The history of the New York City Council can be traced to Dutch colonial times when New York City was known as
New Amsterdam. On February 2, 1653, the town of New Amsterdam, founded on the southern tip of Manhattan Island in 1625, was incorporated as a city under a charter issued by the
Dutch West India Company. A Council of Legislators sat as the local lawmaking body and as a court of inferior jurisdiction. During the 18th and 19th centuries the local legislature was called the
Common Council and then the
Board of Aldermen. In 1898 the amalgamation charter of the
City of Greater New York renamed and revamped the council and added a
New York City Board of Estimate with certain administrative and financial powers. After a number of changes through the ensuing years, the present Council was born in 1938 under a new charter which instituted the council as the sole legislative body and the New York City Board of Estimate as the chief administrative body. Certain functions of the council, however, remained subject to the approval of the board. In 1938, a system of
proportional representation known as
single transferable vote was adopted; a fixed
quota of 75,000 votes was set, so that the size of the council fluctuated with voter turnout. The term was extended to four years in 1945 to coincide with the term of the mayor. Proportional representation was abolished in 1947, largely from pressure from Democrats, who played on fears of
Communist council members being elected (two already had). It was replaced by a system of electing one council member from each
New York State Senate district within the city. The Charter also provided for the election of two council members-at-large from each of the five boroughs. In June 1983, however, a federal court ruled that the 10 at-large seats violated the United States Constitution's
one-person, one-vote mandate. In 1989, the
U.S. Supreme Court held that the Board of Estimate's structure was inconsistent with the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because, although the boroughs had widely disparate populations, each had equal representation on the board. In response, the new Charter abolished the Board of Estimate and provided for the redrawing of the council district lines to increase minority representation on the council. It also increased the number of Council Members from 35 to 51. The council was then granted full power over the municipal budget, as well as authority over zoning, land use and franchises. In 1993 the New York City Council voted to rename the position of president of the city council to the
public advocate. As the presiding officer, the public advocate was an
ex officio member of all committees in the council, and in that capacity had the right to introduce and co-sponsor legislation. However the city charter revision of 2002 transferred the duties of presiding officer from the public advocate to the council speaker; the public advocate remains a non-voting member of the council. In 2022, the composition of first female majority City Council included the first Muslim woman, the first South Asian members, and the first openly gay Black woman.
Term limits A two-
term limit was imposed on city council members and citywide elected officials in a 1993 referendum. The movement to introduce term limits was led by
Ronald Lauder, the heir to the
Estée Lauder fortune. In 1996, voters turned down a council proposal to extend term limits. Lauder spent $4 million on the two referendums. However, in 2008, under pressure from Mayor
Michael Bloomberg (who, like many Council members, was facing the end of his two-term limit at that time), the council voted 29–22 to extend the limit to three terms; the council also defeated (by a vote of 22–28, with one abstention) a proposal to submit the issue to public referendum. Legal challenges to the extension of term limits failed in federal court. The original decision by Judge
Charles Sifton of the
United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York (
Long Island, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island) was upheld by a three-judge panel of the
United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (Vermont, Connecticut and New York), and a proposal in the
New York State Legislature to override the extension was not passed. Voters voted to reinstate the two-term limit law in another referendum in 2010. However, according to
The New York Times, incumbent members of the city council who were elected prior to the 2010 referendum "will still be allowed to run for a third term. People in office before 2010 were eligible for three terms." ==Presiding officers since 1898==