From TheBestLinks.com
Board of Estimate is the name of a governing body found in many counties and municipalities, particularly in the United States.
Typically, the board's membership will consist of a combination of elected officials from the executive branch (e.g., the mayor or county executive) and the legislative branch (called the City Council or, in some localities, the Board of Supervisors), and its powers are usually concentrated in such areas as taxation and land use (especially zoning laws).
Perhaps the most famous Board of Estimate is no longer in existence - the one from New York City, which was composed of the mayor, the controller and the President of the City Council, each having two votes, and the five borough presidents, each having one vote. In 1989, the United States Supreme Court declared the New York City Board of Estimate unconstitutional on the grounds that the city's most populous borough (Brooklyn) had no greater effective representation on the board than the city's least populous borough (Staten Island), this arrangement being illegal pursuant to the high court's 1964 "one man, one vote" decision (Reynolds v. Sims). The City Council then ended up assuming most of the responsibilities that the Board of Estimate had heretofore handled.
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