Resolutions: The Forgotten Enacting Mechanism
There are 279 resolutions from 2023 // How is a resolution different from a local law? // What kinds of resolutions are there? // Why does this matter?
This is part 6 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 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
In New York City, acts of legislation, or “legislative enactments,” are primarily done in two ways:
Bills that become local laws when enacted
Resolutions that are adopted
Per the Rules of the Council:
All enactments shall be by local law or resolution.1
Per the City Council’s bill drafting manual:
The term legislation, as used in this manual, refers to the two primary vehicles of legislative expression by the Council: bills, which become local laws when adopted, and resolutions. Bills may seek to add to, amend, or repeal existing laws, while resolutions may be used to take limited actions authorized by the Charter, or to call on another government official to take action.2
How are resolutions different from local laws?
Local laws change the city’s charter and administrative code—they are what most people think of when they think of “the law,” and they are under the full control of the City Council to originate, craft, and enact.3 The mayor may veto a bill before it becomes a law, but: (1) that rarely happens, and (2) the Council can override that veto.
Resolutions, while they follow a similar procedure to move through the Council, do a variety of different things other than alter the law. They are all broadly “the statement of the opinion of the Council that does not alter the law.”4
Whether a resolution is more or less consequential depends on what kind of opinion it’s offering. For example, the Council often passes resolutions asking other levels of government to pass laws. The Council has no power to make them do that.
The Council is also empowered via the City Charter to pass resolutions giving their opinion on land use applications—and that opinion can allow or kill the application!5
The Council also approves mayoral appointments and the city budget via resolution, and these are consequential opinions as well.
The key thing to remember about many of the weighty opinions: the power of the Council is to weigh in near the end of the process. For land use applications, they are the final hurdle to cross (assuming the mayor doesn’t want to veto their decision, which, again, rarely happens). When the Council has significant power via resolution, it is often the power to veto. The power to do and originate action rests with another branch of the government, like the mayor or the City Planning Commission, who must pass their plan to the Council. For an example, review this (unfortunately complicated) chart of the city’s Uniform Land Use Review Procedure that land use applications must travel through.
This is the big reason why I didn’t give much credit to the City Council for approving 133 land use applications via resolution in 2023 in this post. All they really did was hold back from killing those projects originated by other parts of the government (and chill the introduction of other projects); they did substantially nothing on their own via local law to help create new housing supply.
What kind of resolutions were passed in 2023?
The Council passed 279 resolutions in 2023, and I made a chart breaking down what they did:
Administrative approval: 2
Appointment: 19
Budget: 26
Call on government: 44
Commemoration: 17
Council rules: 2
Finance (often related to property taxes): 12
Land use application approvals: 1346
Opinion: 5
SLR (State Legislation Resolution): 187
📊 You can view this chart’s data here, or download this chart’s data as a .csv file here. If you want to look up any particular resolution, you can do that in Legistar. I can help if you’re having difficulty, just drop a comment.
So what? Why are you telling us about resolutions in a project about local laws?
Often people will hear about the City Council doing a variety of things besides “passing laws.” They’ll hear that the Council approves zoning decisions of some kind, that they “pass the budget,” and more.
Many people are confused about how these actions are performed, if they are not performed via local law. Now you know: they are performed via resolution!
If you want to get a grip on “what the Council is doing,” you must check their resolutions as well as their local laws. While resolutions don’t often change the picture, sometimes they do.
One of the most consequential acts via resolution happening right now is the City Council’s approval (or not) of the mayor’s three City of Yes proposals.
On June 6, 2024, the Council approved the second of these three proposals via Resolution 463 and Resolution 464.
Section 6.40.a, “Types of Enactment,” Rules of the Council (January 2024), p.10
See section 1.1, “The Process of Adopting Legislation,” Bill Drafting Manual: A Guide to Legislative Composition for the City of New York, 3rd edition (2022), pp.1-2
For more on resolutions, see section 10, “Resolutions,” Bill Drafting Manual: A Guide to Legislative Composition for the City of New York, 3rd edition (2022), p.82
The New York State Legislature and the people of the city via referendum may also enact local laws, but the vast majority come from the City Council, or require the City Council as part of the process.
You could take issue with this characterization if you wanted. When the Council approves some land use applications, they are approving changes to the text of the city’s zoning resolution, which could be called “changing the text of the law.” I wouldn’t fight you on that, but I don’t for one reason: those changes originate from outside the Council, and the Council opines on them, sometimes with changes (rarely to make the projects bigger or more liberal). I think the best characterization of this is something like “the Council gives a thumbs up, a thumbs down, or a thumbs up with some percentage of thumbs down.” It’s more akin to a mayor’s action on a bill.
One land use application resulted in two resolutions for its full approval, so while there were 133 land use applications, there were 134 resolutions approving those applications. If you want to look it up: LU 0298-2023 required Res 0869-2023 and Res 0870-2023.
State Legislation Resolutions (SLRs), also called Home Rule Messages/Resolutions, which ask the state government to pass laws that specifically affect NYC. These resolutions are part of a formal process anchored in New York Constitution, Article IX, § 2(b)(2) (emphasis added): “[The state legislature]…Shall have the power to act in relation to the property, affairs or government of any local government only by general law, or by special law only (a) on request of two-thirds of the total membership of its legislative body or on request of its chief executive officer concurred in by a majority of such membership, or (b) except in the case of the city of New York, on certificate of necessity from the governor reciting facts which in the judgment of the governor constitute an emergency requiring enactment of such law and, in such latter case, with the concurrence of two-thirds of the members elected to each house of the legislature.”