Queens councilmembers get committee appointments

Members of the New York City Council got their committee appointments on Thursday, including the 15 members who represent Queens. New York City Design Commission/Glenn Castellano

By Ryan Schwach

Leadership of the City Council on Thursday announced which councilmembers will be serving on which committees and which lawmakers will be in charge of them.

This year’s appointments saw many members of the Queens delegation remain in their positions, though there were also several changes, including the stripping of one councilmember’s committee chairship.

Of the 15 members of the Queens delegation, only three – Vickie Paladino, Francisco Moya and Tiffany Cabán – were not given a chair position.

For Paladino and Moya, the lack of committee leadership is not new. That’s not the case for Cabán.

Cabán formerly chaired the Women and Gender Equity Committee. The progressive Western Queens councilmember and others speculated that the stripping of her chairship was punishment for her voting against last year’s city budget.

“Yesterday, I learned that my time chairing the Committee on Women and Gender Equity has come to an end, and that I will not be chairing any committees going forward,” Cabán said in a statement. “While I can’t say with certainty what considerations went into this decision, I can say that there’s nothing I would change about the last two years: not one statement, not one oversight question, not one vote – especially not my votes against [Mayor Eric Adams’] cruel, dangerous budget cuts.”

“My team will not be impeded by this decision,” she added. “Our best work flows from our ability to remain focused, nimble, and strategic in the face of shifting political terrain.”

Cabán kept some of her other appointments, and also joined the Criminal Justice Committee – Rikers Island is included in the former public defender’s district. Cabán was the only councilmember not present for Thursday’s stated meeting.

Other progressive members who voted against the budget elsewhere in the city experienced shakeups, including Brooklyn’s Chi Ossé and Shahana Hanif, who both lost chairships.

Brooklyn Councilmember Sandy Nurse also voted against the budget and was shifted out of the chair seat on the Committee on Sanitation and named chair of the Committee on Criminal Justice.

During the pre-stated meeting, Speaker Adrienne Adams was asked about changes to the committees and what motivated them.

“I get the impulse to speculate and try to figure out and attribute a singular reason behind committee decisions,” she said. “But it's always a lot more complex than that.”

“Some people are going to be unhappy about the decisions,” she added. “There shouldn’t be an expectation that committee assignments remain static across different legislative sessions.”

The speaker from Queens said that changes to committee positions were about finding a “different energy, different creativity” in various roles that could help the Council move forward with its goals and plans in 2024.

“There were some folks that are right there and still continuing that work, that's great, but there are other spaces where we're going to be pushing and propelling other things,” the speaker said. “Some places where we're going to be going in different directions where there is a need for new energy.”

The example used by Adams on Thursday was the appointment of newly elected Bronx Councilmember Yusef Salaam as chair of the Public Safety committee.

Salaam, who was elected in November, spent seven years wrongfully imprisoned as a member of the Central Park Five – later known as the Exonerated Five – for the 1989 assault and rape of a woman.

The speaker said that Salaam’s perspective the kind of different energy she is looking for.

“He brings something that is very unique, and that is his unique experience with the system,” she said. “[Salaam] will be able to oversee a committee that he has literally been a part of the system from behind the scenes.”

The vote certifying the appointments went down without a hitch at the stated meeting, being approved unanimously by the Council.

Queens Councilmember Tiffany Cabán had her committee chair position taken on Thursday, a move many speculated was in response to her voting against the budget. Emil Cohen/ NYC Council Media Unit

Other Queens appointments

Outside of the more notable – or controversial – committee shifts, other Queens representatives saw changes to their committee assignments on Thursday.

Paladino, a Republican who represents the Northern Queens-centered 19th District, won her re-election by a landslide in 2023. Although being one of the three in the Queens delegation lacking a chair position, she is on more committees in 2024 than she was at the beginning of the 2022 session.

Paladino maintains positions on the Technology and Veteran’s committees, and adds the Governmental Operations, State & Federal Legislation committee, Hospitals, Parks and Recreation, Sanitation and Small Business to her roster.

She was removed from the Mental Health and Resiliency and Waterfronts committees.

Moya is entering his last term in office, and was still left without a full committee chair.

Last year Moya, who has established himself as a mayoral ally in the Council, challenged Speaker Adams for the speakership. Regardless, Moya finds himself on the Civil Service, Finance, Hospitals and powerful Land Use committees.

Moya also sits on the Subcommittee for Zoning, as well the Subcommittee on COVID and Infectious Diseases, which he chairs.

The only other Queens member with a change in what they chair was Flushing Councilmember Sandra Ung, who went from chairing the Governmental Operations committee to chairing the Standards and Ethics Committee.

Every other Queens representative maintained the chairship they had in the previous Council.

Councilmember Linda Lee will chair Mental Health, Jim Gennaro will chair Environmental Protection, Shekar Krishnan will chair Parks and Recreation, Julie Won will chair Contracts, Nantasha Williams will chair Civil and Human Rights, Lynn Schulman will chair Health, Selvena Brooks-Powers will chair Transportation, Joann Ariola chairs Fire and Emergency Management, Jennifer Gutiérrez will chair Technology and Bob Holden will chair the Veterans Committee.

Some of the members celebrated their renewed chair appointments.

"My father, relatives, and friends served in combat, while my mother contributed to the war effort," said Holden in a statement. "Serving as the Chair of the Veterans Committee has been the honor of a lifetime. I am deeply committed to continuing our important work over the last two years, ensuring that our veterans' voices are heard and their needs are addressed in City Hall."

One new committee, called the Task Force to Combat Hate, has three Queens members in Krishnan, Williams and Lee.