On August 21, 2014 I submitted to the discussion group a comment "Considering Informed Consent for City-TLD Applicants" - see here. It urged that a stronger standard than "non-objection" be sought for future city-TLD applicants. The suggestion was that we craft an "informed consent" standard for cities seeking a TLD, and that we draw upon other sectors such as medical and resource management in developing that standard.

In the 26 May report I don't find language adequately representing the suggestion. The only entry that might possibly relate is in Group 1 under "Community engagement." This reader was unclear if the community referenced there was the ICANN or applying community (i.e., city).

Actually, no suggestions of what to do were meant to be present at the report, so the question is whether the issue (not the solution) is there.

The mayor's statement was released during a period in which our organization was requesting information about the identity of those who have purchased .nyc names. We are seeking to identify some metrics for assessing the impact .nyc is having on our city. Our request for anonymized registrant data was refused. And last week we were forced to file a request for registrant information using the state's Freedom of Information Law (FOIL).

The core of what you asked is published by .nyc due to ICANN contractual requirements: the zone file describing each name that is registered and DNS servers that in turn point to content for each domain. https://czds.icann.org/ is the entry point for this information.

It's my belief that, had there been a requirement for informed consent, the city's stakeholders would have participated in developing the application for the .nyc TLD. And from that participation clear metrics for its success would have emerged, and the mayor could have spoken about the success of the TLD using them.

Since .nyc applicant, and now registry, is the city itself (even if under an outsourcing contract), it seems that they had more than just informed consent, they had full authority. The issue you described is that you believe that no matter the standard is a non-objection or an informed consent, that it must come not only from the executive branch but from a multistakeholder representation of the geographic region. Just raising the threshold to informed consent wouldn't be enough to achieve what you are suggesting.