This year, in addition to the candidates, there are four (4) ballot proposals you will be asked to vote on. Questions 1 and 2 are State ballot proposals. Questions 3 and 4 are City ballot proposals put forth by the City’s Charter Revision Commission. They are as follows:

QUESTION 3. Ethics Code for City Administrative Judges

These changes to the City Charter, as proposed by the New York City Charter Revision Commission, would require the Mayor and the Chief Administrative Law Judge of the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings to jointly issue rules establishing a code or codes of professional conduct for the administrative law judges and hearing officers in the City's administrative tribunals. Shall the proposed changes be adopted?

QUESTION 4. Balanced Budget and Other City Fiscal Requirements

These changes to the City Charter, as proposed by the New York City Charter Revision Commission, would establish as Charter requirements the following fiscal mandates that, in general, now apply to the City through a State law enacted in response to the City’s 1975 fiscal crisis. The changes would add these mandates to the City Charter so that they would continue to apply after the State law expires. The changes would:

• Require that the City annually prepare a budget balanced in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), and end each year not showing a deficit in accordance with those principles;
• Require that the Mayor annually prepare a four-year City financial plan, to be based on reasonable assumptions and modified on at least a quarterly basis, and that the plan provide for payment of the City’s debts and a general reserve of at least $100 million to cover shortfalls;
• Impose additional conditions on the Charter’s current restrictions on short-term debt (which may be issued by the City to fund a projected deficit or in anticipation of the receipt of funds from taxes, revenues, and bonds). These conditions generally limit the duration and amount of the short-term debt; and
• Impose additional conditions on the annual audit of the City’s accounts that is currently required by the Charter. These conditions relate to application of generally accepted auditing standards and access by auditors to records so that the audit may be issued within four months after the close of the City fiscal year.