Corey over Brad: How to rank the choice for city comptroller after David Weprin

This Editorial Board wrote Saturday that voters should rank David Weprin their first choice for comptroller. But we’ve got an important follow-up note about filling out the rest of your ballot, given that most polls show the race is between Council Speaker Corey Johnson and Councilman Brad Lander.

Rank Johnson second.

The 39-year-old autodidact has contagious enthusiasm, boundless energy and generally sound judgment. He showed courage last year when, heeding warnings from Black and Latino members wary of gutting spending on police, he resisted calls to slash NYPD funding and charted a more moderate course. Johnson stands out for his ability to garner popular attention for obscure policy issues, a boon in an office where audit findings galvanize change if and only if people actually read them.

In third-place, rank state Sen. Brian Benjamin. He has significant public- and private-sector financial experience, though his involvement with a special purpose acquisition company while on the public payroll raises concerns about his judgment.

What’s the matter with Lander, an earnest and diligent legislator? He is proposing a troublingly far-reaching reshaping of the comptroller’s office, one that would arguably stretch it beyond its charter-mandated responsibilities.

Fiduciary responsibility must guide stewardship of the city’s $250 billion in pension funds. Lander’s proposed a host of newfangled metrics to govern those investments, including analyses of how the investments would “address the cycle of racial wealth and income inequality.”

He’s proposing “participatory auditing” — letting parents and community members identify waste, fraud and abuse and review the results — despite the fact the office has a staff of hundreds of trained professionals paid to do such work.

Perhaps most problematic are plans to conduct audits with pre-ordained outcomes, such as his pledge to “use the tools of the comptroller’s office” to make the case for decriminalizing sex work and advocate for Medicare for All and the New York Health Act. Conclusions should be dictated by the facts auditors uncover — not the other way around.