Winning is Easy—Governing Is Hard
Looking ahead to the unsexy work of fixing New York
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The confetti’s been swept up. The “What just happened?” takes have been written and read. The horserace is behind us: now the homework begins.
As we wrote in our Voter Guide, mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has charismatically led a new political movement, “a talent that could translate to leadership of the city at large.” But it’s no sure thing: “a Mamdani mayoralty could also give way to the mismanagement of inexperience—or to the privileging of close allies over the best people for the job.”
We’re watching closely who will be staffing the coming administration, how the new mayor will navigate the reality-of-governing roadblocks he’ll inevitably butt up against, and what pieces of his agenda will be prioritized at City Hall and in Albany.
It’s not just about avoiding the worst-case scenario: at this pivotal political moment coming off a clear rejection of status-quo politics, New York might be able to tackle problems that have long seemed intractable.
Below are a few issues that we think the new administration should address. They’re structural challenges to housing, transit, energy, and public sector capacity that a Mayor Mamdani could finally solve—or that, if left unaddressed, could drag him down.
On Public Sector Capacity: Civil Service Reform
The political chatter that focused pre-election on campaign tactics, polling, and endorsements has turned to questions of who Mamdani will appoint to the top roles in his administration—and who from the Adams administration (like NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch) he might keep. Mamdani has already named former Bill de Blasio First Deputy Mayor Dean Fuleihan to be the city’s number two again. Fuleihan is a reliable old hand who can help the 34-year-old get his hands around the sprawling apparatus of NYC’s government. Meanwhile, Mamdani’s 34-year-old Assembly Chief of Staff Elle Bisgaard-Church will now be Chief of Staff to the also-millennial mayor.
We care about these top roles, but we’re also interested in the rest of the 300,000 city jobs filled by folks whose names most of us don’t know. Mamdani opened a résumé portal that’s already gotten 50,000 submissions—an incredible sign of enthusiasm from New Yorkers inspired by the mayor-elect who want to put their energy to use serving New York. But translating that interest into hiring will be a massive uphill battle. Unlike private companies that can hire and fire at will, the city has strict rules about filling many roles—rules that have contributed to the 13,000 vacancies now undermining city service delivery.
As captured in this Vital City piece by Robert Gordon and Gabe Paley, “To call the system ‘byzantine’ would be an insult to Byzantium.” (Recoding America author Jennifer Pahlka adds context in this Substack post.) Many roles can only be hired from a list of individuals who have taken a particular civil service test—but yearslong gaps between test-taking and hiring mean those candidates are rarely still interested. Agencies use workarounds to hire into more flexible roles that aren’t really what they need, leading to irrational and inscrutable staffing. Public sector innovation is hobbled; instead, we rely on hacked-together tools like the affordable housing database built by two city teens in the mold of the makeshift vaccine database built by Huge Ma in 2021.
The new administration should use some of its political capital to address this sclerotic system, so that high-quality talent can actually be plugged into the agencies where they can do good for their neighbors. In the meantime, in addition to submitting to the Mamdani résumé bank, anyone interested in serving the new administration should submit to our talent database, too, so we can help surface particularly compelling applicants to the transition team’s leadership.
On Housing Growth and Equity: Property Taxes and Insurance
Mamdani’s top campaign issue was always affordability, specifically housing affordability—and we’ve always agreed with him that addressing skyrocketing rents must be priority one. We’ve been skeptical, though, of rent freezes on stabilized units; those freezes will certainly be a short-term balm for tenants, but they threaten the quality and availability of income-restricted units that we must keep online.
Mamdani’s embrace of adding new supply, including market-rate supply, has been greatly encouraging to those of us who want to see rents not just frozen but lowered—and not just for stabilized tenants, but for everyone. The mayor-elect’s support of the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity, of ending parking mandates and upzoning near transit, and of the ballot proposals to update the ULURP process through which the city approves new homes were all steps in the right direction.
However, creating more homes isn’t just about legalizing them—it’s also about the costs of their creation and maintenance. On that front, we are eager to see how the Mamdani administration tackles two major inputs into those calculations: property taxes and insurance costs.
Let’s take property taxes, which currently “place a greater financial burden on rental apartments” than on homes New Yorkers own. These inequitable tax rates “drive up rents and discourage the production of high-density housing New York desperately needs.” Addressing this imbalance has been a political non-starter, because politically empowered homeowners are benefiting from the status quo. However, First Deputy Mayor appointee Dean Fuleihan has already said that the administration wants to look at property taxes—a great sign for finally achieving equity.
Insurance costs also inflate the price of new housing. Why are they so high in New York? As former city council member and current New York State Association for Affordable Housing president Carlina Rivera writes, we’re the only state in the nation that still applies an “absolute liability” standard for construction worker injury. Other states use a “comparative negligence” standard, incorporating an assessment of whether a worker ignores safety protocols or is intoxicated on the job. Our 1885 “Scaffold Law” has also gone unaddressed for too long because of political pushback.
Indeed, high insurance costs don’t just impact housing—they’re also throttling New York nightlife. If the new mayor and Governor Kathy Hochul want to unleash new housing supply and job creation through city and state partnership, taxes and insurance costs should be part of the conversation.
On Speeding and Funding Infrastructure: Value Capture and SEQR Reform
Increasing housing supply near transit, as Mamdani has vowed to do, will help reduce rent burden by giving New Yorkers more places to live. That’s not all: letting more people live near transit helps connect them to jobs, school, and friends, while reducing the carbon footprint that comes with sprawl. Housing, transit, and climate are all connected, and so we’re excited to see the mayor—and his legislative and executive allies—look at ways to act on all three.
As Alex Armlovich writes in Vital City, upzoning near transit can be complemented by building more transit. And while it might seem financially untenable for a Mayor Mamdani to decide to add more subway lines to the system, Armlovich points out that a quirk in state law could allow him to fund that expansion through the new land value it creates. This tactic would pay for itself—and then some: “the first phase of the Second Avenue Subway, despite its $4.5 billion cost for only three stations, created over $7 billion in private land value nearby.”
Funding these new projects is one piece of the puzzle. Another is speeding them up. Reducing red tape will be an area where Mamdani will need the collaboration of Albany (as will the value capture plan, which Armlovich notes will require MTA buy-in). Right now, the well-intended State Environmental Quality Review Act is often used (and abused) by opponents of homes, transit, and climate action to slow or stop critical projects. The next legislature could update the law to address those pitfalls.
As it is, SEQR added $2 million to the cost of one housing effort in Hempstead, has delayed or derailed housing already well-served by infrastructure and transit, and is contributing to 3.7-year average timelines for large-scale renewable siting permits. To reduce rents for New Yorkers, to connect us to each other, and to meet our climate goals, we must update the ways we approve and fund our infrastructure.
Zohran Mamdani will enter office with tremendous goodwill, partnership with the governor, and a massive movement behind him—here’s hoping he aims that energy at the entrenched but unsexy systems that have hamstrung New York for far too long.