I Read All 174 Local Laws Passed in NYC in 2023

Part 1: Introduction // motivation for the project // what can you learn by reading the law? // vital context to properly evaluate the law

This is part 1 in a series of posts analyzing the 174 local laws of New York City from 2023, and the New York City Council. The links below will be populated as I release each post.

👉 Part 1: Introduction

Part 2: Reporting Requirements

Part 3: Housing Legislation, and the Council’s Housing Posture

Part 4: Notable New Laws by Subject Matter

Part 5: Legislative Drafting & Legislative Management

Part 6: Resolutions—the Forgotten Enacting Mechanism

Part 7: Concluding Review

In 2015’s The Big Short, investor Michael Burry predicts the ‘07-08 financial crisis by carefully reading through thousands of pages of bundled sub-prime mortgages. This granular analysis allows him to see what others couldn’t, including his fellow investors. When Burry decides to bet against the housing market as a result, these investors (consolidated into the fictional character of Lawrence Fields) revolt:

INT. MICHAEL BURRY’S FUND OFFICE

Lawrence Fields: How do you know the bonds are worthless? Aren’t they filled with fucking thousands of pages of mortgages?

Michael Burry: I read them.

LF: You read them?

MB: I read...yes.

LF: No one reads them. Only the lawyers who put them together read them.

MB: I don’t think they even know what they’ve made.

Of course, Michael Burry was correct. Almost everyone relies on surface impressions for everything. No one does the reading. But if you do, if you stare at the raw data yourself, you will discover things no one else does.

It was in this spirit that I decided to read all 174 local laws that were passed in New York City in 2023.

What is the motivation for this project? Why read all the laws?

Before thinking about what ought to be true, figure out what is true.

I wanted to acquire a more definitive picture of the New York City Council through the laws that it crafts and passes.

I was looking for a few things explicitly, like how many laws amend the city’s administrative code versus the charter. But otherwise I was performing unstructured, curiosity-driven analysis—reading through the law and seeing what popped out as interesting and worth following up on. I mostly didn’t know what I was looking for ahead of time, although I did wind up finding plenty.

So what? Well: in a self-governing society, more people need to have a robust grip on what their legislature does if they want it to perform better. And “robust grip” doesn’t mean “reads articles sometimes.” It means “reads the full output of the Council, understands it, and synthesizes it for distribution.”

My aim is to help others understand what the New York City Council does, and give them the tools and citations they need to double-check my analysis easily.

What can you learn from reading all 174 local laws from 2023?

In short:

• The quality and nature of New York City’s local laws,

• What the City Council prioritizes as an institution, and

• The quality of the Council’s legislative management tools and processes, through which the public learns about the Council’s activity.

But you also have to keep the Council and its laws in a broader governmental context to understand them correctly. For example: if you read through all the local laws, and you don’t see a single one commanding the MTA to build a new subway line, you might think: “The Council doesn’t care about new subways! They are really falling down on the job here.” But the broader context is that the MTA is a state public benefit corporation, and it is not controlled by the New York City Council. Once you understand that, you will no longer blame the Council for a lack of subway lines, at least not principally.

Similarly, you should not conflate “174 local laws of 2023” with “everything the NYC Council did in 2023.” Local law analysis is the single best indicator of the Council’s priorities and lawmaking capacity, but passing local laws is not the only thing that institution does:

• They negotiate the city budget with the mayor, and ultimately approve it.

• They pass a variety of resolutions, which are statements of the opinion of the Council. SLRs (state legislation resolutions) are common resolutions that ask the New York State legislature to pass certain state laws that will affect New York City.

• The Council approves land use applications (including rezonings) that have gone through the city’s Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP). This is one of its most important powers, enshrined in section 197-d of the city charter.

• The Council has the power of advice and consent for certain mayoral appointments (which they’re currently trying to expand).

• The Council conducts oversight of the executive branch, parcels out discretionary funding, and many other functions.

• The Council passes its own internal rules package, allocates power internally to its members, committee heads, and leadership, and controls how bills may flow through it.

• The Council exists prior to 2023—just because they didn’t do something in 2023, doesn’t mean they didn’t do it previously. Any rigorous analysis of NYC local laws will look backwards in time when necessary.

My analysis of the local laws of 2023 will keep both of these contexts in mind: the larger governmental context, and the council-specific context.