Edward L. Sadowsky, a sixth-term member of the New York City Council who helped redeem his body’s reputation before the 1989 government review gave it broader authority, died Thursday in Beachwood, Ohio. He was 92 years old.
His death in an elderly home near the home of one of his sons was caused by acute respiratory failure, said another son, Richard Sadowsky.
Officials who promised to revise the city charter and give the council more power in the late 1980s as Sadowsky was promoted to the top leadership position as a politically independent idol destroyer of the cerebrum. relieved. As a good government model.
A revision of the charter was being considered as the Estimate Committee, a group of eight hybrid civil servants elected throughout the city who shared power with the city council, was challenged as unconstitutional.
Richard L. Emery, a civil liberty lawyer who organized a proceeding that led to the abolition of the board in 1989, counciled Sadowsky and Peter F. Barrone, who became the majority leader of the council in 1986. He admitted that he had persuaded the Charter Revision Commission. I was ready to take the place of the board.
“Ed and Peter Barone have reformed the council so that they can actually effectively exercise their new powers after the quotation committee is abolished,” Emery said in an email.
Sadowsky, who served from 1961 to 1985 and represented the northern region of Queens from Flushing to Whitestone, was one of the early liberal democratic reformers of the council. He received such respect from his colleagues and party leaders as an active investigator (he was also considered the smartest member of the council), so he was a charter and government commissioner. He became chairman of the association and later chairman of the Finance Committee. The second-ranked member after the majority of leaders.
As a lawyer, he was an early index to abolish or restructure the Quotation Committee, which consisted of the mayor, city auditor, city council mayor, and five ward mayors.
In the mid-1960s, Sadowsky represented members of Staten Island from 350,000 to Brooklyn’s population, but one board member, as the Mayor voted the same number individually. Claimed to violate the one-vote principle. 2.2 million.
The board’s dominance in city administration has effectively deprived other metropolitan councils of power and prestige. One of its members, Henry J. Stern, left the board to “less than a rubber stamp” in the 1970s. , Because the rubber stamp at least leaves an impression. “
When Sadowsky retired as a legislator in 1985 and practiced the law full-time, he played the roles of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” and was always around the action, The council was dismissed as an institution that was by no means perfect. Initialize. “
Sadowsky’s indictment of the Estimate Commission was substantiated in 1989 when the US Supreme Court declared the Commission unconstitutional. It was abolished under the new city charter and most of its authority was diverted to the expanded city council.
Sadowsky, who declared the council “unexploded” four years ago, admitted that things were getting better even before the changes were fully implemented. “The improvement in member quality was realistic and obvious as it gained more power,” he said.
Sadowsky also raised his voice for other causes. He challenged Mayor John V. Lindsay’s administration to rely on external consultants rather than civil servants and to create a top-heavy super agency aimed at streamlining the city’s bureaucracy. .. In the same year, he sought out scams in a municipal loan program aimed at repairing slum homes.
He successfully sponsored a law to establish a committee to oversee the cultural affairs department and the taxi industry. He fought for more than a decade to guarantee gay rights before the council finally did so in 1986.
And he both the mayor and his council colleagues by questioning the annual budget ritual of inflating revenue forecasts and keeping costs modest, which helped put the city into a financial crisis in the mid-1970s. I went against.
Edward Lewis Sadowsky was born on February 6, 1929 in Brooklyn. His father, David, was a salesman. His mother, Vina (Greenberg) Sadowsky, was a bookkeeper.
After graduating from Erasmushall High School in Brooklyn, he earned a bachelor’s degree from New York University in 1950 and a law degree from Columbia Law School in 1953. He served in the Army’s Directorate General of Judges.
In 1953 he married journalist Jean Fishkin. She died in 2016. With his son Richard, he is surviving by another son, Jonathan. Daughter Nina Sadowsky. Sister Susanne Sadowsky. And six grandchildren.
Sadowsky has always described himself as a “coincidence politician.” The Reform Club he belonged to routinely defended candidates who had lost Democratic nominations in various positions. It changed in 1961 when he realized he was in the same slate as Mayor Robert F. Wagner and broke up with the party boss who supported him twice that year. (Mayor Wagner’s spokesman, Debs Myers, was the former boss of Mr. Sadowsky’s wife at Newsweek.)
He was an avid supporter of racial integration in schools and housing, even when that attitude jeopardized the support of his members. He often quoted Mr. Myers’ advice. “If you keep doing the right thing, you usually find that it’s politically right.”
At some point he did not seek re-election in 1985, hoping to run for leadership position as an executive rather than a legislator. A year later, he lost the opportunity to become the Mayor of Queens after his incumbent Donald R. Mane resigns due to corruption scandal. A colleague of his former council overtook him and named him Claire Schulman instead. He was appointed to the school board later that year.
His desire to seek a Democratic mayoral nomination in 1989 failed in the face of competition between incumbent Edward I. Koch and his main challenger, David N. Dinkins.
But when Sadowsky resigned from the council 24 years later, he did not express regret.
“It’s better to resign in the office than to die in the office,” he said. “Because I can hear some compliments.”
