Two years ago, in the middle of Council Member Oliver Koppell’s (D-Bronx) district office holiday party, three Ringneck doves wandered through the door. They had been abandoned by a neighbor and for days were idling outside in the cold before making their move. Koppell’s staff decided to adopt the birds. They are still in the office.
Soon after the adoption, one constituent who faced eviction stopped by Koppell’s office for support. She brought along her autistic child, who watched as the birds cooed and tossed seed onto the floor. The doves calmed the child while his mother sought advice, said Anna O’Connor, Koppell’s chief of staff.  
Koppell has become attuned to the prevalence and everyday challenges of children with autism and other disabilities, and, as chair of the Committee on Mental Health, Mental Retardation, Alcoholism, Drug Abuse and Disability Services, he said his mission is to raise the visibility of their plight. Since most mental health and disability programs are funded and regulated by the state and federal government, Koppell said his committee acts more as a conduit for funding and a soapbox for discussion than a policy-making body.  
Committee hearings range from discussions about depression among Latinas to the connection between homelessness and poor mental health. But Koppell said addressing the needs of mentally ill children is of particular concern to him.
“We should have a mental health program in every school and we don’t,” Koppell said. “It is frustrating to some degree.”
This year, Koppell is fighting to maintain the funding of two mental health programs that the city administers, both of which were initiated by his predecessor, Council Member Margarita López (D-Manhattan). One is a geriatric mental health program, the other a mental health program for children under five. Both must have their funding restored by the Council with each year’s budget, which could make the programs vulnerable to cuts this year because of the current economic downturn.
Koppell said he also hopes to get the Taxi and Limousine Commission to include access for the disabled as an element of the new design for an environmentally sustainable taxi fleet.
A self-described “jack of all trades,” Koppell said he never expected to become an advocate for the mentally ill and disabled. While his father used to make him debate issues at the dinner table growing up, which he said helped steer him toward politics, Koppell said growing up he never experienced drug abuse, mental illness or disability up-close.
But at the outset of 2006, Koppell said, he was looking for a chairmanship. With López term-limited out the year before, Mental Health, Mental Retardation, Alcoholism, Drug Abuse and Disability Services had a vacancy. Speaker Christine Quinn (D-Manhattan) gave him the job.
A 23-year veteran of the Assembly, Koppell was selected as the attorney general to fill out the remainder of the term Robert Abrams resigned from in 1993. He lost the Democratic primary to retain the position the following year, and spent the next seven years in private life before being elected to the Council in 2001.
He still looks back fondly on his time in the Assembly. In his office, he keeps a framed copy of the five-cent redemption tax legislation “bottle bill” which he wrote in 1982, and which he considers his political legacy.
“More than 100 billion bottles and cans have been recycled in the last 25 years, so it is something that has affected everybody and the environment,” he said.  
Deferring to the speaker’s and mayor’s offices as a Council member can be frustrating, Koppell said, especially when he is unable to draw on Albany contacts to help move forward projects and proposals he thinks are important.
“I’ve known Shelly Silver for 25 years but I can’t call Shelly Silver and say, ‘Why can’t you do this, that and the other thing,’ because Shelly is responsive to the mayor and speaker,” Koppell said. “He might listen to me, but what I tell him won’t be so significant.”
He also feels the drop-off in the ability to make substantive change between Albany and the Council acutely. If his committee often does not make news, Kopell said, there are structural reasons: Most funding is decided at the state and federal levels.
“In a sense, the city plays a somewhat less active front-seat role,” he said. “The city primarily is a conduit for funding.”
Term-limited out of office next year, Koppell said it is unlikely he will run for borough president. He believes the race will be difficult to win for a non-Latino.
While on the Council, Koppell has maintained his private law practice. Once forced out of City Hall, he said he plans to work full-time at his firm—though he does not rule out a return to elected office. But whatever happens, before Koppell packs up his office, he must find new homes for the Ringneck doves, which have since multiplied. Where once there were three, now there are five.