Letter: City should abolish the ‘useless’ Office of the NYC Public Advocate

To the Editor,

A recent call by NYC Councilmembers Robert Holden and Kalmany Yeger to abolish the Office of the New York City Public Advocate makes sense. Too bad a future voter referendum was not placed on the 2023 general election ballot to abolish the office. Any public opinion poll can tell you that the average citizen believes taxpayers would be better off if this useless office was abolished.

It has only provided temporary employment for past public advocates Mark Green, Betsy Gotbaum, Bill de Blasio, Letitia James and current incumbent Jumaane Williams. All have previously used this office as a stepping stone to run for higher office, either mayor or state attorney general. Only Ms. Gotbaum was unsuccessful in staying on the public payroll. Mr. Williams is all but an announced candidate for mayor in 2025.

All engaged in a non-stop series of press conferences, news releases, issuance of various reports, letters to the editor, guest columns in newspapers and publicity stunts for years. All of this was at taxpayers’ expense to raise their respective name identification with voters and grease the wheels for running for another public office. I’m not aware that Williams is on any terrorist watch list. Yet his office comes with the perks of a taxpayer-funded police security detail and private driver. Why not use public transportation to get around town like millions of his constituents do? He resides on the Fort Hamilton Brooklyn Military Base.

NYC has a $107 billion budget with more than 300,000 employees. This is greater than most states and many nations. Members of each of the city’s 59 community boards, their district managers along with every municipal agency provide better customer service to residents than the public advocate. The same is true for members of the NYC Council, borough presidents and city comptroller. They periodically conduct audits of municipal agencies. The Office of Public Advocate just duplicates these functions with taxpayers paying twice for the same service. No one would notice if the Office of Public Advocate was abolished. Life for NYC residents would go on without any significant adverse impact. Funding for the Office of Public Advocate would be better spent on more critical municipal services such as transportation, police, fire, sanitation or education.

Larry Penner