Project Summary: Reading all 174 Local Law Passed in NYC in 2023
Restated project motivation // Resources I used for the project // Want more research like this? // Summary of parts 1-6 of the project
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
Restated motivation
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.
[…]
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.” (from part 1 of this project)
On the self governing front, no one is coming to save you.
It has ever been thus.
The United States, and New York City, are the emergent products of those individuals who choose to act on them—but inaction counts as an “action” too.
When it comes to NYC’s legislature and our city’s law, not enough individuals are choosing to act affirmatively. My aim with this project is to welcome more New Yorkers into the fold by first showing them what “knowing about the law” looks like.
Resources I leaned on for this project
The City Council’s Bill Drafting Manual
The 2024 Rules of the Council (and Robert’s Rules of Order as a consequence)
Legistar, the City Council’s legislative management system
Programmatic analysis via Python programs I wrote and deployed in Replit
Intro.nyc, a great civic tech project
Google Sheets as the first line of defense to clean and analyze data I exported from Legistar
Want more of this research?
💵 Fund it
Do you want to see a comprehensive analysis of the City Council’s activity going back the past decade? Do you want a deeper analysis that looks at City Council committee briefing papers? Do you want this to be released more regularly? Do you have specific policy-area based questions you’d like answered (like my review of housing legislation)?
Email me (daniel@maximumnewyork.com) or DM me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Let’s talk about funding more research, or collaborating in other ways.
