Alexa Avilés: Voting and Legislative Record
Alexa Avilés has built a focused legislative record on the City Council centered on environmental justice, housing accountability, police transparency, and immigrant protection, while also using her votes, particularly on the city budget, as instruments of protest. This section examines what she has actually passed and how she has voted, with citations to primary or strong secondary sources.
A note up front: a council member's record includes both bills passed and votes cast, and Avilés is notable for both. Her sponsored legislation is concrete and verifiable, while her budget votes form a distinct and revealing part of her record. This section tries to capture both, distinguishing what she has enacted from what she has advocated.
Signature legislation
Avilés's office and campaign credit her with passing over half a dozen bills during her tenure, concentrated in a few areas 1. The most significant include:
The How Many Stops Act. Avilés sponsored this police-transparency law, which requires the NYPD to report on police encounters, including lower-level stops that do not lead to arrest, capturing the reason for the stop, the person's demographic information, and whether force was used 2. The law was designed to close reporting loopholes and help identify patterns of discriminatory policing. It was among the most consequential and contested measures she championed, given the NYPD's and some officials' objections to the reporting burden.
Cruise-ship shore power. She passed legislation (Int. 0004) requiring cruise ships to use shore power at cruise terminals, plugging into the electrical grid rather than running engines while docked, to limit emissions, and requiring community traffic-mitigation plans in neighborhoods with cruise terminals such as Red Hook 3,4.
NYCHA transparency. She passed legislation (Int. 0110) requiring reporting on NYCHA's PACT program to maintain oversight of private and nonprofit contractors managing public housing, after data showed privately managed units had higher eviction rates and slower repairs than publicly managed ones 4,5.
Fire-safety tenant protections. She passed legislation (Int. 0006) requiring tenant education and outreach on residential vacate orders issued due to fire damage 4.
Legislative output by the numbers
Avilés's office reported that in 2024 she passed 3 bills, introduced 41 pieces of legislation, and chaired 10 Immigration Committee hearings 4. As of the 2026 session, tracking data showed she had introduced 13 bills, most of them in committee 6.
The pattern is that of a council member with a focused rather than voluminous enacted record, concentrated on environmental justice, housing oversight, and police transparency, paired with a larger body of introduced legislation and active committee work, particularly on immigration.
Committee leadership
As chair of the Committee on Immigration, Avilés's most consequential work has often been through oversight and hearings rather than her own sponsored bills. She chaired numerous immigration hearings and used the committee as a platform to scrutinize city cooperation with federal immigration enforcement, most prominently in opposing Mayor Adams's move to expand ICE access to Rikers Island 7. She has also been a co-sponsor on immigration-related legislation introduced by colleagues, including measures creating a private right of action related to civil immigration detainers and restricting employer use of E-Verify 6.
The budget votes
One of the most distinctive features of Avilés's voting record is her repeated use of budget votes as protest. For her first three years in office, she voted against the city budget, objecting that it preserved what she called cruel cuts from the Adams administration to vital services 8.
This changed in June 2025, when she voted in favor of the FY2026 budget, the first budget she supported since taking office. She explained that, unlike prior budgets, it went beyond restoring cuts to produce genuine benefits for working-class New Yorkers 8. The shift was notable both as a substantive judgment about that particular budget and because her earlier protest votes had become a line of attack from her 2025 moderate challenger, who characterized them as performative gestures that stifled progress 9.
Record versus rhetoric
A fair assessment of Avilés's record distinguishes her concrete legislative achievements from her broader advocacy and protest activity. On the enacted side, the How Many Stops Act, the cruise-ship shore-power law, and the NYCHA transparency measures are real, verifiable laws addressing specific local and citywide problems. On the advocacy side, much of her highest-profile activity, particularly on immigration and Gaza, has taken the form of oversight hearings, public statements, protest, and votes of conscience rather than enacted legislation, which is partly a function of her role as a committee chair and a member of the Council's left flank rather than its leadership.
The honest summary is that Avilés has a focused, genuine legislative record on environmental justice, housing oversight, and police transparency, complemented by an activist approach to her platform and her votes. Supporters see a legislator who both delivers concrete wins and uses every tool, including protest votes, to advance her values. Critics argue that the protest posture, especially the years of budget no-votes, substituted symbolism for results. Both observations describe the same underlying record: a council member who legislates in a focused way on local issues while functioning as a movement voice on the larger fights.