David Pechefsky wrote to me last night from Liberia, where he is setting up a budget office for the Liberian Congress. He told me about his Op-Ed in yesterday’s New York Times. He says it was written during the campaign but they didn’t publish until now. Pechefsy, who lives in Park Slope, is a former assistant director of the New York City Council’s finance division. He ran for City Council in the 39th district on the Green Party ticket in 2009.

IN Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s State of the City speech on Wednesday, he spoke of the City Council as if it were an equal partner in government. Indeed, the mayor’s surprisingly close re-election, the unusual defeat of a handful of council members and some spirited races in the general election in a city where winning the Democratic primary is tantamount to victory, might lead one to expect the 51-member body to be imbued with new democratic vigor. However, the council members inaugurated this month have joined a body whose governance structure is hardly more democratic than a high school student council’s — where the principal calls the shots.

Ultimately, all City Council decisions are made by the speaker and the speaker’s staff. The speaker controls which members get to sit on which committees and who heads those committees, what legislation comes up for a vote, the hiring and firing of the 250-plus central staff and the money that members get to dole out to their districts.