could have beaten an incumbent. There were only three ways that you left the city council of the city of new york does anybody know what those three ways are? Death.
Council member: Jail
Ognibene: Indictment. Or you became a judge and the interesting thing when he said it what I thought was odd is that I flirted with all three this year

Having given that advice, he went on to say that if ideology got them elected, serving constituent aggressively, but politely would keep them in office. Then there was word from outgoing councilmember Ken Fisher on how to get things done.

you all remember heisenberg’s theory of uncertainty. Fisher’s corrolary the announcemnt of the examination of a problem changes its shape. All you have to do is tell a govt agency you’re going to hold a press conference, or hold a hearing and by that date they’ll react to whatever it is they think pissed you off.

There was a lenghty deconstruction of a council agenda, including those items that tend to win the council much ridicule, like this commendation that went, explained Baruch’s Douglas Muzzio, to a group of students from Tel Aviv:

Muzzio: because they won a contest sponsored by trinity college on the firefighting home robot contest. These are things that are not generally of the greatest interest or with profound consequences.

But there was grave advice too: The mayor has trouble overriding vetos in a majority Democratic council, explained a council staffer, so he chips off votes by getting people not to show up. But the Democratic leadership has its own tricks, like scheduling an override at the same time as an issue no member could afford to miss. The override passed. And there were other suggestions, like this one from the City Council’s lawyer, Richard Weinberg, about ethics violations.

it does no good at all if you want to go on a trip and your at the airport on a cell phone saying is it okay if I go on this trip

And don’t, he added, write letters to judges interceding in cases on behalf of a constituent. That’s a big no-no. There was also word from the other end of city hall, from Peter Powers, a former Giuliani Deputy Mayor.

Powers: politics and government is the strangest business in the world, it’s the only business where you can say I’m going to slap you I’m going to kick you I’m going to put you down, but don’t take it personally

That could get you into trouble. In a world where councilmembers rely on the good will of the mayor’s office to get goodies for their constituents, Baruch’s Barbara Fife, a former Dinkins deputy mayor herself, ask what happens when a councilmember goes on a crusade.

can a councilmember who has really gone head to head with the mayor’s office on an issue, they’re coming up for re-election…and they’ve gone to town…can they come back three weeks later and say: I need this extra service for my district?
Brezenoff: No.

That was former Koch Deputy Mayor Stanley Brezenoff. Other advice came from advocates, like NYPIRG’s Gene Russianoff, who said he was trying to think of a diplomatic way to tell councilmembers to be prepared for committee hearings. Then he came across an article by a former council member Andrew Eristoff, who, before leaving government, became city finance commissioner.


when I was in the cc I had no idea of just how little we knew of the operations of the agencies that appeared before us. The result is that commissioners and other witnesses tended to regard councilmembers as both woefully uninformed and unpredictable.

To help them prepare, one of the councilmembers most famous for his aggressive hearings taught them how to ask a question.

Dibrienza: The correct answer to a question…..

There were tips on how to use power, even when something isn’t exactly under the council’s jurisdiction. Land Use chair June Eisland explained how to pressure day care center landlords who don’t make repairs.


You’re moment comes, it’s not written out in the land use process, but your moment comes when the landlord sits in front of you and wants to renew that lease so use that power. Use the elastic powers that you have in the land use process

The incoming councilmembers took lots of notes, asked few questions, and were guarded when I asked them questions That may be wise a former City Council communications director, Peg Breen told them:

even though you need to cultivate the press, reporters are not your pals…they are not there to make you look good it’s a better story if you look bad and they have a different job than you do…


The new members didn’t want to own up to being in the dark. But two did find some parts of the meeting especially helpful. Brooklyn’s Bill De Blasio and the Bronx’s Helen Foster spoke at a reception at the end of the first day.

What did you learn that you didn’t know?
Deblasio: I thought the discussion of how the meetings were actually run was very helpful.
Foster: to have two old school council people to give us their point of view was helpful but the bottom line is when we come in we’re going to be making our own mistakes….

No amount of pre-school can help that. For WNYC, I’m Andrea Bernstein at Baruch College in Grammercy Park.